Choosing a Caribbean Island
With scores of islands - how do you tell which one is right for you?
The Caribbean islands each have their own, distinctive feel, and it‘s very hard to tell in advance which one will suit you best… There are large islands and small islands, developed islands and dozy, laid-back cays and Spanish, English and French-speaking islands, with populations originating from around the world. Almost each one has its own rhythm – soca… salsa… ska! And everywhere is underpinned nowadays by the baselines of reggae. See our snapshot reviews to help you tease out the differences.
Islands are listed alphabetically, inserted as they are written…
Anguilla
In my opinion Anguilla has the finest sea and sand in the Caribbean – I’d say the ‘Caribbean’s best beaches’, but the lack of palms undermines the archetype. But hey, the sea and sand is unbelievable – I have seen fish fry seeding their way in and out the glassy faces of rising waves on Meads Bay; and the sand is so sumptuous that just walking becomes aerobic exercise... Generally Anguilla is extremely low key (there’s not much action beyond the beach bars, unlike eg St Barts), and this despite a sophisticated clientele with money to spend (Anguilla is pretty expensive, certainly it’s hard to have an inexpensive trip there). They come for the island’s smart hotels and particularly stylish villas and ‘super-villas’. The island’s restaurants are also excellent and have good interest (chefs doing interesting things) and depth. The Anguillians themselves are cool – ever independent minded and unimpressed by worldly fame and glamour and – key on a site like this – Anguilla’s beach bars are superb (and have good variety too).
The Bahamas
The Bahamas don’t consider themselves a part of the Caribbean – geologically they are not, and of course they are closer to the States - they sit just off Florida). Clearly visitors go for much the same reasons, however. And in the Bahamas that is for the incredible sand – startlingly bright white, and never-ending – and the sea, the bluest of them all – sometimes it’s like a surrealist painting, turquoise taken to the tenth degree. The Bahamas (30 or so main islands, hundreds of sandbars and cays) have a highly developed tourism industry in certain places (along Cable Beach and Paradise Island around the capital Nassau, plus sections of Grand Bahama – which is fine if you like large hotels full of action –casinos, entertainment, even theme-parks), but for independent travellers the charm of the place is really in the onward hop to the dozens of ‘Out islands’, with their gentler pace and easy tropical life, whether this is on lively, heart-stoppingly pretty Harbour Island or in a dozy settlement on one of the limitless stretches of untouched sand on.. well, there are too many to name.
Barbados
Barbados punches above its weight in the Caribbean: it is a relatively small island but it has excellent beaches, a broad-based tourism industry and good weather even in an area known for its good weather. It is very well connected by air and along it is highly developed along it western and southern coastlines - with some of the Caribbean’s most famous hotels, a handful of good inns and hundreds of superb villas and good apartments. The island has some excellent restaurants and latterly has opened some cool beach bars: finally, there are good tours and sites to visit including gardens, plantation houses, adventures and sailing trips. The Bajans, as they are known, are polite and generally extremely welcoming, and give the island its strong identity. Their island is pretty crowded, but there are still a few hideaways. All in all Barbados makes a reliable first visit to the Caribbean – after which many visitors return again and again.
The Dominican Republic
It’s not usually a first choice for independent travellers from Britain, perhaps because the Dom Rep is remembered for offering the cheapest all-inclusive holidays of them all (I used to recommend buying the package for the flight and leaving the hotel after a night to explore). But things have changed: there are now cool independent hotels across the price range, and in a country with this much natural and cultural depth – outstanding tropical beauty, history, lively Latin life, mesmerising, compulsive music and dance, lots of macho and flounce – any exploration is rewarded. (With their different flight destinations, this is something our US and Canadian friends have always done.) There are cool resort areas – Cabarete, the Samana coast, parts of the south-east – and local curiosities such as the mountains and the desert-like south-west. And don’t forget the capital Santo Domingo: the modern outskirts are a bit of a concrete forest (though you will find cool, self-confident Dominican restaurants and bars there), but at their core lies the Old City, one of the Caribbean’s gems – atmospheric, historic and charming, with some lovely colonial palaces newly converted to hotels.
Grenada
An attractive and reliably charming mid-size island, Grenada’s easy to fall in love with. It is green and mountainous, and while not as geographically dramatic as, say, St Lucia, it is beautiful (particularly its capital, St Georges) and immensely fertile (with excellent gardens). It is less also developed than St Lucia or Barbados, so there are fewer hotels in all categories (luxury, all-inclusive, independent inns) and generally less going on (restaurants, sights etc). However, Grenada retains a certain gentle old-Caribbean charm that other islands have lost in their thrust for progress, and this may be what you are looking for. West Indians are generally friendly, but the Grenadians are particularly so. Tourist life is almost all concentrated in the south-west, where the flatter land has (the most coral growth and therefore) the island’s best white sand beaches - and some superb beach bars. Grenada has two small Grenadine islands: Carriacou is laid back, small island Caribbean life incarnate.
The Grenadines
Although normally mentioned in the same breath as St Vincent, their ‘capital’ island, the Grenadines are really a destination in their own right: you don’t necessarily pass through the larger island to get there. The Grenadines are small-island Caribbean life taken to the nth degree, with charm, somnolence and superb sea and sand in equal measure. And yet, each Grenadine is different. Mustique, the best known, is a glitzy, very international playground with exceptional villas, while Bequia has unutterable local Caribbean charm with small hotels, villas and a vibrant local life. Canouan has hotels, villas and golf but little else; gentle Mayreau and Union Island have strong local life rather than tourism – though the latter gives access to smaller islands nearby including the lovely Tobago Cays, the archetypal ‘desert’ islands (also to Carriacou, though this is mostly reached via Grenada). The Grenadines offers excellent sailing, a little more demanding than in other Caribbean areas, but equally magical - simply slither off the deck into turquoise water and swim in to an abandoned beach....
Guadeloupe
The French island of Guadeloupe, mid-way down the eastern Caribbean chain, is really two islands shunted together: Basse-Terre, the soaring, luxuriant, volcanic western half, and Grande-Terre in the east, the rolling, coral-based half, fringed with white-sand beaches. (See more about the different styles of Caribbean islands.) More than this, Guadeloupe also has another five offshore islets, making it one of the sailing centres of the Caribbean. Easily accessed from France and the States, harder from the UK (generally via Paris or Antigua), Guadeloupe’s tourism is relatively sparse except along the southern side of Grande-Terre, where there are resort towns, marinas and large hotels on the pretty good beaches: elsewhere the inns and gites (self-catering apartments) make for great low-key, independent travel, particularly on Basse-Terre. Guadeloupe has good restaurants, with French and French Creole cuisine, and a good variety of activities, including rainforest hiking, scuba and sailing trips. And while the islanders can be hesitant, and many don’t speak English, they are welcoming once you catch them in conversation.
Jamaica
Jamaica is a large and exceptionally beautiful island in the western Caribbean, south of Florida and Cuba, with a lively population of over 2 million, giving it a strong local life and culture. Jamaica’s tourism industry is vast and it is easy to get to, with flights from cities around the States and Canada and from the UK and mainland Europe (though be sure you choose the correct destination – either Montego Bay in the NW for upbeat Mo Bay and Ocho Rios on the touristy north coast, plus laid-back Negril and the south-west; or Kingston in the SE, for the city, lovely, dozy Port Antonio and the Blue Mountains). There is a huge range of accommodation, from the branded all-inclusives, Sandals and Superclubs, through the classic, elegant independent hotels to inns and funky hideaways, particularly in Negril and Port Antonio. There are also independent villas and apartments across the price range. Sadly there are few independent restaurants, though there’s plenty of interesting local and street food, but there is plenty to see and do, from zip-lines and sailing trips to cultural and plantation tours. And of course there’s the music – reggae in its many forms - which reverberates along every street.
Nevis
Nevis, a tiny 6 miles by 8, has unutterable, almost ineffable charm:, arising from a combination of the islanders, who go more placidly than other West Indians, the traditional wood and stone buildings, which create a calm and gracious air, and vertiginous greenery. Even Nevis’s small scale contributes – other islands soar dramatically from the sea, but from sister-island St Kitts, the leisurely slopes of Nevis make for one of the Caribbean’s most beautiful views. And it’s a charm that so many Caribbean islands, in their rush for development, stacking beaches with ill-suited buildings, cramming visitors in, have lost. Nevis has seen more measured, mostly sympathetic development. For all this charm, getting there is not that easy (actually this is part of its secret, of course): it’s simplest via St Kitts (followed by a long taxi and a ferry ride); alternately charter a plane from Antigua or St Maarten. Nevis has unusual accommodation, with relatively few beach hotels, but inland it has the Caribbean’s finest plantation hotels. Whatever you feel about Caribbean history and the planters who lived in these buildings, for today’s travellers they represent a small form of Caribbean perfection. There is also a very good range of villas and a small number of nice restaurants to go with an easy local life. And some excellent beach bars, naturally.
Saba
Unfeasibly, tiny Saba - a volcanic peak just two and a half miles by three set in the north-eastern Caribbean - is the highest point in the Kingdom of the Netherlands. But lots of things about Saba are unexpected: the islanders speak mainly English, their island is impossibly steep and they built a road that engineers said was impossible. Accessed via (Dutch/French) St Maarten by plane or ferry (it has a very ‘sporting’ airstrip), Saba has a handful of hotels and some lovely traditional wooden cottages with white picket fences and red tin roofs to rent. The island is extremely quiet and its people gracious and polite, so it offers a lovely, low-key escape. It is exceptionally attractive, with rampant tropical greenery and surprisingly extensive hiking, around the flanks and to the peak, the 2885 ft Mt Scenery. Also scuba diving (with no water run-off and its slopes, the corals are excellent). One other untypical thing about Saba: it doesn’t really have a beach. People sunbathe near the quay, but mostly they relax on their balconies until the locals come out on a Friday night.
St Barts
St Barts is unlike any other island in the Caribbean - it feels more metropolitan French than French Caribbean. It is stylish and sophisticated, and well… sexy – what it doesn’t have is the Caribbean’s easy-going character and slow charm, nor even many West Indians of colour. Once Swedish, the island is quite hard to get to (from the States and mainland Europe mainly via St Maarten; from Britain generally via Antigua), but it has a very well developed tourism industry with some of the smartest and most expensive accommodation in the islands, and a whole clutch of excellent restaurants. St Barts is unexpectedly attractive, if on a small scale, and hasexceptional beaches; it is generally expensive, and there are stars and starlets to spy in the many excellent bars and beach bars if you are inclined. It tends to bring out extreme opinions – while it may not feel very Caribbean in spirit, if you are looking for some French elegance on the western side of the Atlantic, it may fit your needs perfectly.
St Lucia
Famed for her physical beauty – like Helen of Troy, she moved whole armies – St Lucia has recently built a reputation as the Caribbean’s most romantic destination. And it’s true, heart-stoppingly pretty bays and beaches, particularly in the north, rise through tropical abundance and vertiginous green forest to the mountainous centre, coming to an iconic crescendo in the Pitons, two vast conical peaks that soar from the sea’s edge. With a strong local (French creole) vibe on land and plenty of activities to keep visitors busy, including seaborne excursions, St Lucia has a well-developed tourist industry and is pretty easy to get to, with many weekly flights from the UK and north America. It caters to all price levels – from guest houses up to standard international chains and, more interestingly, quirky luxury – in both hotels and private villas. The island still doesn’t quite have the levels of cuisine or the ‘scene’ of Barbados, St Barts or Anguilla, but for the right people, looking for a private – and perhaps romantic – escape, with a strong Caribbean feel, she offers an utterly beguiling experience.