Caribbean Sand and Sea

The Caribbean is rightly known for its beaches. There are strands with blinding white sand as far as the eye can see, lapped by gin-clear shallows, there are half-moon curves of sugary orange sand on an emerald bay, there are busy beaches, others with just a rickety bar where you have to wake the barman from his afternoon repose. If the 21st Century’s ultimate quest is to find the finest beach then the Caribbean islands are happy hunting grounds.

NB NB NB – I should mention that if you are looking for a best beaches article, this won’t be it. Instead it looks at why the islands have ended up with the type of beaches they have.

There’s a couple of things to know about how beaches are created, the accidents of geography and geology that creates types of island and with them certain types of beach. White sand results mostly from coral, which has grown where it can on the islands’ flanks for millennia. As it is worn down by wave action and eaten by fish (yes, parrotfish create white sand), so the white sand washes up on the coast. Most islands are originally volcanic, but where coral has grown on a limestone base, the effect is doubled. The other thing to remember is that light coloured sand on a shallow sea bottom reflects the sun, strengthening the blue colour of the sea.

Coral sand is not universally distributed around the islands, however. The larger and older islands, reduced by erosion, have more flat sections where coral can grow and shallow coastlines where white sand piles up against the shore. Younger, steeper-sided volcanic islands with more rainfall (fresh water outflow inhibits coral growth) have fewer areas for coral to grow. Their sand, resulting from island geology, is usually darker - though of course, where the submarine land is shallower in between islands, coral can take hold. Steep islands also have lovely, secluded coves overhung with prodigious greenery.

Beaches - and sand - tend to go by island. In the Lesser Antilles, the chain of islands in Eastern Caribbean, the islands run in two lines of volcanoes. The outer, extinct, line runs from Anguilla, St Martin and St Barts at the head of the eastern Caribbean chain, down through Barbuda and Antigua and culminates in the eastern wing of Guadeloupe. They have the loveliest sand in the Eastern Caribbean.

The inner ring of volcanoes, which runs from the tiny blip of Saba in the north through the western wing of Guadeloupe, to Grenada in the south, includes some live volcanoes – some blow once a century, making them highly active in geological time. They are tall, mountainous and unbelievably fertile. But their sides are steep and have a lot of rain (fresh-water run off also inhibits coral growth), so many of their beaches have dark sand resulting from their volcanic rock. Where there is shallow submarine land - between St Kitts and Nevis, between St Lucia and Martinique and around the Grenadines – you find coral growth and lighter sand.

Barbados, on its own to the east of the Windward chain, is almost entirely a coral island (you can see this in its underground caves), and so it has excellent sand all around. Trinidad and Tobago, south of a deep channel, are geologically South American and different again. Trinidad is washed by the waters of the Orinoco, so light sand beaches can only be found on its northern shore. Tobago has a mix of colours - lighter sand in the west, with its coral reefs, some dark along the wouthern shore and orangey sand in the coves of the north shore.

The Virgin Islands (the UVSI and BVI), with their soaring peaks, are also volcanic, but they sit in shallow waters and the excellent coral sand collects in lovely bays and coves. Anegada is the exception. The island is entirely coral and so its sand is also superb.

The four main islands of the Greater Antilles – Puerto Rico, Hispaniola (the Dominican Republic and Haiti), Cuba and Jamaica are a mix. They are all old enough to have a coral cladding and so most beaches are light in colour, but occasionally, near rivers, you may find darker sand. The Cayman Islands, columns of rock clustered in corals, have excellent light sand.

And that leaves the Bahamas. Aaaah, the Bahamas – and the Turks and Caicos Islands – which have some of the most spectacular sand of all. Unlike the islands to the south, which are mostly volcanic in origin, the Bahamas are an uplifted limestone massif, so they get a double whammy – coral growth on a light limestone substrate. So they have more blinding white sand than anyone else… And, what’s more, they sit in shallow water covered in sand (that’s what baja-mar means in Spanish, a shallow sea). Which simply magnifies the effect – the sun’s rays reflect off it. The result is a sea so vibrantly, extraordinarily blue that it’s worthy of a surrealist painter’s palette.

OK, OK. If you want a few recommendations, then here they are -

For the finest beaches for their sea and sand – Anguilla, for something low key, Antigua for variety, St Barts for sophistication

For blinding white strands, so thick that the walking the beach becomes aerobic exercise – again Anguilla, Barbuda and the Bahamas and TCI

For something quietly magic, small coves overhanging with greenery – St Lucia, eastern Jamaica, Grenada. Without the greenery - south-eastern Barbados, the BVI

For swim-up, tiny island seclusion – the BVI, the islands off Guadeloupe and the Grenadines.