Tropical Paradise > Articles > The Caribbean: A Beginner's Guide

There are few experiences more pleasurable than walking the beach on your first morning in the Caribbean. After the long flight and the time difference the day before, you’re in bed by ten (3am UK time), and so you wake with the first light. The air is fresh and the light soft and the hush of the breaking waves as comforting as it seductive. Dawn is simply the best time of the Caribbean day.

But finding Caribbean perfection is not a foregone conclusion. So many of the islands are developed now. To get the best of the Caribbean - to find the gentle, uncommercial charm of the old West Indies, and yet to be able to depend on levels of service out of the modern age, not to forget a certain exclusivity of course - you need to select your spot carefully, a step beyond the main hubs, or in certain unspoiled parts of the main islands.

That said, there is a grand variety to the Caribbean - there are French islands, former British islands, American and former Spanish; there are sandbars with nothing more than a palm thatch umbrella, island-resorts, islands that specialise in villas, there are swanky humming hotels and charming hideaways, diving lodges, specialist watersports areas and some magnificent sailing areas. Dotted among them of course some of the smartest resorts in the world. There’s bound to be something just right for you.

To locate it, you need knowledge. Start your research by asking around and reading guidebooks to get together some ideas. Consider island-hopping too. Many of the islands mentioned below are small and so you might want to visit two or three in a fortnight’s break. In most cases (particularly for reasons of price), the best thing is to get in touch with the specialist Caribbean tour operators directly. Ring them up and quiz them.

Once you’ve reached the islands you can plug into island gossip as quickly and easily as stopping people in the street - West Indians are always on for a bit of ‘liming’ (general chatting) to pass the time of day. Bars change from season to season and they also have popular nights. The crowds are like birds coming south for the winter - they migrate to where the pickings are the best. For the latest, trendiest restaurant (on some islands, admittedly, the only one), talk to hotel managers, who tend to be more in tune with visitors’ requirements.

Traditionally, Caribbean food is not brilliant, but it is improving and some islands now boast excellent independent restaurants, as well as some fine hotel dining rooms. (Beware, the really serious restaurants get booked up months in advance - you might have to fax your reservations in advance like everyone else).

As the holiday goes on, you may find yourself sleeping past dawn. Still, there’s another fine and time-honoured Caribbean activity at the other end of the day which you can partake of instead: sitting in a rickety waterfront bar, rum punch in hand and watching the sea disappear over a sea horizon.

Islands

The British Virgin Islands
The Virgin Islands are a sprinkling of islands lying to the east of Puerto Rico that must have made life a nightmare for an early cartographer. For the modern visitor, though, they are endless coves, sandbars and secluded beaches. All the more to explore. The BVI are of course some of the Caribbean’s finest sailing grounds, but you may want to combine sailing with time on land and there are some extremely fine hotels.

Virgin Gorda, a ferry ride from the airport, has developed in slow time, unlike the (relatively) mad rush on the capital island of Tortola. It also has the best of the land-based hotels. With its twin pointed roofs standing serenely in the North Sound, Biras Creek offers some of the finest low-key luxury in the Caribbean. The seafront rooms hear a constant wash of incoming waves, but for most people this becomes a sleeping pill in the end. There is an excellent dining room. Biras Creek is elegant, extremely comfortable and will not let you down. More American in feel, with snappier, up-front service, is Little Dix Bay, another haven of high-grade comfort. Its 100 or so rooms stand in the tropical greenery just behind its own magnificent curve of sand. For something a little different, you might get together with some friends and take Richard Branson’s Necker Island, a forested blip just off the northern tip of Virgin Gorda. The open-sided main house has magnificent views through the islands. The southern end of Virgin Gorda is known for some of the Caribbean’s most spectacular beaches, the Baths, where curious, distinctly un-Caribbean rocks stand jumbled on one another and the waves wash in between them. They become quite crowded in the season, so go early or late in the day.

On Tortola the Sugar Mill is a friendly, intimate air and is renowned for its dining room, which is set in the stone surrounds of an old plantation building. The Long Bay Hotel and Villas has a lovely setting in its own bay at the north-western end, rooms and villas standing on the hillside and just above the beach itself. There are also a number of villas on Tortola.

The BVI has beach bars by the dozen, many of which can be reached on a day trip by sailboat or in a hotel launch. In the southern chain of small islands, Cooper Island has a raffish charm. The bar, which stands on the protected, palm fringed shore, collects a rumbustous crowd in season--well worth a detour. Definitely not to be missed is the dozy and charming island of Jost van Dyke, where the beach bars stand shoulder to shoulder and barmen generally have to be woken.

Crewed yachts are best booked through a broker in the UK: Yachting Partners International carries big and expensive motor and sailing yachts; Yacht Connections has an excellent fleet of sailing yachts all over the Caribbean.

Nevis
The sugar era, when cane blanketed the islands to feed Europe’s burgeoning sweet tooth, is long past, and the magnificence of Caribbean plantation houses has mostly been swallowed by the undergrowth now, but in Nevis it is still possible to live the gracious, old West Indian plantation life. This tiny island has a number of excellent plantation house hotels and as an island it retains a grace and gentleness that has long evaporated in other Caribbean islands.

It’s always hard to choose between Montpelier and the Hermitage, both of which are small and offer trusty seclusion among neatly tended tropical gardens of hibiscus and bougainvillea high on the southern hillsides of Nevis. Montpelier has a rarefied air with just 17 rooms in modern blocks scattered around a restored great house, where you take dinner on the veranda, watching fairy-lit cruise ships pass on the sea below (a million miles away, thankfully). The Hermitage Inn is set around a charming wooden house dating from the 1740s and has a slightly less formal atmosphere and equally personable atmosphere. These two hotels run shuttles to their beach huts, but if you would prefer to be on the coastline itself, Nisbet Plantation Beach Club has rooms ranged among the lines of tall palm trees. The prices of these hotels reflect their levels of luxury (and to a certain extent their ambience). A less expensive option, but still with a friendly atmosphere is the Golden Rock Plantation Inn, which also stands in the protected southern uplands.

Food in Nevis varies--the hotels really have the best dining rooms--but there is an interesting evening out to be had at Miss June’s Cuisine, where Miss June cooks a Caribbean smorgasbord of 20 or 25 dishes (by appointment, minimum number or you can join in with others). From Trinidad, she cooks plenty of spicy food, but she also includes tastes from elsewhere in the world.


St Barts
Flying in to St Barts is a bit like a fairground ride--either end of the airstrip, where you would expect the plane to line up, there is a hill. But once you are on terra firma, you will realise that this island is an almost perfect French creation--unutterably stylish, slightly pretentious and peculiarly French (despite being in the Caribbean). St Barts is the winter playground of international sophisticates, where conkers have been replaced by champagne. Their toys, the motoryachts that put in for New Year’s Eve, are the swankiest in the Caribbean.

Many visitors stay in private villas - of which there are some lavish examples on island - but St Barts’ hotels include two of the Caribbean’s very few Relais et Chateaux. Le Toiny (one of them), has a rarified seclusion at the southeastern end of the island, each villa decorated in old colonial style with a private pool and magnificent views looking south. Eden Rock belonged to the first pilot who dared to fly into St Barts, Remy de Haenen, and he used to entertain visiting friends from Hollywood. Just a few very comfortable rooms on the hill and ranged along the calm beach. From the bar you can enjoy watching the planes sputtering on low revs as they come in to land.

As in France itself, eating out is a way of life and St Barts will satisfy, both in hotel dining rooms and outside. At the Filao Beach (the other Relais et Chateaux), you dine right on the waterfront in St Jean Bay. The ever-popular Chez Maya, offers daily changing fish and creole specialities on a simple waterfront deck just outside Gustavia. The Lafayette Club, on the beach in Grand Cul de Sac, actually holds fashion shows for your lunchtime amusement in the winter season.


Anguilla
Anguilla is an anomaly. As a flat, infertile protectorate of Britain, isolated at the northern fringe of the Leeward chain, you might expect it to offer nothing to sybarites, particularly in matters of food. But the beaches are superb and have attracted a small clutch of top-class hotels. And then, Anguilla’s proximity to the Babel island of St Maarten means that there is daily fresh food from Miami. Serious chefs have moved in. Purgatory has become paradise.

The Malliouahana Hotel, whose 50 or so rooms and recently-built suites are ranged along the clifftops on the lovely, west-facing sand of Mead’s Bay, is irreproachable to me. There is an extremely fine (classical French inspired) dining room and a pre-season wine cellar of about 25,000 bottles. For many years this was overseen by Jo Rostang of La Bonne Auberge in Antibes - since his death it has been run by his son Michel. Cap Juluca lines Maundays Bay in a series of white Moorish domes, about a 100 extremely well presented rooms and suites which culminate in Pimms dining room, where you watch the absurdly blue sea through tall and slender columns. Not far off, the thirteen modernist villas of Cove Castles also stand stark white on the blue sky and the fantastic curve of Shoal Bay West. They are extremely stylish and they have magnificent views to the south.

Blanchards is one of the Caribbean’s finest independent restaurants - a compendium of tastes from around the world are applied to tropical ingredients (mostly imported) and excellent local seafood, also a wine-list with a superb range. There is a Caribbean degustation menu at Koal Keel, where an Anguillian chef trained in France combines Caribbean and French cuisine. But there are also raffish Caribbean spots on the beach, some of the best reasons for visiting the island, where you will find superb island seafood (what hasn’t been exported to Puerto Rico - Anguilla is known for its lobsters and crayfish). Try Paradise Cafe on Shoal Bay West, Gorgeous Scilly Cay (a blip offshore), or Sandy Island, just sand and palms, where the Lamb’s Navy Rum girl lives.


The Grenadines
It’s odd how islands that lie so close to one another can be so different once you get onshore. Each of the Grenadine Islands, which lie in a string between the Windward Islands of St Vincent and Grenada, has its own distinctive atmosphere. Some - Mustique and Petit St Vincent - are developed to the height of sophistication, others rank among the doziest, most charming and least spoiled parts of the Caribbean. They are wonderful for a boat-borne trip, whether by yacht, touching hidden coves on near deserted islands, or by the various ferries that criss-cross between the islands.

Within a shout of St Vincent’s south coast (or a telephone call at least, to call the African Queen-style ferry), is one of the Caribbean’s loveliest enclaves of tropical calm. Walkways lead though overhanging greenery, past palm-thatch dining rooms and pool to breezy rooms, some situated marvellously on the hillsides.

The first major island in the chain is Bequia, which has picture-postcard perfection, a magnificent, calm bay with pretty creole houses and bars poking out of the shoreline profusion of palm trees. Tucked into the end of the bay, the Plantation House hotel has very comfortable rooms set in a grassy garden of palm trees. Friendship Bay is secluded on the south coast and has a friendly, low-key feel, with bar chairs hanging from the ceiling to help you keep your balance.

Mustique is famed for its opulence, glamour and outrageous extravagance. It is a favoured bolt-hole of the rich and famous, where people as unexpected as Princess Margaret and David Bowie rub shoulders. They buy a plot and build their dream home. About 50 of these magnificent villas are for hire. There is one hotel on Mustique, the Cotton House, whose rooms are laid out on rolling grassland above an old great house - there is a weekly cocktail party where island and hotel guests gather. There is even a (Mustique-priced) guest house, Firefly, with a charmed setting above the west coast.

Visible to the south are the Tobago Cays, an assembly of tiny, deserted, sand-fringed blips from paradise. Avoid the middle of the day because punters fly in from as far as Barbados, but in the calm of the evening they are wonderful. A few miles west is Mayreau, which is as dozy and charming as it was fifty years ago, one of the few remaining places that actually are what most of the Caribbean merely claims to be. They just have phones, but no proper electricity. Not much to do - just a few friendly local bars and excellent beaches - but worth a stop on a yacht. Also a rustic and low-key hotel, the Salt Whistle Bay Club, set on its own perfect curve of sand.

Carriacou, politically attached to Grenada, is also dozy and thankfully hapless in its attempts to gear up for tourism - another tropical island idyll taken to perfection. The Caribbee Inn, which sits on the heights above one of the Caribbean’s loveliest and most secluded beaches, has just ten room sand charming suites and is an intimate and exquisite place to stay.


Saba
Saba is as unexpected as it is unknown. It has no beaches and it is unfeasibly steep (incredibly, this island of two miles by two has the highest point in the whole Kingdom of the Netherlands). But there is an almost alpine charm, with tropical warmth of course, and a gracious, gentle island life. Also scuba diving. Saba is well worth a detour for a few days.

You will find old Saban charm and a certain local activity (not a bad thing on an island as quiet as this) at the Captain’s Quarters in Windwardside. The nicest rooms are those in the old clapboard Captain’s House of the name, so you should try to reserve one of those. The only place with pretensions to modern luxury is Willard’s of Saba, which is set in a modern villa on the heights of Booby Hill, with a stupendous view over the islands to the south.

Apart from watching planes come in to land on the precarious airstrip, walking and scuba diving are the main activities in Saba. Trails ring the island. They were used by the Sabians themselves until recently - the road was only built in 1938. The Saba Marine Park has been operating since 1987 and has maintained an excellent standard of corals and protected the fish successfully. There is a good variety of scuba diving on its tumbling slopes, including pinnacles and caves.

Bonaire
Flat, dry and scrubby, Bonaire has always been neglected. It was written off as an ‘isla inutila’ (useless island) by early Spanish visitors and then used by the Dutch in the nearby trading port of Curacao as a source of salt and a ranch. But now the neglect is to Bonaire’s benefit because it is uncrowded and relatively undeveloped (though it is building fast). Just off the coast of Venezuela, Bonaire is also one of the top two dive sites in the Caribbean.

The most comfortable hotel in Bonaire is the Harbour Village Beach Resort, which stands just north of Kralendijk, with rooms standing in blocks around a marina. Set in a sandy garden on the waterfront, Captain Don’s Habitat has the more informal feel of a dive lodge (this is the reason that many visitors go of course) and so you can chat over your experiences in the waterfront bar as the sun goes down.

Bonaire is known for its slopes, the vibrant colours of its reefs and reliably good visibility. Well managed by the Bonaire Marine Park, the reefs have remained in good condition. All first dives must take place from the shore. There are few ‘sights’ on Bonaire, just the pitiful huts of the slave quarters from the salt works a century ago. These are still working, though the foot-thick crust of salt is not broken by sledgehammer now but moved by JCB. Visits can be arranged. Factories can be fun!

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