This fabled sea, covering more than a million square miles and 7,000 islands with diverse languages, cultures, and ecosystems, has become probably the planet's premier vacation playground. Here it's all about its regional issues and allures. And yes, the (Plus) means we're including the Bahamas and Bermuda along with the Caribbean coasts of Colombia, Costa Rica, French Guiana, Guatemala, Guayana, Honduras, Nicaragua, Suriname, and Panama.

For other individual island forums, check out Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Aruba, Barbados, Bonaire, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Cuba, Curaçao, Dominican Republic, Guadeloupe, Haiti, Jamaica, Martinique, Montserrat, Puerto Rico, Saba, Statia (St. Eustatius), St. Barth, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Maarten/Martin, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

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5 highlights of Dutch Sint Maarten

Dave Senior Taking up 40 percent of the island of St. Martin and with a population of around 58,000, this territory of the Kingdom of the Netherlands packs a whole lot of fun, flavor, and personality into a petite package. Whereas French St. Martin leans elegant and relaxed, the multicultural, largely English-speaking Dutch side offers its share of quiet corners, but also a livelier menu of casinos, nightlife, beach bars, waterfront dining – along some of the most photographed aircraft landings…

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Started by Helen Brown
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Chilling on Tortola and Jost Van Dyke in the British Virgin Islands

  Victor Block My husband Victor and I are travel writers. Which means when we get to a destination, we explore every aspect, constantly seeking out stories. Until we got to Tortola, capital of the British Virgin Islands, with a population around 15,000. That didn’t happen. And it was almost like — dare I say the word? — a vacation. But let’s back up a bit. We are a lot older than our last trip here 30 years ago when my husband had the temerity to actually hazard driving. To put the roads in…

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Started by Tripatini
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Rum and much more in Barbados

  Victor Block Most travelers know that most Caribbean islands are soaked in rum, but Barbados goes the rest one better because here, locals say, is where rum was discovered. In capital Bridgetown one early-17th-century day, the story goes, a tavern owner was searching for an empty shipping barrel when he inadvertently stumbled across one filled with a concoction worth selling -- a barrel of sugar cane fermented over time. Well, Mr. Rumball -- the tavern owner -- knew a good thing when he…

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Started by Tripatini
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  • Max Pesling June 5, 2022 at 9:26am
    This past February, the British travel site Wanderlust.co.uk ran a piece called "Discovering the Real Haiti" in which it claims "It seems that, from the (now mostly cleared) rubble, a new Haiti is emerging." Well, we've heard this kind of thing before, but writer Phoebe Smith says that this time evidence includes: "chain hotels are springing up; flights from Latin America are launching, making Haiti a viable add-on to a South or Central American adventure; the diaspora in the USA are beginning to take vacations in the coastal resorts of Côte des Arcadins; and whispers abound of more cruise-ship visits – currently only one boat docks here, and that’s on a local-free private beach." Read about it for yourself: https://www.wanderlust.co.uk/content/discovering-the-real-haiti/
  • Paul Varmuza May 18, 2022 at 11:10am
    St Lucia is an irresistible draw for travel writers for a good reason - here's the latest example, by a freelancer for Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/adammorganstern/2022/02/25/10-amazing-...
  • José Balido April 9, 2022 at 11:34am
    At the end of this past year, Lonely Planet came out with this article from its Cuba guide writer about pandemic-era travel to the island, which has had a low number of COVID cases and the world's second highest vaccination rate. Interesting reading; check it out: https://www.lonelyplanet.com/articles/what-its-like-to-travel-to-cu...
    Cuba reopens to tourists: what you need to know before you go - Lonely Planet
    Lonely Planet's Cuba travel expert visited the country in December as it reopened to visitors. So how did he find restrictions, or was it business as…
    • Hal Peat > José Balido April 9, 2022 at 11:14pm
      Heavily focused on the logistics of the COVID issue ins/outs, and skirts the issues of cost effectiveness. Whether you're going for leisure or work purposes - the latter being people like me - the air cost has skyrocketed since I went there for the first time in 2017. $400 R/T for a 40 min. flight between MIA/FLL - Havana? You can almost get to Europe from here for that. Biden hasn't solved any of that huge upsurge in air cost since he came in. Very disappointing. Glad I went when I did, was in love with Havana and want to see more, but until the logistics and price points in air and accommodation all change radically back to at least near where they were, it's not for me again.
    • José Balido > Hal Peat April 10, 2022 at 2:39pm
      Thanks for your observation, Hal. For most of the history of charter and commercial flights between the US and Cuba in the past decades, unreasonably high fares have been more the rule than the exception. I guess like everything else, we'll have to see how this plays out the rest of this year and beyond. But I have a feeling that for the foreseeable future, Cuba is going to take a back seat to more pressing issues in the US, including inflation and other aspects of the economy; the fallout from Russia's invasion of the Ukraine as well as legal/political trauma around Jan. 6 insurrection; the upcoming midterm elections, and more. I hope I'm wrong, but...
  • Jeffrey Kunst March 4, 2022 at 12:23pm
    What's new in the Caribbean for 2022: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/10/travel/caribbean-new-development...
  • Ed Wetschler January 6, 2019 at 4:38pm

    The untold story here is not just the coming of a new airport terminal; it's St. Lucia's embrace of a trend throughout the Caribbean to spread travelers around each island instead of clustering resorts in just one or two hotspots (e.g. Montego Bay, San Juan). In this case,

    St. Lucia's plan is to encourage more hotels in the underdeveloped southern part of the island. That's not just where the airport is; it's also closer to the Pitons. Here's the skinny.

    St. Lucia Will Build a New Airport Terminal
    The redevelopment of Saint Lucia’s international airport will get underway very soon. On Tuesday, December 11, 2018, the Parliament of Saint Lucia vo…
  • Tripatini August 14, 2018 at 8:57pm

    How can we help you, MerryFishers?

  • MerryFishers August 14, 2018 at 8:38pm

    Hello,

    I am new i want some infro for travel 

  • Ed Wetschler September 9, 2017 at 4:44pm

    Check out short video of post- HurricaneIrma St. Martin.

    Also, see how you -- yes, you -- can help in disaster relief and recovery.

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