Spanning an arc from southern Florida to Venezuela on the South American coast, the islands of the Caribbean are made up of two main chains which form a 3200 kilometre mile breakwater between the Caribbean Sea to the south and the Atlantic Ocean to the north. Running south from Florida, the mostly limestone
Greater Antilles (Cuba, Jamaica, Cayman Islands, Dominican Republic and Haiti, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands) comprise the largest and most geographically varied of the two chains, with white-sand beaches aplenty as well as rainforest-smothered peaks that are remnants of submerged ranges related to the Central and South American mountain systems. Dryer, somewhat flatter and boasting as many black-sand beaches as white, the volcanic
Lesser Antilles are further subdivided into the
Leeward Islands (Anguilla, St Martin/St Maarten, St Barts, Saba, St Eustatius, St Kitts, Nevis, Antigua, Barbuda, Montserrat and Guadeloupe) and
Windward Islands (Dominica, Martinique, St Lucia, Barbados, St Vincent, the Grenadines, and Grenada). North of the Greater Antilles, the Bahamas, and Turks and Caicos Islands sit alone, as do Trinidad and Tobago and the "ABC islands" (Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao), just off the Venezuelan coast, though the latter are also an autonomous part of the Kingdom of The Netherlands. Together with Saba, St Eustatius and St Maarten, these islands are collectively known as the
Netherlands Antilles .
Deciding which of the islands to visit, however, is the fifty-million-dollar question. Obviously, you'll need to consider what you want from your holiday. If you're after two weeks of sunbathing and swimming and don't plan on doing any exploring, then you've the freedom to allow a travel agent to pick the cheapest deal available - or just read through this guide and pick which sounds the most appealing. If variety is on your agenda, bigger islands which boast a diversity of landscapes - Cuba, Jamaica and the Dominican Republic - offer more scope for adventurous travel, with possibilities for hiking, rafting, eco-pursuits and cultural tours as well as beachlife, and probably demand a single-island trip. However, as island-hopping can be relatively easy, either by short plane trips or the occasional ferry, it's well worth seeing more than one island, especially if you've picked a destination in the Lesser Antilles.
Of the Caribbean islands, two are not covered in this guide; at the time of writing Montserrat was still recovering from recent volcanic activity, while unrest in Haiti has made travel to that country inadvisable
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