This struck me most forcefully in Castries, St. Lucia, when I decided to take a long walk. While St. Lucia is a famed holiday destination known for luxury resorts, they certainly aren't in the capital. It is ramshackle, a bit edgy and resolutely local: the cruise passengers don't seem to wander around much and the sidewalk traders are there for residents, not tourists. It's the closest I've felt to the heart of Africa since visiting Zambia, and I didn't pass another white face for five or six blocks. (An excellent experience for any white person who thinks England or America is so integrated that being a minority is no big deal these days.) A market sold a mix of tourist tat, local spices and some bits of intriguing craft work, but very few cruisers had wandered in to wake the traders dozing beneath ceiling fans. There must be a love-hate relationship with cruise ships. Tourism is essential for job creation, but I saw little in Castries reaping the benefit. And once I was on a tour bus, little of what I saw reflected, or even admitted to, the challenges of life in town.
I'm setting that scene to explain why this roundup of Caribbean destinations is laughably broad-brushed, highly opinionated and doesn't come near an accurate view of any individual island. Our days were a series of amuse bouche: some excellent, others disappointing. If you're ever cruising through the region yourself, they might help you to choose how you spend your day.
BEACH AND SNORKEL
My perfect day features floating placidly over a coral reef before recovering on a powdery sand beach with a rum cocktail in hand. Thus three of our days featured catamaran sailing packages. I enjoyed them all, but they were bittersweet. The decline in the health of these reefs in the nine years since my last visit is shocking. I'm also now able to compare Caribbean offerings to Mauritius and the Maldives; both of these Indian Ocean destinations offer significantly better, and less crowded experiences. So the quality of all the these trips was a bit disappointing, despite putting me indisputably into my "happy place".
Indeed, it was the day-long excursion from St. Kitts that was the best of the three. The catamaran left from a dock adjacent to the cruise ship (almost an hour of your excursion in St. Thomas is getting to and from the catamaran's dock) and sailed down the picturesque coast of St. Kitts before anchoring off the southern tip. The reef here was badly damaged by hurricanes and global warming; more a jumble of boulders than a collection of coral. But the sea life was actually better here than off St. John, allowing me to spot more than 20 different varieties including two types of sea urchin and three of parrot fish. We then crossed the channel between St. Kitts and its sister island of Nevis while having lunch, before dropping anchor for some time on the beach. A less crowded boat and a more laid-back Caribbean crew made for a more magical sail, especially as they allowed passengers to ride in the nets up front (prohibited by the Americans).
Weather made it hard to judge our Barbados excursion accurately: grey skies and steady wind made for choppy seas, and it rained at least half the day. The sail never went up. Instead we motored to a bay within sight of the cruise ship. I assume this was because of the weather. The snorkeling was pretty good, however, thanks to a nice little reef created by sunken ship. A few hundred yards over in the same bay, lazy giant turtles rely on expedition leaders for feeding, rather than doing their own hunting. The near-guarantee of seeing these magnificent beasts is wonderful, but the crowds were so bad as to almost destroy the experience. Up to 30 snorkelers were thrashing about in a circle around the turtle, many trying to prod it or otherwise get in its way. I felt terribly sorry for the beast, and the whole thing felt more like a zoo than a natural experience. It left a bad taste in my mouth..
SIGHTSEEING
San Juan is the obvious winner here. Where American oversight seemed to hinder a catamaran cruise, it's a boon for an old colonial town. San Juan is in far better shape than most of the other ports we visited, and clearly has a life beyond tourism. Wander down gracious streets with an old world feel, follow impressive old walls, explore two historic Spanish forts. I had a delightful clamber around Fort San Filipe del Morro, which looks similar to the fort at St. Augustine, Florida, but expands Tardis-like once you're through the main gate, spilling down the cliffs to the sea below. The nearby Ballaja Barracks are as spectacular as anything you'd see in Madrid, and have just benefitted from a multi-million dollar renovation as they were transformed into a cultural centre. Nearby, however, the crumbling, down-at-heel cathedral reminds you how difficult it is to preserve anything in this climate of humidity, pests and hurricanes.
Next comes Antigua, thanks to Nelson's Dockyard. This was the British Navy hub in the Caribbean, where ships put in to have hulls cleaned and sails and rigging refitted before return journeys. Now the restored historic buildings offer a museum, shops, a boutique hotel, restaurants and a yacht marina. While the museum was resolutely old style ... no interactive tech in sight ... it was filled with interesting stuff and we would have liked to have spent longer here. The place is perhaps more relevant to us as we live near, and have regularly explored, the dockyards in Portsmouth. Having the start of the naval journey in our heads, it was interesting to see the other end of the line. It's a shame that they don't have any historic ships, as at Portsmouth, to further bring it to life.
We only had a few fleeting minutes driving through central Charlotte-Amalie in St. Thomas, but it was enough for me to see the town's Danish roots in its architecture. Now that I know Copenhagen, I can recognise kindred elements in this tropical former colony. With more time, it's an angle we would have loved to explore more.
Viking tries hard to play the history and culture angle at other Caribbean stops, but without much success in this ... there first year in the region (see next entry for more).
STUNNING VIEWS
This could be the dominant theme of our cruise destinations. Unsurprising, considering most islands in this stretch of the Caribbean are in fact the tops of volcanoes. (Some dormant, some active.) On the ship, a guest lecturer gave a talk on the geology of the volcanoes and coral reefs that make up the landscape; a nice background for our drives.
St. Thomas lays its American marketing flare onto its views, transforming the picturesque Mountain Top point into a vast barn selling tourist tat and flogging banana daiquiris, supposedly invented here. Ignore the commercialism and the view is indeed spectacular, particularly of the unusually long and narrow Magens Bay. I have fond memories of this place from a trip in my 20s, and was sorely tempted to skip organised shore excursions to just go to the beach here.
SHOPPING
If you stick close to the cruise ports, you'll assume the Caribbean is just one huge shopping mall for jewellery, with a few big chains operating in every port. Diamonds, emeralds, tanzanite ... there's bling to rival anything on Bond Street here. St. Thomas is probably the most commercial of all the ports, balancing the parade of jewellers with some galleries of local arts and crafts to break things up. San Juan does the same, but actually has department stores and offices where non-tourism happens as well. It would be hard to distinguish between the shopping areas in most of the other ports, with similar places selling the same brands at prices that seem fairly consistent.
As with any shopping these days, you need to be careful and do your research in advance. The Philip Stein watch bands I was after were significantly cheaper than any price I could get in the UK. But my husband, having shopped for and identified the Tissot watch he wanted, had it delivered home for more than £300 less via Amazon. From what I saw, the more you were planning to spend, the more vendors were willing to deal. It's probably not the best place to buy a single, moderately-priced item, but if you're planning to drop £40,000 on a diamond necklace I suspect you can negotiate a steal here.Few places, sadly, have much local colour. The covered market at Castries had charm, but they weren't selling much beyond tee shirts, beach clothes and tacky souvenirs. Point-a-Pitre has the elements of a fine local experience, combining its French heritage with tropical flair. There's a spice market in the centre of town with a magnificent cast-iron roof and a sound system piping in Debussy and French Jazz. Ladies in colourful local madras prints sell the island's vanilla, nutmeg, other spices and bottles of flavoured rum punch. It would have been better if all the bottles hadn't shared the same "hand painted" decoration, making me think there's some industrial production line hidden away that's churning everything out of one place. I got the same feeling about the spices, which were all bagged and priced identically, no matter the vendor.
Sadly, the vendors cling to the kind of French customer "service" that's mostly disappeared back in Paris. When I had my French-speaking husband along, vendors were polite but perfunctory. Once I was on my own, they ran the gamut from frosty to hostile. A few blocks further on I was enchanted by a thriving vegetable market, but when I tried to explain in my halting French that I was from a cruise, so wouldn't be cooking anything, the woman actually made angry motions to wave me away and stop wasting her time. A real shame, as in most markets around the world people who love food naturally share and enjoy a bond, whatever the language.
Still, this was the island where we did the most shopping, coming home with spices, cinnamon oil and jewellery hand-crafted in silver with a stone called larimar, found only in the Dominican Republic.
MISSED POTENTIAL
Without a poor tour (of that, more in the next story) and bad attitude, Guadeloupe might have been my favourite of all the islands visited. Distinct architecture ... including magnificently creepy black-and-white cemeteries climbing up hillsides ... intriguing history and two lobes of a butterfly-shaped island with radically different terrain (one mountainous, one flat) invited further exploration. It was the place that seemed to have the most distinct local culture, technically a part of France but very much its own beast. It's the island on which Death in Paradise, one of my favourite BBC mystery shows, is filmed, so I have a sense of the bits we didn't see.
BIGGEST DISSAPOINTMENT
Everyone knows about the Caribbean's hurricane season, but the tourism industry seems to conspire to keep the Christmas Winds under wraps. Turns out that December is actually the end of the rainy season in the islands, and most locals will tell you that the Christmas holidays are always peppered with storms. By the first week of January everything calms down, opening the legendary high season when the Caribbean Sea is calm as a lake and it rarely rains. But if visiting for the holidays, expect storms, choppy seas and reduced visibility for snorkelling.
We still had mostly sunny days, with only two complete wash-outs. Frustratingly, one of those included high winds and driving rains so bad they prevented us from getting ashore in the British Virgin Islands. (We were to have dropped anchor and taken the ship's tenders in to port.) I had fully expected Tortola, and our half-day excursion to Jost Van Dyke, to be the highlight of the trip. Only the delights of an exceptional ship kept me from being seriously disgruntled by my extra day at sea.
IN SUMMARY
Though the ship was exceptional, our excursions were average. Every island had its high and low points; no single destination stands above the rest. If returning by cruise ship to most of these islands, I would probably now organise my own activities in advance with local guides. But we're more likely, if returning to this part of the Caribbean, to stay on land. The Virgin Islands is the obvious choice, with their spectacular beauty, great snorkelling, British and American flavour and ferries allowing visitors to island hop. Though I have to admit, Guadeloupe is the one that leaves a wistful "what if" dancing in my head.
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