Stay cool and head back to the Caribbean
Hurricanes may have blasted some of the islands but, says Fred Mawer, there are still plenty of reasons to...
I’m just back from Barbados, and I can report that its white-sand beaches and lush tropical gardens are looking as glorious as ever. During the week I was there, it was baking hot and mostly sunny, with the occasional refreshing downpour – typical for this time of year.
Normally all this wouldn’t be news. But the Caribbean’s status as an idyllic holiday destination took a massive knock recently.
Two immensely powerful category five hurricanes, Irma and Maria, ripped through the region in September, devastating the islands directly in their paths.
These included Barbuda, the British and US Virgin Islands, the dual-nation island of Dutch St Maarten and French St Martin, Anguilla, St Barts, Puerto Rico and Dominica.
The catastrophic destruction dominated the headlines for many days, and it will take many months, and in some cases years, for these islands to recover fully.
However, what’s not universally appreciated is that the islands of the Caribbean are spread over a very large area – more than a million square miles. The hurricanes passed through the north-eastern corner of the region, leaving about three-quarters of the Caribbean largely unaffected.
It’s very much business, and holidays, as usual at a host of everpopular islands and countries, among them not only Barbados, but also St Lucia, Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, Grenada and St Kitts.
The same is true even for places that were scarily close to the hurricanes’ paths but not directly hit.
For example, Antigua, just 28 miles from its pulverised little sister of Barbuda, escaped significant damage, and with tourism the main lifeblood to its economy, it desperately wants visitors to keep coming.
So if you’re considering a holiday to the Caribbean in the coming months, there are plenty of islands to head to.
I’ve been lucky enough to have visited the region many times over the years. Here are some key points you need to know to plan a trip.
WHEN TO GO
The Atlantic hurricane season officially runs from June 1 to November 30. But hurricanes are statistically likeliest between mid-August and mid-October, and especially in September.
The other major consideration is cost. The Caribbean can be an expensive place to visit. To keep
costs down, you may want to avoid peak season – mid-December to April – when hotel and villa rates can be 50% higher than at other times of year.
Factoring in both the weather and cost, either the first half of December or May are ideal times to visit.
WHERE TO GO
The hurricane-damaged British Virgin Islands (BVI), Anguilla, St Barts and Dominica are really special places, among the best in the Caribbean for particular types of holiday. But there are enticing alternative islands, with similar Unique Selling Points.
The BVI are all about escapist little islands and yachty holidays – but the Grenadines provide that, too. Anguilla has the Caribbean’s most sublime beaches – but those on Antigua are also pretty special.
For luxury hotels and villas, gourmet restaurants and celebrity-spotting, St Barts is unbeatable – but Barbados’s ‘Platinum’ west coast runs it close.
Mountainous and rainforest-covered Dominica is the Caribbean’s nature isle par excellence – but there are worthy alternatives, including Trinidad and Tobago for superlative bird-watching, and southern St Lucia for jungly and dramatic scenery.
As far as other tips go, for an affordable hotel-based holiday, an all-inclusive in the Dominican Republic is a sensible choice.
Cuba is as cheap as the Caribbean gets if you stay in locals’ houses (find them on airbnb.ie), and, in my opinion, it’s the region’s most culturally stimulating country. Stay in Havana and travel around rather than plonking yourself in a beach resort.
Lastly, if you’re thinking of visiting the Caribbean in the peak hurricane season, note that major storms very rarely hit the most southerly Caribbean islands such as Aruba and Tobago. That said, Grenada, another southerly island, was badly hit by Hurricane Ivan in 2004.
HOW TO BOOK
Packages are still the way most people book Caribbean-holidays. Tour operators usually offer better deals than you can get by booking flights and hotels direct, and by booking a package you get back-up assistance if things go wrong (such as being caught up in a hurricane). Companies specialising in the Caribbean include Topflight (topflight.ie); Abbey Travel (www.abbeytravel.ie); Tropical Sky (tropicalsky.ie); Caribtours (caribtours.ie); Tropic Breeze (tropicbreeze.co.uk) and Virgin Holidays (virgin holidays.co.uk).
Shop around: operators often offer very similar places to stay in the Caribbean; identical holidays can vary in price between companies by many hundreds of euros; and any added-value hotel perks that you might be offered, such as a ‘free’ extra night or spa treatments, are rarely unique to a particular operator.
CARIBBEAN CRUISES
The Caribbean is also open for cruises. The western Caribbean (in cruise parlance Jamaica, the Cayman Islands, Mexico’s Yucatan coast, Belize) and the southern Caribbean (including Grenada, St Vincent and the Grenadines and the Dutch islands of Aruba, Bonaire, Curaçao) were unaffected by the hurricanes.
Within the eastern Caribbean, many itineraries do include hurricane-hit islands and ports, key among them being Puerto Rico’s San Juan, St Thomas in the US Virgin Islands, and St Maarten.
Some cruise lines have switched such itineraries to a different part of the Caribbean, while others have for the time being swapped recovering islands with nearby ones not damaged by the storms.
That said, some cruise ports on hurricane-affected islands, such as at San Juan and St Thomas, have reopened and are reappearing on some cruise lines’ itineraries.
At the moment, such islands won’t be looking pristine, and the full range of excursions may not be on offer. However, your visit will be much appreciated by locals, in terms of financial support.
MORE INFORMATION
See caribbeantravelupdate.com for detailed, regularly updated information on recovering islands.