The Caribbean Arc

The expedition opens on Saint Kitts — a narrow volcanic island whose economy ran on sugar for three hundred years. Basseterre is small enough to read in an afternoon: the Circus roundabout, the Georgian waterfront, the National Museum. The island's great monument is Brimstone Hill Fortress, a UNESCO site at 220 metres, its cannon still trained over the Caribbean Sea. Dinner by the harbour as the light dies over Nevis Peak.

A morning flight hops north to Sint Maarten — the Dutch half of an island split between two European nations. Its claim to fame is Maho Beach, at the end of the Princess Juliana airport runway, where arriving aircraft clear the fence by a few metres and departing jets send sunbathers sliding across the sand. Loud, ridiculous, spectacular. In the afternoon, a connecting flight to Antigua. (Sint Maarten transit is subject to flight connections.)

The ferry to Barbuda runs early and returns in the evening — exactly the right way to see the most pristine coastline in the Eastern Caribbean. Fewer than 2,000 residents, no high-rises, and miles of pale pink sand without a beach bar or another person. The island's other spectacle is the frigatebird colony — the largest in the Western Hemisphere, several thousand birds nesting in the mangroves of Codrington Lagoon. Back to Antigua by evening.

The morning allows time for Antigua's signature sight: English Harbour and Nelson's Dockyard — a Georgian naval base so well preserved it is now the only working Georgian dockyard in the world, with views from Shirley Heights out to Montserrat and Guadeloupe. In the afternoon, a short flight south to Dominica, whose dramatic mountain approach and dense green interior tell you immediately this is not a typical island.

Dominica calls itself the Nature Isle and it is not wrong. The morning brings Trafalgar Falls — twin cascades fed by different volcanic springs, one cool and one warm — and the Titou Gorge, a narrow slot canyon reached by swimming. For those up for the most demanding option, the Boiling Lake hike is one of the genuinely extraordinary walks in the Caribbean: six to eight hours through the Valley of Desolation to the world's second-largest boiling lake. The gentler alternative — Emerald Pool, Trafalgar Falls, and a riverside lunch — is also perfectly satisfying.

A morning flight south to Saint Lucia, whose twin Pitons — volcanic spires rising sheer from the sea south of Soufrière — are the version of the island the photographs show. The afternoon is given to Pigeon Island National Park in the north: a former pirate stronghold and British naval base, its restored fortifications offering long views to Martinique. The day closes at a calm west-coast beach as the sun drops behind the hills.

A short hop east and the landscape changes completely. Barbados is not volcanic — it is a coral island, flat by Caribbean standards, with a settled, prosperous air from three centuries as the most economically significant island in the British Caribbean. The afternoon leaves time to walk Bridgetown: the Garrison Historic Area, the colonnaded buildings of Broad Street, and the rum shops that are the actual social infrastructure of the island. The Oistins Fish Fry closes the evening if the timing is right.

A full day on the island. The north coast, between Bathsheba and the Scotland District, is the part of Barbados nobody photographs for the brochures and everybody remembers: Atlantic swell coming in uninterrupted from Africa, the water a different colour entirely from the calm Caribbean side. Harrison's Cave is a kilometre of white stalactites navigated by electric tram; the Barbados Museum, in the old military prison, covers the plantation era and the 1816 rebellion led by Bussa.

A morning flight west to Saint Vincent, an island at the top of the Grenadines chain and less visited than almost anything in the Eastern Caribbean, despite the La Soufrière volcano at its northern end being the most recently active in the island arc — the April 2021 eruption evacuated the northern half. The capital Kingstown is a compact working port with a covered market, a botanical garden that claims to be the oldest in the Western Hemisphere, and a Victorian cathedral decorated by a self-taught Vincentian artist.

The morning ferry south takes an hour to Bequia — the largest of the Grenadines, a small island of white wooden houses, boatyards, and fishing boats that has been a centre of Caribbean boat-building for as long as anyone can establish. The harbour at Port Elizabeth is one of the most pleasant anchorages in the Eastern Caribbean, ringed by rum bars. An evening flight to Grenada closes the day.

Grenada is the Spice Isle: nutmeg and mace grown in the volcanic interior, accounting for a significant percentage of the world's production. The capital St. George's is consistently cited as the most beautiful town in the Caribbean — its horseshoe harbour, coloured houses rising up the hillsides, and the eighteenth-century Fort George on the headland. The Grand Etang crater lake, the nutmeg and chocolate cooperatives in Gouyave, and the Underwater Sculpture Park at Molinière Bay — a gallery of life-size figures on the seabed — round out the day.

An early flight to Port of Spain, Trinidad, where a connecting flight continues to Tobago — a completely different island in character despite being its political twin. Tobago is quieter, smaller, and geologically older, its interior covered by the oldest protected rainforest in the Western Hemisphere. The evening brings a first encounter with Tobago's food: crab and dumplings at one of the beach shacks along Store Bay, eaten at a plastic table while the fishing boats come in.

The final morning on Tobago before the short flight back to Port of Spain. Trinidad's capital is a city apart from anything else on the expedition: Hindu temples and mosques alongside churches and rum distilleries, the Magnificent Seven Victorian buildings along the Savannah, the Pitch Lake at La Brea — a forty-hectare lake of natural asphalt, the largest on Earth — and doubles sold from carts at every junction from before dawn. Those continuing onward can extend into the Guianas — ask us about the Guyana and Suriname add-on.