Best Hotel
This was a tough award to decide, because some of our hotels were spacious resorts, and some were jammed into inner-cities, so the comparison is not apples with apples.
- Stonefield Estate in St. Lucia would be a strong contender due to its fabulous view, generous balcony, private plunge pool and outdoor shower, but its facilities are a little rundown, there was no TV, the resturant was too limited and the hot water failed regularly. The outdoor shower here rates an honourable mention.
- La Pagerie, a fine modern establishment in a busy town in Martinique, is let down by its petty regulations, practically no off-street parking and no hot water. Its live entertainment was a real bonus.
- Sugar Ridge in Antigua is a great and modern resort with two impressive pools and restaurants. Our room in a villa of 4 units had a tiny private plunge pool and a nice balcony, but did have (that Caribbean trait,) poor hot water.
- Sugar Mill in Tortola wins the prize for best restaurant, but our room was too quaint, had no TV and only luke-warm water. The balcony was inadequate.
- W at Vieques is a serious contender with a very spacious room in an ultra-modern and very chic resort. W is let down by luke warm water, a rocky beach, a restaurant requiring bookings and Fawlty Towers type performance when you finally got a table.
- Avila in Curacao is another strong contender, a modern resort on a great but we suspect artificially enhanced beach. The shower water was hot! The location was great. Trouble is the resort was just too crowded, and petty regulations were frustrating. Our room had minor faults which were reported but not rectified.
But our prize goes to El Convento in Old San Juan. This old and compact inner-city hotel was just perfect, full of character and interest, with numerous dining choices within and nearby. No view, no beach of course, but we had a great room, with a kitchenette, safe, and high flow hot water! There was a pool and a jacuzzi on the roof. This is a great place to stay.
The centuries old El Convento Hotel in Old San Juan was our selection for the best hotel we stayed at in the Caribbean.Generally, in our experience, the good Caribbean hotels we stayed at provide WiFi as part of the package (something Australian hotels could adopt) but don't have guest (coin-operated) laundries. Laundromats in town were hard to find too, and were then open only in odd hours. Breakfasts may or may not be included. Tea/coffee making, refrigerators are safes are highly desirable but not universal. None, including El Convento, had a microwave oven in the room. Most but not all had fitness centres, and all have swimming pools. They include free parking, but sometimes there's not ebough spots. Best Rental Car
The award for the best rental car goes to the brand new and bright red Jeep Wrangler we got from Island Rentals on Vieques in Puerto Rico. The roads on Caribbean islands are typically potholed and rough, and this was probably the most suitable vehicle we had for that type of terrain. Honourable mention should go to the Suzuki Grande Vitara we had on Tortola in the British Virgin Islands, also a great car for steep and rough roads.
The registration plate on our Vieques rental Jeep shows the iconic fortifications and sentry boxes of Old San Juan.The least suitable car we rented was a sports-modified Misubishi Lancer from Avis on St. Lucia. This ridiculous car had spoilers and wings totally unsuited to the extraordinarily rough roads that country has to offer, and its protrusions made it doubly difficult to negotiate deep potholes and ridges, and bumps, which proliferated on the roads.
Worst Traffic
It's hard to believe that traffic could ever be a major problem on tiny Caribbean islands, but Martinique excelled itself and it took us 90 minutes to travel 10km to the airport on our departure day. We had observed this traffic situation on previous days, so we avoided it, but could not do so on the last day. A nightmare in a manual-transmission rental. Fortunately, we allowed plenty of time and didn't burn out the clutch, but we had to get up very early!
Longest Petrol Queue
There was no competition for this award - it went to the only open gas station on the island of Vieques. It took us three trips before we could make a successful purchase. The first time, after queueing for 30 minutes, and being second in line, the station abrubtly closed to clear the way for a tanker which had come off the ferry from the "big island" and was going to top up supplies. Over an hour later, we came back to join the queue gain, but we discovered that the station was still closed. Two hours later, we were successful, with only a very short queue.
Gasoline shortages on Vieques are quite common, apparently. The arrival of the tanker was a cause for comment and some celebration amongst the locals.
Steepest Roads
This award is a tie between St. Lucia and Tortola, where terrifyingly steep stretches are quite common, coupled by exceedingly tight and blind hairpin bends. The Caribbean islands that we drove on were variably hilly and mountainous, but these two were the most extreme, and share the prize.
Lookout & bar over Cane Garden Bay in Tortola. The scary downhills from here to the bay, and Apple Bay, helped Tortola share the prize for the steepest roads.Weirdest Driving Experience
Driving everywhere in the Caribbean required us to quickly adapt between the two sides of the road. However, the weirdest combination was in Tortola where they adopt the British practice of keeping left, but all vehicles are left-hand-drive, imported from the USA. Gives the drivers a very good view of the edges of the road!
Best Beach
Of course, beaches are a combination of things, like the sand, the water, the surf, facilities, even access, and diferent people will weight these factors differently. But on our assessment, our best beach was Turners on Antigua, based on the colour of its water and the colour and fineness of its sand. It has no surf. Also, we could go to Turners before breakfast and be the only people on the beach.
Turner's Beach on Antigua was our favourite location for early morning swims. Later in the day, bars and restaurants opened, lounge chairs were rented, and crowds built up. On cruise ship days, it was best to go elsewhere.If clear, beautiful water was the main criterion, then a Curacao beach would win the prize, but they just lost out because of the broken coral underfoot. We believe the clear water and the lack of sand are related, and we can well understand why Curacao is such a diving paradise.
Honourable mention goes to Caracas Bay on Vieques. This beach is so nice that we'd drive from one side of the island to the other just for a pre-breakfast swim. It's attractions were clean sand, clear water and a slight surf. Even early in the morning, this popular beach had a few other people on it.
Prettiest Marina
The Caribbean is replete with marinas, but most of those we saw were pretty scruffy places. The one that stood out and gets this award is Sopers Hole on Tortola. The water at Sopers Hole is crystal clear blue, but also the marina buildings themselves are tidy and well maintained, and quite pretty to boot. This was a very busy marina, lots of yachting activity, tourist cruises and shopping/eating possibilities.
View of Sopers Hole in Tortola, winning our prize for the prettiest marina of the many we saw.Best Attraction
We almost didn't visit Nelson's Dockyard in Antigua, but when we did, we realised it is one of the great attractions of the Caribbean, and wins our award. This Victorian relic used to house the British Navy and is named after Admiral Horatio Nelson who had tenure here. It is now managed as a National Park, and is kept alive by being a working marina as well as a tourist attraction with interpretative signage, restaurants and bars. A stunning place to visit!
Just one of many historic ruins at Nelson's Dockyard. The cobbled ramp is an orginal use to haul goods up out of the water.A very honourable mention has to go to the Queen Emma Bridge in Willemstad, Curacao. It's a pontoon bridge which is pulled aside to make way for vessels from yachts up to giant cruise ships and super-tankers. The frequent traffic and its location downtown makes the bridge a unique and fascinating tourist attraction.
And another mention goes to the cruise ships we saw everywhere. Our itinerary was intended to avoid cruise ships and their passengers, but it was impossible. Any maybe just as well, because it was truly fascinating to see these gigantic floating blocks of flats being manoeuvered and parked in tiny harbours. On disgorging their cargo, we saw the entire nature of each location change, only to return to its more languid natural self when the ships pulled out.
Cruise ships dominated every destination. Here we see one sailing out past the opened Queen Emma Bridge in Curacao, past another moored at the Mega Pier.Best Coffee
Coffee is grown in the Caribbean, and they are proud of it, but finding decent espresso and cappucino (to our Aussie taste) was quite difficult. Lots of places offer cappucinos, but they often don't cut the mustard, mostly being too weak or milky. Our award for the best cappucino goes to Cafe Don Ruiz in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Our favourite cafe, with the best cappucino in the Caribbean, was this one in Old San Juan.Best Food
We were disappointed at how poor the food was in some locations, in particular St. Lucia and (very surprisingly) Martinique, where the French tourists seemed to quite happy to eat uninteresting meals. We have decided to split this award into two categories...
- Best island - Curacao. Avila food was good, but we also easily found nearby restaurants with excellent quality meals. We ate better in Curacao than anywhere else.
- Best meal - Sugar Mill, Tortola. Grilled fresh lobster was a weekly special at the already excellent restaurant at Sugar Mill, and it was exquisite. We even shared this meal with Richard Branson. The special Valentines Day menu at Carmichaels at Sugar Ridge, Antigua was also very good, but not up to the standard of Sugar Mill.
We had our best Caribbean meal at the Sugar Mill (Tortola) restaurant. The gazebo shown here was a great location for quiet relaxation after breakfast, with a cuppa, and views over the sea.Best Island
All the islands were good in some ways, and added considerably to our knowledge and enjoyment of the diversity of the Caribbean. Basically, they all share the same history - the original inhabitants, Amerindians, were pretty well destroyed by the mostly Spanish invaders of the 15-16th Centuries, who then established plantations and, needing cheap labour, kidnapped Africans and established slave trading. This is the background everywhere, and we were pleased to appreciate this view of the Caribbean.
We were visiting in the here and now, and our objectives were to relax and enjoy the current ambience of the islands. Because of the diversity, it is impossible to select a single winner, but our favourites are:-
- Old San Juan: not strictly an island at all, but a huge surprise and a great delight. Fabulous downtown and fortifications.
- Antigua: great beaches, easy to get around when you work out where you're going.
- Curacao: the clearest, blue-est water, very civilised, easy to get around.
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