The Caribbean Oscars...

We've just had the Oscars, so we've desided to award our prizes for the best performance in various aspects of our stay in the Caribbean...

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.

Puerto Rico's Old San Juan - Perfecto!

Christopher Columbus, who first sighted Puerto Rico on his second trip in 1493, is well recognised in Old San Juan.

Prior to planning for this trip, all we knew about Puerto Rico was from watching West Side Story maybe 40 years ago! Now we've stayed on Vieques and in San Juan, we think this American outpost may well be the unexpected highlight of our whole Caribbean journey. San Juan is not only the oldest European settlement in the USA, the little peninsula known as Old (Veijo) San Juan must be one of the most photogenic cities in the world. We didn't even leave it to look at new San Juan!

The modest San Juan Bautista Cathedral, just up a short hill from the San Juan gate. 17C arrivals would visit this church to give thanks for a safe journey. Devotees come to the cathedral to see the tomb of Ponce de Leon and the body of martyr St. Pio.

This design and colour scheme is typical of many chapels in Old San Juan.

The narrow streets of Old San Juan are packed with colorful old buildings and parked cars.

Our hotel was El Convento, originally a Carmelite convent dating back to the 1600's. This hotel is fantastic! It's on the 100m long hill up from the San Juan Gate where VIPs used to enter the city through its fortified walls and climb up to the San Juan Bautista Cathedral to give thanks for a safe journey. The hotel is full of character, as you would expect. It has been renovated, of course, but in period style so as not to lose any of its magnificent ambience. Our "superior" room was in the same vein, with all the required mod-cons including that feature missing from every other Caribbean hotel, genuine hot water a decent flow and pressure. El Convento has no beach, and has no view, but as an inner-city hotel with charm, it delivers the full package! It even has tiny pool and a hot tub on the roof, and a guest laundry. It provides a turn-down service in the evening, with chocolates on the pillow. What a hotel!

Our digs, the Gran Hotel, El Convento, dates to 1651 and was the world's first Carmelite Convent.

The view from our hotel window down the Escalinata de las Monjas.

Cool and breezy inside the courtyard at El Convento Hotel.

Three distinct features give Old San Juan its fabulous appeal, the incredible fortifications, the magnificent buildings and the narrow cobblestoned streets.

Newer dwellings outside the Old San Juan fortifications don't match the excellence of those inside.

Under Ponce de Leon, the Spanish established a colony in San Juan in 1508, and 25 years later, they commenced building incredible fortifications which eventually completely ringed the city and effectively protected the entrance to a great deep water harbour. It would take 250 years to complete. San Juan withstood multiple attacks by the English and Dutch, but finally fell into American hands after its war with Spain in 1898.

The symbol of Puerto Rico, which appears on car registration plates, is the sentry box which helped the Spanish protect its most strategic asset in the Caribbean.

Old San Juan is famous for the sentry boxes at dozens of locations on the Spanish fortifications. This one, seen from the Santa Maria Magdalina de Pazzis cemetery, enjoys divine protection.

For our part, we have never seen more complete and better preserved fortifications anywhere. The many sentry boxes are the iconic emblems of all of Puerto Rico, but also, you can clearly observe maybe hundreds of embrasures (wedge shaped slots cut in the tops of walls to give shooters access while protecting them at the same time), casemates (storage and quarters), bastions (protrusions in the walls to give defenders a better view of attackers). There are well preserved loopholes (for protected shooting), wells (holding a year's supply of water) and moats (for trapping the enemy). Collectively, these add up to an amzing historical site, now in the hands of te US National Parks Service, which, by our observations over many trips, always does a magnificent job at conservation, education and managed access.

Roughly, Old San Juan is a grid of about 9 streets running east-west, and 9 running north-south. Every one of these blocks is packed with buildings so magnificent they dare the camera to capture them, but but in itself is a great challenge because the streets are so narrow. Many of the buildings are as old as the fortifications, most are in good order and condition, freshly painted in rich pastels, but others are in various stages of dereliction. The run down places have often been the target of revolutionary graffiti and attractive in a different way.

The entire precinct of Old San Juan is packed with gloriously decorated, centuries old buildings, all impossible to photograph with good perpective due to very narrow streets.

Residence in Calle del Christo at dusk.

Many houses feature fine ceramic artworks near their front doors.

Night time in Calle del Cristo, with the Cristo Chapel showing at the bottom of the hill.

Art Deco is strong in Old San Juan. This lovely example is the Banco Popular seen from the waterfront.

We saw many groups of school children resting in shady places, this one in the plaza between our hotel and the Cathedral.

The grand but stark courtyard of the Ballaja which houses the Museo de las Americas and also our favourite coffee shop, the Cafe Don Ruiz.

Just another magnificent Old San Juan building, impossible to photograph with good perspective due to the narrow streets.

The surface of almost every street is paved with blue oxidised cobblestones. These are rich with character and the intensity of the blue colour is sometimes quite remarkable. Vehicles travelling over the cobblestones make a delightful rumble and give pedestrians good warning of their approach. The city officers who must have chosen to maintain the cobblestones made a very good decision!

Brightly coloured buildings and cobblestoned streets provide our lasting memories of Old San Juan.

Old San Juan is a busy hub for cruise ships. We couldn't work out whether ships were calling in here as part of an itinerary, or if the city was the terminus for Caribbean cruises. But the effect was the same - the presence of a cruise ship brings a new buzz to Old San Juan as passengers (or soon-to-be passsengers, or ex-passengers) take tours and roam the streets and fortifications.

The fortiifications which originally defended Puerto Rico from English, Dutch and maybe American invaders now welcomes them in the form of gigantic floating apartment blocks.

Old San Juan is rich with bars, cafes and restaurants, and we had no trouble finding meals outside the hotel. The only problem was making the decision! Our great hotel spoiled our appetite somewhat by turning on free wine and cheese every evening. How many hotels do that these days? This function was very well attended by hotel guests as you can imagine - we even met a couple of Aussies (from the Gold Coast) there. We don't think many Australians come to the Caribbean, but when you say that to someone, it turns out that maybe there are more than we think!

This property is uniquely decorated with colorful puppets.

This ceiling fan in a cemetery mason's workshop is done cooling!

Old San Juan is very Spanish, but also very American, just like Miami. All the familiar fast food stores are here, CVS and Walgreens drug-stores are in town, and we could get Ben & Jerry's ice cream. Unlike most of the rest of the Caribbean, San Juan operates with American efficiency, but boils with Spanish culture and charm - a thoroughly delightful city to visit, and a highlight of our Caribbean holiday.

San Juan has a thriving arts culture, with numerous galleries and exhibitions.

Not all buildings in Old San Juan are in good order and condition. Like many derelicts, this one has lost its roof.

Luxury on the Isla de Vieques...

Getting from Tortola to the Isla de Vieques (Puerto Rico) required flying to San Juan (on Seaborne Airlines) and then connecting to Vieques (on Cape Air). Both these Caribbean airlines did everything required of them, but the transit through San Juan was so inefficient that despite a 2 hour allowance, we went within 10 minutes of missing the connection. We were over 60 minutes in the US immigration queue, and another 30 minutes in the security queue to access the departure gates. The flights were interesting: Seaborne's aircraft was a brand new Saab turbo-prop, and Cape Air's was a 10 seater Cessna. Mike got to be co-pilot, and sat in the front seat! The pilot's name was Jim Beams so Mike bored him with a joke about whiskey that he has no doubt heard a million times.

In all our planning for this trip, we have been pronouncing Vieques as if it were French, but now we have heard the Spanish say it, we know it to be pronounced "Vee-eck-ess", the syllables very close together but distinct. Vieques is 20km east of the "big island" of Puerto Rico - there's not much water between them, and each island is easily seen from the other.

We didn't have a rental car planned or booked on Vieques, but we then decided to explore the pretty small island, so we rented a brand new fire-engine red Jeep for two days. In that time, we covered just about every road on the island, and swam at every beach. The hardest thing with this particular rental was topping up the gas at the end of it. It took three times queued up at the only service station before getting lucky. The first time the gas station closed after we had queued for 30 minutes, to allow a tanker in. The second time, we joined the queue only to discover the station was actually closed. The arrival of the tanker was in fact a cause for jubilation in Vieques - shortages and runouts are apparently common. It looks like the tanker comes over by ferry from the big island. Just to confuse the tourists, it's not purely USA here. Speeds are in km/hr and petrol is $/litre.

Our rented Jeep Wranger parked at a southern beach on Vieques. How much are these cars in Australia?

Vieques' roads were twisty and narrow like those on all other Caribbean islands, but they were in much better condition, and well painted with kerb strips. The main roads were identified with route numbers which appeared on the the map, and main road intersections were clearly signposted - what a change from St. Lucia and Antigua!

Horses roam free on Vieques. (So do cows, apparently, although we didn't see any.) They eat the grass on the side of the road, so you have to be careful of them when driving. The horses pay absolutely no attention to cars. We had to stop in one location while a couple of cowboys (gauchos?) attempted to muster a herd of horses who weren't being very cooperative.

Vieques' resident team of lawn-mowers are smarter than the tourists and stay out of the sun.

Our hotel was the luxurious W Retreat and Spa, about 5 minutes from the airport. This is a stunning (but expensive) hotel. The design and interior decor of the "great house" is just stunning. Our room was much the same, being described as a "neo-bohemian retreat" whatever that means. Regardless, it was a fantastic hotel room, complete with a galvanised steel bath tub. Like many resorts, most of the rooms form a horseshoe around a central pool and beach area. Throughout the day and evening, this area vibrates with lively music emanating from speakers hidden in the gardens, and a busy trade in bar sales, pool-side snacks as well as an activities tent managing kayaks and snorkelling equipment. No hobie cats though. We were intrigued with the wet cabanas which, for $200, entitles you to a day in a shaded cabana equipped with poolside mattresses, cushions, a flat screen TV, lots of alcohol and a little fruit. Some groups indulged in this decadent luxury, and spent all day there.

The lounge area of the Great House at the W Retreat and Spa, Isla de Vieques. The mural is actually painted onto a wall of expanded metal.

Sunbaking appears to be the main objective of many residents at W. Some never leave the hotel "compound" during their stay. The couple on the right reserved their lounges early in the morning, and spent the entire day there, every day.

The main beach at W Hotel on Vieques. Another beach was reserved for adults - it was called "Whisper Beach" so we think the restriction was for peace and quiet, rather than any mature entertainment.

Vieques has two small towns, Isabel Segunda and Esperanza. The former is the business centre (and the ferry runs to here) and the latter seems there to cater for tourists. We had several meals in Esperanza to escape the high cost of eating at W. All the cafes and bars at Esperanza face the Caribbean Sea and have fabulous views. In Isabel II, we found a laundromat, the first such in the whole Caribbean sector of this trip, so we invested an hour and a few dollars there to give our clothing a well deserved freshening up.

The ferry to Puerto Rico's "big island" departing the tiny harbour at Isabel II on Vieques.

We were intrigued to observe that almost all the businesses on Vieques that we interacted with were being run by American ladies "of a certain age" rather than "real" Peurto Ricand of any age or gender. Their staff were in the same demographic. This applied to cafes, dress shops, a delicatessen, craft stores etc (notably, not the laundry, nor the service station). We pondered what this meant, but in case we have it wrong, we don't include our conclusions in this blog.

Vieques is famous for its bioluminescent bays where world class displays of phosphorescent dinoflaggelates are available, except at the full moon. Sadly, the dinoflaggelates have headed for the bottom after heavy rain and cooler weather. It seems the polar vortex has gotten this far south! So, we didn't take the evening kayak tour we planned.

The beach at W looks great, but it's a bit rocky underfoot. Some of the beaches we found in our Jeep are much better, in fact, maybe the best we've seen in the Caribbean. There's a whole string of them on the south side, but our favourite was Caracas, a beach similar in size and shape to Cane Garden in Tortola, but totally without the commercialisation. If you want a chair, bring it yourself. If you want a drink, put it in your Esky. Nevertheless, these southern beaches are pretty popular with tourists and locals alike. Apart from the fine white sand and clear blue water, Caracas Beach also offers a swell and a tiny surf, making it a very nice place to have a swim. We took to visiting Caracas before breakfast at Belly Buttons in Esperanza.

Caracas was our favourite beach on Vieques. The beach was well equipped with shade and facilities, but was devoid of commercial vendors common on other Caribbean islands.

Having dinner at Tradewinds, a popular restaurant and boutique hotel in Esperanza. The view is of Cayo Afuera and the Caribbean Sea.

The whole western quarter of Vieques is a restricted area and a national wildlife refuge. We think the main reason for this is not conservation but because of the danger from lots of unexploded ordinance left over after the US Navy controversially used the island for target practice in the past. Signs on the beaches warn you not to stray too far!

Our flight out of Vieques back to San Juan was in another puddle-jumping Cape Air Cessna, but was interesting for a number of reasons. Firstly, the only security at the tiny airport was a lady guarding the door to the airstrip. We also noted that waiting passengers had live chickens clucking away in cloth bags as hand luggage, another had a dog. Luckily, this cargo was not intended for our flight. What did accompany us was a blonde bombshell, deeply tanned, wearing nothing but green thongs and a string bikini with a transparent mesh coverall which covered nothing. Such a passenger was apparently unusual enough for staff at both airports to be distracted, and she was personally selected to sit with the pilot, so Mike missed out this time!

Our Cape Air Cessna just before we boarded it at Vieques Airport. For some reason, the bikini clad passenger got offered the seat beside the pilot.