Fall out of your

bed and onto

the sand at Palm
Island Resort in
the Grenadines.

These 25 quintessential Caribbean beach experiences are  guaranteed to make your life list a whole lot livelier by bob friel

3 4 
 1 SLEEP ON THE SAND
(A L M O S T) There aren’t
many better ways to
welcome a new day than
to roll out of bed and right
onto the beach. Palm Island
Resort, St. Vincent and the
Grenadines (whose superb
shoreline is pictured on
the previous pages), is one
of the best places in the
Caribbean to go from sack
to sand in one easy move.
Other recommendations
include the Meridian Club,
Pine Cay, Turks and Caicos,
and Cape Santa Maria,
Long Island, the Bahamas.
2 CO N C H I F YO U ’ R E H A P PY
Grab a picnic table on
Provo’s Blue Hills Beach
and watch as Da Conch
Shack staff snags your
lunch out of the offshore
crawl. Go all in: Order conch
salad, conch fritters and
cracked conch. While you’re
waiting for the food, ask for
a rum punch and a slimy
conch “pistol,” a reputed
aphrodisiac. Eat the worm,
slam the drink, feel the love.
3 G O E L E M E N TA L Slap on
the sunscreen and a
floppy hat, then find your
Zen on the vast sandbars
that barely break the
surface off the Bahamas’
Musha Cay (pictured here)
or Little Exuma, or the
Grenadines’ Palm Island.
4 P RI M O R D I A L P U R S U I T S
Find fresh jaguar tracks
in the black volcanic sand
of Costa Rica’s Tortuguero
National Park and follow
them to the nighttime
nesting sites of Costa Rica’s
endangered green sea
turtles. When your guide
gives the OK, move closer
to the living dinosaur and
watch as it executes its
ancient imperative. You can
3 6 
also see turtles lay eggs on
Rosalie Beach, Dominica;
Playa Chiriqui, Panama;
Matura Beach, Trinidad;
and even Cancún, Mexico.
5 I N T H E PI N K Lie on your
belly along the tide line
at Eleuthera’s French Leave
Beach. Examine the rich,
ruby-tone veins running
through the white coral
flakes and learn the secret
of the pink sands — bits of
the tiny sea creatures called
foraminifera, or forams.
Other blushing strands
include Pink Sand Beach,
on Harbour Island in the
Bahamas; Horseshoe Bay
Beach, on Bermuda; and
Crane Beach, on Barbados.
Previous Spread: PetePhipp/Travelshots/age fotostock; Clockwise from Right: Zach Stovall; Musha Cay; Gary Moss Photography/Getty Images
D E M B O N E S With fly rod
at the ready, stalk the
elusive bonefish at water’s
edge along the powdery
white beaches of Crasqui,
in Venezuela’s Los Roques
archipelago. Your prey,
hung with mirrored scales,
is invisible in the crystal
seas, so look for its shadow
sliding along the bottom.
Cast a Crazy Charlie, twitch
the line, and hold on tight.
7 R U B B E D T H E RI G H T WAY
When in Jamaica, flag
down a roving masseuse on
Negril’s seven-mile beach
(you’ll know them by their
big bottles of aloe). Then
melt into the sun-warmed
sand under the ministra-
tions of their expert hands.
8 VE N I , V I D I , B E AC H Y
Wade onto the beach
at uninhabited Samana
Cay, 65 miles south of San
9
Salvador in the Bahamas,
no shoes, no shirt, no problem Forget the sandy burger and go find some of the
and step onto the same
soft sand that Christopher best bites on the beach. » Fresh lobster at Yellow Beach Bar on Îlet Pinel, St. Martin (pictured here)
Columbus felt beneath his
feet on his first New World
» Ceviche at Carioca’s on Holbox, Mexico » Shark and Bake at Maracas Beach, Trinidad » Conch pizza
beach day, Oct. 12, 1492. at Azul, Ambergris Caye, Belize » Grilled red snapper at Infiniti Bar, Grace Bay Club, Turks and Caicos.
10 Rock on Walk, wade, waddle, crouch, crawl, climb, slither, slog and swim your way from
grotto to sandy grotto, from Baths Beach to Devil’s Bay, amid the giant granite boulders of
the Baths on Virgin Gorda, in the BVI. To be one with the boulders (as opposed to being one among
Jen Judge

hundreds), time your trip for early morning or late afternoon to avoid the cruise-shippin’ day-trippers.
11 C AT C H T H E S U N S E T
S H OW It can be a sub-
tle rim of color on the sun’s
last sliver or a full-blown
blast that momentarily
hangs above the spot where
our favorite star just went
down. Either way, seeing
the green flash promises
great fortune. Some of the
best spots to get flashed
include Seven Mile Beach,
Grand Cayman; Mead’s Bay,
Anguilla; any beach in
Negril, Jamaica; and
Malcolm’s Beach, Provo.

12 YA G O T TA R E GAT TA
Row your dinghy
ashore at Bequia’s Lower
Bay Beach during the Easter
Regatta. Fortify yourself at
De Reef beach bar; pick a
favorite from the colorful
local racing boats and root
for your team; enter the
sand-sculpture contest;
and then wander back to
De Reef for the after-race
partying with new friends.

13 M A K E A B E AC H BA BY
To inspire a lifetime
of island addiction, plant
your baby’s butt in the
talcum-soft sand of Grand
Cayman’s Seven Mile Beach
or help your toddler wobble
into its calm, warm water.
Other great places to gently
acquaint your kids with
Caribbean beaches include
Grace Bay, on Provo, and
Palm Beach, on Aruba.

14 LAZE LIKE A LOCAL

Enjoy the Caribbean
equivalent of a lazy Sunday
in Central Park with the New
York Times by picking up

15
Macduff Everton/Corbis

the Sunday fatty editions of

go gilligan Spend a castaway day (or at least a three-hour tour) on the beaches of
the Jamaica Gleaner and the
Jamaica Observer and then the uninhabited Silk Cayes of Belize, tiny dollops of sand topped by a smattering of swaying
spreading out beneath the
swaying palms on Montego
palms. Other accessible places to wash ashore in the Caribbean include Mopion, in the Grenadines’
Bay’s Doctor’s Cave Beach. Tobago Cays, and little Sandy Spit (pictured here), near Jost Van Dyke in the British Virgin Islands.
4 0  41
 17 S E E C RI T T E R S Step
off the sand and
submerge yourself in a
wonderland of corals and
reef fish found just offshore.
» Tango with a turtle off
Roatan’s West End beach,
in Honduras. » Pack a week
of fish-watching into one
day at Trunk Bay, St. John,
USVI. » Scope thousands
of fish off 18 Palms Beach,
Bonaire. » Signal another
great find on the reefs of
Eleuthera’s Lighthouse
Beach. » Meet one fish,
two fish, red fish … and
every other color of fish
off Blue Beach on Vieques.
18 G O O N A (W I N D -)
S U R FI N ’ S A FA RI Drag
a windsurfing rig through
the white sand bordering
Bonaire’s Lac Bay. Stop at
the edge of the aquamarine
water and feel the steady
breeze. Now go for it, dude.
19 G I V E US A B R E A K
Wade through beer
bongs, tequila shooters,
wet T-shirts and thongs
Clockwise from Left: Onne van der Wal/Corbis; Danita Delimont/Alamy; Lew Robertson/Brand X/Corbis
gone wrong on Tortugas
Beach, Cancún, between
mid-March and mid-April at
least once (so you’ll forever
appreciate the Caribbean’s
more sublime moments).
20 motion of the
ocean Channel your
inner Burt Lancaster and
Deborah Kerr and act out a
little From Here to Eternity
on Lover’s Beach, Nevis.
You may learn that sex on
the beach (not the drink)
means a week of removing
sand from places it was
never meant to be.
16
altogether now Let the walk through the old salt ponds scour away your inhibitions so
that as soon as you pass through the final dune and onto Saline Beach on St. Barts (pictured 21 ’ S P L A S H D OW N!
The Dune Preserve in
Anguilla is such a perfect
here) you can strip away your top, your bottoms and your cares. (A nicely chilled Sancerre will help beachfront music venue
soothe any residual nerves.) And on St. Martin, you can take it all off on either end of Orient Beach. that none other than Jimmy
4 2  43
Buffett himself recorded a
live album there. If you do
only one Caribbean music
fest, make it Moonsplash,
held annually in late March.
Pop for a room at CuisinArt
Resort, right down the
beach, and you won’t even
need to designate a driver.
22 H A N G L O O S E Strap
on your baggies, grab
a board and hit the waves
off Rincón, Puerto Rico
(pictured here), or Cabarete,
Dominican Republic. Rip,
shred, nail a few El Rollos,
and then head to the beach
for some brews with the
brahs and bitchin’ Bettys.
23 M A K E YO U R M A R K
Leave the first foot-
prints of the day — maybe
the month — along 17 miles
of virgin sand on the idyllic
west side of Barbuda.
24 POTENT
PI L G RI M AG E S Sip
these Caribbean cocktails
on the beaches where they
were born. » Put away a
piña colada (pictured here)
at the Caribe Hilton in
Puerto Rico. » Down a
daiquiri on Daiquiri Beach,
Cuba. » Quaff a Killer Bee
on Pinney’s Beach, Nevis.
» Pop some Painkillers on
Jost Van Dyke’s White Bay,
in the BVI. » Slurp a Frozen
Nipper on Guana Cay
Beach, the Bahamas.
25 S TA R S E A R C H Lie
back on the cool night
sand at any of the beaches
that halo Anegada, in the
BVI; watch the satellites
and the meteorites streak
by. There’s no light pollution
here, so don’t even try to
count the stars — you might
as well count the grains of
sand on the island’s 16
miles of wide beaches. ✸