Reflections of Travel to the Caribbean

As a 4-ten years Licensed Travel Agent, worldwide airline worker, researcher, author, instructor, and photographer, travel, whether for satisfaction or small business functions, has constantly been a substantial and an integral aspect of my life. Some 400 journeys to every single part of the world, by signifies of road, rail, sea, and air, entailed locations both of those mundane and unique. This report focuses on individuals in the Caribbean.

Considerable, a number of-manner journey to it, normally on much more than one particular celebration, coated 18 islands.

Antigua, via St. John’s, entailed a street tour of Shirley Heights, Nelson’s Dockyard Nationwide Park, and the Blockhouse ruins.

Aruba, with its colourful money and cruise port of Oranjestad, involved sights, this kind of as Oranjestad. The Parliament, Queen Wilhelmina Park, Queen Beatrix Worldwide Airport, Santa Cruz, the Agnochi Catashi rock formations, the Ayo rock formations, the Purely natural Bridge, the Aruba Aloe Manufacturing unit and Museum, and the large-increase motels on Palm Beach and the minimal-rise ones on Eagle Beach.

Barbados, with its Bridgetown funds, entailed sightseeing of a lot of of its parishes and provided these points of interest as Santa Cruz, the Barbados Wildlife Reserve, and the Barbados Concorde Knowledge, itself close to Grantley Adams Worldwide Airport.

Bonaire, served by Kralendijk, entailed points of interest, this sort of as Gotomeer, Seru Largu, and Washington Slagbaai Countrywide Park. Found in northwest Bonaire, it is a 14,830-acre character sanctuary which was originally inhabited by native South Americans and was the area of the island’s two most significant plantations in the course of the Colonial Period of time, increasing divi-divi trees and aloe and producing charcoal. Accessed by both a 15- and a 22-mile route, the park showcased substantial topographical diversity, such as desert locations, white and black sand shorelines, caverns, flamingo-frequented salt flats, reefs, coral-crammed bays, and pink ponds. A visitor’s centre and museum were being located at its entrance.

Curacao, with colorful Dutch architecture portray its Willemstad streets, entailed sights, this kind of as the Waterfront, which dated from 1634, the Plaza Pier, Fort Amsterdam, the Queen Emma: pontoon Bridge, the Wilhelmina Drawbridge, the Mikve Israel-Emanuel Synagogue, and the Jewish Museum.

Journeys over and above Willemstad entailed the Curacao Liqueur Manufacturing unit Fort Nassau the Boca Tabla Grotto the Knip Plantation Residence Knip Bay, which was a single of the island’s most gorgeous seashores exactly where the pure sugary sand met the turquoise Caribbean Sea and general scenes loved from its “cunucu,” which was the Papiamento term for “country.”

Dominica, lush and velvety inexperienced, was marked by its popular Morne Trois Pitons Nationwide Park, a 17,000-acre ecological region located on the island’s south aspect. A UNESCO Environment Heritage Internet site and the only a person in the Japanese Caribbean, it showcased a person of the world’s past oceanic rain forests. It was accessed by slender, ascending, potholed roadways and showcased crater lakes, grotto-fed waterfalls, new h2o lakes, and the 3 peaks of Morne Trois Pitons. Mist regularly rose about the dark-environmentally friendly advancement of this primordial rain forest. An aerial tram afforded breathtaking sights of this Switzerland-reminiscent locale.

Other visited parts involved Trafalgar Falls and Laudat Village.

Grand Cayman signified George Town, Hell, Seven Mile Beach front, and West Bay.

Grenada, the spice island, was indicative of St. George’s, Fort Frederick, Annandale Falls, Grand Etang Countrywide Park, and the Douglaston Spice Estate.

The well known Casa de Campos was symbolic of the Dominican Republic on the island of Hispaniola.

Jamaica, with its lush, mountainous interior, instructed pictures of mainland forests, and its sights bundled Dunn’s River Falls, Mountain Valley, the seashores of Montego Bay, and Ocho Rios. A plantation jitney tour and bamboo rafting on the Martha Brae River have been highlights.

Puerto Rico was characterized by San Juan, Playa de Luquillo, the El Yunque Rain Forest, and Isla Verde. Old San Juan was property to the San Juan Nationwide Historic Site, with buildings that dated from the 16th century, together with the San Felipe del Morro and San Cristóbal fortresses and the aged city walls.

St. Barthelemy entailed coverage of Gustava, the funds and seaport, the Den Rock Resort, the island’s initial, Morne Vitet, the island’s optimum peak at 281 meters, Anse de Grand Cul de Sac, Anse de Marigot, Loreint Seaside, St. Jean Seashore, and Turtle Island, the conference stage of the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea.

St. Croix, with its Danish heritage, involved visits to its two primary towns, Christiansted and Frederiksted. Fort Christiansvaern was among the Christiansted’s Countrywide Historic Site’s Danish colonial buildings. The West St. George Village Botanical Gardens occupied an old sugar plantation. And a boat cruise to Buck Island Reef Monument, a small, uninhabited, 176-acre island 1.5 miles north of the northeast coastline of St. Croix, supplied scuba diving chances.

St. John, the smallest of the US Virgin Islands, was accessed by an inter-island ferry from St. Thomas and entailed a tour of its Virgin Islands Nationwide Park, which occupied most of the island. Its beach locations, like Trunk Bay, backed by forests, and Francis Bay, whose quiet waters have been property to sea turtles, ended up fringed by coral reefs. Annaberg Plantation was at the time the area of an 18th-century sugar plantation and trails as a result of the tropical forest led to the ruins of Reef Bay Sugar Mill.

St. Lucia, in the Jap Caribbean, was an island country whose pair of substantially tapered mountains, the Pitons, marked its west coastline, which alone was household to volcanic seashores, reef-diving web-sites, luxury resorts, ad fishing villages. Rainforest inside trails normally finished at waterfalls like the 15-meter-superior Toraille, which poured above a cliff into a yard.

From Castires, its cruise port, exploration encompassed St. Mark’s, 18th-century merchant residence crafted in 1942, which had employed the primary structure’s 1920 foundation Caribelle Batik Marigot Bay the Roseau Valley banana plantation Anse La Raye and La Sikwi Sugarmill, which involved a guided tour and the tasting of St. Lucia-indigenous foodstuff: fried eco-friendly bananas, breadfruit, sugar cane, grapefruit, yellow bananas, and banana ketchup.

St. Maarten/St. Martin was marked by its major cities, Marigot in French St. Martin and Philipsburg in Dutch St. Maarten.

St. Thomas’s sightseeing attractions provided Skyline Push, a view from its Mountain Leading, Charlette Amalie, Fort Christian, and an ascent up its Paradise Position Tramway. But a unique emphasize was a parasailing flight in excess of its bay.

Harnessed to a parachute and airborne-introduced from the stern of a speedboat, the parasail instantaneously surrendered to aerodynamic forces and come to be airborne, the planet receding and miniaturizing in seconds until finally even the boat’s motor audio faded to silence. Remaining suspended 600 ft above St. Thomas Harbor and the now-tiny, 91,000-ton Constellation cruise ship with my ft dangling into oblivion, I was remaining with the surreal viewpoint of the island under the intense winds which stuffed my chute and singularly held me aloft and my views.

Trinidad was marked by its capital, Port-of-Spain.