Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

Kingstown — the capital of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines (a 32-island chain in the southern Lesser Antilles, 389km², 110,000 people) with the St George’s Cathedral (an 1820 Anglican cathedral with red interior walls and a window depicting a Black angel — a deliberate inversion of the traditional white angel image, commissioned in 1930) and the Botanical Gardens (the oldest botanical gardens in the western hemisphere, established 1765, containing a breadfruit tree descended from the original plants brought by Captain Bligh on HMS Providence in 1793).

💡 The St Vincent Botanical Gardens (established 1765, the oldest in the western hemisphere) contain a direct descendant of the breadfruit trees brought by William Bligh to Saint Vincent from Tahiti in 1793 on HMS Providence — the second breadfruit voyage, the first having ended with the Mutiny on the Bounty in 1789. Bligh successfully completed the second voyage and delivered 544 breadfruit plants to the Caribbean; the plants were intended to provide cheap, high-calorie food for enslaved Africans. The enslaved workers initially refused to eat breadfruit.

La Soufrière (1,234m — the highest point in the eastern Caribbean, an active stratovolcano that erupted explosively in April 2021, sending ash clouds to 10,000m and forcing the evacuation of 20,000 people from the northern half of Saint Vincent — the third major eruption in the 20th/21st century, after 1902 and 1979) with a certified guide: the crater rim hike offers views into the active caldera and the surrounding volcanic landscape.

💡 The 1902 eruption of La Soufrière (7 May 1902 — a day after the catastrophic eruption of Mont Pelée on Martinique which killed 30,000 people) killed approximately 1,600 people on Saint Vincent, mostly Indigenous Garifuna people living in the northern valleys. The island was simultaneously struck by two volcanic disasters in 24 hours — the ash fall from La Soufrière and the pyroclastic debris from Mont Pelée drifting south.

45 min ferry. Bequia (the largest of the Grenadines, 18km², population 5,000 — a yacht-building and whale-hunting island that was the last place in the world where indigenous people were granted a legal subsistence quota for humpback whale hunting: 4 whales per year, by the International Whaling Commission, for the Bequian Whale Sanctuary at Petit Nevis) with Admiralty Bay (the finest natural harbour in the Lesser Antilles, filled with yachts and surrounded by pastel wooden houses).

💡 Bequia’s whale hunting tradition (using hand-thrown harpoons from open wooden boats — a method unchanged since the 19th century, when Bequian boatbuilders learned from New England whalers) is the subject of ongoing IWC controversy. The subsistence quota of 4 humpback whales per year was granted in recognition of the cultural tradition; in practice, catches average 1–2 whales per decade due to the difficulty of the hunt.

The Tobago Cays Marine Park (five uninhabited islands surrounded by a horseshoe reef in the southern Grenadines — the most photographed sailing destination in the Lesser Antilles, with loggerhead and hawksbill turtles in a protected feeding area, nurse sharks in the shallows and the clearest water in the eastern Caribbean — accessible by day-sail charter from Bequia or Union Island, 2–3 hours sailing).

💡 The Tobago Cays (an uninhabited chain of five cays inside a horseshoe reef, now a marine park) were used as the filming location for the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise — the Gibbet Island hanging scene in The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) was filmed at Petit Tabac Cay, the most isolated of the five islands. The production crew arrived by boat; the island was accessible to no one for the duration of filming.

2h by boat or 20 min by plane. Mustique (a 5.6km² private island owned by the Mustique Company — a shareholders’ consortium of villa owners — with approximately 100 ultra-luxury villas, one hotel, one bar and no day-trippers without a villa booking, the most exclusive private island accessible to non-billionaires in the Caribbean, made famous by Princess Margaret who was given a plot of land there in 1960 and built the Villa Les Jolies Eaux).

💡 Princess Margaret received a plot of land on Mustique in 1960 as a wedding present from Colin Tennant (Lord Glenconner), a friend who had bought the entire island for £45,000 in 1958. Her villa (Les Jolies Eaux) became the centre of a glamorous social scene in the 1970s–1980s; Mick Jagger, David Bowie, Tommy Hilfiger and other celebrities built villas nearby. Princess Margaret’s parties at Mustique are among the most mythologised events in post-war British social history.

The southernmost Vincentian Grenadine, Union Island (population 3,000) with Clifton Harbour (the main transport hub for the southern Grenadines — ferries to Tobago Cays, Mayreau, Palm Island and the Grenada Grenadines) and Kitesurf Paradise (the Ashton Lagoon — a flat-water kitesurfing site with consistent 20-knot Trade Winds, rated among the top 10 kitesurfing locations in the world).

💡 The Grenadines chain (32 islands stretching 100km between Saint Vincent and Grenada, split between the two nations at a political boundary just north of Petit St Vincent) creates the finest island-hopping sailing territory in the Caribbean — anchorages 2–8 nautical miles apart, consistent Trade Winds from the northeast and protected waters behind the chain. The Grenadines were the inspiration for the Coral Island by R.M. Ballantyne (1857).

Young Island (an island 200m off Kingstown connected by water taxi, the site of the Young Island Resort — a boutique resort where you swim ashore and hammocks hang over the water) and a final meal of Vincentian roast breadfruit with saltfish (the national dish of Saint Vincent — a halved breadfruit roasted over charcoal, the interior scooped out and served with saltfish, butter and hot pepper sauce). Fly from Saint Vincent (SVD).

💡 Roasted breadfruit with saltfish (the national dish of Saint Vincent — a whole breadfruit placed directly on charcoal embers and roasted until the skin blackens and the interior cooks to a fluffy, potato-like texture, scooped out and served with flaked saltfish sautéed with onions and hot pepper) was initially rejected by enslaved Africans when first introduced but became the defining food of the island. Breadfruit is now consumed throughout the Caribbean and Pacific.