Best Of The Caribbean: Perfect Scenery
Point your camera almost anywhere in the Caribbean and "click" you have an amazing picture for your vacation photo album. The scenery of these travel destinations truly earns them the ultimate distinction of being among the world's most beautiful islands. As part of the "Perfect Caribbean" guide that appears in the November 2009 issue of ISLANDS magazine, readers and editors point to this Caribbean scenery as their favorites.
"Any Caribbean Water" That was the top reader response for scenery. "That indescribable crystal color shocks me every time I see it, sending peace and calm to my very core," says Judy Breadner of Ontario."Whatever else I have ever seen in the Caribbean, it is the water that will always bring me back. It touches my very soul."
BVI: Baths On Virgin Gorda in the British Virgin Islands, the granite boulders and caves of the Baths are famous, yet there always seems to be something new to discover about them and a new way to see them.
Dominican Republic: Pico Duarte One ISLANDS editor just returned from a week in the Dominican Republic and filled up his memory cards shooting 2,000 images of towering Pico Duarte, plus waterfalls, horses and beaches. And yes, that's after deleting hundreds on the fly.
Eleuthera: Glass Window Bridge One of the many sights in the Bahamas alone that can take our collective breath away is Eleuthera's Glass Window Bridge, separating ocean and sea.
Grand Cayman: Hell The name doesn't sound particularly scenic, but readers do like Grand Cayman's Hell for its million-year-old limestone shards that seem to knife up from below.
St. Lucia: Pitons But if you come back with just one scenic picture, make it of St. Lucia's Pitons. As iconic and well photographed as those twin 2,000-plus-foot peaks already are, readers could still gaze out at them for days. "Memories of walking hand in hand with the water splashing against our feet all took place in the shadow of the famous Pitons," says James Schutt of Wisconsin. They were the highlight for Josephine Wade of New York too. "I imagine my love and I in St. Lucia strolling along the lush greenery with the twin peaks in the distance heading to the beautiful golden beaches," she says. "Afterward we lay in our four-poster in the open-air bedroom with nothing blocking our view of the brilliant blue sky and the island's Pitons so breathtaking that all we could do was sigh."
More Favorite Scenic Spots The colorful richness of Caribbean scenery can be overwhelming, whether in the swirling blue paints of the Exumas' waters or the wild green slopes of Dominica's jungle. Even the beaches range from Eleuthera pink to the Turks and Caicos white to Montserrat black. Sometimes the colors melt together as sky matches sea; sometimes they change all together in the twilight of an orange sunset.
Contest: Win a Caribbean Trip! Don't see your favorite Caribbean spot listed here? Let us know what we missed — and you could win a free resort stay. Enter our new "Caribbean Favorites" contest.