Beach Bucket List: The Top 25 Caribbean Beach Experiences

Fall out of your bed and onto the sand at Palm Island Resort in the Grenadines.

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These 25 quinTessenTial Caribbean beaCh experienCes are � guaranTeed To make your life lisT a whole loT livelier by bob friel

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1 S L E E P O N T H E S A N D

(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 Y O U ’ R E H A P P Y 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 R I 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

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 P I 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.

6 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 R I 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 V E N I , V I D I , B E A C H Y wade onto the beach

at uninhabited samana cay, 65 miles south of san salvador in the Bahamas, and step onto the same soft sand that christopher columbus felt beneath his feet on his first New world beach day, oct. 12, 1492.

9 N O SH O E S , N O SHIR T, N O PR O B L E M Forget the sandy burger and go find some of the best bites on the beach. » Fresh lobster at Yellow Beach Bar on Îlet Pinel, St. Martin (pictured here)

» Ceviche at Carioca’s on Holbox, Mexico » Shark and Bake at Maracas Beach, Trinidad » Conch pizza at Azul, Ambergris Caye, Belize » Grilled red snapper at Infiniti Bar, Grace Bay Club, Turks and Caicos.

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10 R O C K O N 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 hundreds), time your trip for early morning or late afternoon to avoid the cruise-shippin’ day-trippers.

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1 1 C AT C H T H E S U N S E T

S H O W 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 G AT 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 A C H B A B Y 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 L A Z E L I K E A L O C A L enjoy the caribbean

equivalent of a lazy sunday in central Park with the New York Times by picking up the sunday fatty editions of the Jamaica Gleaner and the Jamaica Observer and then spreading out beneath the swaying palms on montego Bay’s doctor’s cave Beach.

15 G O G IL L I GA N Spend a castaway day (or at least a three-hour tour) on the beaches of the uninhabited Silk Cayes of Belize, tiny dollops of sand topped by a smattering of swaying

palms. Other accessible places to wash ashore in the Caribbean include Mopion, in the Grenadines’ Tobago Cays, and little Sandy Spit (pictured here), near Jost Van Dyke in the British Virgin Islands.

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17 S E E C R I 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 F I N ’ S A FA R I 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 U S A B R E A K wade through beer

bongs, tequila shooters, wet t-shirts and thongs 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 M O T I O N O F T H E

O C E A N 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.

2 1 ’ S P L A S H D O W N ! the dune Preserve in

anguilla is such a perfect beachfront music venue that none other than Jimmy

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 Y O 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 P O T E N T

P I L G R I M A G 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. ✸

16 A LT O G E T H E R N OW 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

here) you can strip away your top, your bottoms and your cares. (A nicely chilled Sancerre will help soothe any residual nerves.) And on St. Martin, you can take it all off on either end of Orient Beach.