November 2022

Volcanic mountains and developed beaches.

St. Vincent and the Grenadines is an archipelago nation in the Caribbean. It's known for yachts, volcanoes, and not being a mass-tourism place like its neighbors. While a LOT of cruiseship passengers disembark here daily, few spend more than a day, and locals take a great interest in anyone that wants to spend more time in their home nation.

We spent a week here, entirely on St. Vincent due to bad weather/rough seas and the expensive costs to get to the Grenadines.

The cities and towns are mostly ugly. Kingstown is filled with rats, and men urinating in public. In my opinion, it's probably the ugliest capital city in the Lesser Antilles.

However, the people here are quite charming. People joke a lot, smile, and generally seem to have no hurry. We rented a small house near Kingstown, and had quite a lot of fun meeting the locals - at one point a dozen schoolgirls stopped our car in the middle of the road to start an arm wrestling contest with us!

The island, however, is densely overpopulated, with seemingly any non-vertical ground covered in houses and roads and people. Traffic is horrendous, getting around is stressful and time-consuming, and there's just no space. Everyone is crammed into the slopes of the volcano right down to the rugged coast. Most houses are built on hillsides, and it's scary to think how many houses are lost to landslides in heavy rain.

We rented a car and drove to different parts of the island every day. Highlights were packrafting out to a sea arch, some pretty waterfalls on the northwest coast, and the Owia Salt Pools in the northeast.

The island is pretty, and a week is more than enough to see the highlights.