Caribbean Cruise

Why Caribbean Cruise works

The Caribbean is a geo-political region at the centre of the Americas, built around the Caribbean Sea in the North Atlantic and largely overlapping with the West Indies. It is bordered by North America to the north, Central America to the west, and South America to the south, and comprises numerous islands, cays, islets, reefs, and banks, ranging from the relatively flat, non-volcanic terrain of islands such as Aruba, Curaçao, Barbados, and The Bahamas to the rugged mountain ranges of Cuba, Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, and the Lesser Antilles.

Christopher Columbus reached the Caribbean at Hispaniola in 1492, after which Spanish and Portuguese explorers began claiming territory across the region, soon followed by English, French, and Dutch rivals who turned the Caribbean into a battleground for European colonial wars for centuries. Spain's early colonial economy relied on the encomienda system, under which Indigenous people were forced to work for conquistadors; the resulting collapse in the Indigenous population led Spain to begin importing enslaved people from Africa starting in 1503, a trade that expanded sharply as English, French, and Dutch merchants took it over in the seventeenth century, eventually bringing an estimated five million enslaved Africans to the Caribbean. Colonial control shifted repeatedly between powers — Jamaica passed from Spain to England, and Martinique and western Hispaniola passed to France.

The region's waters host migratory schools of fish, sea turtles, and extensive coral reef formations, and the Puerto Rico Trench, just north of Puerto Rico, is the deepest point in the entire Atlantic Ocean. Among its landmarks are Harrison's Cave, a natural cave system in Barbados; Dunn's River Falls near Ocho Rios in Jamaica; the historic centres of Santo Domingo, Willemstad, and San Juan; and the sharply pointed Piton peaks of Saint Lucia. The Lesser Antilles form an island arc that is generally understood to include Grenada, while definitions of the Greater and Lesser Antilles vary enough that the Virgin Islands are sometimes grouped with the Greater Antilles instead.

Caribbean climates vary considerably despite the region's shared tropical setting: lowland areas near the sea, from Costa Rica north to Belize and across the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, have a tropical rainforest climate, while Cuba, northern Colombia and Venezuela, and southern Yucatán see more seasonal tropical savanna conditions, and the extreme northern coast of Venezuela and islands such as Aruba and Curaçao are arid, kept dry by cool ocean upwellings. Consistent easterly trade winds drive this pattern, and the region as a whole divides into a wetter season from May through November, with more frequent cloud cover, and a drier, generally sunnier season from December through April.

National dishes reflect the region's layered history and its Indigenous, African, European, and Asian influences: Jamaica is known for ackee and saltfish, callaloo, and jerk chicken; Cuba for platillo Moros y Cristianos and ropa vieja; Puerto Rico for yellow rice with pigeon peas; Trinidad and other islands for roti and curry; and Haiti for griot served with rice and beans. Rice and peas or rice and beans, in one form or another, recur across nearly every island's table, alongside seafood specialities such as the Bahamas' conch fritters and Barbados's cou-cou and flying fish. Guyana's pepperpot and Belize's stewed chicken with rice and beans round out a food culture that shifts distinctly from island to island even where core ingredients repeat.

• Caribbean — Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0

Text adapted from the linked articles under CC BY-SA 4.0; edited for length.

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