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St Vincent and the Grenadines

Top tip: Big drum, calypso, soca, steelpan & reggae

Geography

Geography


St Vincent & the Grenadines make up part of the Windward Islands and lie south of St Lucia. The highest point on St Vincent is the volcanic peak of La Soufrière (1,219m/4,000ft). The ‘tail’ of the comet of St Vincent (the Grenadines) is a string of islands and cays that splays south from Bequia (pronounced Beck-Way), Petit Nevis, Isle à Quatre and Pigeon Island to Battowia, Baliceaux, Mustique, Petit Mustique, Savan, Canouan, Petit Canouan, Mayreau and the Tobago Cays, Union Island, Palm Island and Petit St Vincent.

The climate is tropical, with trade winds tempering the hottest months of June and July. The best time to visit St Vincent and the Grenadines is from December to April, when the nights are cooler and the days hot. The rainy season is from June, with rainfull heavy in the mountains and short, sharp bursts on the coast.

Aruba is basically dry and therefore has an abundance of cacti as well as the wind shaped Watapana (divi divi) trees, the highly medicinal aloe and the Flamboyant trees in bloom from June to August. The small but well kept gardens of Aruban homes also have a variety of tropical flowers and foliage.


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Highlights

Highlights


Water sports abound: windsurfing, sunfish sailing, snorkelling and kayaking. Observe Bequia’s age-old traditions of boat building by hand. Visit the oldest Botanical Gardens in the western hemisphere, which occupy 8.1 hectares to the north of Kingstown, St Vincent, the capital, a lively town peppered with colonial architecture. Take in the beautiful stretches of powder white sands on Canouanisland, with its wide shallows and coral reefs, or stay on glamorous Mustique, long a hiding place for the rich and famous, including members of the British Royal Family. Take a boat trip to the Falls of Baleine, at the northern tip of St Vincent, a waterfall streaming from volcanic slopes to form a series of shallow pools. Head to the numerous islets and coves of the TobagoCays where you can see some of the most spectacular coral reefs in the world. Hike up La Soufrière volcano in the north of St Vincent, a 5km journey which rewards you with a wonderful bird’s-eye view of the crater and its islands, and all of St Vincent.

History

History


By the time St Vincent was discovered by Christopher Columbus in January 1498, the island had been occupied for nearly 200 years – by Carib Indians from South America, who had subjugated the original Arawak Indian inhabitants. The island remained a Spanish possession until 1627, when it was granted to the British Lord Carlisle. However, the Caribs fought furiously to keep possession of it. In 1783, the Treaty of Versailles restored St Vincent to Britain, after the French had temporarily taken it. Carib resistance was finally crushed in 1795, after which the settlement of St Vincent proceeded on more conventional lines.

During the late 19th and 20th centuries, St Vincent endured a series of natural disasters: in 1812, the first recorded eruption of the La Soufrière volcano, during which many lives were lost; in 1896, floods; two years later, a hurricane; and in 1902, the second eruption of La Soufrière, killing 2000 inhabitants. The next eruptions, neither of which caused loss of life, occurred in the 1970s.

Soon after World War II, the right to vote was extended to the entire adult population, after decades of restriction. This was an essential preparatory move towards independence – the key issue of the day. For small Caribbean islands like St Vincent & the Grenadines, a variety of proposals were studied during the 1960s, leading to St Vincent’s adoption of Associate Statehood with the UK in 1969. Under this agreement the island was internally self-governing, while London looked after foreign and defence matters. It also gave St Vincent the right to declare full independence at any time, which it finally did in October 1979. The viability of St Vincent as a nation state has been the subject of constant debate ever since.

In 1992, the New Democratic Party (NDP) administration of James Mitchell committed itself to the pursuit of a limited political and economic union with three other countries in the region – St Lucia, Dominica and Grenada. The NDP remained in power for almost two decades. It was finally ousted in March 2001, when the United Labour Party won an absolute parliamentary majority. The new premier was ULP party leader Ralph Gonsalves, a former lawyer known to many as ‘Comrade Ralph’. Under the new government, St. Vincent joined the Non-Aligned Movement in February 2003 and, later in the year, introduced anti-money laundering measures which ensured its removal from a ‘blacklist’ of countries which had failed to take sufficient measures to deal with the problem. Gonsalves won a second term in office in the December 2005 elections.

Interested in St Vincent and the Grenadines? Call +44 (0)20 7604 4408 for expert holiday advice

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