The Caribbean Islands

Geographically, the Caribbean cuts a wide swathe from the Florida Keys east into the Atlantic and around towards South America, linking thousands of islands. Some are tiny, projecting bravely out of the sparkling warm water, remnants of a long ago volcanic surge through the earth’s crust. Islands, often so close together that they can be seen from each other’s hilltops, actually cover an area of 2,500 miles. Like sisters, they seem to hold hands: from the Bahamas to the Greater Antilles, the Virgin Islands, the Leewards to the Windwards, the most easterly being Barabados, and across the south to the Lesser Antilles, together they form a loose necklace, a dotted boundary for the azure Caribbean sea.