Which Islands

See this posting that is just a few questions down. Same comments apply ... it would help tremendously if you'd give us a hint at what you're interested in, budget considerations, etc. I can appreciate the fact that you may feel a little overwhelmed at where to begin, but asking everyone to just tell you their 5 favorite islands isn't going to get you very far. The quality and usefulness of the responses you get is directly proportional to the quality of the question you ask. If you're primarily interested in diving, for example, I'd give you 5 totally different islands than if you were just interested in the best beaches or you were just interested in the 5 cheapest islands for vacationing.

As for getting between islands, for the most part you can only go by ferry to islands in the same group/country. There are some exceptions, such as being able to go between the US and British Virgin Islands, going between St. Maarten and several neighboring islands. You can almost always (but not always) go between islands in the same country/group like between St. Vincent & the Grenadines, St Kitts and Nevis, Trinidad & Tobago, etc. but, by and large, you are pretty limited on the ferry option. There are some regional airlines such as Caribbean Star, LIAT and Caribbean Airlines. LIAT and Caribbean Airlines (formerly BWIA) used to have some air passes available but I'm not aware of either of those airlines recently offering them. The cost of flights between islands varies widely, but they will frequently run about $100 one way to a nearby island.

By the way, my 5 favorite islands are Bonaire (diving), Curacao (diving and good variety), St. Lucia (little bit of everything), British Virgin Islands (beautiful and laid back) & Dominica (diving, natural beauty, hiking). If you are not a diver but are a beach lover you are not going to like 2 of my five favorites and it will cost you a small fortune to do them all on one trip. Not trying to be a smart aleck, but that's the usefulness of the kind of information you are likely to get by posting such a general question.

how many islands do you want to visit. if more than one then you need to get your entry point. barbados is lively friendly and an easy introduction to the region and from there you can easily get liat flights to st. lucia or grenada. curacao is a fantastic place with beautiful buildings and again is safe and laid back. from there you could easily visit aruba. jamaica is much rawer if that makes sence and a beautiful island with fiesty, flirtatious people and then there's the dominican republic with it's afro-spanish culture. in between these there are little gems like dominica, st. kitts etc. but they are probably a bit more difficult to get to.

If linking together a few islands by ferry is your main objective ... instead of visiting someone's list of the "5 best islands" which may be scattered all over the Carribean ... you can consider:

1) St. Thomas - St. John (Excellent place as well) - British Virgin Islands (Tortola). All of them are connected by ferries. Once you get to Tortola you can get ferries to other islands in BVI. The Baths in Virgin Gorda is awesome and my favorite beach in the Caribbean. Don't think you can fly home direct from BVI so either go back to St. Thomas and fly home or fly to nearby St. Maarten, visit there and then fly home (or do more island hopping).

2) If you base in St. Maarten you can ferry to Anguilla (best overall island for beaches in the Caribbean IMHO), Saba (excellent diving and hiking but no beaches) and St. Barths (beautiful beaches, nice town of Gustavia), plus St. Maarten is "two islands in one" with a French side and Dutch side that have a very different feel. It also has excellent beaches. Most touristy island in the Caribbean in my opinion, but it's still worthy of a visit.

3) You can go to St. Vincent and ferry throughout the Grenadines. Lovely, lovely place. Don't think you can fly direct to STV from the U.S. so you could fly to Barbados or St. Lucia first, see those islands, then go to St. Vincent and the Grenadine. Or fly into Barbados/out of St. Lucia (or vice versa). All of these islands are quite nice.

4) The other option for utilizing ferries for much of your transport is Martinique-Dominica-Guadelupe which has a ferry. Can't fly direct to these either from the U.S. but can fly into Antigua (where you can also catch a ferry to Montserrat), then fly to Guadeloupe, ferry to Dominica, then ferry to Martinique, then fly to Barbados to return to U.S. (or vice versa or can just leave & return from either Antigua or Barbados. Antigua would get my vote for 2nd best island in the Caribbean for beaches.

5) ABC islands are also clustered together and easy to hit on one trip, but you can't ferry between them. Fly into Aruba, then catch short "local" flight to Curacao, then fly to Bonaire (awesome for divers/snorkelers; lousy for non-divers/snorkelers), then return to Aruba for flight back to U.S.

Thanks for replying. We were too vague in what we are looking for in an island. We like beaches and greenery. We don't dive. We are not looking for high end resorts. We would like to enjoy the natural beauty of the islands. Would ferrying to the islands be less expensive than flying? We speak Spanish and a little French.

The Island depends on you interests...
My favorites are:

Cozumel...Very Safe!! Rent a jeep drive the back side of the island.. Deserted beaches on back side of island ( unsafe for swimming), neat bars...Good diving. GReat atmosphere. Nice downtown and good night life when the Cruise ships are in and peaceful when they are not in. Few good beaches...

Jamacia. Very Romantic..Great people and Culture. Not real safe to explore on your own.

Grand Cayman.. I have only been here on a Cruise ship, but Great diving...people here don't seem as nice as other islands...Great beaches!!!

Tortola..Nice laidback island..GReat full moon party.

St Thomas...Shopping!! Busy..lots of crouds

St Martin...I did a lot of research on this Island and planned on going in 06 , but had to cancell at the last minute.....from what I read it seems like a great place.

If you would like to see more than one island economically, an idea would be to cover the countries of St. Vincent and Grenada, including some of the smaller islands in between. They are all connected by scheduled boats, but you would need to plan your accommodations around their schedules as they aren't all daily. You can also fly, if you need to, or hire a private boat in some places.

Carriacou is part of Grenada and is connected by a daily (maybe twice daily now) catamaran ferry. There is a twice weekly mail boat between Carriacou and Union Island, which is part of St. Vincent & Grenadines. From there, scheduled boats stop on Mayreau, Canauon and St. Vincent, with several ferries daily between St. Vincent and Bequia.

St. Vincent isn't beachy, but really lush. Grenada has beautiful beaches and lush interior. All of the smaller islands have good beaches, and are drier but still have green. You can skip Canauon, since it has been overrun with wealthy gated communities, I'm told. Mayreau is mighty small, but a great day trip.

Carriacou and Bequia are my favorite destinations, small enough to be easy to get around and get acquainted, and developed enough to have a range of accommodation choices, mostly locally or expat owned.

Carol,
Thanks, the extra info is helpful. You actually have several excellent choices. Get a good guidebook or two (I think either Lonely Planet or Rough Guide in combination with a Frommer's gives you a pretty well rounded wrap up) and read up some more on the COMBINATIONS of islands below. Any of them will give you good greenery, good beaches plus more. Any of them can be done on a variety of budgets. What sort of budget are you looking at? You can get a nice but not fancy one or two star hotel for under $100 a night pretty much anywhere in the Caribbean. That's usually how we travel. There are also some more budget choices such as guesthouses, hostels, and some limited camping options. This posting by LittleKris lists some superbudget options (he was trying to stay for about $30 a night or less).

Play around on kayak.com to see where you can get good prices in and out of for each of these combos. Since they are all good options, I'd probably base a lot of my decision on cost and amount of hassle necessary to fly to these places from your hometown. For inter-island flights you may also need to Google the airlines I noted above and check their websites, but you should be able to really limit the amount of island flights using the itineraries below.

1) #6's recommendation is a good one. Do your hiking, etc. on St. Vincent & Grenada, lay on the beaches in the Grenadines & Grenada. You can also get flights to Grenada from the U.S. You could also fly into or out of Barbados or St. Lucia and see one of them first (or last) then start/finish the rest of this route. St. Lucia is lush, mountainous, has some good beaches, geothermal activity, plantations, picturesque fishing villages, food and accomodation in all price ranges. Barbados also has a lot to offer ... great beaches (more great beaches than St. Lucia), caves, monkeys, plantations ... but it's a flat and scrubby island.

2) Fly to Trinidad and also go to Tobago (cheap ferry and cheap flights) on the same trip. Great islands for natural beauty, hiking and wildlife, different from the rest of the Caribbean islands, lots of Hindu culture on Trinidad (40% Indian; saw two Hindu cremations on the beach while I was there!). Tobago has some beautiful beaches.

3) Do the Martinique-Dominica-Guadeloupe trip noted above. Your basic french will go a long way on M & G. There are also local ferries going to the small islands around Guadeloupe and it looks like you can catch a ferry from Martinique to St. Lucia as well. All of these islands are lush with great hiking & waterfalls & geothermal features. All have some great beaches except Dominica (which has some decent beaches with picturesque fishing villages, but no turquoise water, powder white sand kinds of places). To "put the cherry on top of the sundae", start in St. Lucia, ferry to Martinique and work your way up the chain. Fly from Guadeloupe to Antigua and come back home from Antigua (tons of gorgeous beaches; flat and scrubby island; other interesting sites like Nelson's Dockyard). An awesome trip .... if I had to vote out of the choices I'm presenting this would probably be my top choice.

4) the St. Thomas - St. John - British Virgin Islands trip noted above. Spend less time in St. Thomas and more anywhere else.

You could also go to Puerto Rico and visit the nearby islands of Vieques and Culebra via ferry, but this would be a distant last place to any of the options above in my opinion. Dominican Republic and Jamaica would also offer you options of lots of good beaches and natural beauty if you just want to go to one island (albeit large, diverse ones). If you decide you want to explore these options in more depth, there are several experts on those islands that frequent this branch (RockyBar for DR, MikeyMike for Jamaica, etc.). You can look through other posts and find out a lot about these options.

OK, there's a start. I think the lushest islands with the best beaches are covered in the above itineraries. At least this will help you focus on a limited number of good choices.