The Caribbean has been the most difficult and frustrating region to get around out of anywhere I’ve been in the world. For whatever reason the islands have never established a decent set of ferry connections to allow people to travel between them. Flights exists but not between all airports meaning that travellers and locals alike are forced to take several short flights with long connections and extremely high price tags! Maybe this is the point of it all after all, the main beneficiaries are the Caribbean airlines and many locals told me the lack of ferries was to protect LIAT in particular. Whether or not this is true, getting around by boat or plane can be difficult and is always expensive.
Flights
There are flight routes all over the Caribbean, far too many for me to go into detail about but I’ll include the useful details that I can
Some islands have major airports capable of hosting large passenger jets from the US, Canada or Europe:
- Puerto Rico has cheap regular flights from across the US
- Sint Maarten has a major airport with connections to the US, Canada & France
- Guadeloupe and Martinique run regular cheap flights to and from Paris as well as other nearby islands
- Barbados has lots of direct flights to and from the UK
- Antigua has a large airport with connections all over the Caribbean, North America and Europe
Some islands have tiny airports with extremely limited connections:
- Anguilla has very few flight routes but you can fly to Sint Maarten and get a ferry from right next to the airport
- St Barts only has a small airport and most flights come from Sint Maarten
- Saba has a tiny airport only connected to Sint Maarten on a regular basis
- Statia has a small airport only connected to Sint Maarten on a regular basis
- Nevis has very few flight connections and it would normally be easier to get a ferry from St Kitts
- Barbuda has very few flight connections and it would normally be easier to get a ferry from Antigua
A typical small plane for hopping between islands
Ferries
There are some good ferry connections around the Caribbean but many routes do not exist and some online information is badly out of date. These are the ones that definitely exist:
- Puerto Rico – Culebra; regular daily ferries Link
- Puerto Rico – Vieques; regular daily ferries Link
- Tortola – Virgin Gorda; regular daily ferries Link
- Saint Martin – Anguilla; regular ferries from the airport and Marigot Link
- Saint Martin – St Barts; semi regular ferries from Phillipsburg and Marigot Link
- Saint Martin – Saba; the fast “Edge” ferry once per day, 3 days a week & a slow local ferry once per day, 3 other days a week Link
- St Kitts – Nevis; regular daily ferries from Basseterre to Charlestown & regular “Seabridge” car ferry Link
- Antigua – Barbuda; regular ferry Link
- Antigua – Montserrat; semi regular ferry Link
- Guadeloupe – Dominica; Link
- Dominica – Martinique; Link
- Martinique – St Lucia; Link
Many of these routes are expensive and most islands also charge an additional departure tax.
Please not that there is a ferry listed online from Saba – Statia – St Kitts. THIS DOES NOT EXIST. It was temporary when Saint Martin was recovering from Hurricane Maria in 2017 and was discontinued. I’ve tried to leave comments on the page and hopefully it will be updated.
Last Updated: May 2020
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