Thirty-two islands and cays, nine of them inhabited. Saint Vincent, the large one, is volcanic, green, steep, with black-sand beaches and very few hotels. The Grenadines, strung sixty kilometres to the south, are flat, sandy, white, and count among the finest anchorages on the planet. This is an archipelago visited by boat as much as by car, and that single fact shapes everything else.
The essentials in four lines
- Canadian passport valid for the whole of your stay. No visa up to 30 days, extendable locally.
- About five and a half hours of flying, with a connection from Montreal to Argyle (SVD).
- East Caribbean dollar, US dollars accepted. English. Driving on the left with a temporary local permit.
- December to May is the dry season. Hurricane season runs June to November.
One thing to grasp before booking
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines do not resemble one another. The main island is a volcanic massif topping out at 1 234 metres, covered in rainforest, cut by rivers and edged with grey or black volcanic sand. You come for the hiking, the waterfalls and the honesty of an island where tourism remains a minority activity.
The Grenadines offer the white sand and turquoise water of the brochure. Each has its own character: Bequia and its boat-building tradition, Mustique and its private villas, Canouan, Mayreau, Union Island, and the Tobago Cays.
Many travellers combine the two: a few days on Saint Vincent for the terrain, then a ferry or short flight to a Grenadine for the beach. That is the formula that makes the archipelago most interesting.
The Tobago Cays
Five uninhabited islets behind a horseshoe reef, designated a marine park. The water is shallow and unusually clear, green turtles graze the seagrass in a marked zone where you can swim with them, and sailboats anchor by the dozen without a thing being built ashore.
You reach it on a day trip from Union Island, fifteen minutes by boat. Fishermen come to grill lobster on the beach at Petit Bateau at midday. It is the high point of the trip for almost everyone who makes it.
The volcano and northern Saint Vincent
La Soufrière, 1 234 metres, erupted explosively in April 2021, covering the north of the island in ash and forcing twenty thousand people to evacuate. The crater trail has since reopened, and the climb takes five to six hours round trip with a guide. The landscape still carries traces of the event, which makes the walk all the more striking.
Lower down, Dark View Falls, the Vermont trail and the Buccament valley shelter the Saint Vincent parrot, a blue and bronze amazon found nowhere else and pictured on the national coat of arms.
On the leeward coast, Wallilabou Bay served as the set for a major Hollywood production in the early 2000s; part of the structures remain in place and can be visited.
Kingstown and its botanical garden
The capital fits into a few streets of stone arcades, with a Saturday market that spills onto the pavements. Above the town, the botanical garden was founded in 1765: the oldest in the western hemisphere.
It still displays a breadfruit tree descended from the plants Captain Bligh delivered in 1793, after a first voyage remembered for another reason. Breadfruit was meant to feed the enslaved workforce of the plantations; today it underpins the local kitchen.
Bequia
Seven square kilometres, five thousand residents, an hour by ferry from Kingstown. Port Elizabeth lives around Admiralty Bay, Princess Margaret Beach is reached on foot by a path cut into the cliff, and village workshops still build boats by hand.
It is the most accessible and most affordable of the Grenadines, with small hotels, rentals and a real village that carries on out of season. For a first stay in the archipelago it is often the best choice.
All-inclusive in the Grenadines
The format is rare and takes a particular shape here. Two private islands in the south of the archipelago sell all-inclusive: you arrive by boat, there is a single property on the island, and the package covers everything because nothing else exists nearby. It is an upper-tier model, at rates unrelated to those of Punta Cana.
Elsewhere, accommodation sells room-only or half board, in small hotels of twenty to forty rooms. If a conventional all-inclusive is your main criterion, other destinations answer better; our criteria for choosing an all-inclusive hotel allow the comparison without error.
Sailing
The Grenadines rank among the three or four best cruising grounds in the world. The islands sit two to three hours of sailing apart, the anchorages are sheltered, the trade winds blow steadily from December to May, and there is scarcely a difficult passage.
Chartering a sailboat with a skipper for a week, for four or six people, often costs about the same as an equivalent hotel stay, and opens up places no road reaches. It is the way the archipelago was built to be seen.
When to go
The dry season runs December to May, with steady trade winds and little rain. From June to November, showers multiply and the cyclone season peaks. The southern islands of the archipelago, Union Island, Canouan and Mayreau, were hit hard by the hurricane of July 2024 and are still rebuilding: check what services are running before booking.
Carnival, Vincy Mas, fills late June and early July, with two weeks of calypso and parades in Kingstown. To place those periods in Quebec departure pricing, see when to travel south.
Entry requirements, health and safety
A Canadian passport must be valid for the whole stay. No visa is required up to 30 days, extendable at the discretion of the immigration service. Customs officers may ask for an onward ticket and proof of sufficient funds.
No vaccine is mandatory, except proof of yellow fever vaccination if arriving from an affected country. Dengue and Zika circulate: repellent morning and evening. Care is provided by a hospital in Kingstown, with evacuation to Barbados or Martinique for serious cases; there is no Canadian consular office on the islands, services being handled from Barbados.
For current entry conditions and official recommendations, see the Government of Canada page on Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.
To plan this trip, see also Bequia, Palm Island, St Vincent, resorts that suit families and the All-inclusive vacations section.
