Saint Vincent is the main island of the archipelago, where the flights land and the ferries leave from, but it is not the one people picture when they think of the Grenadines. It is volcanic, steep, forested, with black-sand beaches and very few hotels. You come for the mountain and for the passage to the southern islands.
The essentials in four lines
- Fly into Argyle (SVD) with a connection from Montreal, twenty minutes from Kingstown.
- Driving is on the left and a temporary local permit is required. East Caribbean dollar.
- The sand is volcanic, grey to black. The white sand is in the Grenadines, further south.
- December to May is the dry season. Hurricane season runs June to November.
Kingstown
The capital fits into a few streets of stone arcades built in the nineteenth century to shelter merchants from the rain. The Saturday morning market spills onto the pavements and gathers all the island’s activity.
Above the town, the botanical garden was founded in 1765: the oldest in the western hemisphere. It displays a breadfruit tree descended from the plants Captain Bligh delivered in 1793, after a first voyage remembered for other reasons. Those trees were meant to feed the enslaved workforce of the plantations; breadfruit now underpins the local kitchen.
Fort Charlotte, on a cliff above the town, gives the view over the roadstead and the first of the Grenadines.
The volcano
La Soufrière, one thousand two hundred and thirty-four 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.
The climb takes five to six hours round trip with a guide, by the eastern or western flank depending on the season. The landscape still carries traces of the event: charred trunks, ash flows, vegetation starting again. That is what makes the walk memorable.
The leeward coast
The western road follows a run of fishing villages between sea and cliff. Two stops are essential.
Dark View Falls, an hour from Kingstown, drop in two tiers into a swimming pool, at the end of a ten-minute path and a bamboo bridge.
Wallilabou Bay, further south, served as a set for a major Hollywood production in the early 2000s. Part of the structures remain in place, in a deep inlet ringed by cliffs, and can be visited freely.
Inland, 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.
The passage to the Grenadines
This is the island’s other essential function. From the Kingstown dock, ferries serve Bequia in an hour, then Canouan, Mayreau and Union Island several times a week. Domestic flights also link Bequia, Canouan and Union.
Many travellers give two or three nights to Saint Vincent for the volcano and the west coast, then move to a Grenadine for the beach. That is the formula that makes the archipelago most interesting.
Accommodation
There is no all-inclusive resort on Saint Vincent. The supply consists of small hotels around Kingstown and Villa Bay, one property on an islet opposite, and guest houses in the villages.
If all-inclusive is your main criterion, two private islands in the south of the archipelago offer it, and other Caribbean destinations will answer better. Our criteria for choosing an all-inclusive hotel allow the comparison without error.
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.
Carnival, called Vincy Mas, fills late June and early July, with two weeks of calypso and parades in Kingstown. Our guide on when to travel south from Montreal sets out the pricing calendar.
To plan this trip, see also our St Vincent et les Grenadines page, Bequia, Palm Island and our month-by-month calendar.
