Grenada has an abundance of locally grown food and spirits, and one way to tap into the Spice Island’s rich culinary diversity is to stay at one of Grenada’s resorts with all-inclusive options.

From popular brands with global recognition to family-owned luxury beach resorts, Grenada has a small but diverse group of all-inclusive options to choose from.

Spice Island Beach Resort This legendary resort set directly on Grand Anse Beach is a traditional all-inclusive, meaning fine dining, premium drinks, non-motorized water sports, and access to the fitness center and kids club in one nightly rate. The 64 suites are spread around eight beachfront acres, all opening onto the sand or gardens and many featuring private courtyard pools. The private Janissa’s Spa is Grenada’s best.

Royalton Grenada Got some Marriott points to burn? This Autograph Collection resort on Tamarind Bay might deplete your Bonvoy balance but it’s well worth the splurge on a luxury all-inclusive vacation in Grenada that includes all-suites accommodations — some on the beach, others with direct access to a private pool. Amenities include five gourmet restaurants, a spa and fitness center, a kids club and beach camp program, and butler-served Diamond Club rooms.

Sandals Grenada There’s a certain amount of homogeneity — lets call it consistency — among the resorts in the Sandals chain of all-inclusive resorts. Certain restaurant names and room types repeat from property to property, and the Red Lane spa is a given, for example. That said, we think Sandals Grenada stands out as one of the company’s more beautiful hotels, and we’re particular fans of the Love Nest suites here. Guests can sample Grenadian food at the Spices restaurant, kayak or sail in the waters off Pink Gin Beach, indulge in treatments at the spa — you’ll never get bored even during a stay of a week or more.

Coyaba Beach Resort This midsized (80-room) resort has a lovely location on Grand Anse Beach and offers two all-inclusive packages alongside American and Modified American Plan options. The premium all-inclusive deal includes all food and drinks, daily massages, snorkeling, dive, and market tours, and — my wife’s favorite — a logo robe to take home. Activities include tennis, yoga and tai chi classes, and nightly entertainment.

The post How to Take an All-Inclusive Vacation in Grenada appeared first on Caribbean Journal.

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Devanshi Kasana and her colleagues were puzzled when they discovered it: a large shark typically thought to live in the freezing Arctic – in the middle of a coral reef in Belize. 

It was the first time a so-called Greenland shark, had been found in the waters of the Western Caribbean. 

The shark, between 10 and 11 feet long, was found in the Glover’s Reef Marine Reserve, a coral atoll off the coast of Belize. 

Kasana, a PhD candidate in Florida International University’s Predator Ecology and Conservation Lab, was working with a team of local Belizean fishermen tagging tiger sharks when they found the unusual visitor. 

The final determination was that the shark was in the Sleeper shark family, and likely either a Greenland shark or a hybrid between the Greenland shark and the Pacific sleeper shark. 

Greenland sharks are a mystery, with little known about the creatures, which tend to live more than 400 years. 

In fact, they’re thought to be the longest-living vertebrates known to science. 

But they’ve been typically known to scavenge on polar bear carcasses in a freezing habitat near the Arctic and North Atlantic oceans — not the Caribbean. 

The result, Kasana and her team suggested, is that sleeper sharks “may be more common and widespread at depth in the tropics than available records indicate.” 

“Great discoveries and conservation can happen when fishermen, scientists and the government work together,” said Beverly Wade, Director of the Blue Bond and Finance Permanence Unit in the Office of the Prime Minister of Belize. “We can really enhance what we can do individually, while also doing some great conservation work and making fantastic discoveries, like this one.”

Kasana published her findings in the journal Marine Biology 

You can find her full article here. 

The post A New Caribbean Shark?  appeared first on Caribbean Journal.

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“Hamilton, you are back!” 

Under a sunbeam on the water’s edge in Charlestown, Nevis, historian Harvey Hendrickson reads his ode to a still-shrouded sculpture on the lawn. 

A few minutes later, the bronze is revealed, and Alexander Hamilton is finally back in the place of his birth nearly 257 years after his family moved to St Croix. 

It was in Nevis that Hamilton, one of the founding fathers of the United States, must have dreamt and aspired and “as a consequence, achieved great things,” Nevis Premier Mark Brantley said. 

Hamilton, whose towering life returned to the public consciousness with the launch of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Tony-sweeping musical in 2015, was born on the Eastern Caribbean island in 1757, spending his early years in Nevis and then periods of his youth in St Croix and Statia. 

While his birth abroad in Nevis precluded him from being eligible to serve as president of the United States, Hamilton’s extraordinary career included being the first secretary of the treasury, founder of the Federalist Party, founder of the US Coast Guard and arguably the father of the United States’ financial system, among other achievements. 

Today, Hamilton’s birthplace is a centerpiece of downtown historic Charlestown, Nevis‘ capital, home to a museum and, on the second floor, the site of the Nevis Island Assembly. 

And Hamilton remains a major draw for the island, which has seen a wave of new tourism interest driven by the reinvigorated public curiosity about Hamilton; the island’s top resort, the Four Seasons Nevis, has an Alexander Suite, for example; there’s even an Alexander Hamilton Rum on sale in the museum shop. 

Because it all truly did begin in tiny Nevis, and Hamilton’s Caribbean contribution was the subject of a thoughtful ceremony at the Alexander Hamilton Museum in Charlestown this past weekend, one that included a moving appearance by Hamilton re-enactor Scott MacScott. 

“We, as I like to say, must agree that the United States owes Nevis a debt of gratitude,” Brantley said. 

In a world where statues and their place are the subject of sometimes tumultuous conversations, the bigger purpose of the Hamilton work  is “not to glorify but to recognize the impact that individuals from small island states can have,” said Jahnel Nisbett, director of the Nevis Historical and Conservation Society. 

The idea is for visitors to come to learn about Hamilton “and leave knowing more about Nevis itself and its rich history,” she said. 

More broadly, the hope is to inspire young people in Nevis “of the contribution of a Nevisian, that an island this size could have contributed so much to a country the size of the United States,” Brantley said. 

The life-size bronze statue, donated by Robin Sommers, is part of a series of statues by American sculptor Benjamin Victor, whose first Hamilton statue debuted at the US Coast Guard Academy in 2018. 

Hamilton, set on the grass in front of his onetime home, is portrayed as a younger man to represent his youth in the Caribbean, carrying a scroll – a symbol of his skills and knowledge, said Nicole Scholet, president of the Alexander Hamilton Awareness Society. 

The series will also include statues in Statia and St Croix, Hamilton’s other stops in the Caribbean. 

And now in Nevis, Hamilton is back, peering out at the sea and the streets of Charlestown, the place that by the caprice of history drove him to one day help forge the American Republic.  

“It’s a welcome addition,” Brantley said. “It reminds us that we are never limited by the station of our birth, only by the extent of our ambition and imagination.” 

The post Alexander Hamilton Is Back in Nevis  appeared first on Caribbean Journal.

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Every time you come back, you feel better. 

Maybe you’ve just spent a morning snorkeling the 1,000 Steps, or a day windsurfing at Lac Bay. 

But the moment you punch in the passcode and walk through the door at Bamboo Bonaire, you feel something. 

It’s not easy for a tiny hotel to cultivate that.

It’s a boutique hotel that’s been around for just over a decade, hidden away in plain sight just off the western coastal road, steps from Captain Don’s and Buddy Dive.

But you’d never know it. Because it feels like its own dimension. 

There are just 13 sleekly-designed rooms here, most of them cottage-style, some of them with their own private patios with magnesium plunge pools or jacuzzis. 

And they’re all wonderfully, deliciously, indulgently quiet. And that’s the biggest story here: the almost impossibly vast sense of tranquility. 

With the high walls and the breeze and the Bonaire sky, you almost feel like you’re somewhere in the American desert — surrounded by cacti somewhere in New Mexico or Arizona. (This is Bonaire, of course, so you do actually have cacti on the other side of the wall.) 

It’s a lovely, ethereal feeling, that you’re in a unique place in space and time – and that’s precisely what Bamboo is trying to achieve.

This is an oasis and a sanctuary, whether you’re a honeymooning couple or on a weeklong aquatic adventure (Bamboo even has its own partnership with VIP Diving, meaning you get 24/7 unlimited tanks on property — just pack up and head to your favorite dive site in Bonaire’s Marine Park). 

There are the little touches — my name was painted on a wooden sign above the lintel of the door, or the fact that every room has a kitchen or kitchenette and a outdoor shower. 

And then there are the bigger touches: a lovely common area that feels like your own private spa, with a pool and living-room style loungers and a hot tub; a terrific boutique spa and, happily, one of the top restaurants in the Caribbean, CHEFS Bonaire. 

It’s not easy to classify it — it’s a boutique hotel, but it’s got all the amenities of a far larger resort; it’s certainly a wellness hotel, but it easily transcends that category. It’s not dive hotel, but you get all of the same needs filled with far more luxury. 

And then there’s that marvelous soundtrack again: shaking palm leaves and desert breezes and wooden chimes. 

This isn’t like any other resorts in Bonaire, and it isn’t really like anywhere else in the Caribbean. 

It’s the kind of place you’ll just keep coming back to. 

For more, visit Bamboo Bonaire. 

The post A Secret Caribbean Oasis in Bonaire  appeared first on Caribbean Journal.

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Wyndham is adding new all-inclusive resorts in the Riviera Maya of Mexico, part of a new, broad alliance with Spanish firm Palladium Hotel Group. 

That will include the Grand Palladium Colonial Resort & Spa, Grand Palladium Kantenah Resort & Spa and Grand Palladium White Sand Resort & Spa, along with the TRS Yucatan Hotel, all of which are in the Riviera Maya on the Caribbean coast of Mexico. 

Wyndham, in the midst of a large all-inclusive expansion, is adding a total of 14 all-inclusive properties in the Palladium Hotel Group portfolio in destinations including including Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica and Brazil.

Later this summer, Wyndham will also add the Grand Palladium Costa Mujeres Resort & Spa near Cancun; two TRS resorts in Cap Cana; a Grand Palladium resort in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic; and the Grand Palladium Jamaica and Grand Palladium Lady Hamilton in Jamaica. 

All of the properties will be joining Wyndham’s Registry Collection, under a long-term agreement “leveraging Wyndham’s extensive distribution,” the company said. 

The move will eventually bring Wydham’s total all-inclusive count to 26 hotels in the hemisphere. 

“Expanding Registry Collection Hotels continues Wyndham’s global growth in the luxury space and grants more travelers access to new, preeminent experiences in some of the most remarkable destinations,” said Geoffrey A. Ballotti, president and chief executive officer of Wyndham Hotels & Resorts. “These unique, all-inclusive hotels are designed to ensure that guests – whether redeeming Wyndham Rewards points or booking directly – will enjoy an elevated vacation.”

The Grand Palladium brand is focused on family-friendly vacations, while the newer TRS brand covers adults-only stays. 

As the all-inclusive space continues to get more competitive, more and more hotel brands are joining forces, most notably Marriott’s alliance with Blue Diamond and, more recently, with Playa.

For more, visit Wydham’s Registry Collection. 

The post Wyndham Adding Riviera Maya, Cancun All-Inclusive Resorts appeared first on Caribbean Journal.

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