Early this year, while living in Santo Domingo, I decided to visit as much of the East Indies and Guyanas as possible. I ended up taking 21 flight in 16 days and visited all the guyanas, and all of the Lesser Antilles countries except for 2, which I only missed because of InterCaribbean’s error. I talked about the Guyanas in an earlier post, but now let’s talk about the second part, the Lesser Antilles, and how InterCaribbean Airways screwed up my 14 flight itinerary that would’ve allowed me to visit all of the Lesser Antillean countries, meaning I actually ended up missing St. Vincent & the Grenadines and Grenada.

*My 14 flight route would’ve taken me to all of the remaining Lesser Antillean countries. In the end you can see St Vincent & the Grenadines and Grenada have been left unvisited.*

After my Guyanas and Trinidad & Tobago trip, I wanted to visit all the Lesser Antilles. I planned three interconnected multi-city routes allowing me a night or so in each island country, except for St Kitts, where I had several days as Trump had recently invaded Venezuela to distract from the Epstein Files, and Caribbean flights had been halted. However on the first day of going to the airport, I went to the gate at the boarding time to discover the plane had already left. Apparently InterCaribbean had changed the boarding and flight time without informing all of the passengers. The reason being issues with the airport, the had to change the time to an earlier time to comply with the SDQ airport’s regulations, but failed to inform me. I would later learn that this is common, and InterCaribbean Airway flights routinely left earlier than the boarding time, an experience I repeated a few times during this trip, but luckily with me on the plane these times. There was even one time where I was afraid I’d get stuck on an island for 3 more days, but that comes later…

Anyway, as this would’ve been the first of my 14 flights, I scrambled, calling the airlines and had to change my first couple of flights to get back to my original route. I ended up having to skip the first two islands and spend a night on Tortola, on the British Virgin Islands which were not even a country and therefore had not been on my tour.

Tortola, British Virgin Islands 🇻🇬

Still I had to do this in order to catch up with my original itinerary. Furthermore, the British Virgin Islands were insanely expensive, with a single night at any sort of fixed accommodation being at least 250usd a night and even going into 400 or so. I say fixed because I ended up actually spending the night in a room, and not only a room, but a room on a yacht for 80 usd. Still, I needed 25 usd to get from the airport to the town on a shared taxi and 50usd to be driven by the owner’s wife back to the airport to catch my flight the next morning.

Bridgetown, Barbados 🇧🇧

I arrived in Bridgetown, Barbados, country of origin of Rihanna, and was immediately struck by how cool the accents were. It sounded a bit like some pirate Irish accent. The vowels were all over the place and complex, not what you’d expect from contact languages. I kind of want to learn Barbadian English (or Bajan English, as it is known).

I stayed in the center of Bridgetown near Constitution River, which I would learn later is actually not where the touristy stuff is. For that you would need to stay more south. Luckily, after exploring the slightly sketchy area I stayed in, I awoke around 5am and walked carefully down to the touristy area to catch the sunrise and explore for a few hours before my late morning flight.

Castries, St Lucia 🇱🇨

Castries, Saint Lucia was a long layover. Six hours, just enough time to get out and explore the city for a few hours. In fact, I got back at least an hour and a half before the flight by walking, and stayed at the beach, since the airport was right a very nice pristine beach.

Marigot, Dominica 🇩🇲

Next, I arrived in Dominica, where I spent the night at a really cool converted airbnb that apparently all the locals knew about. It was that famous. The owner is a full time cop, but he invited me to go to town with him and spend some time at the bar. I went to the bar with him and he went to play slot machines, which surprised me since I didn’t expect a man of the law would gamble, despite it apparently being legal. I ate some food and then walked back to the airbnb to relax. It was a nice airbnb.

Basseterre, St Kitts & Nevis 🇰🇳

St Kitts, historically known as Saint Kitts, was the island I stayed on the longest. This was mostly because there weren’t many flights out due to Trump’s invasion of Venezuela. Basseterre is a small city whose small buildings are routinely dwarfed by giant cruise ships. I managed to explore a few places, such as an alcohol refinery and a nice beach that I was actually partially driven to by a helpful local.

InterCaribbean Airway rears its ugly head again

On my last night on St Kitts, I received an email from InterCaribbean Airways that sent shivers down my spine:

InterCaribbean’s only flight off the island was cancelled and they told me the only flight out would be one week later!

I couldn’t do this. I scrambled, but luckily found and booked the only flight I could find, a Haitian airline, which I wasn’t even sure was real.

After a nail-biting 6.5 hours of waiting and 1 hour extra when the plane didn’t show up and the ground staff were just as confused as the passengers as to the airplane’s wherabouts, including mentioning “we are calling and emailing the plane to see where they are”, the plane finally arrived and I finally escaped St. Kitts

St. John’s, Antigua & Barbuda 🇦🇬

I arrived at night in St. John’s, Antigua and my airbnb host picked me up. I stayed in a room at his house. Kind of run down with partially working lights, it was an authentic experience, especially since the host’s mother built the house herself. Still I woke up early in the morning and explored the city before the host sent me to the airport back to Santo Domingo

Epilogue

I did end up meeting my friend when I got back. And I started a chargeback on my credit card for the first multi-city journey asking for 850usd back from InterCaribbean Airways, which is most of the flight’s cost, but a bit less than the flights I would need to take in the future to get to St Vincent & the Grenadines and Grenada, the two countries I missed due to InterCaribbean Airways’ incompetence in their flight schedules. Fortunately, my friend who’s been to many Caribbean islands tells me that those two islands are the prettiest of the bunch and definitely warrant a longer stay than I had originally planned.

Lesser Antilles Island Hopping (InterCaribbean Nightmare)