Patrick and I visited the picturesque islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe at the end of December/beginning of January. If you have no idea where these islands are, you are not alone. Martinique and Guadeloupe are part of the Caribbean/West Indies, and St. Barts and St. Martin make up the additional French islands there. If you’re looking for postcard-worthy beaches and the most delicious rum (or rhum as it’s known there), these islands could be a great addition to your travel bucket list. The weather was consistently in the low-to-mid 80s, and we spent our vacation exploring coastal towns, dining, cocktail-sipping, and relaxing with our toes in the white sand.
To get to Martinique, we flew out of Miami, Florida. We spent the week prior visiting family in Port Charlotte, so we didn’t fly directly from California. We were able to adjust to the time difference in Florida (three hours), which was nice because we were at a four-hour time difference in Martinique. We flew into Fort-de-France, the capital, and rented a car at the airport to drive half an hour to our airbnb in Les Trois-Îlets. The Airbnb that we booked was walking distance from Plage de L’Anse Mitan beach, and we also visited Plage des Salines (50 minute drive) and Anse Dufour (20 minute drive). Click here to see a short video of the six beaches that we visited.
From Fort-de-France, Martinique, we flew to Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe. We stayed at an Airbnb in the Sainte-Anne area (about a half hour from the airport). It was a 30-minute walk to the beach, Plage de Bois-Jolan, from our place – we did have a standoff with a few cows on the dirt path along the way though. We also visited Plage de Sainte-Anne (9-minute drive) and Plage de Petit-Havre (20-minute drive). While all of the beaches were exceptional on our vacation, Patrick and I both agreed that we enjoyed the beaches of Guadeloupe the most because of the extremely clear and shallow water.
When we first arrived on the islands, you could travel from one French island to another (like traveling within the U.S.) without additional Covid testing. Omicron changed everything, and while we were there, mandatory testing within 24 hours of travel (along with proof of vaccination) was implemented. The new requirements became very challenging for us to figure out, and we were also nervous about testing positive and getting stuck/quarantining. Due to the spike in cases, we didn’t want to spend time indoors, so we omitted museums and tours from our plans in order to stay safe. I know that during this same time, flights were getting canceled and postponed left and right in the U.S., and we had our flight canceled (as well as all other flights that day) to St. Barts. Since we already had the required Covid test completed (luckily negative) for travel, and our itinerary was already messed up, we decided to cut our losses and head back to the states.
We flew from Pointe-à-Pitre to Miami and ended up spending a few nights (and NYE) in South Beach. It was a bummer to have to cut our island trip short, but we believe that we made the right call. We had a wonderful time exploring both Martinique and Guadeloupe, and I know that we’ll be back to finish our trip one day. Until then, I’ll be seeking out Martinique rum to drink here in Santa Barbara and dreaming of sparkling blue water and pristine white sand beaches.
Keep reading to see my good-to-know traveling tips for these islands!
Trip Takeaways:
The islands are very French. I believe that most of the visitors are traveling from France and some from Canada. Patrick has worked hard on learning French, and that is the only way we were able to get by. I would not recommend going to these islands if you don’t speak any French (like myself lol); unlike traveling in Europe, there is almost zero English spoken. They hardly have any English speakers traveling there in general, and they have very few American tourists. We also blew their minds when we told them that we traveled all the way from California. We had some people ask us directly why we were there and not on the islands that speak English – it was a fair question. To be honest, the language barrier was very difficult at times, especially paired with mask wearing and French-based creole.
Since the islands are governed by France, some parts of our trip resembled traveling in Europe. You will need to have Euros as currency. I had a tough time finding an exchange place in Santa Barbara surprisingly, so I was able to order the currency online through my bank and have it delivered to our house (highly recommend). Don’t forget to bring plug adapters too – we brought types C, D, & E with us. In typical European fashion, our Airbnbs had very small washing machines and no dryers – they have large drying racks. We also found that our places (both walking distance to the beach) had some beach items (chairs, beach toys etc.) but no beach towels. We think that people must travel with their own beach towels or buy them there, but we had never experienced this before. After using bath towels at the beach (a total sandy, wet fail), we bought some light, Turkish towels. If you don’t want to purchase, I would suggest packing them.
Public transportation is not reliable and there aren’t rideshare apps available, so I do highly recommend renting a car. Keep in mind, the cars are manual, so I was no help to Patrick as I don’t know how to drive stick shift. We also made our airport car reservations ahead of time, but our reservation was lost in Martinique, and, in general, the rental car places were very busy and short staffed. In Martinique, the rental car booths were closed, so we had to walk for a bit to reach where the cars were actually kept. I can’t recommend packing a carry-on bag enough for situations like this – I swear if I can do it for three weeks, you can too! Driving is really tough as the roads are narrow and super hilly, so we didn’t make our way around the entirety of the islands. Not to mention, if you get a heavy rainstorm or have animals on the road like we experienced too. The extent of the driving we did was reserved for beaches primarily. We did make a special trek to get to a pharmacy that could issue us the French TousAntiCovid QR code and app. No one knew what to make of our flimsy American paper vaccine cards, and once we got the app, it was a lot easier and less complicated to get around.
Our interisland flight experience was a bit stressful as it was very different from flying in the U.S. We weren’t issued boarding passes beforehand and we had to wait for a monitor to tell us when we were able to approach the check-in counter. We are used to arriving extra early for flights, but the gate agents didn’t appear until 45 minutes before our flight departure time. Apparently, this is typical, and luckily we got our passes and went through security quickly. There were probably only ten people total on our flight, so it was a small plane and a short trip. Because of the language confusion and the island-time mentality, we were thrilled when we finally actually boarded our plane.
If you follow me on Instagram, you know that I made it my mission to sample all of the rum/rhum cocktails, and I have no regrets. Martinique is the rum capital of the world, and it lived up to its reputation. The rum there is all rhum agricole, which means that it has to be made using fresh-pressed sugar cane juice. Because of this, you have to have sugar cane in close proximity, so it’s grown all over the islands. You can look for the AOC (appellation d’origine contrôlée) on rum labels to be certain that it is of the highest quality. Most rum is not made from fresh sugar cane anymore and is way more processed, so this is why the rum is so incredible (take it from a now-expert sampler). I’m not a huge fan of mojitos or piña coladas usually, but when made with simple ingredients and premium rum, I’m sold. Luckily, you can pair the rum with delicious food while you’re there too; from casual food trucks to fancy sit-down meals, we didn’t have a bad meal. The food was very fresh, the pastries looked right out of Paris, and the local French creole food was excellent too.
I hope that this travel guide is helpful for your future travels – don’t hesitate to comment with any additional questions too. If you use this guide, please tag me or let me know! Happy travels!
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