Grenada

Grenada is the Caribbean island most travellers can't quite place on a map and which, once visited, becomes the one they want to keep quiet about. Nutmeg, mace, cinnamon, and cocoa — the Spice Isle nickname is not marketing, it is the working economy you can smell driving inland from Maurice Bishop airport. The country still grows roughly a third of the world's nutmeg, and the small estates around Belmont and Grenville run tours that are more agriculture than performance.

The capital, St George's, is the most photogenic working port in the Caribbean — pastel Georgian terraces stacked around a horseshoe harbour, the Carenage still loading inter-island freight in the afternoons — and the country's south coast holds the beach-grade properties: Spice Island Beach Resort on Grand Anse (family-owned across three generations, the country's most considered hospitality lineage) and Silversands further along. The newer Six Senses La Sagesse, on the south-east coast, raised the ceiling when it opened in 2024 and brought a credible carbon-and-marine programme with it.

What sets Grenada apart from the rest of the Lesser Antilles is the way the conservation work sits in plain view. The Molinière Underwater Sculpture Park, off Flamingo Bay, was the world's first of its kind and was conceived explicitly as an artificial reef to redirect dive pressure from the natural reef nearby; it now hosts measurable coral recruitment. Carriacou's Sandy Island and the offshore Tobago Cays are formally protected and well-managed by the Sustainable Grenadines partnership.

December through May is the dry season and the unambiguous window. Grenada sits south of the main hurricane belt — Ivan in 2004 was the only major modern strike — but the wet season from June onward brings reliable afternoon rains that flatten the beach days. Carnival, in early August, is the locals' own week and a real reason to break the dry-season rule.