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Articles by Shirley Crawford
Birding the Caroni Swamp at Trinidad’s Dusk
The flat-bottomed boat pushes off from a muddy dock on the edge of the Caroni Swamp just after four in the afternoon, the engine cutting to a low idle as it enters a narrow channel walled in on both sides by red mangroves, their tangled roots half-submerged in brackish water the color of strong tea.
Bonaire’s Reef Guardians and the Art of Diving Slow
The dive site known as Something Special sits directly off a rocky stretch of Bonaire’s western coast, marked only by a small yellow rock painted with its name and accessible entirely by shore entry — no boat required, no long approach, just a short walk from a parked truck to the water’s edge.
Jamaica Courts the Middle East After Hurricane Melissa
Jamaica is looking east — literally — as it works to fill hotel rooms for the winter season ahead. While much of the Caribbean’s marketing muscle traditionally flexes toward North America and Europe, Jamaica’s tourism ministry just boarded a plane for Riyadh and Dubai, betting that Gulf travelers and investors could become the island’s next big growth story.
Why Couples Are Choosing Solo Caribbean Trips
There’s a small, quietly revealing detail buried in a recent personal essay that went semi-viral this month: a man writing about why he backs his girlfriend’s habit of traveling alone. It’s not a press release. It’s not industry data. It’s just one relationship, honestly described. But it landed at a moment when the underlying behavior it describes — women choosing to travel independently, with or without a partner’s blessing — has become one of the defining forces in global tourism.
St. Lucia’s Green Fig Cuisine: Humble Ingredient, Deep Pride
She boils the bananas with the skins still on, and she has a specific reason for this that she will share only with people who ask the right way. Lucilla Joseph is eighty years old, small in the manner of people who have conserved their energy carefully across a long life, and she has been cooking green fig and saltfish — St. Lucia’s national dish — since she was eleven, when her mother assigned her the task on weekend mornings so that the older women could attend to other work.
Trinidad’s Surprising Rise as a Nature Destination
Say “Trinidad” to most travelers and a fairly narrow set of associations comes back: Carnival, business travel tied to the island’s energy sector, the busy commercial streets of Port of Spain, maybe a mental note that it’s paired with Tobago on most itineraries as the beach half of a two-island trip.
These Caribbean Islands Have Surprisingly Great Surf
Ask most travelers to picture the Caribbean and they’ll land on some version of the same image: flat, glassy water, a hammock, maybe a floating pool bar. It’s not wrong, exactly — but it’s a partial picture, and it ignores an entire parallel Caribbean that exists just around the point from the postcard version.
Sandals Reveals New Jamaica Dining Ahead of Reopening
Jamaica’s most storied stretch of resort coastline is getting a culinary reboot — and it’s shaping up to be one of the more ambitious dining overhauls the all-inclusive sector has seen in years. Sandals Resorts International has pulled back the curtain on the food and beverage concepts headed to three of its flagship Jamaica properties — Sandals Montego Bay, Sandals Caribbean Cay and Sandals South Coast — as part of a US$200 million transformation tied to the brand’s broader “Sandals 2.0” vision.
Bahamian Filmmaker Earns Top Caribbean Honor
There’s a particular kind of pride that ripples through a small island nation when one of its own is recognized on a bigger stage — and that’s exactly what happened this month when Bahamian filmmaker Latrell Lewis-King walked away with the Film ICON Award at the 2026 Caribbean POSH ICON Woman Awards. The honor, handed out during a milestone weekend in the British Virgin Islands, is more than a trophy for one storyteller.
Most Romantic Caribbean Islands for Couples in 2026
There are few places on earth where romance arrives as effortlessly as it does in the Caribbean. The light softens at golden hour in a way that makes everything — the silhouette of a palm, a fishing boat crossing the bay, your partner’s face — look like a painting. In 2026, the Caribbean’s most romantic destinations are leaning hard into what makes them extraordinary, delivering experiences that go well beyond a candlelit dinner on the beach.
Which Caribbean Island Is Growing Fastest?
The Caribbean Isn’t Just Recovering Anymore — It’s Booming If you’ve been waiting for the “right time” to book that Caribbean trip, the region’s tourism numbers suggest everyone else already has.
Grenada’s Spice Island Wins Top Expedia Honor
Small Island, Big Win: How a Family-Run Grenada Resort Outclassed the Giants Spice Island Beach Resort’s 2026 Expedia honor is the latest sign that Grenada’s boutique hospitality scene is punching well above its weight. In an industry where global hotel conglomerates spend millions on loyalty programs, marketing budgets and standardized service scripts, it’s easy to assume the biggest names always win.
Caribbean Wellness Retreats Worth Traveling the World For
The Caribbean has always offered a particular kind of healing — one delivered through sunlight, sea salt, and the particular unhurriedness of island life. But in 2026, the region’s wellness offering has evolved well beyond the standard spa menu and sunrise yoga class.
Farm-to-Table Resorts Are Redefining Caribbean Hospitality
There’s a particular magic to eating a tomato that was still on the vine an hour before it reached your plate. In the Caribbean, that experience — once the exclusive territory of farmers’ markets and private villa chefs — is rapidly becoming a defining feature of high-end resort hospitality. Across the archipelago, from the limestone bluffs of Cayman Brac to the volcanic slopes of St. Kitts, a new generation of properties is doing something quietly radical: they’re growing their own food.
The Sugar Ghosts of Nevis: A Historical Circuit
The ruins of the Cottle Church sit in a field above Charlestown, half-swallowed by vegetation, its coral stone walls still standing to their original height in some sections but open to the sky where the roof collapsed sometime in the nineteenth century. It was built in 1824 by John Cottle—an unusual Nevisian planter by the standards of his era—as a place where enslaved people could worship alongside the free.
Caribbean Hot Sauce Boom: Artisan Brands Going Global
Walk through any market in the Caribbean — whether it’s a Saturday morning in Bridgetown, a beachside stall in Placencia, or a roadside stand in the hills outside Port of Spain — and you’ll find them: small amber bottles, hand-labeled, filled with something that smells of smoke and fruit and something dangerously alive. These are the pepper sauces that Caribbean families have been making for generations, passed down through kitchens that never measured anything and never needed to.
Caribbean Tourism’s Billion-Dollar Inclusivity Reckoning
The numbers are impressive. The Caribbean welcomed 35 million visitors in 2025, according to the Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO)—once again surpassing pre-pandemic benchmarks and cementing the region’s status as one of the world’s most desired travel destinations. Sun, sea, and culture continue to draw travelers from every corner of the globe, and for many Caribbean economies, tourism remains the engine that drives everything else.
Sailing to Each Other: A Cross-Cultural Love in Antigua
English Harbour in Antigua carries the compressed history of the British Caribbean in its stonework — the dockyard that Nelson called home, the capstans and boathouses still in use, the harbor where sailing vessels from every point of the compass arrive and depart with a regularity that makes the bay feel like a living chart of the world’s wandering.
Biggest Mistakes Tourists Make in the Caribbean
Every year, millions of travelers descend on the Caribbean chasing the dream: white sand, turquoise water, rum cocktails at sunset. And most find exactly that. But ask the people who actually live there — the market vendors in Bridgetown, the fishing families along the coast of St. Lucia, the taxi drivers in Kingston — and a more complicated picture emerges. The Caribbean receives over 34 million international tourists annually, according to the Caribbean Tourism Organization.
Bequia’s Bold New Luxury Villa Changes Caribbean Travel
There is a particular kind of Caribbean that well-traveled people quietly keep to themselves — not the all-inclusive strip, not the celebrity-saturated shoreline, but the sort of island that asks something of you. You have to want to get there. Bequia is that island. And now, with the arrival of Rock Villa, one of the smallest, most captivating outposts in the Grenadines has quietly become home to one of the most compelling new luxury properties in the entire Caribbean.
St. Lawrence Gap: Barbados’s Most Electrifying Strip
There’s a particular kind of electricity that crackles along the south coast of Barbados after sundown. The smell of fresh-grilled catch drifts across the sea breeze. Soca rhythms spill from open-air bars. Laughter—uninhibited, genuine—fills a 1.5-kilometre stretch of road that locals simply call “The Gap.” Welcome to St. Lawrence Gap, the strip that perhaps better than anywhere else in the Caribbean captures what it feels like when a destination truly comes alive.
Caribbean Nightlife Guide: Where to Party in 2026
The Caribbean knows how to party — and the evidence is centuries deep. From the ancestral drum ceremonies that evolved into Trinidad’s Carnival to the dancehall sound systems that transformed Kingston’s inner-city yards into global cultural laboratories, the Caribbean’s nightlife and music culture is among the most original and influential in the world.
How Women-Led Travel Experiences Reveal a Destination’s Soul
From Tanzania safari companies to craft retreats in Morocco, a quiet revolution is underway — and it’s reshaping what a meaningful trip looks like. There’s a particular kind of travel that stays with you. Not the kind where you move efficiently from landmark to landmark, photographs neatly logged, boxes checked. The kind that gets under your skin — where you understand something about a place that a guidebook couldn’t have told you. Increasingly, that kind of travel is being shaped by women.
The Pyrmont Curaçao Set to Open Q3 2026: 300-Room Ocean-View All-Inclusive Joins the Island’s Luxury Hotel Boom
Curaçao’s reputation as one of the Caribbean’s most dynamic emerging luxury destinations receives a significant boost this year with the anticipated Q3 2026 opening of The Pyrmont Curaçao — a 300-room all-inclusive resort that will rank among the most comprehensive new hospitality projects the island has seen in years.
The Underwater Mountains of Saba: Diving Volcanic Seamounts
The seamount rises from 900 meters to within 30 of the surface, and you’d never know it from above: the sea here looks like any other piece of deep Caribbean water—dark blue, windswept, with nothing visible to suggest that a volcanic mountain is ascending beneath you. But on the dive computer, the depth reading drops rapidly as the RIB positions over the site, and Sean Pairaudeau, Saba’s Marine Park dive coordinator, watches the numbers with the attention of a pilot reading instruments.
Jamaica’s Iconic Half Moon Resort Rises Again
There are hotel reopenings, and then there is this. When Eclipse at Half Moon swung its doors open on April 2, 2026, it wasn’t simply a luxury resort returning from a forced hiatus. It was a declaration — delivered in the language of sun, salt air, and authentic Jamaican warmth — that one of the Caribbean’s most storied destinations had weathered its darkest chapter and emerged not just intact, but renewed. The moment carried weight that few ribbon-cutting ceremonies ever do.
Jamaica Beyond the Beach: The Island’s Best Adventure Experiences
The version of Jamaica that most visitors experience — all-inclusive resorts, Dunn’s River Falls, and rum cocktails at sunset — is genuinely wonderful. But it represents approximately ten percent of what this extraordinary island has to offer the traveler willing to venture beyond the wristband perimeter. Jamaica’s Blue and John Crow Mountains National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2015, protects 194,000 acres of some of the most biologically significant forest in the Caribbean.
Jamaica Reimagines Its Food to Drive Tourism Recovery
Jamaica arrived at 2025 with momentum. The island’s tourism sector had diversified, its food scene had earned international recognition, and its upcoming Food and Drink Festival was celebrating a landmark 11th year. Then, in late October, Hurricane Melissa made landfall as a Category 5 storm, rewriting the final chapter of what had otherwise been a year of hard-won progress. By November, the recovery was already underway.
Trinidad and Tobago’s Beach Food Festival Bets on Agro-Tourism
Trinidad and Tobago doesn’t always get the Caribbean headline it deserves. In travel coverage, the twin-island republic tends to appear in carnival season and then go quiet — as if the rest of the year were simply waiting time between costume parades. Anyone who has actually spent time in Port of Spain’s street food culture, or eaten a proper doubles at sunrise, or followed a Tobago Blue Food Festival procession into the hills, knows how wrong that reading is.
The New Currency of African Luxury Travel: Time, Exclusivity and the Rise of Impossible Experiences
The luxury travel market in Africa is undergoing a profound philosophical shift, and the operators who understand it first stand to capture the most valuable segment of the global travel economy. According to Audley Travel’s “Luxury Tailormade Travel Trends 2026” report, developed in partnership with Globetrender, the ultra-high-net-worth traveller has fundamentally changed their relationship with travel: they are no longer accumulating bucket-list destinations and ticking off iconic experiences.
Lopesan’s Triple Resort Debut in Punta Cana: Splash Cove, Caoba Lagoon, and Serenity Bay Open May 1 at Costa Bavaro
May 1, 2026 will be a landmark date for Caribbean hospitality. On that day, the Lopesan Costa Bavaro complex in Punta Cana simultaneously opens not one but three brand-new five-star all-inclusive resorts — a scale of simultaneous debut that has no recent parallel in the Dominican Republic and arguably none across the entire Caribbean region.
The Rhythm of Life' Is Rewriting African Tourism's Global Story
When Angola’s Minister of Tourism Márcio de Jesus Lopes Daniel stepped onto the stage at the CityCube Berlin on the evening of 2 March 2026, he was making history. Angola had become only the third African nation to serve as Official Host Country of ITB Berlin — the world’s leading B2B travel trade show — and the moment signalled something far larger than a national tourism milestone.
Southwest Airlines Launches Nonstop Flights to St. Maarten
Caribbean travelers have long dreamed of affordable, no-frills access to the famously photogenic island of St. Maarten—and that dream becomes a reality this spring. Southwest Airlines, the United States’ largest domestic carrier by passenger volume, is officially entering the St. Maarten market, launching new nonstop service beginning April 7, 2026.
South Caicos Salterra Resort: The Caribbean's Hidden Luxury
The Caribbean travel landscape is experiencing a significant shift as discerning travelers discover a new paradise that offers something increasingly rare: authentic tranquility combined with world-class luxury. South Caicos, a small island in the Turks and Caicos archipelago with only 1,100 permanent residents, has emerged as the destination of choice for travelers seeking an escape from crowded resort corridors and overtourism.
2026 Travel Trends: Budget Destinations & Smart Travel Tips
Americans are fundamentally changing how they approach travel in 2026, prioritizing value, authenticity, and strategic timing over traditional peak-season trips to overcrowded hotspots. According to newly released research from The Points Guy, travelers are embracing shoulder-season journeys, seeking lesser-known destinations, and leveraging loyalty programs to maximize their experiences while minimizing costs.
How to Avoid Tourist Traps & Experience Authentic Travel
Travel should be about discovery, connection, and meaningful experiences — not just checking monuments off a list or rushing from one crowded attraction to another. That’s where anti-tourist travel comes in: an approach that prioritizes authenticity, local culture, and slow exploration over crowds and “must-see” checklists. Drawing on expert insights and travel research, this guide will show you how to shift from being a typical tourist to a thoughtful, curious traveler.
Mexican Caribbean 2026: New Resorts & Direct Flights Announced
The Mexican Caribbean stands poised for transformative growth in 2026, positioning itself as one of the world’s premier tourism destinations through strategic infrastructure expansion, enhanced international connectivity, and innovative marketing initiatives.
Panama Solo Travel 2026: Ultimate Guide for Explorers
As solo travel continues its upward trajectory in 2026, discerning independent travelers are discovering what makes Panama an exceptional choice for those venturing out alone. Unlike destinations that require extensive planning or feel isolating for single travelers, Panama combines accessibility, authenticity, and adventure in ways that empower rather than intimidate solo explorers.
Authentic Caribbean Dining Experience
When it comes to authentic Caribbean dining experiences, Lewin’s Jamaican Cuisine stands out as a beacon of traditional flavors and cultural authenticity. This beloved establishment brings the vibrant tastes of Jamaica to life through carefully crafted dishes that honor generations of culinary heritage. The Heart of Jamaican Cooking Jamaican cuisine represents a remarkable fusion of influences, blending African, Indian, Chinese, and European cooking traditions into something uniquely Caribbean.
11 Islands with Best Resorts
When the prestigious Michelin Guide turns its attention to a destination, travelers take notice. Known for over a century of restaurant excellence through its coveted star system, Michelin has expanded its expertise to hotels with the newly established Michelin Keys distinction. The Caribbean has emerged as a standout region, with 11 exceptional islands earning recognition for housing some of the world’s finest accommodations.
Sandals Elevates Caribbean Luxury Standards
The Caribbean luxury resort landscape continues to evolve, and Sandals Resorts International is leading the charge with significant property enhancements that speak directly to what today’s discerning travelers are seeking: authentic cultural connections paired with next-generation luxury amenities.
17 Strange but Charming Things Realtors Said in 1950s Florida Home Ads
In 1950s Florida, buying a home felt like stepping into a dream. And realtors knew how to sell that dream with colorful, sometimes odd descriptions. They weren’t just selling square footage. They were selling charm, pride, and a slice of the good life. Here are some of the quirky ways homes were once advertised. “Perfect for the Lady of the House” In the 1950s, home ads often spoke directly to women, especially those expected to run the household full-time.
P044: Do expected benign breast pathologies require a follow-up clinic appointment?
Introduction: It is a standard practice to bring back all patients who have had a biopsy for suspicious breast lesions to the results clinic. However, variations exist when it comes to patients with expected benign results. The aim of this project was to improve the efficiency of our results clinic by offering patients, who are expected to have benign breast pathologies a choice between a letter or a follow-up appointment.
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