Arthur's Blog: Choose an Unusual and Under-Visited Destination for Your Tropical Vacation

This coming winter, you could of course go to one of the standard Caribbean or Mexican locations: Aruba, San Juan, Cancun, St. Thomas. And there you'd vacation with hordes of fellow sun-worshippers, in easy reach of flashy shopping malls with products bearing the most familiar names. In some of these places, you'll be surrounded by Las Vegas-style casinos featuring roulette wheels, craps tables, and all the hard-nosed types from America who flock to mindless gambling. I, myself, don't cherish their company.
Or you could go to the less-visited destinations with fewer crowds, a usual absence of casinos, less emphasis on shopping, beaches just as inviting, and local populations that still smile at the tourist and appreciate their presence. I'm talking about places like Bonaire, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and some resorts along the Mayan Riviera of Mexico.
The Mayan Coast of Mexico : The Mayan Riviera just barely makes the list of attractive lures; its northernmost outpost, the giant Cancun, is as urbanized as any, and receives more tourist visitors than any other resort area of Mexico. But south of the famous "hotel zone" of Cancun, with its dozens of resort properties, the beaches are fully as spectacular, the water just as warm, and the hotels are fairly well-spaced from each other. Each is an all-inclusive resort from whose grounds you will rarely escape -- their single drawback -- but they supply unbeatable value to the person willing to confine a Mexican vacation to the expansive premises of one such sprawling establishment. At a big, modern property called Secrets Maroma, at which I stayed a few years ago, a single, flat expenditure for the stay enabled me to eat in any one of nine excellent ethnic restaurants, ordering as many cocktails or glasses of wine as I wished, to lounge about in seven bars with unlimited drinks, and to enjoy numerous programs of sea sports and evening entertainment. There are a couple dozen properties similar to that one, and all are within striking distance of the famous Mayan ruins at Tulum, which make for an unforgettable visiting experience.
St. Vincent and the Grenadines : Here's the very opposite of the mass-volume destinations, a grouping of islands that made little effort to attract tourism other than the upscale variety until very recently. It was held back by the fame of one of its islands -- Mustique -- where Princess Margaret of Great Britain maintained a winter home, and where the cost of renting one of the area's ultra-luxurious villas was so high as to saddle the other islands with the unwarranted reputation of being unaffordable. Add the fact that St. Vincent and the Grenadines are also a boating paradise attracting those wealthy aristocrats in their white flannels and blue blazers, and also a lesser number of scuba divers exploring exquisite underwater sights. And yet the grouping's island of Bequia (pronounced beck-way) has several totally affordable hotels and guesthouses, and exquisite beaches to enjoy. You can't fly here direct (that is, until an international airport now in construction on the actual island of St. Vincent is completed, probably around eighteen months from now), and most people get here by flying first to neighboring Barbados, and switching there to a smaller plane capable of landing on a short runway. Once here -- in the age-old cliche -- you'll "enjoy the Caribbean as it used to be," in a place untouched so far by mass-volume tourism.
St. Lucia : With its many all-inclusive beachfront resorts and many modest B&B's, St. Lucia is far more developed for tourism than St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and enjoys non-stop flights from numerous cities in Canada and on the East Coast of the U.S.: Toronto, Montreal, New York, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Miami; and also from San Juan. But although this British commonwealth member (where English is universally spoken) is visited by a great many sun seekers, its hotels -- with the exception of one sprawling Sandals resort -- are mainly small and quiet, without casinos but with a remarkable level of cuisine. Because St. Lucia was once occupied by the French, it maintains the French culinary tradition, and I for one was amazed at the gourmet quality served to me buffet-style at the beachfront resort I recently patronized. I felt I was in a gourmet restaurant, and looked forward with great eagerness to every tasty meal. Staying here, you never feel you are in a mass-market community of visitors; there are no crowds of people, and the main city is a purely-Caribbean town without even vestiges of the classic tourist traps for shopping -- in other words, an exquisite place, well worth the trip.
Bonaire: With the smallest population of any of my favorites, and only small hotels, this member of the Dutch Antilles (which enjoys connecting air transportation from Aruba and Curacao) is famed throughout the world of sports-lovers for its scuba-diving and snorkeling; its crystal-clear waters are above protected coral reefs and schools of exotic fish, and no one comes here for anything other than to lazily float above the surface of the sea entranced by the sights below you seen through your snorkeling mask, or else to undergo quick instruction in scuba-diving (you take a short "resort course") and go diving sixty feet down below the surface of the warm-as-a-bathtub waters. No matter what your age or normal athletic prowess, you'll be invited to pursue the sport of scuba-diving (after a short training course), and the resulting dive or dives will make your trip memorable beyond conception. Apart from that, you'll relax in a slow-moving atmosphere on a small and friendly island that also enjoys top-quality white-sand beaches. Crowds don't exist; casinos are only lightly patronized; and nearly everyone speaks English.