Information about the Caribbean

The Caribbean French: Caraïbe or more commonly Antilles; Spanish: Caribe) is a region consisting of the Caribbean Sea, its islands (most of which enclose the sea), and the surrounding coasts. The region is located southeast of the Gulf of Mexico and Northern America, east of Central America, and to the north of South America.

Situated largely on the Caribbean Plate, the region comprises more than 7,000 islands, islets, reefs, and cays. These islands, called the West Indies, generally form island arcs that delineate the eastern and northern edges of the Caribbean Sea. These islands are called the West Indies because when Christopher Columbus landed here in 1492 he believed that he had reached the Indies (in Asia).

The region consists of the Antilles, divided into the larger Greater Antilles which bound the sea on the north and the Lesser Antilles on the south and east (including the Leeward Antilles), and the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands, which are in fact in the Atlantic Ocean north of Cuba, not in the Caribbean Sea.

Geopolitically, the West Indies are usually reckoned as a subregion of North America and are organised into 27 territories including sovereign states, overseas departments, and dependencies. At one time, there was a short-lived country called the Federation of the West Indies composed of ten English-speaking Caribbean territories, all of which were then UK dependencies.

The region takes its name from that of the Carib, an ethnic group present in the Lesser Antilles and parts of adjacent South America at the time of European contact In the English-speaking world, someone from the Caribbean is usually referred to as a "West Indian," although the phrase "Caribbean person" is sometimes used.

  Caribbean cruise article

    List of islands in the Caribbean
  
    * 1 Anguilla
    * 2 Antigua and Barbuda
    * 3 Aruba
    * 4 Bahamas
    * 5 Barbados
    * 6 British Virgin Islands
    * 7 Cayman Islands
    * 8 Colombia
    * 9 Cuba
    * 10 Dominica
    * 11 Dominican Republic
    * 12 Grenada
    * 13 Guadeloupe
    * 14 Haiti
    * 15 Honduras
    * 16 Jamaica
    * 17 Martinique
    * 18 Mexico
    * 19 Montserrat
    * 20 Netherlands Antilles
    * 21 US Virgen Island 

    * 22 Puerto Rico
    * 23 Saint Barthélemy
    * 24 Saint Kitts and Nevis
    * 25 Saint Lucia
    * 26 Saint Martin (France)
    * 27 Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
    * 28 Trinidad and Tobago
    * 29 Turks and Caicos Islands

VIEW  LIST OF ALL THE CARIBBEAN ISLANDS 

And Continental countries with Caribbean coastlines and islands