Barbados

A tropical Saskatchewan. That was my first reaction to Barbados as Anna and I rode in the taxi to our hotel after landing at the new Canadian designed airport. Barbados is much more densly populated than Saskatchewan though, and the crops are sugarcane and cotton, not flax and canola. It is also (maybe obviously) very warm there. The temperature never really changes, staying around 27C which makes it hard to sleep until you get used to it. (We didn't have any air conditioning. I'm sure most hotels do.) This also makes the beaches even more attractive than they already are, because although the water is warm, it's cooler than anywhere else. All beaches around the whole island are public too, so you don't have to look hard to find one. It's possible that it is a little cooler in the middle of the island with a little higher elevation. We only went east during the middle of one day, when we went to Harrison Cave, and then walked to the Flower Forest (which took 45 minutes, but the taxi driver had assured us would only take 10 minutes.) I think the east coast would be a little cooler too because of the wind coming off the Atlantic Ocean.

Just for the record - we never actually went in the flower forest because we ran out of time, but the flower forest looks so much more worth the admission than Harrison Cave. If you do want an "untouristy" place to go, Barbados may not be for you. Then I highly recommend Dominica, which is trying hard to develop its tourist industry, but at the moment it is a lot more free, natural, and less populated than Barbados. We have not tried some of the other small islands around Dominica, but some of them are supposed to be pretty nice too.