The Caribbean’s Lesser and Greater Antilles

 

The Caribbean island grouping known as the Lesser Antilles consists of three smaller island groups: the Windward Islands, the Leeward Islands, and the Leeward Antilles.

The Windward Islands include Martinique, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Grenada.

The Windward Islands are the northern islands of the Lesser Antilles island group in the Eastern Caribbean. They are so named because the trade winds touch here first, placing these islands upwind from the Leeward Islands. The term dates back to the days when explorers and merchants relied on the trade winds to carry their ships across the Atlantic to the Caribbean.

The Leeward Islands include Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, the British Virgin Islands, Anguilla, St. Martin/Maarten, St. Barts, Saba, St. Eustatius, St. Kitts and Nevis, Antigua and Barbuda, Montserrat, Guadeloupe, and Dominica.

The Leeward Antilles are the so-called ABC Islands off the coast of South America -- Aruba, Bonaire, and Curacao.

 

The Greater Antilles are one of the island groups in the Caribbean Sea. Comprising the islands of Cuba, the Cayman Islands, Hispaniola (containing the Dominican Republic and Haiti), Puerto Rico, and Jamaica, the Greater Antilles constitute over 94% of the land mass of the entire West Indies,^[1] as well as over 90% of its population.

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