10 Interesting Facts About the Caribbean Islands

The Caribbean is a region of more than 700 islands, islets, reefs and cays, and only a small fraction of them has anyone living on it. That single number explains most of what is surprising about the region: why one island has the world’s shortest commercial runway, why a dozen languages are spoken across a sea you can cross in a day, and why “the Caribbean” covers everything from a nation of 10 million people to an uninhabited rock.

The ten facts below cover the geography, the languages, the history and the record-holders, followed by a short quiz so you can test what stuck.

Fun facts about the Caribbean islands

1. The Caribbean has more than 700 islands, in three main groups

The Caribbean is made up of over 700 islands, islets, reefs and cays, sorted into three major groups. Knowing which group an island belongs to tells you roughly where it sits and often which European power colonised it.

The three groups are listed below.

• The Lucayan Archipelago. The Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands, north of the rest of the Caribbean and technically in the Atlantic rather than the Caribbean Sea. The full list of islands is far too long to print.
• The Greater Antilles. The big ones: Cuba, Hispaniola (shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic), Jamaica, Puerto Rico and the Cayman Islands.
• The Lesser Antilles. The arc curving south and east, split into the Leeward Islands (Antigua, St Kitts, Montserrat), the Windward Islands (Grenada, St Lucia, St Vincent, Dominica) and the Leeward Antilles off the Venezuelan coast (Aruba, Bonaire, Curaçao). The complete list of Lesser Antilles islands runs to dozens of entries.

Cuba alone accounts for a large share of the count, because more than 4,000 islands and cays surround its main island in four archipelagos.

2. Only about 2 per cent of Caribbean islands are inhabited

Roughly 2 per cent of the Caribbean’s islands have permanent residents, which means the overwhelming majority are uninhabited rocks, reefs and cays. Most of the 700-plus are too small, too dry or too exposed to support anyone.

That is why the shipping map and the tourist map look nothing alike. Around 40 million people live in the Caribbean, and almost all of them live on a couple of dozen islands.

3. Most Caribbean people descend from enslaved Africans

The majority of Caribbean people today descend from Africans trafficked to the islands by European colonial powers to work on sugar plantations. The indigenous Taíno, Kalinago and Arawak populations were devastated within decades of European arrival by violence, forced labour and introduced disease.

After emancipation, those communities stayed and built the societies that exist now. Indentured labourers from India, China and Java followed in the nineteenth century, particularly to Trinidad, Guyana and Suriname, which is why Caribbean food, music and religion carry South Asian and East Asian threads alongside African and European ones.

4. The Caribbean speaks at least six languages, plus creoles

Spanish is the most widely spoken language in the Caribbean by number of speakers, followed by French, English and Dutch, alongside Haitian Creole and Papiamento. Each traces directly back to which European power held the island longest.

Papiamento is the interesting one. Spoken on Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao, it is a creole built from Portuguese and Spanish with Dutch, English, African and Arawak elements, and it is a first language rather than a dialect. Haitian Creole, French-based and spoken by millions, is the most widely spoken creole in the Americas.

5. Five Pirates of the Caribbean films exist, and the last one was shot in Australia

The Pirates of the Caribbean series runs to five films, not four, and the fifth broke the pattern by filming on the other side of the world. The Curse of the Black Pearl, Dead Man’s Chest, At World’s End and On Stranger Tides used Caribbean locations including St Vincent and the Grenadines, Dominica, the Bahamas and Puerto Rico.

Dead Men Tell No Tales, released in 2017, was shot in Queensland, Australia, at Village Roadshow Studios and around Port Douglas, after the Australian government redirected production incentives to attract it. So the last Caribbean pirate film contains no Caribbean at all.

6. Jamaica was the setting of the first James Bond film

Jamaica provided the setting and much of the location work for Dr. No, the first James Bond film, released in 1962. The island’s connection to Bond runs deeper than one film: Ian Fleming wrote the novels at Goldeneye, his house on Jamaica’s north coast, and named the character after an ornithologist whose book on Caribbean birds sat on his shelf.

Jamaica returned in Live and Let Die and again in No Time to Die, which opens with Bond in retirement there.

7. Saba has the shortest commercial runway in the world

Juancho E. Yrausquin Airport on the Dutch Caribbean island of Saba has a runway 400 m (1,312 ft) long, widely recognised as the shortest commercial runway anywhere. It is hemmed in by high hills on one side, with cliffs dropping into the sea at both ends.

Jets are not permitted to use it. The aircraft that land there are short-takeoff propeller types such as the de Havilland Canada Twin Otter, flying in from Sint Maarten under special waivers, and the approach is one of the most photographed in aviation.

8. Jamaica holds a world record for churches per square mile

Guinness World Records recognises Jamaica for having the most churches per square mile of any country. The National Library of Jamaica has counted more than 1,600 registered churches across an island of roughly 4,244 square miles, which works out at about 2.75 per square mile.

The real figure is almost certainly higher, because small congregations meeting in homes and yards are not always formally registered. More than 100 Christian denominations operate on the island, including Baptist, Anglican, Catholic, Seventh-day Adventist and Pentecostal.

9. Barbados is the only foreign country George Washington ever visited

George Washington left what is now the United States exactly once in his life, and the destination was Barbados. He sailed there in 1751, aged 19, accompanying his half-brother Lawrence, who had tuberculosis and had been advised that the climate might help.

The trip did not save Lawrence, who died the following year, and Washington himself caught smallpox in Barbados, which probably gave him the immunity that carried him through later epidemics. The house where they stayed in Bridgetown survives, has been restored and is open to visitors as George Washington House.

10. “West Indies” is a 500-year-old mistake that stuck

The Caribbean islands are still called the West Indies because Christopher Columbus thought he had reached Asia. Sailing west in 1492 to find a sea route to the Indies, he made landfall in the Bahamas and concluded he had arrived at the eastern edge of Asia, so he called the islands the Indies and their people “Indians”.

Once the error became clear, the name was not dropped; it was qualified. The Americas became the West Indies, to distinguish them from the real East Indies in Asia. Both the regional name and the misapplied word “Indian” have outlived the mistake by five centuries.

Caribbean trivia questions and answers

Test what you just read with the five questions below.

1. Where is the Caribbean region located?

The Caribbean lies south-east of the Gulf of Mexico, east of Central America and north of South America, between the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea.

2. Why are the Caribbean islands called the West Indies?

Because Columbus, trying to reach Asia by sailing west, believed the islands he found were part of the Indies. When the mistake was recognised, the region was renamed the West Indies to distinguish it from the East Indies in Asia.

3. Who were the first people in the Caribbean?

Indigenous peoples including the Taíno, the Kalinago and the Arawak had lived in the Caribbean for centuries before Christopher Columbus arrived in 1492. Columbus is credited with the European discovery of the islands, not their discovery.

4. What is the largest island in the Caribbean?

Cuba, at 109,884 km² (42,426 sq mi). Hispaniola is second, and it is the only large Caribbean island divided between two countries.

5. Which Caribbean island has the shortest commercial runway in the world?

Saba, in the Dutch Caribbean. Its runway is 400 m (1,312 ft) long and closed to jet traffic.

Where to read more about the Caribbean

Our other Caribbean pages go deeper on the islands above.

1. Cuba travel guide. Entry rules, money, getting around and where to go on the largest island in the region.
2. 30 things to do in Cuba. Havana, Trinidad, Santiago and the beaches, worked through one by one.
3. Chartering a yacht in the Caribbean. How to sail between the islands rather than fly.

WonderfulWanderings Pro Tips

Three things worth knowing before you quote any of these facts are listed below.

1. Check which “Caribbean” someone means. The Bahamas and Turks and Caicos sit in the Atlantic, not the Caribbean Sea, yet both are counted as Caribbean islands in every list including this one. Hurricane maps, flight routes and cruise itineraries all treat them differently.
2. Do not repeat the four-film Pirates claim. There are five, and the fifth was filmed in Queensland. This is one of the most commonly copied errors in Caribbean fact lists, and it has been wrong since 2017.
3. Saba’s runway rewards a day trip, not a stopover. Flights come from Sint Maarten on small propeller aircraft and are weather-dependent. Build a spare day into the plan, because a cancellation strands you on whichever end you started from.

About the author. This guide is written and maintained by the Wonderful Wanderings editorial team. Wonderful Wanderings was founded in 2012 by Sofie Couwenbergh, and the team has covered the Caribbean from Aruba to Cuba for independent travellers. We cover the tours, hotels and travel insurance worth booking across the region, and update this page when the facts behind it change.