# Island Hopping



## roddyc (Jan 24, 2006)

Hello all,
Besides Puerto Rico, which island would make a good base to hop to other islands?  Also, is there an airline that offers a package to travel from island to island?  Thanks in advance for any suggestions.


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## silverfox82 (Jan 24, 2006)

*try st maarten*

although you might have to go thru sju to get to sxm, st maarten is the 2nd most busy airport in the islands for takeoffs and landings, mostly puddle jumpers inter island. san juan probably has more point to point destinations with american eagle but depending on your itinerary sxm could still work. This is one of the funny things about traveling down island, if you fly to st barts from the french side of sxm, no departure tax, no customs, no imigration, fly from the dutch side all of the above. I assume the same applies if you fly from the dutch side to any of the other dutch islands, which seems a bit silly since there is no imigration between the two sides, go figure, but for me it's what makes "getting away" even more special.


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## Carolinian (Jan 24, 2006)

The Caribbean airline LIAT has a couple of passes.  If memory serves, one is for 7 or 10 days and the other is unlimited for a month.  They are based in Antigua and fly to about 20 islands, including Sint Maarten.  They also have some special LD fares that are lower than the normal fare, yet allow unlimited stopovers as long as you fly in a more or less straight line.

I did a t/s exchange to Sint Maarten a few years ago, and booked my tickets from the US openjawed, in to Sint Maarten and out of Antigua.  I booked a LIAT ticket to close the jaws, flying Sint Maarten to Antigua with a free stopoever in St. Kitts enroute.

Unless a recent ownership change has led to a policy change, Air Jamaica also allows free stopovers enroute.  I used them on another Caribbean trip for that purpose.  I had an exchange in Barbados, and used Delta skymiles for a ticket on Air Jamaica.  The itineray was Atlanta to Jamaica to St. Lucia to Barbados.  I did a free stopover on St. Lucia on the way back for a few days and could have also done Jamaica if I had wanted to do so.  The free stopovers are on both ff and paid tickets.

There are also some island hopping posibilities by boat.  There is a fast ferry from Guadeloupe to Martinique, stopping some days at Dominica enroute.  The scheduling works for a day trip from Guadeloupe to Dominica, which I did when I had a t/s exchange in Guadeloupe.  If you were staying overnight, you can do all three islands.

From Sint Maarten / St. Martin, you can also do day trips by boat to Anguilla, St. Barths, and Saba.

The new EasyCruise also offers some interesting island hopping opportunities. www.easycruise.com


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