Which islands are the best?

[spazzy]

We are traveling with a group of 10 ages 18-50 and are interested in a day on a catameran, jeep tour, couple of beach days. Which island would you suggest for each? Barbados, St. Croix, St. Lucia, St. Marteen, Antigua. Also do you recommend Royal Caribbean tour or book ourselves?

[Karysa]

St. Martin has great beaches and the color of the water is incredible. I would either visit a beach or take a catamaran excursion in St. Martin. A combination of visiting Mullet Bay in the morning and Maho in the afternoon would be one suggestion. Mullet is a beautiful beach from there you can walk 10 minutes and be on Maho and watch some of the planes coming and going. The Maho experience is unique to St. Martin. You might also want to spend the day at Orient beach which has a clothing optional section at the far end of the beach. They have many water activities and many choices of beach bar/restaurants at Orient. Pinel Island is another beautiful place to spend the day, it requires a five minute ferry ride on top of a taxi like all of the rest. I also love Petite Plage in Grand Case. It is a nice beach with a great restaurant/bar that has service right to your lounge chair. You can rent kayaks and snorkel equipment and spend some time snorkeling by the rocks or off of the dock or sign up for a snorkel trip to the nearby Creole Rock. If you went on a Catamaran excursion I would suggest one that stopped at Creole Rock as the snorkeling there has been by far the best that I have done on the island. The traffic in St. Maarten/St. Martin can be very heavy so I would not suggest a jeep excursion here.