Georgetown

Georgetown sits on Saint Vincent’s windward coast, a good ninety-minute drive from Kingstown along a road that gets rougher and greener the further north you go, and it is, without much exaggeration, a town the twentieth century mostly passed by. Once the island’s second-largest settlement and the hub of a thriving sugar and arrowroot economy, Georgetown emptied out considerably after the sugar industry collapsed in the mid-1900s, and what’s left has a particular unhurried melancholy that I found more compelling than sad.

Wooden buildings from the plantation era line parts of the main road, some restored, most simply weathering in place, paint peeling in long strips under the salt air. A handful of rum shops do steady business, a market sells produce from the surrounding valleys, and the windward coast’s rougher Atlantic swell means the beaches here have none of the calm turquoise postcard quality of the leeward side — dark volcanic sand, real surf, and a wildness that feels appropriate to this side of the island.

Just south of town, the Rabacca Dry River cuts a wide, ash-grey gash across the landscape — a channel carved by lahars and pyroclastic flows during La Soufrière’s eruptions, dry most of the year but capable of turning into a genuinely dangerous flash flood during heavy rain. It also marks the trailhead for the windward route up La Soufrière, a longer and considerably more strenuous climb than the popular western approach, favored by hikers who want the volcano without the crowds. A few kilometers further, Argyle International Airport — opened in 2017 after a construction saga that spanned over a decade — now handles the direct flights that finally connect Saint Vincent to North America and Europe without a stopover in Barbados.

There’s something almost poetic about Georgetown’s position: a town built on an economy that vanished, sitting between a river made of volcanic destruction and an airport built on the promise of the island’s tourism future. It hasn’t decided yet which version of itself it’s becoming, and that uncertainty is part of what makes it worth the drive.

When to go: Dry season for safer crossing of the Rabacca Dry River and better hiking conditions on the windward volcano trail. Combine a visit with an early morning arrival or late departure from Argyle International, since the airport is only a short drive away.