Caribbean Guide
 Caribbean Islands, Caribbean Posters, Caribbean Art Prints, Bahama Islands, Cuba, Barbados, Puerto Rico, St. Lucia, Honduras, Surinam, St. Helena, Guiana, Dominica, Grenada, Exotic Posters, Tropical Posters
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 Moored Boat, Grand Anse Beach, Grenada, Caribbean Photographic Print Miller, John... 12 in. x 9 in. Buy at AllPosters.com Framed Mounted Welcome to the Caribbean
The Caribbean is a region consisting of the Caribbean Sea, its islands (most of which enclose the sea), and the surrounding coasts. The region is located southeast of the Gulf of Mexico and North America, east of Central America, and to the north of South America.
Situated largely on the Caribbean Plate, the region comprises more than 7,000 islands, islets, reefs, and cays. These islands, called the West Indies, generally form island arcs that delineate the eastern and northern edges of the Caribbean Sea. These islands are called the West Indies because when Christopher Columbus landed there in 1492 he believed that he had reached the Indies (in Asia).
The region consists of the Antilles, divided into the larger Greater Antilles which bound the sea on the north and the Lesser Antilles on the south and east (including the Leeward Antilles), and the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands or the Lucayan Archipelago, which are in fact in the Atlantic Ocean north of Cuba, not in the Caribbean Sea.
Geo-politically, the West Indies are usually regarded as a subregion of North America and are organized into 27 territories including sovereign states, overseas departments, and dependencies. From January 3, 1958, to May 31, 1962, there was a short-lived country called the Federation of the West Indies composed of ten English-speaking Caribbean territories, all of which were then UK dependencies.
The region takes its name from that of the Carib, an ethnic group present in the Lesser Antilles and parts of adjacent South America at the time of European contact.
Trinidad and Tobago
Geologically and physiographically Trinidad and Tobago are outliers of the South American continent. Trinidad (area 1862 sq. mi.) is separated from Venezuela by the Gulf of Paria, which it encloses on the east, and by the narrow entrances to the gulf. The mountain range along the northern edge of the island, with a maximum elevation of 3085 feet, is a continuation of the range that forms the Paria Peninsula of Venezuela. The core of this range consists of crystalline schists with threads of quartz that are in places gold-bearing.
Foldings in the sedimentary rocks overlying these old schists are represented both in the main range itself and in two other ranges of hills running roughly parallel to it. The southern and most prominent of these, with elevations up to 600 feet, forms the south rim of the island. The central ridge is so masked by alluvial deposits from the Orinoco as to have little prominence except in one isolated summit (1028 feet). The whole north coast is rocky, and the east coast, beaten by the Atlantic surf, is practically unapproachable.
 Inner and Outer Brass Islands, St. Thomas Photographic Print 16 in. x 12 in. Buy at AllPosters.com Framed Mounted The Virgin Islands
The Virgin Islands, excepting the outlying member, St. Croix, which surmounts a small bank of its own farther south, rise from the largest bank of the Lesser Antilles. It extends 80 miles eastward from Porto Rico with a breadth of 25 or 30 miles. The islands in this group are largely or wholly of volcanic origin and are now in a late mature stage of dissection; but some of them include also larger or smaller areas of deformed and greatly eroded stratified rocks, chiefly slates, which appear to underlie the volcanic rocks. Read More
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