Ever since I first read Agatha Christie’s ‘A Caribbean Mystery’, I’ve had my eye on the Caribbean as a place to set a murder mystery show. After all, the region is beautiful, exotic, and some of the islands are still remote enough that I reckoned I could justify creating an old-fashioned ‘whodunnit’ TV series on one of them. But what I hadn’t realised was just how many great activities we could use as the settings for our weekly murders, and to turn it into a novel, A Meditation on Murder.
So we’ve had an episode set in a dive school, one in a surf club, another on a yachting holiday, a bird watching trip, an outward bound holiday resort, and—for next year’s series 5 - we have our first scuba diving murder with underwater shots of our actors on a coral reef. In short, the Caribbean, famed for its sun, sand and sea, may be a great place to set a weekly TV murder show and book, but it’s an even greater place to go if you want an active holiday.
British Virgin Islands – Flotilla Sailing Holiday
I have always loved the idea of sailing, but am broadly terrified of getting lost at sea, so a flotilla holiday has always felt like the perfect compromise. And there can’t be anywhere finer in the world to go on a sailing holiday than the British Virgin Islands. The sky is blue, the water is bluer still, there are over 60 unspoilt islands to explore, and each day’s sailing is line of sight (meaning you never have to sail for a destination you can’t already see). The perfect holiday for those with a yearning to get under sail, with none of the necessary skill.
The Cayman Islands – Horse Riding
To my mind, horse riding in the UK conjures up images of mucking out at dawn with frost still stiff on the grass. In the Caribbean it’s a different story. ‘Spirit of the West’ offers the chance to ride across white sandy beaches, and, even better, ride your horse into the bath-warm sea to cool down. And they even organise moonlit rides. I can’t imagine anything more magical than that.
Les Saintes – Walking / Swimming with Dolphins / Kayaking
A personal favourite of mine is the tiny island of Les Saintes, just off the coast of Guadeloupe, where we film Death in Paradise. You can only get there by boat, cars are discouraged, and because the island’s covered in mountainous jungle, you get to go on long rambling walks where you bump into wild iguanas as they mooch about. You can swim in the main harbour with a mother and child dolphin, and even kayak over a sunken shipwreck. The most perfect spot on earth for some active R&R.
Aruba – Skydiving
Anyone who’s flown into a Caribbean island knows the beauty of those last few miles of approach as the islands reveal themselves set in the turquoise sea. But how would you like to get more ‘up close and personal’ with that view? ‘Real Adventures’ runs tandem skydiving courses on Aruba—and the Caribbean is surely the coolest place in the world to jump out of an aeroplane (passing hurricanes during the typhoon season not withstanding, ahem). And best of all, Aruba is so small that you can see the whole island—coast to coast—as you jump out of the plane.
Cuba – Marlin Fishing
As a male writer du certain age, it’s hard not to look at the entire existence of Ernest Hemingway and not feel inadequate. However, while most of what he did was mad, bad or just plain dangerous to know, it is possible to ‘do a Hemingway’ by replicating the heroics of his Pulitzer prize winning story, the Old Man and the Sea, and go Big Game fishing in Cuba. And if you don’t catch anything, you can at least go to the same bars as he did and drown your sorrows… as he did.
Caruçao – Diving at Full Moon
Not for the faint-hearted this one, but, once a year—in September/October—exactly one week after the full moon, local dive companies lead night-time dives as all the creatures of the coral reef release their millions of spawned eggs all at the same time, and it becomes a feeding frenzy for local predators, including the local sharks. Take a camera and a very big stick.
Puerto Rico – Caving / Rock Climbing
Rock climbing and caving are two of the most viscerally wonderful / liberating / terrifying [delete where applicable] things a human can do, but why bother worrying about packing thermals and Kendal Mint Cake when you can go rock climbing and caving in the jungles of Puerto Rico?
St. Martin – Kitesurfing
Kitesurfing is surely the best near-shore invention of recent decades (and there’s a lot of wind in the Caribbean - even when it’s sunny, it always seems to be windy). Wind Adventures on St. Martin (www.wind-adventures.com) says it can teach you how to kitesurf in only a few hours, but even if you find it takes longer than that, you can still sit on the board and look at the pretty fish.
Jamaica – Hiking the Blue Mountains
The luddite in me knows that for all the tech-based fun to be had nowadays, nothing beats just strapping on a pair of boots and walking up a slope until you run out of slope to walk up—and there’s something truly special about the Blue Mountains in Jamaica, home of the eponymous coffee bean. Because of the heat, you normally walk through the night and reach the peak at dawn—just in time, no doubt, to realise you didn’t bring any coffee with you.
Guadeloupe – snorkeling the Jacques Cousteau Reserve
Swim in the same coral reef that inspired Jacques Cousteau to invent the aqualung—where the water is so teeming with tropical fish that the snorkeling’s to die for (I swam into a Lion Fish, so it really was very nearly to die for). And if the snorkeling gets too much, take the Nautilus glass-bottomed boat out to the reef and see the fish while sitting down in comfort. When you’re done with all that, you can travel a couple of miles north up the coastline and visit the jewel of Guadeloupe—Deshaies—the gorgeous town where we film Death in Paradise.
Robert Thorogood, the creator and writer of BBC One’s popular series Death in Paradise brings the characters to life on the page in an all-new, locked-room mystery, A Meditation on Murder (RRP £7.99), perfect for fans of classic crime – and, of course, the millions of fans of the TV series itself.
