Lee Abbamonte
Try to become the youngest person to travel to every country in the world
Lift the Travel Ban to Cuba
By Lee | 
5 Comments » 
With the dawn of a new administration in the United States, the time to lift the travel ban to Cuba has come. The nearly 50 year trade embargo’s time has past and the United States Government needs to ease the restrictions on Americans who wish or do travel to the island nation only 90 miles from Florida. The passing of the failed Bush Administration and the impending closing of the utterly ridiculous Guantanamo Bay prison camp is a start but we need more. Hundreds of thousands of Americans, both illegally and legally travel to the island every year. They risk civil penalties and fines upon return to the United States if they sneak into the country illegally and if they seek permission from the US Government then they risk being told no. This to me is ridiculous. It is ridiculous that you may face fines if we, as American citizens-the freedom capital of the world travel to a place that’s 90 miles from the United States. It is unfair, un-American and the threat from Cuba is not what it used to be. The Bay of Pigs was nearly 50 years ago and the Soviet Union is no longer together. The time has come for President Obama to allow Americans to travel freely to this island that time forgot.
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St. Martin and Anguilla
By Lee | 5 Comments » The island of St. Martin is divided between two nations, Dutch (St. Maarten) and French (St. Martin). The French side is where I stayed in a place called Grand Case Beach at a hotel called L’esplanade which was very good and the people were very helpful and friendly. The French side is way more islandy feeling and looking. It also has a much quieter and more relaxed vibe to it-it’s the kind of place where you can just walk around barefoot all day if you wanted. From the shores of beautiful Grand Case Beach you can walk up and down the beach behind restaurant row and eat and drink your way down the beach. That’s pretty much what I did.
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The Scoop on Guadeloupe
By Lee | 6 Comments » Guadeloupe is an overseas French territory much like it’s sister island Martinique. However, Guadeloupe is clearly the ugly twin and cannot be held in the same breath as the much nicer, classier and safer Martinique. Guadeloupe is not without some virtues of course but I have to admit after being in Martinique and having a blast, I was hoping for a little more of the same in Guadeloupe but that was not to be. It’s no wonder why Guadeloupe is the forgotten Caribbean island, often skipped by cruises and only visited by off the beaten track tourists and of course the French.
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Magnifique Martinique
By Lee | 2 Comments » I first heard about Martinique when I was a kid from that old Beach Boys song, Kokomo, and I thought it sounded so exotic and cool and I knew I always wanted to go there. It didn’t disappoint. Martinique is really everything you would want in an affluent island as you cannot compare it to other places in the Caribbean except for perhaps Bermuda from the places I’ve been so far. It is gorgeous, pleasant, no hassles from people, has great architecture, great beaches, golf course, great food, a bustling little capital city of Fort-de-France and even shockingly nice French people. Martinique has a really cool feeling of you don’t know where you are because it feels like the south of France; you could be in Nice or Cannes or even St. Tropez. But you’re in the Caribbean and Martinique is the quintessential way to see how the French do the Caribbean.
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St. Vincent and Bequia
By Lee | 7 Comments » After leaving Grenada for that early morning flight up to St. Vincent, the plane flew straight over the gorgeous and untouched Grenadine Island chain. It is a chain of mostly forgotten islands and their slogan is “the Caribbean the way it used to be”. The view from the small prop plane made me excited to get out to Bequia. But not until enjoying a liberating nap in St. Vincent at one of the worst hotels I’ve ever stayed at, the Tropic Breeze-more about that later.
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The Long Short Journey to Grenada
By Lee | 3 Comments » I had heard previously about airlines in the Caribbean making many and inexplicable stops in their flight itineraries. Meaning, they would say for instance, they were flying from Curacao to Grenada but failing to mention there would be three stopovers in between. I never really thought much about it, figuring people just didn’t plan properly or something like that. However that exact thing happened to me the other day on that exact journey from Curacao to Grenada.
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Blue Curacao
By Lee | 4 Comments » Curacao is the last letter in the Dutch ABC islands of the South Caribbean consisting of Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao and certainly its most dynamic. Aruba possesses the best beaches by far, Bonaire the best diving by far and Curacao has decent of both but more importantly it has a cool, cosmopolitan vibe to it that makes it a very pleasant place to spend a few days.
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My Thoughts on Cruises
By Lee | 11 Comments » 
Cruises are quite possibly the worst things ever invented. The only redeeming quality is that they serve as a fairly comfortable mode of transport in which you have to think and plan nothing and you generally wake up in a new place. However, there are so many awful and annoying things about cruises that I can’t possibly enumerate them all. However, here a few of the worst things about cruises.
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Helicopter to Montserrat
By Lee | 3 Comments » 
On my recent trip to the Caribbean I visited nine new countries and the highlight was undoubtably my helicopter trip to Montserrat. Montserrat is a British overseas territory located in the Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean Sea. The former capital city of Plymouth was completely destroyed and two-thirds of the island’s population forced to flee abroad by an eruption of the previously dormant Soufriere Hills Volcano, beginning on July 18, 1995. The eruption continues today on a much reduced scale. The damage being confined to the areas around Plymouth including its docking facilities and the former International Airport; which has since been replaced by a very small airport where the remaining 4700 residents have been relocated to on the “safe” north side of the island.
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San Andrés Island, Colombia
By Lee | 6 Comments » 
San Andrés is the largest and principal island of the Colombian department of San Andrés y Providencia which consists of two island groups about 480 miles northwest of Colombia and 140 miles from the coast of Nicaragua. The archipelago has been claimed by Nicaragua, England and is now under the control of Colombia. San Andrés is the main island of the San Andrés group and the principal town is San Andrés in the north of the island. This is where most people spend their time on the island when they are not diving and the hub of commerce for the island.
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