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Our beaches, our roads, our distilleries and our tables — with real drive times, not straight-line ones. Readable offline.
Tap the one that interests you. Each chapter reads on its own.
Three questions, and the guide lays out a plan ordered geographically, with real drive times and three ideas for each part of the day. Exportable to your calendar.
Three tools that work offline, once the guide is installed on your phone. They are no use before you leave — and a great deal of use once you are here.
Two hours free and no idea what to do with them? The guide ranks the beaches, the sites and the tables by real drive time from wherever you are standing. Your phone's GPS works without a signal, and so does this.
Forty kilometres here means an hour. Our times are based on the speeds we see every day on these roads — and they account for Le Lamentin at rush hour, and for the roads that simply stop.
The guide installs on your phone like an app, and the island map downloads in three minutes. After that, you need no signal at all.
Add it to your home screen: it opens full screen, like an app, and stays readable in the North, in the mountains, anywhere the signal drops.
Three minutes on wifi, and your phone guides you anywhere on the island, even with no signal. It is the step nobody thinks of.
About thirty megabytes, once. After that, every place in this guide opens straight onto your map and directions work with no connection at all. Offline, only driving navigation is available — no cycling, no walking, no live traffic. The map stays valid for a year.
The questions we are asked most often at the counter, and what we actually answer.
Seven days is enough to see the essentials, as long as you do not rush. The rhythm that works is one big outing in the morning, a beach in the afternoon. Allow one day for the Grand Sud and Les Salines, one for the Anses d'Arlet and the turtles, one for Mount Pelée and Saint-Pierre, one for the Route de la Trace and the Balata garden, one for the rum distilleries, one for the Caravelle peninsula, and one day with nothing planned — that is usually the one people remember.
Our detailed itineraries follow this split. The classic mistake is trying to do everything. The island is seventy kilometres from north to south, but its roads are slow: forty kilometres easily takes an hour. A seven-day trip averages around twelve hours behind the wheel.
Six places come up in every conversation, and they are spread across the whole island: Grande Anse des Salines at Sainte-Anne, the Anses d'Arlet and its sea turtles, Saint-Pierre and the ruins of the 1902 eruption, Diamond Rock, Mount Pelée, UNESCO-listed, and the Caravelle peninsula with its nature reserve.
To those add the estates and rum distilleries — Clément, Saint-Étienne, La Mauny, Trois Rivières — the Balata garden on the Route de la Trace, and the white-sand shallows of Le François, those sandbanks in the open ocean where you stand waist-deep a kilometre from shore.
Yes, and that is not a sales line. The finest places on the island are served by no public transport at all. Anse Couleuvre at the end of the Prêcheur road, Anse Trabaud reached by a dirt track, the Caravelle peninsula, the Mount Pelée trailheads: no bus goes there. Even Les Salines, served in theory, needs a car if you want to be there at eight in the morning, the only time the beach is quiet.
Our page on driving in Martinique covers the roads and the traffic traps. Taxis exist but are expensive over long distances, and organised excursions impose their own timetable. A car is the only way to decide in the morning where you are going according to the weather — which changes everything when sargassum hits one coast and not the other. See our car rental prices.
The dry season, known here as carême, runs from December to April: high season, with the least rain and the most people. December and February are the tightest — cars and accommodation are gone by mid-November.
From June to November comes hivernage: hotter, wetter, with short intense showers rather than whole days of rain. It is also the official hurricane season, but a major hurricane hits the island directly only once every ten to twenty years. Prices are softer and the beaches almost empty. Our travel tips page goes into the detail.
The Caribbean-coast beaches suit small children: calm water, sandy bottom, little depth. Grande Anse d'Arlet and Anse Céron in the north, with its freshwater river running onto the sand, are the two safe bets. The Martinique Zoo at Le Carbet, set in the ruins of an old estate, fills half a day without difficulty.
Avoid the Atlantic coast for swimming, where swell and currents can catch you out, and save the long northern roads for children who travel well.
Tropical showers rarely last more than twenty minutes: often you need only wait. If the day is properly grey, there is no shortage of indoor options — the 1902 Memorial at Saint-Pierre, the rum distilleries and their cellars, the Aimé Césaire museum in Fort-de-France, or the great covered market and its spices.
A local tip: it rains more often in the north and at altitude than in the south. When the Route de la Trace is under cloud, Les Salines is usually in the sun.
Excluding flights and accommodation, for two people over seven days, allow roughly €175 to €280 for car hire depending on the category and the season, around sixty euros of fuel to drive round the island, and €25 to €40 per meal for two at a decent table — far less at a roadside food truck, which often serves the best meal of the trip.
The beaches are all free. Paid sites stay modest: €8 at the 1902 Memorial, €8 at Château Dubuc, €16.50 at the Balata garden.
The Caribbean coast, to the west, is sheltered from the trade winds: calm, clear water, easy swimming, sunsets facing the sea, and almost never any sargassum. That is the side for swimming.
The Atlantic coast, to the east, takes the wind head on: real swell, currents that can be treacherous, and it is the side that receives the sargassum. In exchange it offers huge empty beaches, surfing, kitesurfing and the white-sand shallows. That is the side for seeing something spectacular.
With a car you do not have to choose: the two coasts are less than an hour apart.
We are a car rental company in Fort-de-France. This guide is what we tell our customers when we hand over the keys — the roads we take, the beaches we prefer, and the mistakes we watch people make.
Samuel and the Welcome Rent teamThree questions, thirty seconds. Your answers are read only by us and are published nowhere — they help us improve the guide for the travellers who come next.
If so, your plan is built around your real dates and your car appointments are added to your calendar.
I will build your plan over that length, allowing for the real distances.
Choose as many as you like.
The places you have kept close at hand. They stay here, even with no connection.