The words Caribbean and Bahamas are used by cruise industry conveniently to refer to the places they cover in their tours to Caribbean Sea. Caribbean is a group of islands in the Caribbean Sea, South of US and lying between the Gulf of Mexico and North Atlantic Sea. Bahamas is a place, rather a group of islands inside Caribbean region that makes up an independent island nation. On the other hand, Caribbean includes all islands and nations falling in this region. This article attempts to highlight the differences between Caribbean and Bahamas.
If you are on a Caribbean cruise, you may not necessarily get a chance to explore Bahamas as the entire Caribbean region can be conveniently divided into Northern, Southern, Eastern, and Western regions with thousands of islands, coral reefs, cays, and islets. Puerto Rico and Leeward and Windward Islands make up the Eastern Caribbean while the prominent countries and islands in Western Caribbean are Bahamas, Haiti, Jamaica, Florida Keys and Cuba. It is the Southern Caribbean, also known as the West Indies that comprises many island nations such as Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, St. Lucia, Aruba, Bonaire etc.
Thus, it is clear that a particular group of islands making up Bahamas is just one area in the entire Caribbean, which is a large area occupied by thousands of islands. Caribbean is not a monolithic region, though one thing that is common to all islands on the Caribbean is warm and sunny weather around the year and crystal-clear waters with sandy beaches. Otherwise, various cultural differences are visible in different groups of islands in the Caribbean.
Caribbean islands are also collectively known as West Indies because of the misconception that Christopher Columbus had when he landed at one of the islands in 1492. He thought he had discovered India despite being close to US.
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What is the difference between Caribbean and Bahamas? • If you need to choose between a Caribbean and a Bahamas cruise, please understand that Bahamas is one nation inside the Caribbean which is a large region comprising nearly 7000 islands. • Thus, Caribbean is a chain of islands that include dozens of independent countries while Bahamas is just one of them.
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