What is the best season to go to Martinique?
The answer is clear: there is no ideal season to go to Martinique, just as there is no season to avoid. To make the right choice, we found 4 criteria to choose when to go to Martinique: the price , the activities , the climate , and the kitesurf !
When is the cheapest time to go to Martinique?
If you want to save money, avoid the period from mid-December to the end of April. The price of accommodation is then everywhere the highest of the year (except at Résidence Macabou, where it drops at the end of the Carnival holidays, and even more for Easter holidays), and the price of tickets return plane can double (sometimes exceeding 1000 euros in eco class), especially if you did not do it at least 6 months in advance.
On the other hand, you will find plane tickets between 300 and 500 euros in May and June , then from the end of August until mid-December , and of course, accommodation is offered at extremely attractive prices, as is the price of car rental, which represents the third item of expenditure.
From April , the tourist season gradually slows until the end of June, tourism professionals are more available, and those who appreciate the crowd less will find more happiness. In May and especially in June, notice to lovers of flowers and nature: this is the period when there is the most flowering and fruit in Martinique!
If you come from September to November , it is the low point of the tourist season, and you will certainly have the chance to live Robinson Crusoe experiences, discovering immense deserted beaches just for you. Even if almost half of the restaurants tend to close in September, there is still a good half, and that is more than enough, because the best restaurants have customers all year round!
For those who are forced to respect school holidays, the All Saints period is then an ideal choice.
When is the best time to go to Martinique if your priority criteria is entertainment or events ?
The first week of January , extremely calm, is a moment deserted by tourists, who are waiting to recover from the end-of-year celebrations before going on vacation (apart from seniors who spend several months in the sun, arriving already well before Christmas).
In January, February, and until Ash Wednesday (46 days before Easter, in general at the beginning of March), you can taste the joys of the numerous festivities of the long Martinique carnival, colorful, noisy and musical (and also in rum it must be recognized). If you like a busy holiday with lots of people, this is the right time!
However, even if this season is the busiest, it never looks like a beach on the French Riviera or the Costa Brava: knowing that there are over fifty practicable beaches on this splendid island, the distances between each Beach towels remain reasonable, especially on the slightly longer beaches.
If you like local festivals and especially the magnificent skiff race the first week of August, come in the middle of summer : you will live a rich experience of meetings with Martiniquais, with whom you will fall in love even more than Martinique (c is to say…).
In December, and during the Christmas holidays , a profusion of "Chanté Nwel" and hymns in Creole will await you, with real enthusiastic fervor; you will taste "Jambon-Nwel", "Pâté en Pot", Pork Stew, but also conch, sea urchins or lobster. In short, a Christmas at 28 ° which will certainly disorient you!
When to go to Martinique if your priority criterion is climate ?
First, we will quote this excerpt from the excellent article "When to go to Martinique?" "From the site http://www.guidemartinique.com :
“ Tropical climate: sun and rain on the program
Martinique has a tropical climate. Temperatures vary relatively little with a small amplitude of about 5 ° C between the coldest month and the warmest month ... The nights are mild and the thermometer rarely goes below 20 ° C in by the sea. During the day, mercury most often changes between 26 and 33 ° C depending on the season and the amount of sunshine. If the mildness is one of the characteristics of the tropical climate, it is the same with the rain ... The showers, which often occur in the form of grains, are generally brief but generous, completely soaking the soil and even causing floods at certain times. There are essentially two seasons in the West Indies: Lent which covers roughly the winter and spring months (December to May) and constitutes the dry season and the Hivernage which, as its name does not indicate, covers the months summer and autumn (June-November) and constitutes the wet season. But this dichotomy remains very uncertain in practice and it is not uncommon for the wintering months to be largely sunny and for waves - that is to say disturbances leading to significant precipitation - to occur in the dry season ... thing is certain on the other hand, the cyclonic season extends from July to November and Martinique is during this period on the road of some storms. Devastating cyclones, however, remain rather rare and only occur on average every 10 years. "
Also, most tourist sites will tell you that you have to go to the Caribbean tropics during the "dry season" (which would be between December and April), but those who claim it certainly did not come often to the Antilles to know as well. badly the West Indian climate. These sites - which proclaim themselves specialists - copy and paste all the pictures found on the web, and we find there for example this quick sentence without further explanation: "We distinguish a dry season, more favorable, which s 'stretches from December to April, and a wet season, during which heavy rain falls from June to November'.
If statistics indeed indicate that the precipitation rate is half as much between January and March as the rest of the year, it should not be forgotten that, anyway, it rains at least once almost every day in Martinique , including during the famous "dry season". First, the rain will be there for your vacation (often between 4 and 6 am, by the way), and second… we don't care if it rains, since unlike our metropolitan latitudes, the rain does not mean it is not sunny! In the West Indies, it is rather a non-event: most of the time, the rain is very heavy (it drops baths or halberds according to your preference), but it lasts only 5 or 10 minutes in the vast majority of cases . It is enough to take shelter during the rain, then to continue to live normally, since the temperature has not changed. In a nutshell, the wet season in Martinique, seen with metropolitan eyes, is all year round, with less amount of rain - but still rain - between December and April. Conclusion: do not give up going to Martinique during the "wet season" ...
Another expeditious phrase which is duplicated on the canvas: "the archipelago suffers from the risk of cyclones and tropical storms during the wet season and especially from mid-August to October". This sentence, which would discourage more than one, just forgets one detail: in Martinique, there have been 9 cyclones since 1903. Also, the famous cyclone Irma was not felt at all in Martinique, and the last cyclone Maria caused only 2 days of very bad weather (not even a storm). Thus, the expression “cyclonic season” is particularly misleading: it is not a season in which cyclones occur regularly, but the only possible period in which a cyclone can occur if necessary. Also, the media dramatizes cyclones in the collective imagination: we obviously focus on the human losses and the gigantic damage caused by cyclones, hurricanes and other typhoons, without noticing that we are often shown images of particularly poor countries and underprivileged (for example Haiti), where precarious housing and infrastructure put people in great danger with each major meteorological phenomenon. In Martinique, the building is up to high pressure, and even if a cyclone would coincide with your vacation, the simple confinement during the cyclone would protect you from any danger (the last time it was necessary to deplore deaths, c 'was in 1970, when the dwellings were very different). It should of course not be imagined that there is zero risk, but we can also put things into perspective: Martinique is relatively little exposed to cyclones, thanks to its position very south in the West Indies arc, and if the we think about it well, the number of climatic events which caused as much damage as human losses is not zero either in mainland France. Conclusion: do not give up on leaving for Martinique during the “hurricane season”…
Finally, all year round, the water temperature is between 24 ° and 29 ° C (most often between 26 ° and 28 °), in short it is ideal for any season!
When to go kitesurfing in Martinique?
Water sports enthusiasts (for example kitesurfing ...) will particularly appreciate the months of December and January , where in principle the trade winds are the most sustained and present with the most regularity.