Guadeloupe
You can be here in December for about €1,081, 3 days, 1 stop.
Why now
Good time in December: 29°C days, 18 rainy days, sea 28°C.
The dry season, from roughly midwinter to late spring, is also the French holiday season, so ferries and rental cars fill up. The wet months bring short heavy showers and mosquitoes but also empty roads and green mountains. Carnival runs for weeks before Lent and shuts Pointe-à-Pitre's streets for parades.
Best months here: January, February, March. December is not one of them — the label above measures the month against a fixed bar, not against the rest of the year here. Daytime highs, sea temperature and rainy days from three years of Open-Meteo reanalysis; a rainy day is one with at least 1 mm of rain, which is the WMO threshold and not the same as "it drizzled".
The place
Guadeloupe is two islands hinged like a butterfly and joined by a bridge: Grande-Terre, flat and cane-planted, with the beaches and most of the hotels around Sainte-Anne and Saint-François; Basse-Terre, volcanic and wet, with the rainforest of the national park, La Soufrière and the waterfalls. It is France with a Creole accent, euros, boulangeries and roundabouts, and it suits self-drivers who want rainforest one day and reef the next rather than anyone expecting resort service or a walkable town.
What you can do
- 01Climb La Soufrière from Bains Jaunes, about two hours up through cloud forest; start early, the summit clouds over by midday.
- 02Snorkel the Cousteau Reserve off Plage de Malendure at Bouillante, by boat or kayak out to the Pigeon Islets.
- 03Walk the Chutes du Carbet trail to the second fall, then drive the Route de la Traversée through the park's rainforest.
- 04Eat bokit and accras from a roadside stand, then a Creole lunch of colombo or court-bouillon at a beach shack.
- 05Visit the Mémorial ACTe on the old Darboussier sugar-factory site in Pointe-à-Pitre, on slavery and what followed it.
Where to stay · neighbourhoods
Split a week between Grande-Terre (Sainte-Anne or Saint-François) for beaches and Basse-Terre near Deshaies for rainforest and reef, rather than commuting across the bridge. Pointe-à-Pitre is for the market and the memorial, not for sleeping.
Unusual things
- ◦Habitation La Grivelière in the Grande Rivière valley above Vieux-Habitants, a restored 18th-century coffee estate at the end of a rough road.
- ◦The Parc Archéologique des Roches Gravées at Trois-Rivières, Amerindian petroglyphs on boulders in a garden of tropical trees.
- ◦The mangroves of the Grand Cul-de-Sac Marin, kayaked from Sainte-Rose out to the Îlet Caret sandbank on a calm morning.
Day trips
Flight options
Routes come from OpenFlights (historical) and a 2026 route reference compiled from public timetables. Durations are the published schedule where we have it, otherwise a block-time model fitted on measured nonstop flights. Verify schedules with the airline before booking.
Entry requirements · IT passport
Source: passport-index-data, March 2026 (coarse indicator), covering 258 of our 268 destinations for each of 199 passports. Always confirm with the destination's official site.
Airports
Distances are centre to airport derived · nonstop counts are our route reference for 2026, not every flight that exists.
Local transport
- Airport to city
- Taxi, 20 min, ~€25; car essential
- Car needed?
- Recommended for most of what is worth seeing
- Getting around
- A rental car is essential; the N4 roundabouts out of Pointe-à-Pitre jam at rush hour, and the airport is about 20 minutes from Le Gosier. Buses exist but finish early and skip Sundays.
- Clock
- 2 hours ahead of Chicago (America/Guadeloupe) derived
- Daylight
- 11.2 hours of daylight in December · sunrise 06:26, sunset 17:36 derived
- Currency
- EUR
Good to know
Hurricane season runs from early summer to late autumn, and sargassum seaweed can cover the Atlantic-facing beaches for weeks; the sheltered Caribbean side is the fallback.
Alternatives at a similar price
Whole trip per person for 3 days from Chicago in December, then the flight time; estimates, like the total above.
Dubai
Abu Dhabi
Costa Rica
Hurghada
Sharm El Sheikh
Luxor