Martinique
You can be here in December for about €1,095, 3 days, 1 stop.
Why now
Good time in December: 29°C days, 18 rainy days, sea 28°C.
The dry season from the northern winter is the comfortable and busy one; the wet months bring afternoon storms, green hills and cheaper rooms, and the hurricane risk sits in the late-summer months. Carnival and the Tour des Yoles boat race fill the island for a week each.
Best months here: February, March, November. 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
Martinique is a French département with a volcano at one end and white-sand coves at the other, rum distilleries in between and supermarkets that sell Camembert. It is Caribbean and European at the same time, and suits people who like to drive, hike and eat well rather than stay inside a resort.
What you can do
- 01Climb Mont Pelée from the Aileron trailhead on a clear morning, then see the 1902 ruins of Saint-Pierre below.
- 02Swim at Les Salines beach near Sainte-Anne, on a weekday, before the picnic crowd arrives.
- 03Tour a distillery, Clément for the estate house and Depaz or Neisson for the rum, and taste the agricole white.
- 04Eat accras and a colombo at a lolo shack on the Grande Anse d'Arlet waterfront.
- 05Walk the Presqu'île de la Caravelle nature trail to the Dubuc castle ruins and the Atlantic mangroves.
Where to stay · neighbourhoods
Trois-Îlets or Anse d'Arlet for a first visit with beaches and easy driving, the north for hiking and quiet; large all-inclusives are few and not the point of the island.
Unusual things
- ◦The Habitation Clément's contemporary art foundation in the cane fields near Le François.
- ◦The Fonds Blancs off Le François, sandbanks where boats stop for people to stand waist-deep in the sea.
- ◦The Gorges de la Falaise near Ajoupa-Bouillon, a river canyon walked and swum with a guide.
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 hire car is essential and traffic around Fort-de-France is heavy at rush hour; the ferry from Trois-Îlets to the capital avoids it. The airport at Le Lamentin is central and 20 minutes from the southern resorts.
- Clock
- 2 hours ahead of Chicago (America/Martinique) derived
- Daylight
- 11.3 hours of daylight in December · sunrise 06:21, sunset 17:37 derived
- Currency
- EUR
Good to know
Sargassum seaweed can cover the Atlantic beaches for weeks, and the sea on that coast is rough; the Caribbean side is the swimming side.
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
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