Just beach and sea? The Caribbean is more than a postcard idyll

White sand, turquoise blue water, green palm leaves; the trinity of the Caribbean postcard motif. Yet the Caribbean is much more than the cliché of the tropical dream beach that has been immortalized in the collective memory through films, travel catalogs and Instagram. It is an extraordinarily diverse region of the world, comprising over 7,000 islands, more than a dozen sovereign island states and numerous other territories. European and African influences, Creole culture, sleepy and lively colonial towns, volcanoes, rainforests, coral reefs and, of course, paradisiacal beaches - the Caribbean has it all.