Montserrat

Montserrat is a small Caribbean island still shaped by the Soufrière Hills volcano, whose eruptions since 1995 buried the former capital, Plymouth, under ash and rock. The southern half of the island remains an exclusion zone, visible from safe distances and giving Montserrat an unusually dramatic, almost apocalyptic landscape found nowhere else in the Caribbean. The northern part, where most of the population now lives, is lush and green, with hiking trails and small black-sand beaches. Tourism is small-scale, drawing mostly those curious about the volcano's aftermath.