The Caribbean[3] is a region consisting of the Caribbean Sea, its islands (most of which enclose the sea), and the surrounding coasts. The region is located southeast of the Gulf of Mexico and North America, east of Central America, and to the north of South America.

Situated largely on the Caribbean Plate, the region comprises more than 7,000 islands, islets, reefs, and cays. These islands, called the West Indies, generally form island arcs that delineate the eastern and northern edges of the Caribbean Sea.[4] These islands are called the West Indies because when Christopher Columbus landed there in 1492 he believed that he had reached the Indies (in Asia).

The region consists of the Antilles, divided into the larger Greater Antilles which bound the sea on the north and the Lesser Antilles on the south and east (including the Leeward Antilles), and the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands or the Lucayan Archipelago, which are in fact in the Atlantic Ocean north of Cuba, not in the Caribbean Sea.

Geo-politically, the West Indies are usually regarded as a sub-region of North America[5][6][7][8] and are organized into 27 territories including sovereign states, overseas departments, and dependencies. Between January 3, 1958, to May 31, 1962, there was a short-lived country called the Federation of the West Indies composed of ten English-speaking Caribbean territories, all of which were then UK dependencies.

The West Indies is a large group of islands that separate the Caribbean Sea from the Atlantic Ocean. They comprise three main island groups:

Bahamas (north)
Greater Antilles (central)
Lesser Antilles (southeast)

The Bahamas consist of over 3,000 individual islands and reefs.

The Greater Antilles include the island countries of Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti and the Dominican Republic (Hispaniola), and Puerto Rico.

The Lesser Antilles are the much smaller islands to the southeast, and they are divided into two (2) groups, the Leeward Islands and Windward Islands.

Indians were the first inhabitants, and then, In 1492, the explorer Christopher Columbus became the first European to arrive at the islands. It's believed by historians that he first stepped foot in the Bahamas. Columbus called these islands the Indies because he thought he had finally reached Asia (and the East Indies). Spain, when Columbus' mistake was discovered, (pardon the pun) renamed them the West Indies, to distinguish them from the Spice Islands in the Pacific Ocean, (the East Indies) which we now call Indonesia.

Today the West Indies, better know as the Caribbean, is comprised of many island countries, dependencies and territories, and (as a group) remain one of the premier tourist destinations on the planet.

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