A Guide for Caribbean Ports of Call

Some cruise passengers, shopping lists firmly in hand, view the Caribbean as a multi-port buying spree to stock up on duty-free items ranging from cosmetics to cameras. Others regard port-calls as handy ways to sample beaches and resort hotels, a quick way to check out an island for a future resort holiday built around snorkeling, diving, swimming, sunning, tennis or golf.

Most Caribbean cruise ships offer a variety of shore excursions in each port of call, jaunts priced from as little as $15 per person to $100 or more for an overview of the island via helicopter. Basic offerings in each port usually include a general sightseeing tour with local history and a shopping stop; a boat ride that may include free rum punch and a steel-drum band or a yacht cruise to an uninhabited island, and a snorkeling, diving or beach tour.

Sometimes two couples or a small group may find it cheaper and more convenient to get together and negotiate an island tour with a local cab driver on the pier, especially avid photographers or shoppers who want to stop frequently along the route. It’s important to agree on a fixed price before getting into the cab, and to ascertain that the driver speaks adequate English.

But people who have not traveled outside the United States before, or who are uneasy about striking out on their own, may prefer ship-affiliated excursions with larger groups.

Because the weather in the Caribbean can be hot and humid, it’s important not to get overly ambitious and sign up for every excursion. Don’t take a full-day tour if a half-day will do, and don’t sign up for both a morning and an afternoon tour unless one is a relaxing beach or snorkeling excursion. Divers must have their certificates with them if they plan a scuba trip. Here are some practical travel tips for those Caribbean islands most often visited by cruise ships:

Bahamas: While technically not part of the Caribbean, the Bahamas, especially Nassau, are host to a number of cruise ship visits each week. From the expanded dock facilities, passengers can easily walk into the heart of town and the colorful Straw Market. Both taxis and horse-drawn carriages are on hand to take visitors on tours around Nassau and the island, including Ardastra Gardens with its marching flamingos. Local entrepreneurs along the sidewalk hustle corn-row hairdos braided on the spot. Two huge gambling casinos, one at Merv Griffin’s Paradise Island, the other at Carnival’s Crystal Palace Resort, are a short cab ride from the pier. Some ships offer evening tours of Nassau’s night life.

Barbados: This well-organized Caribbean port has expanded its pierside shopping and the arts and crafts village a short stroll away. Minivans and taxis fan out from the ship to a wide variety of island excursions--from Harrison’s Caves ($33) to an Atlantis submarine tour ($65). The charming, open-air Brown Sugar Restaurant, on the outskirts of Bridgetown (take a cab from the pier), serves a buffet lunch of fried flying fish and delectable local vegetables, salads and desserts for $12.50. The Barbados Hilton, with its beautiful palm-shaded beach, is just steps away. Everyone speaks English, and the shopping concentrates on English china and woolens and Irish crystal.

Cozumel/Cancun: Diving, shopping and exploring the ancient Mayan ruins of the Yucatan head the shore options here. Most ships make a brief early morning call at Playa del Carmen (on the mainland near Cancun) to drop off passengers for excursions to Tulum and Chichen Itza, then sail on to the island of Cozumel to spend the rest of the day. The main dock is just across the street from the heart of town and the shops that sell T-shirts, black coral jewelry (an island specialty), hand-embroidered shirts and hand-woven hemp hammocks. All prices are negotiable.

Grand Cayman: Cruise ships anchor offshore here and tender passengers in by small boat, with frequent departures in both directions. Shore excursions include the ubiquitous Atlantis submarine ($68), an island tour that includes a visit to a turtle farm ($25), and diving and snorkeling ($26 to $62) around some of the island’s 325 shipwrecks, plus a snorkel/dive trip to Stingray City, where passengers can swim with the giant rays. A seven-mile-long, sugar-white-sand beach is a $4 to $5 cab ride per person from the dock, but the taxi-vans don’t leave until they’re full. Shoppers buy black and pink coral jewelry. Chef Tell (he used to do a show on national TV) cooks lavish meals at his Grand Old House restaurant, a modest cab ride from town. Pirates’ Week, Saturday through Nov. 2, is the big blowout of the year, with island music, costumed dancers and plenty of food.

Jamaica: Ocho Rios and Montego Bay, at opposite ends of the island, are the major cruise ports for this large, scenic island. The splashy trip to Dunn’s River Falls ($28; wear a bathing suit) is the No. 1 shore excursion here, followed by river rafting on the Martha Brae River ($40) and great house plantation tours ($30). The food, especially the spicy barbecued jerk chicken and jerk pork, is some of the best in the Caribbean, and Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee beans are world-famous (but check the label carefully before buying). On the downside, overly aggressive vendors selling everything from straw bags to drugs alienate some visitors. Jamaica increased security in tourist areas this year on the heels of sporadic outbreaks of street crime in the capital city of Kingston, itself not a day-tripper destination. Visitors may prefer to stick with escorted shore excursion groups.

Martinique: The language is French, the local currency the franc (although dollars are accepted) in this overseas department of France. From the port, it’s a longish walk, or a $5 cab ride, into Fort-de-France, where shoppers head first for Roger Albert’s gigantic perfume and cosmetics emporium. The top excursion is a half-day tour to Mt. Pelee and its museum, with artifacts from the 1902 volcanic explosion that wiped out the town of St. Pierre and its 30,000 residents, or an all-day island tour that visits Pelee and rural Leyritz Plantation for lunch. A ferry crosses from Fort-de-France to the beaches of Trois Islets, where the birthplace of Napoleon’s Josephine is open to visitors. Don’t miss a performance of the Grand Ballet de Martinique if it’s offered on board your ship.

Puerto Rico: As a home port and port of call, San Juan has blossomed in recent years. The language is English, the currency the U.S. dollar. Most ships dock at the edge of Old San Juan, where shopping, restaurants and walking tours are just steps away. The U.S. Park Service conducts free tours of El Morro fortress several times a day. Popular shore excursions include a visit to the Bacardi rum factory. For passengers on their own, an important first stop is the pierside tourism office to pick up a copy of “Que Pasa,” with its maps and up-to-date tourist information. The classic Caribe Hilton, which claims to have invented the pina colada, has just undergone a $40-million renovation. One of the best restaurants in town is the chef-owned Ramiro’s at 1106 Magdalena in the Condada area, a short cab ride from the pier.

St. Martin: This island is half-French, half-Dutch, with no passport necessary to travel from one to the other. The standard island tour takes in both, as well as stops for shopping and swimming. Most ships anchor off the Dutch capital of Philipsburg, but getting to Marigot on the French side is a simple matter of hailing a jitney (taxi-van) and paying $3 or so each way for the ride. Philipsburg is bustling and heavy with traffic, Marigot smaller and more charming with appealing (and expensive) French restaurants. Both feature lots of duty-free bargains, especially in liquors, perfumes and jewelry.

St. Thomas: A must on most itineraries, this island is considered the duty-free shopping mecca of the Caribbean, in part because U.S. citizens can bring back $800 worth of imports from the U.S. Virgins, and anyone 21 and over can take home five bottles of liquor (six if one is local rum). A shuttle into town costs a couple of dollars, but there is good shopping right at the port’s Hayvensight Mall, expanded recently with the addition of some very upscale boutiques. Golfers can enjoy a day at Mahogany Run ($50 for nine holes on a shore excursion), and fast-food addicts can find relief from elaborate shipboard meals at outlets from their favorite stateside chain. Snorkelers and swimmers usually opt for an excursion to the nearby island of St. John and the exquisite beach at Trunk Bay.

The less-visited islands of the Caribbean carry their own special charm, and many of the smaller cruise ships are discovering that sophisticated passengers prefer them. What they lack in heavy-duty shopping and shore excursions, they more than make up for with unspoiled beaches and untrammeled scenery.

Antigua: This English-speaking island, pronounced An-TEE-guh, claims to have 365 beaches, one for every day of the year. Most of them, unfortunately, are a long, bumpy, expensive cab ride from the port. The best way to see the island is to sign up for a shore excursion to Nelson’s Dockyard, a restored 17th-Century shipbuilding center with attractive shopping; Admiral’s Inn is the fashionable place to lunch. The funky town of St. John’s is a short cab ride from the port; the West Indian Sea Island Shop and Coco Shop sell handsome, locally produced batik fabrics and garments. Watch bills and sales slips carefully, because the Eastern Caribbean (EC) dollar, worth only half as much as the U.S. dollar, is written the same way and not every vendor is anxious to clarify the difference.

Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao: The Dutch-accented ABC islands in the southern Caribbean offer plentiful duty-free shopping and freshly painted pastel, 18th-Century colonial buildings. Curacao’s canal-side market, a row of Venezuelan boats shaded by brightly colored sails, is a photographer’s dream, and Aruba’s powder-sand beaches should please swimmers and sunbathers. Bonaire, an infrequent port of call, is best-known for its diving and snorkeling. All three are desert islands, dryer than the rest of the Caribbean. While the Netherlands Antilles florin is the official currency, U.S. dollars and credit cards are freely accepted everywhere.

British Virgin Islands: Island “collectors” adore the 60 or so British Virgins, with their laid-back lifestyles and pristine scenery. For small cruise ships, The Baths at Virgin Gorda is a popular anchorage for swimming and snorkeling. A handful of discreet upscale resorts and restaurants are sprinkled around the bays and inlets of both Virgin Gorda and Tortola, the largest island. A glass-bottom boat ride from Salt Cay sails over the wreck of the Rhone, a Royal Mail steamer that crashed into the reef in 1867 during a hurricane. The Sugar Mill near Cane Garden Bay makes a good lunch stop if you’re driving around Tortola.

Grenada: Very few visitors manage to elude the spice sellers of Grenada, but the modest prices for tiny hand-woven baskets of fresh island nutmeg, cinnamon and cloves make them popular souvenirs. The island looked prettier than ever on a recent visit, with new bougainvillea-draped pergolas offering shady spots to rest on a stroll around the small boat harbor called the Carenage. St. George’s is still the most scenic harbor in the Caribbean. Around-the-island tours by taxi (four to a cab; $25 per person) relive the American military intervention of 1983 and the subsequent visit by Ronald Reagan. Grand Anse is the best beach; shore excursion visits cost $21, but it’s also simple to take a road or water taxi there from St. George’s.

Guadeloupe: Like its sister island of Martinique, Guadeloupe is a department of France, with an equal number of topless French sunbathers on the beaches. While the city of Pointe-a-Pitre is the major cruise port, the smaller city of Basse-Terre, nearer the island’s famous Soufriere volcano, is working to attract cruise ships as well. And a new effort to lure more American tourists calls for English classes for the island’s French- and patois-speaking cab drivers and hotel staffers. Soufriere volcano, along with the rain forest in the National Park of Guadeloupe, are the top shore excursion attractions on the island, and the island’s home-style restaurants are renowned for Creole cooking.

St. Bart’s: The chicest little island in the Caribbean is a popular port of call for upscale little cruise and sailing ships. Visitors like to toodle around the narrow, hilly roads in $25-a-day Mini-Mokes (similar to golf carts), stopping for a fish or lobster lunch at a beachfront cafe and shopping for fashions straight from the French Riviera in stylish boutiques.

St. Croix: Largest of the U.S. Virgin Islands, St. Croix has had some tourism setbacks, especially a couple of years ago due to Hurricane Hugo, which badly damaged the dock and a lot of local hotels. The island has made great improvements since then, but cruise ships are still calling infrequently. Restored manor houses are a major sightseeing attraction, but shopping, as in St. Thomas, remains the island’s biggest draw.

St. Kitts: Columbus is thought to have landed here, but it’s still a relatively rare cruise ship port of call. And that’s a shame, because it’s a lush, friendly place with English as the official language and the EC dollar as the official currency. The Caribelle Batik Factory and the 200-year-old Brimstone Hill fortress are regular stops on island tours, whether you book a shore excursion or hire a local taxi driver. The Golden Lemon is a longtime favorite spot for lunch.

St. Lucia: The pretty new Pointe Seraphine dock and shopping area brings Bagshaws, the island’s most popular shop, to the passenger, along with 22 other duty-free shops and a restaurant. A red double-decker London bus shuttles passengers from Pointe Seraphine into the town of Castries. An all-day catamaran cruise from the port takes passengers to Soufriere volcano ($55) and includes lunch on board. Shorter half-day tours ($25 each) cover either Marigot Bay, where the film “Dr. Doolittle” was shot, or a driving tour of the north end of the island.

St. Vincent and the Grenadines: Yachtsmen from all over the world come to this string of tiny islands set in a sapphire-and-turquoise sea. Small ships call occasionally at Bequia, a former whaling island, or trendy Mustique, where Basil’s Bar is the place to be seen. Swimming, sailing and snorkeling head the list of activities here, with little or no organized shore excursions offered.

Trinidad and Tobago: Amazon River cruises often call en route at Tobago, where Pigeon Point is the most popular anchorage. Passengers are tendered to shore for a beach party complete with steel-drum bands, limbo contests, sunbathing and rum punch. Ships rarely call at the more urban island of Trinidad.

Note: Shore excursion prices listed above are intended to be representative and may vary from one cruise ship to another.