The Southern Caribbean,
slow and salty

The Caribbean we'd grown up imagining was the Western one — the cruise that hits Cozumel and Grand Cayman and a private island and is back at the dock by Saturday. The Southern Caribbean is the version most travelers don't quite know is there: warmer water, calmer seas, smaller crowds, and islands with their own personalities instead of one duty-free strip after another. We sailed it on Carnival Valor in October 2013, and it's still the trip that comes up most often when people ask us where they should go.

Here's the journal — what we did, what surprised us, and what we'd tell anyone considering it for their first big Caribbean trip.

The case for the south —

Three reasons. The water. The Southern Caribbean is below the hurricane belt, which means calmer seas, clearer water, and a longer reliable season. The islands. Aruba, Curaçao, Bonaire, Grenada, Barbados, St. Kitts — every one of them feels like a different country (because, in most cases, it is one). They have languages, currencies, foods, and personalities you don't find on a Western Caribbean run. The pace. Longer sea distances between islands means more sea days, which means more actual rest. After a year of thinking we'd "go to the beach for a week" and never quite getting around to it, this was the trip that finally worked.

I did not check email. I did not look at the news. For seven days I was fully, embarrassingly off the grid — and the world somehow continued to work. — Seanna, around day five

A few favorite days —

Beach day on a real beach. One of our port days was just a beach day — the ship docked at an island whose entire downtown is the beach. We sat in chairs, drank rum punches that were probably 80% rum, swam, walked, swam more, ate fresh fish at a place with no menu, and got back to the ship sun-tired in the best way.

Snorkel trip from a small boat. We took a small-group catamaran trip rather than the ship's mass excursion and the difference was night and day. Half the people, twice the time in the water, a captain who knew where the sea turtles were. It is the cheapest upgrade you can make to a cruise: pick the small-boat version of the snorkel excursion every time.

The transit between islands. Standing on the upper deck at sunset, watching one island shrink behind us and another start to appear on the horizon, is one of the great quiet pleasures of cruising and the Southern Caribbean is full of it.

See all 1552 photos from this trip →

What we'd do differently —

1. Pick a balcony if the math works. In the Caribbean specifically, the balcony pays itself back in mornings. Coffee, a chair, the trade winds, an island appearing at the horizon — that's the entire trip in five minutes a day.

2. Skip the ship's bus tours. On most of these islands you can walk or grab a taxi to the headline beach for a fraction of the cost and twice the time. Save the ship's organized excursion budget for the snorkel trips and the cooking classes — places where the guide actually adds value.

3. Don't overschedule. The temptation on a 7-night cruise is to do something at every port. Resist. Pick three or four port days to do something big, and leave the rest free.

Want to go? —

Carnival, Royal Caribbean, NCL, and Princess all run Southern Caribbean itineraries — usually 7 to 10 nights. We can plan this exact trip, or scale it up to a longer two-week version that hits more islands. Like all of our cruise plans, you'll typically get supplier perks (specialty dining, onboard credit, sometimes free upgrades) at no extra cost.

Plan my Caribbean trip

Read the bigger-ship version: The Western Caribbean on a very large ship (Royal Caribbean Harmony, 2025)