21-DAY SOUTHERN & WESTERN CARIBBEAN: ABC ISLANDS

Cozumel is the busiest cruise port in the Caribbean, and it is busy for a straightforward reason: the reef starts a few hundred yards offshore, the water is eighty-five degrees, and the visibility is routinely over a hundred feet.

Which pier you get matters. Punta Langosta is in San Miguel and you can walk into town. Puerta Maya and the International Pier are three to four miles south: a fixed-rate taxi, not a walk. The ship’s daily paper says which one you are on; check it before planning a morning in town.

The diving is genuinely world class and the snorkeling is nearly as good. Palancar is a drift dive, which means the boat drops you up-current and picks you up downstream; you do very little work. If you would rather not get on a boat, Money Bar and Dzul-Ha are reef-off-the-beach and cost a taxi fare.

The mainland is possible but tight. Tulum is a ferry plus a drive plus the same again coming back. On a ten-hour call with a ship’s excursion it works; on a seven-hour call independently it is a bad bet, and the ferry is the part that strands people.

The east coast is the surprise. Fifteen minutes across the island there is an undeveloped Atlantic shore with a single road, a handful of beach bars and nobody on it. Rent something with wheels and it is the best half-day on the island.

Nassau is the most-visited port in the Caribbean and the one people most often write off. It is worth understanding why before deciding what to do with the day: the ships dock in the middle of a working capital city of a quarter of a million people, and the four blocks immediately around the pier are given over to duty-free jewelry shops that have nothing to do with the Bahamas.

Walk past the first four blocks. Ten minutes east and uphill puts you at the Queen’s Staircase, sixty-six steps cut by hand through solid limestone, and Fort Fincastle above it. Ten minutes west puts you on Junkanoo Beach, which is free, public and perfectly decent.

The good water is a boat ride away. New Providence’s own beaches are fine; the postcard water is at Rose Island, Blue Lagoon or the sandbars, all half an hour out by boat. If the point of the day is the sea, book something that leaves the island.

Atlantis is a day pass, not a stroll. The resort on Paradise Island sells water-park access by the day and it is not cheap. It is a good day with children and a poor one without.

Cash is unnecessary. The Bahamian dollar is pegged to the US dollar and the two circulate interchangeably; you will get change in a mix of both.