Caribbean Cruise Ports: Three of Eight Publish What the Taxi Costs

Updated October 2026 · By Pierstop

A Caribbean itinerary looks like one holiday and behaves like eight separate jurisdictions, because that is exactly what it is. Nassau, Cozumel, St. Maarten, San Juan, St. Thomas, Grand Cayman, Willemstad and Basseterre turn up on the same runs, and almost nothing you learn in the first one transfers to the second. Two of them fly the same flag and still disagree.

The clearest proof is the first decision you make in every port: the taxi at the end of the pier. But after writing all eight guides, the useful question turned out not to be what the fare is. It is whether anyone publishes it.

On that, the eight split three against five.

Three publish a number you can hold a driver to. San Juan makes the meter compulsory by law. St. Maarten prints government zone fares. St. Kitts sets a maximum fare in regulations — US$5 per car, for up to four people.

Five do not. St. Thomas quotes per person with no current tariff for the run into town. Nassau abolished meters in 2017 and has republished nothing consolidated since. Cozumel has no reachable tariff at all. Willemstad's fares are regulated and unmetered, and no regulator publishes a rate card. And Grand Cayman's regulated tariff chart has no cruise-port entry anywhere in it.

That is the difference that costs money. In the first three you can quote a rule. In the other five, the only protection is agreeing the number out loud before the doors close.

This is the page that holds all eight side by side. Each port has its own full guide; this one is about what changes between them.

The Taxi Rule Changes in Every Port

Port	How the fare is set	Published?	The thing that catches people
San Juan	Meter compulsory by law	Yes	Zone fares were abolished in 2018 and are still printed everywhere
St. Kitts	Maximum fare set in regulations	Yes	It is per car for up to four — the opposite of St. Thomas
St. Maarten	Government zones, no meters	Yes	The tariff switches to per person at three passengers
St. Thomas	Territory-set fares, no meters	No	Quoted per person, so four of you is four fares
Nassau	Zones, no meters since 2017	No	No consolidated tariff has been republished since
Cozumel	Union-run, no reachable tariff	No	Rate boards at the pier; ask "car or per person"
Willemstad	Government-regulated, unmetered	No	No regulator publishes a rate card at all
Grand Cayman	Regulated chart with no cruise-port entry	No	The published prices are for the shuttle, not the taxi

Read that table as eight different conversations you need to have at eight different kerbs — and note that the three "yes" rows disagree with each other as sharply as they disagree with the rest.

San Juan: the meter, and only the meter

San Juan is the one port here where the rule is written down and unambiguous, which makes it the easiest to get right and the most commonly got wrong.

Puerto Rico abolished its tourist taxi zones. Section 8.69 of Reglamento 9358 sits under a subchapter headed Eliminación de Áreas de Transporte Turístico and states that as of 5 May 2018 every Área de Transporte Turístico designation made by the Tourism Company ceased to have effect — concluding that such areas or zones will not exist. The stated reasoning is fairness: the whole territory is a tourist destination, so no area should be priced differently for being more touristy.

And in San Juan specifically, the code's table of fixed fares gives no dollar figure at all. Where other towns get a number — Ponce USD 127.00, Cataño USD 30.00 — the entry for San Juan reads only: Sólo se podrá utilizar tarifa metrada o acuerdo con el cliente. Carolina, Río Piedras and Piñones are the same.

The metered tariff is uniform across every municipality in Puerto Rico: USD 3.75 to start, USD 0.10 per nineteenth of a mile — USD 1.90 a mile — a USD 5.00 minimum per trip, USD 0.10 per 25 seconds of waiting, and USD 36.00 an hour to hire by time. Only tolls and four extras may be added: USD 1.00 for a phone dispatch, USD 1.00 per bag, USD 1.00 between 22:00 and 06:00, and USD 2.00 per passenger beyond five.

Two clauses are worth carrying ashore. Fares are per trip, not per passenger — the code says so explicitly and repeats that the operator may not charge above the meter regardless of how many people are in the car. And an agreed price must be lower than the meter: a pre-agreement is legal, but the code defines it as a price below the metered fare, so a flat quote above the meter is precisely what the rule exists to stop.

St. Kitts: a maximum, in regulations, per car

St. Kitts is the only port here where the rule is not just published but capped, and it is the cheapest sentence in this article to remember.

The Vehicles and Road Traffic (Maximum Fares) (Amendment) Regulations 2021, which the St. Kitts Tourism Authority links from its own website, set a maximum of US$5 — EC$13 — for anywhere within Basseterre, from Ponds Pasture to Cunningham Street. That figure is for the car, covering one to four passengers. Waiting beyond the first fifteen minutes costs US$5 per additional fifteen minutes.

There are no meters, so the published table is the whole of your protection: it is a maximum, not a starting point, and it only helps if both parties know the number. Agree the fare for your destination before you get in.

Then put it next to St. Thomas. Same sea, same week on the same itinerary, and a family of four pays one fare here and four fares there. That is the single widest gap in this table, and it has nothing to do with distance or cost of living — only with which rulebook happens to apply at that kerb.

The other thing St. Kitts does that none of the others match: you can usually skip the decision. The Old Treasury Building is 160 m from the port exit, The Circus 200 m and Independence Square 290 m. The fare table matters for Brimstone Hill, 17.5 km inland, rather than for getting into town.

St. Thomas: the same flag as San Juan, the opposite rule

St. Thomas is the port that proves this is a question of jurisdiction rather than of region. It flies the same flag as San Juan, spends the same dollar and dials the same 911 — and it prices its taxis by the exact rule Puerto Rico's code forbids.

Fares are set by the territory and regulated by the Virgin Islands Taxicab Commission, there are no meters, and the price is quoted per person rather than per car. A family of four is four fares for one journey. Carry the San Juan assumption the 100 km east and you will budget for one fare and pay four.

We will not print a figure for the dock-to-town run, for the same reason we will not print one for Nassau: the Commission publishes its rules, its fee schedules and its complaint line, and no current passenger tariff between the cruise docks and Charlotte Amalie. Every dollar amount in circulation for that journey is untraceable to the Commission, and several of them contradict each other. One fare is officially published — the Magens Bay Authority puts the run from either dock to Magens Bay at 15 to 20 minutes and about USD 10 to 15 per person each way.

So: state the per-person fare out loud before the doors close, confirm whether it is each way or return, and carry cash. A territorial law requiring taxis to offer electronic payment took effect in 2026, but do not stake the afternoon on the vehicle you happen to flag down.

St. Maarten: no meter, and the arithmetic changes at three

St. Maarten is the exact inverse, and it is the port where families lose the most money.

Fares are fixed by government zone with no meters, so there is nothing to negotiate and nothing to read off a dial. But the tariff is not one rate, it is two. One or two passengers pay per car: USD 10 to Philipsburg, USD 25 to Maho Beach and the airport. From three to five passengers it switches to a per-person rate: USD 4 each to Philipsburg, USD 9 each to Maho.

So a family of four to Maho Beach pays 4 × USD 9 = USD 36, not the USD 25 quoted almost everywhere — 44 per cent more. Then add 25 per cent between 22:00 and 06:00 and on public holidays, and that USD 36 becomes USD 45 on a late-departure call. State your destination and your passenger count before you get in, and the fare becomes arithmetic instead of an argument.

This is the precise trap that San Juan's per-trip rule forbids. Same sea, opposite rule.

Nassau: zones, but nobody publishes them

Nassau's taxis are zone-priced and never metered — meters were abolished in 2017 — so the fare is agreed before you get in. Beyond two passengers, expect roughly USD 4 per extra person.

We will not print a fare per zone here, and you should distrust any guide that does. The only official zone table still published is consolidated to 2010; a Ministry of Transport release raised tourist-zone rates by 20 per cent in 2017 and nothing consolidated has been republished since. Every dollar figure circulating online is therefore stale or somebody's arithmetic. Ask the driver, agree the number out loud, then get in.

Cozumel: read the board, and ask the question

Cozumel is the most opaque of the eight. The taxis are run by the Sindicato de Taxistas Lic. Adolfo López Mateos, and beyond that there is no published tariff we can reach — not on the union's own site, and not from the Quintana Roo transport authority, whose web estate variously times out or has no DNS record. The operator's own FAQ says only that fares are posted on rate boards where you arrive.

So: read the board at the pier, agree the number out loud in pesos before you get in, and ask explicitly whether the price is for the car or per person. That last question is the most common Cozumel argument, and it is settled in four seconds at the kerb and never afterwards.

Willemstad: regulated, unmetered, and unpublished

Curaçao's taxis are government-regulated with fixed, unmetered fares — and no regulator publishes a rate card. The Curaçao Tourist Board's own instruction is to agree the price for your destination before you get in, and there is no Uber or Lyft on the island.

We will not print a figure, for the same reason we will not print one for Nassau or St. Thomas: every number in circulation for Willemstad is untraceable to an authority.

What Willemstad has instead is the best fallback in this table. The Otrobanda bus terminal is six minutes from the cruise gate, and Autobusbedrijf Curaçao publishes its fares: ANG 2.00 for the city and the eastern half of the island, ANG 2.50 for the western routes. Pay cash and bring coins. And the crossing into Punda — the thing most passengers would hail a taxi for — is a free ferry, which runs whenever the Queen Emma pontoon bridge is swung open or out of service.

Grand Cayman: the published price is for the shuttle, not the taxi

Grand Cayman is the subtlest trap here, because it looks like a port with published prices. It has them — they are just for something else.

The Port Authority publishes shuttle fares: US$6.00 per person one way to Public Beach, US$8.00 for the longer run, with a four-passenger minimum. The public bus is better still, at an average CI$2 — roughly US$2.40 at the peg — with routes WB1, WB2 and WB3 leaving a depot 180 m from the Royal Watler landing every two to five minutes.

The taxi is the one with no published price. The regulated tariff chart has no cruise-port entry anywhere in it, so the only move is to agree the fare with the dispatcher before you get into the car.

It is also a tender port, which removes the berth lottery entirely — and the boat puts you in the middle of George Town rather than at an industrial quay, so the walkable half of the day costs nothing at all.

The Second Variable: Which Pier You Are Tied To

In four of these eight the berth genuinely changes the day, and only the daily programme tells you which one you have. In the other four it barely matters, which is itself worth knowing.

• Cozumel — three terminals, and yours decides everything. Punta Langosta opens onto Avenida Rafael E. Melgar with the main square 950 m away, about 13 minutes on the flat. Terminal SSA México and Terminal Puerta Maya leave you 4.7 to 5.2 km south of the centre with no mapped pavement on either road — both pedestrian routers put you on the carriageway of a main road for a full hour. It is not a walk. And it is the majority experience: roughly seven passengers in ten land south of town.
• San Juan — two districts, six minutes or five kilometres. Transit calls use Piers 1, 3 and 4 in the Old San Juan District, 6 minutes from the first old-town streets and about 11 from Plaza de Armas. Turnaround and homeport ships use the Pan American piers on Isla Grande, which are 5.1 to 5.3 km and over an hour on foot around the bay, with a shuttle instead.
• St. Thomas — two docks 3.3 km apart, and the surprise is what they do not change. Havensight, the West Indian Company Dock east of town, and Crown Bay, the Austin "Babe" Monsanto Marine Terminal to the west, are run by two different organisations. Yet downtown is roughly equidistant: Emancipation Garden is 2.5 km and 31 minutes from Havensight against 3.0 km and 36 minutes from Crown Bay, and Main Street is about 34 minutes from either. What the berth really decides is the five-minute radius — Havensight has the cable-car base across the street, a taproom at 428 m and a sit-down restaurant at 345 m; Crown Bay has a marina café at 258 m, a pharmacy at 445 m and a taxi queue.
• Nassau — one wharf, but the outer berths are long. Prince George Wharf puts Bay Street on the far side of the gate, but from the outer berths NAS 4 or NAS 5 you are roughly 800 m out along the pier before reaching the terminal, with free tram assistance back in. Ship to Bay Street is honestly 5 to 10 minutes, not one number.
• St. Maarten — a single facility. Everyone lands at the Dr. A. C. Wathey Cruise Facility at Point Blanche, and Philipsburg is about 1.6 km. The port and tourist bureau call it 15 minutes; two independent pedestrian routers make it 20 to 22, and that is the figure to plan with. It is flat and paved, so the obstacle is heat rather than terrain.
• Basseterre — two piers, two minutes apart in practice. Pier 2, finished in 2019, carried 78 percent of passengers last season against 19 percent for Pier 1, and the whole difference is seven minutes on foot from mid-Pier 1 to the Bay Road exit against nine from Pier 2. On the 41 days last season with four to six ships in, start back earlier than the distance suggests.
• Willemstad — nine passengers in ten use one gate. The Mega Pier outside St. Anna Bay takes 90.9 percent of capacity on the port authority's published schedule, and everyone there leaves through the Cruisterminal Gate. Small ships go to Mathey Wharf instead — which has restrooms but, unlike the Mega Terminal, no complimentary WiFi.
• Grand Cayman — no berth at all. It is a tender port, and the boat lands you in the middle of George Town. That removes the lottery the other ports impose, and it is why the walkable half of a Grand Cayman day costs nothing.

Money: Seven Ports Where You Barely Need to Think, One Where You Do

• San Juan is a US territory on the US dollar. Cards and contactless work as on the mainland; sales tax is 11.5 per cent added at the till. Both Spanish forts are cashless — card only.
• St. Thomas is a US territory on the US dollar as well, so there is nothing to exchange and cards work normally in shops and restaurants. Taxis are the exception — carry cash.
• Nassau uses the Bahamian dollar pegged 1:1 to the US dollar, quoted by the Central Bank at exactly 1.0000 buy and sell. There is nothing to gain by changing money; both circulate interchangeably.
• St. Maarten quotes everything in US dollars on the Dutch side despite the Caribbean guilder being official, and uses the euro on the French side.
• St. Kitts uses the Eastern Caribbean dollar, fixed at US$1 = EC$2.70 since 1976. US notes are accepted, change comes back in EC dollars, and US coins are refused. Note that shops — and even the national bank — settle below the peg: 2.67 on the day we checked.
• Willemstad uses the Caribbean guilder, which replaced the Antillean guilder one-for-one in March 2025 and is fixed by law at US$1 = Cg 1.79. The tourist board states that commercial transactions settle at 1.82, which is the rate you will actually meet.
• Grand Cayman pegs the Cayman dollar to the US dollar and takes US cash all over George Town — at the merchant's own rate.
• Cozumel is the one where currency genuinely matters. Agree fares in pesos, and expect a poor rate if you insist on dollars.

Carry US dollars in small notes plus one card and you are covered in all eight. The small notes are for taxis and market stalls; the card is for the things that refuse cash, which in San Juan includes both of the sights you came for.

One Rule That Does Hold Everywhere

For all the differences, one thing is constant across all eight: book a tour for distance, not for access.

Where the ship docks in the middle of town, much of what gets sold on the pier is transport into a place you can already walk to — the whole argument of the Nassau port guide, where Bay Street is on the far side of the gate. Where the ship docks a long way out, the calculation inverts and transport is the product you are actually buying, which is the situation at Cozumel's southern piers.

The tours worth booking in each port are the ones reaching something the harbour cannot: the rainforest and the bio bay in San Juan, the reef and the mainland ruins in Cozumel, the two-country island loop in St. Maarten, and the Exuma pigs from Nassau — the most-booked idea in that port and the one with the most caveats, which is why the pigs have an article of their own.

Two port days here also have a single decision that outweighs everything else, and each has been given its own page: whether to stay on Cozumel or take the ferry to Playa del Carmen, and which of four ways to reach Maho Beach from the St. Maarten pier.

St. Thomas turns the same rule into a question about the transfer. With two docks 3.3 km apart, the thing that sorts the tour list is whether pier pickup is included — a trip that starts somewhere else adds two taxi fares per person to the ticket, and you will not know the size of that surcharge until you are standing at the rank. The St. Thomas port guide splits its picks on exactly that line.

When to Sail

The Caribbean season runs broadly November to April, and it is shaped by weather rather than demand. Atlantic hurricane season is 1 June to 30 November, statistically peaking around 10 September, with most activity between mid-August and mid-October — so the cruise season is deliberately the calm end of the year.

There is one wrinkle at the front of it. November is San Juan's wettest month, averaging 187 mm, so an early-season call is the one most likely to meet rain, and January to April is the sweet spot: 28 to 30 °C by day and 22 to 24 °C at night, against 31 to 32 °C in the off-season heat.

Each port's full guide has the walking times, the opening hours and the small print that changes a day: Nassau, Cozumel, St. Maarten, San Juan, St. Thomas, St. Kitts, Willemstad and Grand Cayman.

Some links on this page are affiliate links. If you book through them, Pierstop earns a small commission at no extra cost to you. We only link to services we genuinely recommend. Prices are the lowest listed at the time of writing and are subject to change — always confirm directly with the operator before your visit.