Caribbean

Guide

Caribbean Cruise Ports: Four Ports, Four Completely Different Rulebooks

Updated September 2026 · By Pierstop

A Caribbean itinerary looks like one holiday and behaves like four separate countries, because it is four separate countries. Nassau, Cozumel, St. Maarten and San Juan turn up on the same seven-night run, and almost nothing you learn in the first one transfers to the second.

The clearest proof is the first decision you make in every port: the taxi at the end of the pier. Those four ports price that identical journey in four incompatible ways — one where the meter is compulsory by law, one where meters are illegal and the fare changes shape at three passengers, one where meters were abolished and no current tariff is published, and one where no tariff is published at all. Assume the rule from your last port and you will overpay in this one.

This is the page that holds the four 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	The thing that catches people
San Juan	Meter compulsory by law	Zone fares were abolished in 2018 and are still printed everywhere
St. Maarten	Government zones, no meters	The tariff switches to per person at three passengers
Nassau	Zones, no meters since 2017	No consolidated tariff has been republished since
Cozumel	No reachable published tariff	Rate boards at the pier; ask "car or per person"

Read that table as four different conversations you need to have at four different kerbs.

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. 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 four. 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.

The Second Variable: Which Pier You Are Tied To

In three of these four ports the berth changes the day, and only the daily programme tells you which one you have.

• 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.
• 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 — the only single-facility port here. 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.

Money: Three 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.
• 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.
• 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 four. 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 the four: 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.

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 and San Juan.

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