What are some good Caribbean islands to travel to with friends or family? Why?
07.06.2025 18:32
Bocas Islands Panama: Best beaches ever. Google Red Frog Beach on Bocas Del Torro. Google Starfish Beach in the Bocas Islands. These places are just as amazing as the Google images I have uploaded as a Google guide. You can get your own house in the side of a mountain with a golf cart to drive down to one of several beaches and there’s almost no one on them in the summer. It is like being marooned in paradise. Plus you can tour caves, take boat rides thru the jungle, see sloths…and of course wade in the 2-foot crystal waters at Starfish Beach with full-grown starfish sitting on the bottom all around you.
Places I don’t recommend to stay: There are nice things to see in the Cayman Islands and Jamaica, but these are 1-day cruise ship stops if you ask me, not destinations. Nassau Bay’s Atlantis is a great waterpark like no other, but it gets old after day 2. The island is tiny and not well developed and travel to other islands is not easy. Great place to go for a 3-day getaway if you have kids. Not a true Caribbean experience.
I have lived in Houston since 1992 which has made last-minute travel and cruises to the Caribbean a pretty regular cheap getaway for us so I have spent time in many of the places. Where you want to go depends upon what your priorities are.
Cruises are a nice way to see several small island ports and decide from the taste of each where you might wish to come back. However, you will not be at any particular port long enough to really experience what the location has to offer on a cruise.
Places I would not go back to: Dominican Republic. If you like to get off the resort, this is not the place to go. Resorts have armed guards with assault rifles for a reason. We experienced the following ‘joys’ as we traveled around DR: food sickness, identity theft, a slashed tire, insane traffic because a red light has zero meaning here, one million mopeds on every road darting through traffic, getting pulled over at a random traffic check by men armed with a sawed-off shotgun and an assault rifle for a random car check for drug smuggling. If you go here, stay on the resort.
Note I have stopped in the Virgin Islands on a cruise but I have not been there long enough to tell if it is a good place to stay. I will say that the clear waters are amazing and this is the only place where I ever walked along a dock and spotted those big foot-long conch shells sitting in the water. I was able to turn one over and show my kids the conch inside which was pretty cool.
What might be the social consequences of an ethnic as opposed to a civic conception of the nation?
Costa Rica: Adventure. If Adventure is your thing and cost is not a major factor, contact a Costa Rican travel group and set up a trip to Costa Rica where you stay in 2–3 different locations. Stay near the Arenal Volcano area 2 days and then stay at Monteverde for 2–3 days and either 1) Pick one spot on the Caribbean side for a couple days if you want beach time (the beaches on the west side do not compare), or 2) If you want to really do it up right, fly from there to Panama City, switch to the municipal plane and take the 20 min flight to Bocas Town where you can catch a Boat to Bocas Del Toro (which will be discussed in the best beaches section more). The Arenal Volcano will have you going for days on dune buggy rides to water falls, ziplining, repelling down waterfalls and other adventures. Monteverde has the best hanging bridges that take you over rain forests to amazing cloud forests, horseback riding and other adventurous excursions. We will be making out 3rd trip down there this summer.
Aruba: Diving Aruba is a very small island with 2 things that really stand out. If you like to snorkel or scuba dive, the water is crystal clear and the island is surrounded by diveable shipwrecks. But the other thing that is really cool is the fluorescent-colored iguanas. They are running around everywhere and don’t even look real due to the unreal colors.