One of the most surprising Caribbean destinations I ever visited on a small ship was Los Roques. Situated on a spit of land north of the Venezuelan mainland, the charming town has only a half dozen or so dusty streets that were thick with small hotels catering to international tourists who arrived by plane.

The town was storybook Latin America, with only a few people roaming the streets during the hours of siesta, lazy dogs lying on their bellies under shade trees, and kids diving from the piers into water as blue as Windex.

Once, on a Caribbean island visited only by small ships, I climbed to the highest peak in the the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The island was Saba, in the Dutch Caribbean.

Other small slices of paradise include Jost Van Dyke in the British Virgin Islands; Monserrat; St. George’s, Grenada; Gustavia, St. Barts, Basseterre … the list goes on. In fact, the number of small, out-of-the-way Caribbean islands vastly outnumbers the major Eastern and Western Caribbean ports, allowing small ship companies to create a stunning array of itineraries.

Azamara Club Cruises, Oceania Cruises, Regent Seven Seas, Seabourn, SeaDream Yacht Club, Silversea, Star Clippers and Windstar Cruises are just some of the companies operating smaller ships to smaller islands in the Caribbean.

But there’s a price to be paid for exclusivity. Many of the smaller vessels that frequent these smaller ports offer top-end luxury cruise experiences that often cost more than $300 per day — per person. Compare that to bigger ships, carrying 2,000 or more passengers, where the cost can sink into double-digit per diems.

The upshot: You could pay three to four times more if you want your footprints to be among the first — and only — on that sandy beach. Small luxury ships do provide a lot more than exclusivity to the Caribbean islands, including a (nearly) all-inclusive vacation. The additional purchases on big ships — beverages, gratuities, shore excursions (some of which are included in the fare on a luxury ship) — can negate their low cost of entry.

BIG-SHIP CARIBBEAN

A couple of years ago, I enjoyed cruising for two weeks on Emerald Princess. The Princess Cruises’ ship offers a quality cruise experience, with lots to do and more-than-adequate staterooms, even at the lowest-priced level.

Spanning 15 decks and 951 feet (nearly one-fifth of a mile), Emerald Princess is not the biggest of the big by a long shot, but she is big enough to make trips between staterooms and public rooms near-Olympic events, particularly if you use the stairs. Once, I arrived at one end of the ship to snap a photo only to discover that I had left my camera in my stateroom at the other end of the ship. I was out of breath when I returned with the camera nearly half a mile later.

Naturally, when ships the size of Emerald Princess (and larger) disgorge passengers, there are a lot of feet contending for space in shops, restaurants and on activities.

Once, while anchored on a Carnival ship in the Cayman islands, I tendered ashore to what seemed to me a standing-room only town. The shops I visited were so crowded that I had to pull my arms into my sides and shuffle sideways to move about. I’m not claustrophobic, but I felt squeezed and uneasy and couldn’t wait to get out and back to the ship.

That said, the big cruise ships have become adept at managing the throngs of passengers. Shore operations are usually executed efficiently. Still, there’s no getting away from the crowding in such ports as Cozumel, Mexico, which, during the cruise season, routinely hosts up to eight ships a day, bringing between 12,000 and 20,000 guests to the island. Whether you’re destined for an overland trip to the ruins of Tulum or simply the Margaritaville at the end of the pier, you’ll have plenty of friends to accompany you.

SUNSET IN ST. JOHN’S

Back in St. John’s, the sun was setting as Emerald Princess pushed away from the pier and pointed itself toward the open sea. Many of us on Silver Cloud stood on the open decks and watched the spectacle of the large, but beautiful, vessel making its way into the sunset.

Calypso music played from the pool deck, and from the balconies of staterooms, flashes fired like firecrackers as passengers snapped one last picture of paradise.

“It looks like they’re having a good time,” a fellow passenger remarked to me as we stood there with cocktails in our hands. Then as he turned to walk away, he added: “I just hope they’re not going where we’re going.”

Ralph Grizzle writes about cruising on his website, AvidCruiser.com