(38) Mexico’s Dreams Tulum offers families hands-on, naturalist-supervised interaction with the local marine environment, including helping to care for sea turtle eggs and setting the tiny guys free when they hatch.
(39) Play with a green sea turtle at Grand Cayman’s Turtle Farm (see “Creature Comforts”), then have one for lunch in the restaurant.
(40) Bobsleds get the press in Jamaica, but dogs have their day here too – sled dogs, that is. Mush along behind a team of affable mutts during Chukka Caribbean Adventures’ Jamaica Dogsled Experience, a two-hour romp over the verdant countryside near Ocho Rios, with stops along the way for refreshments and canine photo ops.
(41) There are plenty of places to spot primates in the Caribbean, but few get you closer to the business of monkeys than the Barbados Wildlife Reserve. Lured by the promise of an easy meal, a troop of gregarious green monkeys from the nearby Farley Hill National Park frequents the reserve, which is home to the Barbados Primate Research Center.
(42) Join one of Lamanai Outpost Lodge’s nightly airboat sorties across the New River Lagoon, in northern Belize, and get to know the endangered Morelet’s crocodile. Experts from the lodge – a leader in the conservation of crocs and other indigenous wildlife – capture, measure and tag the reptiles (which can grow to 8 feet long) and then give participants some toothy face time with them.
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(43) At the Interactive Aquarium in Cancún, Mexico, kids older than 6 (preferably those who haven’t seen Jaws or Open Water) can don a wetsuit, hop into a plexiglass cage and spend a half-hour submerged in the aquarium’s enormous shark tank, hand-feeding a school of bull sharks, brown sharks and nurse sharks.
(44) Unless you smell like plankton, you and the whale sharks of Isla Holbox are bound to get along just fine. Between mid-June and early September, you’ll find dozens of licensed tour operators on this sleepy Mexican island offering half-day swims with the world’s biggest fish. We like Willy Betancourt’s Willy’s Tours (984-875-2008).
(45) If you’re not content with a daytime visit, you can spend the night among the monkeys and tapirs and jaguars (oh my!) at the Belize Zoo’s Jungle Lodge. Snuggling with the animals is frowned upon, however.
(46-47) On St. Martin’s Dutch side, fans of keelhauling and such can step aboard Lord Sheffield Tall Ship Adventures’ 72-foot-tall pirate ship for a day of swimming, snorkeling around historic shipwrecks and, of course, bowsprit jumping. In Nassau, Bahamas, the Pirates Museum tells a pirate tale in multimedia, historically accurate right down to a three-quarter-scale pirate ship and full-size prison cells.
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(48) Also in the Bahamas, the government-sponsored People-to-People program pairs visitors with locals for a unique cultural exchange. Offering the chance to share stories, a home-cooked meal and sightseeing tips, it just may introduce your kid to a lifelong friend.
(49) Take a tube down one of Dominica’s hundreds of wild rivers, through beautiful gorges and past (but not over) cascading waterfalls. Eco-tour outfit Wacky Rollers hosts a rip-roaring 80-minute tubing tour.
(50) Snorkeling’s a sedate diversion, but getting there sure isn’t aboard Grenada Seafaris’ 450 hp tour boat. Straddling motorcycle-style seats with handlebars (there’s a bench in back for parents with little ones), passengers feel the wind as they blast up Grenada’s verdant west coast, toward some of the island’s best snorkeling spots.
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(51-55) Get the whole family’s adrenaline racing by soaring above the treetops on a zip line. These flying bird’s-eye-view rainforest tours abound in the islands. Our favorites include Antigua Rainforest Canopy Tours, near English Harbour; Chukka Caribbean Adventures, Montego Bay and Ocho Rios, Jamaica; Palm Services, St. Lucia; and Loterie Farm, St. Martin. Or, for the truly adventurous, Selvática, near Cancún, Mexico, offers nighttime zip lining. In the jungle. Where it’s dark. And where you could get picked off by a really fast jaguar.
(56) For another nighttime diversion, the Atlantis Submarines tour in Grand Cayman (see “Creature Comforts”) offers the only after-dark underwater ride in the Caribbean.
(57-58) On St. Thomas, USVI, get a bird’s-eye view of capital city, Charlotte Amalie, on the Paradise Point St. Thomas Skyride. The high-flying gondola ride takes about seven minutes to reach its destination, some 700 feet above the harbor. Time your arrival at the top for one of the twice-daily exotic bird shows. Then head over to the east end of the island to Coral World Ocean Park, where kids can get up close with sea lions, turtles and starfish and see twice-daily shark feedings – from the dry side of the tank.
(59) Give the kids an eye-opening experience with eco-tour operator Alltournative Offtrack Adventures, in Mexico’s Riviera Maya. There are plenty of excursions to choose from (kids must be 6 or older); the Maya Adventure tour combines a climb at the Cobá Maya ruins and time spent in a traditional Maya village with a zip line, a cenote swim and a canoe trip. Finish the day with a lunch prepared by women from the Maya community.
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(60-64) When the sunburn strikes, expose the kids to some stone-walled history at one of the many colonial forts on the islands, including Fort Shirley in Dominica, Fort George in Grenada, Brimstone Hill in St. Kitts and El Morro in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
(65) Dunn’s River Falls is one of Jamaica’s best-known attractions, and for good reason. Adventurous kids can tag along with mom and dad on a guided tour. You’ll form a hand-to-hand human chain as you make the dizzying 600-foot climb to the top, weaving through crystal-clear pools and mini waterfalls along the way. Be sure to wear sturdy shoes – and visit on a Friday if you can; with no cruise ships in town, you’ll have the place practically to yourselves.
(66) All aboard the St. Kitts Scenic Railway, aka the Sugar Train, for a leisurely three-hour tour of the island. The narrow-gauge rail line (the last of its kind in the Caribbean) was built between 1912 and 1926 to haul sugar cane from field to factory. Today, it rolls on as a double-decker, open-air sightseeing express. Cars trundle through small towns, where local kids wave happy hellos, and through abandoned fields of waving sugar cane. Serenades by a three-person a cappella choir and free beverages and sugar cake make the trip all the sweeter.
(67) If you’re on Providenciales, in the Turks and Caicos, with kids who want to see the reef but are too young to snorkel, try the semi-submersible Undersea Explorer. Passengers descend a narrow ladder into the belly of the boat, about five feet below the water’s surface, and the hull has plenty of picture windows from which to spy on schools of jackfish, slow-moving sea turtles and nearby stands of fire and brain coral.
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