Renting an island not just for the rich

(CNN) -- Lori Hyde was hunting for a unique vacation experience when her curiosity was piqued by Pretty Joe Rock, a tiny speck of land in the waters off Marathon in the Florida Keys with just enough room for a two-bedroom home and a few clusters of mangroves.

She and her husband spent a week on the petite island in February, relaxing and enjoying each other's company, with no one else around but the resident birds.

"I was looking for a rental that would be private so that came up as I was searching around and we were like, well it can't get much more private than that," said Hyde, 43, a stay-at-home mom who lives in Woodbridge, Virginia.

"It's not an exclusive sort of thing. We're just ordinary people who just did something cool."

Indeed, the idea of renting a private island usually conjures up images of multimillionaires spending a fortune to jet off to a tropical paradise in the Caribbean or the South Pacific. If you have a lot of money to shell out, the possibilities are endless.

But while a big budget will give you more options and luxurious accommodations, you don't have to be rich to rent your own island for a vacation. It can sometimes take as little as a few hundred dollars a week, a sense of adventure and the willingness to look at locations closer to home.

Pretty Joe Rock, for example, can be yours for under $3,000 a week, which includes the use of a boat to get you to and from the island. Owner Bob Rainek said he gets a broad spectrum of renters, from blue collar to white collar; from families with kids to couples.

"It's almost a universal thing that people have this romantic kind of feeling for islands," Rainek said. "It's a mystique to be on your own private island, to have water 360 degrees [around you.] It's a primal type emotion, as I look at it."