Excursions for southern carribean cruise

We're considering a cruise out of san juan to aruba, curacao(willemstad), dominica(roseau) and st thomas (charlotte amalie). What is a must see at these locations? TIA

Re: Excursions for southern carribean cruise

When I was in St Thomas I did the snorkeling trip to Trunk Bay in St. Johns. What a GORGEOUS BEACH! It was so worth it, so surreal.

It was only like a 3 hour excursion and left plenty of time for shopping in town!

Re: Excursions for southern carribean cruise

In St Thomas - we did the skyride which was pretty neat. We did our own thing though for most of the day -we took a cab shopping and then to Magens Bay Beach.

I've never been to Aruba on a cruise but, I've been there for vacation. There is really nice snorkelling there.

Re: Excursions for southern carribean cruise

I went on a cruise that stopped at Dominica and I just hired a local taxi driver there for a tour. Ridiculously cheap and SO GOOD.

Re: Excursions for southern carribean cruise

What cruise line are you going on - and what are the options? All the ships have many of the same tours - but they call them different names so giving you a name of the tour might not be very helpful unless you went on the same cruise line. Can you post what your choices are? Then I could help you better - also what kind of things are you looking to do? I have found that the land tours - are nice but often are a lot of touristy places with shopping time at the touristy shops with the trinkets and then you spend time waiting for people who can't make it back to the bus on time. Then there are a lot of tours where they take you to a hotel or specific beach either by bus, van or water taxi and those are basically a day at the beach - in many instances you are usually better to do those type activities on your own (since the tours are generally more expensive), then there are other tours - like catamaran with snorkeling, or scuba diving, jet ski type things, as well as more active land tours - that are more hiking or kyacking rather than shopping and sightseeing, finally there are also booze cruises - where they basically put you on a flat slow moving boat and they have a band or music and and serve rum punch or soda - then they make maybe one stop if they have a glass bottom, followed by a short beach stop (st thomas has one that DH and I did one time that was pretty fun). So it really depends on what your interests are and what you want to get out of the trip, relaxation, exercise, sightseeing.

On St thomas I have done several different tours (with Celebrity and princess- the two that I mentioned below several times, and then a jet boat tour and a booze cruise, as well as an island tour). The two that I recommend are:

Trunk Bay (on St John's) you take a ferry over to St Johns then open buses to the bay. It is an underwater preserve and has very nice snorkeling. You swim right off the beach. It is a nice calm bay with amazing blue water and there are even plaques for you to read if you want to know what you are looking at. If you don't want to snorkel it is still a nice beach to lay on and swim in the water.

I have also done another tour - which sometimes has more than one name - Buck island tour - it is a catamaran tour - which is a lot of fun and relaxing (they serve rum punch and you relax on the catamaran) - they take you to a cove off a deserted island and you snorkel right off the boat. I highly recommend this tour - I have done it thru different cruise lines and sometimes they have more than one tour going. I think there is sailboat (with some pirates name I can't remember) that goes as well as catamaran tours. Either one was good - but I preferred the catamaran. Anyway the cove is amazing and they have guides who get in the water with you and tell you what you are looking at. Not only did I see a TON of fish, but I saw a nurse shark, baby squid and many other fish.

Aruba - I have done a snorkeling tour (I do a lot of them on all the islands b.c I like the catamaran tours and love to swim and I have been to many of the islands several times so I have done land tours in the past). There is one tour that is a great time. It is a catamaran trip that takes you to two different snorkeling locations - a reef, and a shipwreck. Then they take you to the hotel strip beach and you get a bbq lunch at a restaurant on the boardwalk over the water. You then get a while to swim, walk the beach, do the water activities etc (basically free time) then they sail back. As with all of them they offer soda or rum punch and have music.

Re: Excursions for southern carribean cruise

In Puerto Rico, we did the El Yunque Rainforest tour, in St. Thomas we went to Maegan's Bay(gorgeous, warm water and perfect for relaxing on the beach) and in Aruba (we went there for our honeymoon so we stayed there but some rec's I have are): The Kuku Kanookoo bus, shopping in the town, ATV tour of the island, jeep tour of the island, and there was one more tour that we did that went to a private island off the coast but I can't remember the name of that tour-sorry! Aruba is gorgeous and I really feel like you can't go wrong even if you just isit on the beach all day!! Good luck!

Re: Excursions for southern carribean cruise

Message edited 4/21/2009 3:19:25 PM.

Re: Excursions for southern carribean cruise