Mar

30

Cruise Shore Excursions: There’s No Right Answer

Filed Under Cruise, Excursions, General, Tips | 3 Comments

For me, one of the best things about a cruise is the ports of call you get to visit. I guess that’s because I’m a traveler, first and foremost. Now, I love the on-board experience of a cruise, being at sea, the activities, entertainment, lazing by the pool and so forth. But for me, it’s the pleasure of arriving in a new place every couple of days and getting a taste of life there that I enjoy the most. Which leads to the eternal question: if I am only going to have a day - or less - in a place, how best to make the most of that time? Well, in my view, there is simply no surefire “best way” every time.

Case in point: When we took our three family generations on a 14 day Panama Canal cruise aboard Celebrity’s Summit a year ago, we kept changing port activities to get the process just right and just never really nailed it. In Aruba, I arranged on my own to rent a minivan for the day and we went off to the beach and exploring independently. That worked out great - Avis had a shady location right at the pier, we didn’t have far to walk, we reserved it all online, brought our own booster seats for the kids (Parents: sorry, you still can’t avoid the “gear”) and it was a great day at our own pace.

Conversely, in Puntarenas, Costa Rica, I had independently investigated and arranged for a van and driver for the day. This turned out to be way more complicated than it should have been. It started with a very long walk with the kids and seniors in tow (the pier in Puntarenas is one of the longest I have ever seen, jutting straight out from the town), it was very hot, the plans with the driver got messed up, and to top it off I had to go back to the cabin to get the booster seats for the kids because they didn’t have them - even though they said they would. And to put salt in the wound, those who had chosen excursions organized by the cruiseline had their transportation come right out to the gangway.

So we think “lesson learned” and pay handsomely to join a ship-organized excursion in Huatulco, just to keep it simple - in that desperate search for that happy medium. We get to Huatulco and - guess what - we have to walk forever, the air conditioning on the bus doesn’t work and it has to be 120F/50c in there. Everyone is complaining, and rightly so. It’s so hot that our little one essentially passes out and is sound asleep the whole time. They ultimately do scare up another bus and move us on to it, but in a small port there are only so many options and we were well past halfway through the tour by that time. And yes, having booked via the ship did give us the option to speak with them about it, but what good does that do when your time in port is only so long and what you really want is what you had planned?

So what’s the point of sharing these war stories? Well,  like it or not, when you travel this sort of stuff is reality. It’s easy to read brochures or do online research and just expect that there’s one right answer and it will always be perfect. But when you are travelling, that is rarely the case. The best idea is to make decisions based on what you think makes sense, and make the most of it as it happens.

The fact is that, despite the hiccups along the way, every port visit was tremendous and I would go back to each and every one of them (even those I have already been to several times). We had some amazing experiences, such as the girls releasing sea turtles at a rescue center south of Acapulco and seeing a flock of Costa Rican scarlett macaws near Jaco Beach. And we have family memories to last a lifetime.