Good tour guides straight off the ship??

[scomar]

I was talking with a Puerto Rico expert from a well known site that gives advice on trips from ordinary people and they said to just get a guide straight off the ship at San Juan's port. They said you can get a much better price then reserving from a guide company online. Has anyone done this and did you have a good experience with them? I posted this here because the response is greater then posting in the ports board.

Thanks to all who reply

[ldog]

I don't know about Puerto Rico but in most Caribbean ports that is so. You are still going with "luck of the draw" and you could get a dud but... what the heck. It's an adventure.

[Cqis]

We took a tour we booked through the cruise line In San Juan. When the tour was over we walked through the district near the ship. We found out that there is a FREE bus that takes you to all the sights. We took the bus and did the tour again at our leisure. Talk to the people on the street. It was an ice cream vendor that gave us the information and even directed us to some sites close by that were not on the tour.One was the Miracle
House.

Cely

[Randyk47]

This kind of opens up the discussion of the relative benefits and risks of using a non-ship sponsored tour or guide but without going into that I'll have to say we have used non-ship guides without any problem. The one we really enjoyed was in Dominica with Harold Francis. He's basically a "cab" driver and he took my wife and I on an incredible up close and personal tour of his island. Quite interesting and a real view into daily life on a small Caribbean island.

[taxmantoo]

There are certainly lots of tour guides when you get off in San Juan. We noticed that for the most part they all had the same uniform (maybe 2 or 3 different companies each with their uniform). Their cabs/buses all looked the same. We did not take any of them as we had reservations with Jose for the Segway Tour. Jose told me that the guides were all licensed by the city/state and they adhere to strict regulations.

By the way, the Segway tour is fantastic. Check out the Puerto Rico boards where you can see many excellent reviews.