Shore Excursions

[Spider 48]

We're taking our first Southern Caribbean Cruise with Ports in Aruba, Curacao, Dominica and St. Thomas. Should we sign up for any of the shore excursions or are we better off just touring on our own. Are there any particular shore excursions that we should NOT miss?

[lindleyjulie]

I would say arrange your own, in St Thomas taxis are waiting to take you to town $3 then you board another one and decide where you want to go we went to Magens Bay but then we like sunbathing cost about $5 each one tip the food and drink on the beach were very expensive next time we took a packed lunch from the Lido, on the return journey the taxis were on the beach $2 more, the view from the top of the hill is fab get your camera out. Dominica is great same thing walk to the end of the pier and they are shouting at you its a little like mayhem:eek: but this guy is sorting them all out you just tell him where you want to go we got sparky and skippy (one legged) they were great we negotiated a price remember they are very poor it worked out $10 cheaper than the ships tour and we arrived at every place around fiffteen minutes before the ships tour so it was not crowded we went to the emerald pool we also stopped in the rainforest and sampled some of Dominic's fruits with the locals very friendly and not under pressure at any time its easy we were a little worried about doing it at first and always cheked with front desk how safe we were in each country and we felt we were giving a little back into there country. Enjoy ;)

Julie:cool:

[OCruisers]

Spider .... We often take excursions offered by the ship in ports with "short" port stops. In ARUBA we took a HAL excursion that we enjoyed:

Review: DePalm Island "Ticket to Paradise" (Click Here) (http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=134665)
(Posted in the Ports of Call section under Aruba)

Happy Sailing! OCruisers :)