Doh15

We were in PR recently and visited El Yunque twice (once inside the park boundaries to hike and once outside the park to swim in a river). We enjoyed both experiences but I wonder a little what the excursion includes (seems like you should have a few hours in the park but not sure how they organize that, or not) and I don't know how to judge if it's worth organizing your trip home around.

I agree. Once in a while it seems like they provision locally and those are usually good but it's still pretty limited.

Not to beat a dead horse, but the layering thing is very true. Particularly on excursions I might have had 3-4 layers on my torso at some points and I would keep taking them off and putting them back on based on whether the sun was out, or we were just sitting on the bus or what.

I would think you could also ask to sit by yourself in Amphora if you wanted.

We did this recently as a last minute thing and really liked it more than we expected even (we did not miss any ports). A cruise is not the same as a land tour but we didn't realize before we took the trip how difficult it would have been to see the places we saw by land. We really liked the Westfjords and the Westmann Islands, for example, and those would take a lot of effort to see on your own. We also got the chance to do some decent hikes to waterfalls and it felt reasonably active. So without diminishing the benefits of a land tour I think the cruise offers at least competing benefits. The yacht club did get a little crowded at times but I don't recall ever really being frustrated. We did sometimes bundle up outside. Didn't mind the bus rides- a couple excursions had long rides to and fro through pretty countryside and a couple had 3 or 4 stops where you had to get on/off the bus to see multiple sites which lets you see a lot but also gets a little old I think.

Tier III NOx is pretty clean-- about 1/4 the emissions of Tier II-- but I think the Norwegian fjords are now zero emissions areas, meaning only electrically powered boats are allowed.

We did AMA and aren't very social-- we like to be polite and it's nice to have the occasional conversation to find out where people are from, but for better or worse we are on the cruise to spend time with people we know, not try to make new friends. Not sure if our cruise was particularly undersold but we had no problems eating by ourselves-- we generally took a booth which seats 4 and no one ever joined us. And yes, on excursions and in the lounge it was no issue to smile and nod and people and not really engage if you didn't feel like it.

We did this years ago and had a great trip-- it was just four of us on the boat with a captain (who was a wine expert) and his wife (who was an excellent chef). I just looked and it seems like they have traded up in boats and it now costs $30-40k for a week (depending on how many of you there are-- it has 3 cabins so a max of 6 people), but I am sure it would be great if that's your budget. https://www.charterbarge.com

Update for what it’s worth— our ship seemed to use an apple monitor as a screen for the cabin. Maybe in theory it would have been possible to connect my iphone using a usb port but in practice it did not seem to be (although admittedly I did not spend much time investigating it).

I was very impressed with the full sliding door/window on the Ama french balcony. Would have no problem booking that again.

Ama on the Rhine has a nice mix of options including some hikes (2-6 miles) and some bike tours (10-20 miles).

Thank you for for answering my question but also just generally for all of the information and updates!

How far up and down the river is boat traffic banned based on that gauge?

Interesting, thanks! (It would have never occurred to me either to ask them for help taking the tv off the wall or to bring a universal remote.) We do have iphones, although aircast doesn’t always work for us even at home, but if anyone has experience using those would be interested to hear.

Does anyone know if it's possible to connect a phone to a tv on Amawaterways (via a HDMI cable or even casting)? Not a big deal either way but we might download some movies to a phone if we could. thanks