Expedition Cruise Excursions Questions

Hello everyone! I am planning my first cruise, and am considering an Expedition cruise, but I have a question about shore excursions on these cruises. Do all of them concentrate on wildlife/ natural history type things, or are there alternatives? My partner is not into that kind of thing at all, and I won't book anything that will bore him. Silversea seems to offer exactly the kind of experience we are looking for on a cruise, but I am concerned about this particular thing.

I am restricted to only a few NA ports, so I think I am stuck with the expedition cruises. It's a new for 2018 itinerary- Mazatlan to San Diego, so am just looking for general info about the shore excursions on the expeditions ships. We were planning originally on a similar Azamara voyage, but are willing to wait to have the Silversea experience, if we will both enjoy it.

I did trip reports on two expedition cruises (Svalbard 2011, and Panama Canal 2013) which include detailed accounts of the excursions. The 2011 one doesn't include pictures as I hadn't yet figured out how to post.

However, the 2013 cruise may be a better correlate to the trip you're considering, and that review does have pictures so you could get an idea of what the excursions entail. There is a fair bit of a difference, IME, between the excursions in Polar destinations vs non-Polar destination. The link to my review is in my signature below.

We are definitely big Silver Explorer fans and we're looking forward to another cruise on her next year.

Thanks so much- your reviews have been incredibly helpful. The Svalbard trip in particular sounds amazing. I am so sorry about your cameras-I realize this was quite some time ago, but it must have been incredibly frustrating.

The ship sounds lovely. Thanks again.

Thanks for your kind words. We eventually got new cameras, and now we are quite happy with them. But yes, it was not fun to lose both of them during the trip, when there was a lot of wildlife that we wanted to photograph! Thankfully the memory cards were not damaged, so we could recover the photos which were already on there.

Welcome to CC, by the way...just noticed that these are your first two posts.

Thanks for the warm welcome! I look forward to hearing about your India cruise in 2017.

We love the Explorer.We are in fact already booked on the Mazlatan/San diego cruise as well as the next to Vancouver in 2018.

Mostly the Excursions will be orientated to nature but some cruises definitely have some more conventional excursions such as the Explore's cruise around Cuba.

I have also done some cruise reports from the Explorer-

http://boards.cruisecritic.com.au/showthread.php?t=2275811

http://boards.cruisecritic.com.au/showthread.php?t=2264051

http://boards.cruisecritic.com.au/showthread.php?t=1887835&highlight=greenland

http://boards.cruisecritic.com.au/showthread.php?t=1814491&highlight=namibia

http://boards.cruisecritic.com.au/showthread.php?t=2106471&highlight=guam

I am sure you will enjoy it and possibly your partner will start to look at nature in a new light.

Thanks, Drron. I hope you enjoy the cruise. Thanks for the review links- they were helpful. I am still debating, but my partner is balking at driving to Mazatlan, which is a bore, but we'll see.

Thanks, Drron. I hope you enjoy the cruise. Thanks for the review links- they were helpful. I am still debating, but my partner is balking at driving to Mazatlan, which is a bore, but we'll see.

Well tell your partner be glad it is only a drive for you, for us it will be a least 3 flights. :)

The Silver Explorer is my favourite Silverseas ship.

There is that! We o have a European trip planned for the summer that will require three, so I feel your pain.