Fletcher

Tokyo offers very little for the tourist. I'd go to Kyoto for the ancient culture and Japanese gardens.

Kersh - Your original post shows precisely why huge ships like Arcadia are so wrong for these islands. They can't go anywhere except deep water ports and leave their passengers stranded. Next time consider a smaller ship, perhaps like the Paul Gauguin.

Oh, and good luck finding an aircon taxi on Bora Bora!

Do not wonder off by yourself. These creatures run free on the island. That is why you will see in the village that the houses are built up off the ground. The dragons kind of stay where they are suppose to, but I did not see any barriers keeping them there. They are so called in the wild. You don't want to be close to one without one or two park rangers to sacrifice themselves to save you. These lizards can bring down a deer. They can move as fast as a dog runs. This is not a zoo like Singapore or San Diego. That is what makes it interesting and something not to be missed if you are in this part of the world. Just be safe.

The houses are built on stilts for two reasons - as protection from snakes and flooding. The graves of villagers are covered in sharp coral to deter the dragons from digging up the dead.

While it's true that dragons have attacked people on very rare occasions, they pose no threat in the same way that a lion or an elephant might in the wild. They tend to grab the leg of a deer or a buffalo and wait until the poor thing dies of blood poisoning and then the dragon eat it at leisure, the deader, smellier and fly-ridden and maggoty the better. They are fairly disgusting creatures.

Will be passing you by somewhere! I am on the PG September 10, 2014.

Also on board this September and am going to the Australs. I would love to see any ship go the the Gambier Islands. This is my 6th trip and to find new places keeps it fresh.

 

 

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Zegrahm Expditions are chartering a luxury expedition ship called Caledonian Sky and that's going to the Gambiers as well as Pitcairn and the Marquesas next September 2014.

Mmmm . . . the Windstar itineraries don't look too interesting, though I have been to FP many times and always hope for something new. The cruises do seem cheap, though, perhaps to entice people away from PG for the first year.

I've located this shot of my visit to Komodo with our poor goat walking to its doom:

Thanks for that, Cassicruiser!

When we went to Komodo first-time round we stayed at a little hotel in Labuanbajo on the island of Flores. We went over to Komodo on the local police launch - just the two of us plus two Japanese photographers. We were the only tourists on the island.

At the Flores hotel was a BBC group which included the author Douglas Adams. They had just come back from a 3 or 4-day stay on Komodo itself and had some hair-raising tales about rats and snakes. They took their own food which included a number of live chickens and these birds were in a sort of basket which they lifted out of their boat and placed on the jetty. Within seconds a dragon appeared from nowhere, grabbed a chicken and vanished.

It seems so tame today!

In all honesty, going to Komodo on a big ship is not the way to go and I hope UNESCO threaten to withdraw the island from their World Heritage List as the Indonesian government have turned it into a circus. It just sounds appalling. I'm going back there on a ship early next year - 100 passengers, having sailed up from Auckland, and we are not bothering with Komodo itself. We are going to the neighbouring island of Rinca to see the dragons there.

When I first went to Komodo in 1990, we had an incredible 'up close and personal' experience - you had to buy a goat from the village and feed it to the dragons - and I thought then that I didn't want to see another dragon ever again. They are impressive, yes, but also disgusting things. We could smell their breath. In fact, there was the stench of death everywhere. And the snakes! More snakes than anywhere on Earth we were told.

Anyway, I going back and I'm greatly looking forward to it. The landscape around these islands is dramatically beautiful and the snorkelling world class.

You often see dragons on the beaches and they are excellent swimmers. Because so many cruisers visit Komodo these days the animals have become much more brazen and forage among the rubbish left on the beaches by the trippers.

Apia is quite a charming place, though inward investment by the Chinese is changing things - hopefully for the better but there's a hideous big Chinese bank right on the waterfront. The town itself has some old buildings, a lovely cathedral, a market and the legendary Aggie Grey's Hotel - modernised but still a nice place to have a drink and maybe even use the pool. The thatched fales in the grounds have names like Marlon Brando and William Holden who used to come over here from Hollywood.

Slightly out of town is Robert Louis Stevenson's house, Vailima. Don't think for a moment the house is original or looked like that in the 1880s. It's a complete reconstruction. You can walk up the hill to see RLS's grave. It's one helluva climb and not to be done if it's wet.

Snorkelling isn't great here and probably not worth getting wet. However, if you're desperate about the only place on this island, Upolu, is the Palolo Deep Marine Reserve, on the outskirts of Apia.

We've been here a few times and have always rented a car. Driving around the island is very easy and there are some of the South Pacific's best beaches on the south coast - the area around Saleapaga and Lalomanu is especially beautiful.

If you visit on a Sunday the whole country goes to church and most businesses are closed.

Rent a car and drive around the island. While not scenic in the Moorea sense, the island has some beautiful beaches and you also get to see some traditional Tongan villages. There is a bizarre neolithic site and the main town is pretty shabby and uninteresting, tobe honest, apart from the Royal Palace which is about the only 'must-see.' As far as snorkelling is concerned, Tonga has world class reefs in the Haapai Group and Vavau. Big ships can't go there.

Hello Bowie - We chose Fox Glacier over Franz Josef as we really wanted to photograph Lake Matheson. There is a lively Forum on NZ over on TripAdvisor -

http://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowForum-g255104-i125-New_Zealand.html

and if you scroll through that you will find masses of reliable info and quite a few opinions about various places. I found it indispensable when planning our trip.

The weather is the big issue on the South Island so I would always urge people to stay at least 3 days in Fiordland to have a chance of a nice day or two. We never went to Queenstown as we thought it looked much too big and resorty for us. So we stayed at a rather pricey but lovely place called Fiordland Lodge near Te Anau. But your cruise is doing these places so you may not want to stay here as well.

We liked Dunedin - interesting architecture and there's a penguin and albatross colony nearby that's worth seeing. The winelands around Blenheim are lovely and provide lots of opportunities to visit wineries. Blenheim itself is dullsville - we stayed for 3 days at a nice self-catering place called Vintner's Retreat and shopped and cooked (and drank) for ourselves. Our view was of the Cloudy Bay label for real. The nicest town up there is Nelson. We actually thought of leaving the UK and going to live there.

The World Heritage Site on the North Island, Tongariro, is a spectacular volcanic landscape and is probably a scenic drive-through rather than a stay. The offshore islands are uninhabited wildlife zones that used to be regular stops for a cruise ship called Orion which has recently been bought by the US operator Lindblad.

To be perfectly frank, Bowie, NZ is not a country you will need a guide. They speak English, things are very well signposted, the maps are great, the sightseeing hotspots are beautifully organised . . . driving around here is an absolute doddle. And also, ahem, there really isn't that much to see except the scenery - NZ is not a country where you can think of a single building that's world famous. It doesn't have any cultural meccas, or Roman ruins, or a Louvre, or a Great Wall. It has masses and masses of scenery, wild stretches of coastline, mountains, fiords, penguins, albatrosses, vineyards, some pleasant towns, an appealing capital at Wellington (good museum there).

We started in Christchurch and then did a sort of figure-of-eight and ended up in Auckland - you'll need to change cars between the islands if you rent from someone like Avis or Hertz.

A lot of people cruise around NZ and have a great time. Bowie's trip on the Oceanic Discoverer is the perfect way to do it - a small ship like that can get to so many interesting places.

Personally, having both cruised and driven around NZ, I think it's more of a land-based country because the roads and accommodations are exemplary and also because several companies offer either day-trips or overnighters on boats around Fiordland.

Our driving trip took 4 weeks. It took weeks of research to get our route finalised and then we booked everything up my email. We never used a travel agency and stayed in a mixture of motels, self-catering and luxury lodges.

After that we took a cruise to the Bay of Islands and then up to Melanesia.

My only regret is not getting to the Chatham Islands - any cruise which goes there would be brilliant.

These ships are really quite unsuited to these islands - too big to get people ashore in most places and if they ever do succeed in landing people then there are too many people on the island! Useless.

We rented a car and drove ourselves around. The main coastal road is fairly new, funded by the Chinese, and in excellent condition. We drove up to the village of Mero, had a quick dip in the sea from the lovely black sand beach, then drove up to Portsmouth and Fort Shirley. While not as spectacular as Brimstone Fort in St Kitts, this fort is well worth seeing and the views across the bay are magnificent. After that we drove back down the coastal road, then inland to the Trois Pitons National Park, a World Heritage Site. To be frank, we were a little underwhelmed by the emerald pool and waterfall but the overall scenery is arguably the most dramatic in the Caribbean. We dropped the car off in Roseau and walked around the town - if you have a liking for colonial architecture you are in for a treat. Roseau was a wonderful place to stroll around for an hour. All in all, a great day.

xxx

This could be good news - and perhaps unwelcome competition for Paul Gauguin. There is room for another operation in FP and personally I think the PG itineraries are a little tame and unimaginative. A new operation could do regular Marquesas trips (in competition with Aranui) and also perhaps an Australs trip and even a trip to Mangareva-Gambiers and on to Pitcairn.

Mmmm . . . I was a bit perplexed by St Lucia and that's why I booked the Ambrose trip which turned out to be barely OK - about 5/10. For me, booking a tour is a bit of a defeat as we really like doing our own thing and on Antigua, St Kitts, Dominica, Martinique and Barbados we rented a car and had no trouble at all. However, I was put off doing that in St Lucia because so many people on here talked about the terrible state of the roads. Well, St Lucia's roads are no better and no worse than anywhere else so if I went back (which I won't) I would definitely rent a car. That way I wouldn't have to stop at Ambrose's trinket stalls and snake charmer rubbish.

We visited Guadeloupe on our cruise two weeks ago. We usually do our own thing but this time we took a ship's tour which was a sort of 'Island Panorama.' We went to a market at Ste-Anne where we bought Mango jam (our only purchase on the entire trip). There was a beach here and some of us went swimming, though it was crowded out with locals. We drove on to Pointe des Chateaux which was truly spectacular - an amazing seascape with Atlantic rollers crashing in. There is a large memorial cross here on the hill and we were promised we could walk up to it = no chance unless you have at least an hour here. On the way back there was a short stop at an incredible cemetery, Morne-a-l'Eau, which rivals those in Argentina.

We really liked this trip, even though it should have been longer, and we liked the look of Guadeloupe - in fact, of the ten Caribbean islands we visited this is the only one we'd readily return to. Problem is, there doesn't seem to be a single decent hotel.

An unpleasant beach, in my view, man-made, shelving, murky water. The resort is probably OK - the pool looked beautiful - but I can't see why anyone would pay this sort of room rate and have that overcrowded, busy beach and no privacy. The hotel rents out sun loungers for $50 each, cheaper ones without any shade for $10. The area reserved for day-trippers is seriously grotty. We gave up on the beach entirely and had a lovely lunch at the hotel for about $150 including a nice bottle of wine.

We booked online a Spencer Ambrose tour for US$90 each and took the tour 2 weeks ago. This included a drive down the island to Soufriere, then a boat to Jalousie Beach where we would stop for two hours and have lunch, then a speedboat trip back up the island to Castries. This seemed like good value for money. And so it proved, sort of.

Spencer himself was at the dock to meet us. He had the ‘flu, which freaked us out a bit because cruise passengers live in fear of anyone who sneezes. Luckily, Spencer was not our driver for the day: our driver’s name was Small and already on board his MPV was a nice couple from Canada who were staying at a resort.

Our stops on the way to Soufriere weren’t exactly exciting: a banana plantation was really just a roadside trinket stall but we did get a banana to eat. Next was in the middle of a village where Small fetched us a bag of freshly baked bread which is apparently some sort of local speciality. It was merely bread. We passed a road accident and I might mention here that Small’s driving was appalling: he was on the rev limiter almost all the time, he aggressively tail-gated a learner driver for several miles and, worst of all, he refused to allow another MPV to pass so we hurtled up a hill side by side at 60mph. It was shockingly bad driving.

We went into the so-called Drive-In Volcano. It had a mild sulphurous smell, trinket stalls and was a complete waste of time. The waterfall was even less impressive: a modest trickle and they’d had to damn up the river with bags of concrete to create an unattractive bathing pool.

We drove straight through Soufriere and had no opportunity to explore the town. Then we got on Spencer’s speedboat and headed around into Jalousie Beach, between the famous Pitons. This beach is basically man-made, with imported sand, and an artificial shelf. Much of it is taken up by the resort - once the Jalousie Hilton, now stupidly renamed Sugar Beach by its new owners, Viceroy. There is a cramped, crowded, hot and inarguably grotty area reserved for ‘plebs’ like us who arrive on day-trips. There was absolutely no way we could spend two hours there - and Spenser’s food looked like total slop - so we walked over to the hotel and had a lovely lunch in their beachfront restaurant. The beach was uninviting so we didn’t bother to swim, though the hotel did offer to rent us a sun lounger for $50 each.

Two hours later we set off in Spencer’s speedboat - there was the two of us, the two Canadians and eight others. This two-hour trip back to Castries was excellent, giving wonderful island views, and was the highlight of the tour.

Overall I’d give the day 5/10. Spencer’s outfit was well-organised; Small was an excellent guide and a bad driver; the lunch looked disgusting; the sightseeing stops were frankly a waste of time and even the Pitons were merely as we expected, lacking the wow factor because of the large numbers of tourists and a lot of crass commercialisation: this should never have been given World Heritage Site status.

Just a note that a pier is being built on the island for cruise ships so expect a lot more visitors. The better lace to visit will be Rinca which is doing no such thing.

That's appalling news - maybe UNESCO should consider dropping Komodo off its World Heritage list. The very thought of 2000+ passengers arriving on one ship is not only disheartening it means that none of those passengers will have anything like an authentic experience - you might as well go and see a dragon in a zoo.

You are right about Rinca - that's the place to go nowadays. I expect the dragons on Komodo will all swim over there . . .

Flowers2 and others - my contact at the Sugar Beach/Jalousie Hotel has now confirmed there was an error in the earlier email - the $50 armband plan does NOT include transport to the hotel from Castries. Transport to the hotel, she says, is by public water taxi at a rate to be mutually agreed by passenger and driver. The $50 still seems like a good deal as that includes $25 credit at the beach restaurant and use of the hotel's sun loungers but not the swimming pool. Sorry if I have misled anyone . . .

Did your email specificall mention that the $50 "day pass" specifically included the r/t boat trip? That would be absolutely incredible if that were the case.

I emailed the hotel back to clarify, asking if the boat from Castries ran to a schedule and if the cost was included in the $50. This is exactly what they said:

"The water taxi service is ran daily at day break till sunset, however, the charges are included in the US$50 charge for the day pass."

From that I assumed the boat trip was included in the price . . .

My current plan is to email them a day or two before we arrive and book a day room and use the pool - we're not especially interested in using the beach, which is far too developed for our taste, but we do want to admire the scenery.