Active excursions?

[OnTheWater50]

We are in our 50's and active. We love to hike, walk, snorkel, & bike. We have been on 3 ocean cruises but have never had included excursions so we have generally booked our own private excursions. We are looking at the West Indies with Viking Ocean. How active are the excursions in general? Seems like they are mostly city tours - which is fine but I would like to plan ahead if we will want to book some private, more active excursions in addition to or instead of the included excursions. Thanks for the help!

[dln929]

http://www.vikingcruises.com/oceans/cruise-destinations/caribbean-north-america/west-indies-explorer/index.html#_

 

If you follow this link for Viking's itinerary you'll see the ports listed on the left, day by day. Click on each port to see what the included excursion is. Mostly driving tour with walking. When we were on the Star in January we walked a lot on our tours. ;)

[OnTheWater50]

Thanks, Deirdre. I have read some of your other posts (we have been on 2 Azamara cruises that we loved) and I think we travel in a similar style. I appreciate your input!

[dln929]

Thanks, Deirdre. I have read some of your other posts (we have been on 2 Azamara cruises that we loved) and I think we travel in a similar style. I appreciate your input!

 

Why thank you. I hope you do go ahead and try Viking Oceans. We found them on par with our Azamara cruises--all of which we thought were pretty wonderful. The crew is every bit as welcoming as you'd find on Azamara and the food? Well actually I thought it was better on Viking Star and that's saying A LOT. ;)

 

But back to your excursion question. You can call Viking directly and ask them if any of their "for extra fee" excursions offer something other than walking or driving (i.e., snorkeling on a catamaran). We've always had a good experience on the phone with Viking. They're very helpful.

[Lucky Granny]

Hi, I just returned from a not-Viking cruise in the West Indies (lol....we call it the Eastern Carribbean in the US) and it was beautiful. We were not beach people on that cruise so we booked tour-of-the-island excursions rather than the swim/snorkel or zipline types of excursions. We discovered that if you are not one one of those previously mentioned types of excursions, there is not much else to do on those islands but ride around and look. Most of our excursions drove us to the highest point on the island from where we looked down at the beauty below. All the islands were beautiful, but they were all pretty much alike in that aspect. I would suggest you look at the not-free excursions offered by Viking and also at the reviews on Trip Advisor of the private tours you might book. We did a private riding around tour on Antigua and probably saw the same things a similar ship excursion would have seen but at half the price. I do suggest that you do a ride-up-to-the-top excursion on one island because the skill of the drivers to navigate narrow roads and hairpin turns while meeting oncoming traffic is remarkable and the rainforests are beautiful.

Edited March 17, 2016 by Lucky Granny