Caving St Lucia
What are the best shore excursions on a South Caribbean Cruise?
I’m going on a South Caribbean Cruise in 2 weeks, and have noticed that numerous places where we are stopping do the activities that we would like to do. We are stopping at:
St Thomas
Dominica
Barbados
St Kitts
St Lucia
St Maarten
We would like to go zip lining and snorkeling. We are already signed up to go canyoning in Dominica, and are going to the Malibu factory and on a cave tour in Barbados. Where are the best places for zip lining and snorkeling? I’ve seen mixed reviews on the snorkeling conditions and stuff you see zip lining on the other stops.
We did the canopy tour/ziplines in Dominica – it was so much fun!! This was through WackyRollers. You may not be able to book this on your own, depending on which cruise line you’re sailing with. We were on Holland and did this excursion independently – we were the only two people on the excursion!
St. Lucia is the place to do an island tour. There are several very reputable companies you can book with. The tour is long and is over winding, narrow roads, however.
In Barbados, you can walk to some nice beaches or take a cab. There is also a company that will take you snorkeling with the turtles. Evidently, this is a very popular excursion and if you do it through the ship it will be a mob scene, from what I’ve read. When we were there, we just walked [a long walk] to Lobster Alive [next door to the beach "everybody" goes to] and it was very nice. Not good snorkeling, however, and by Noon it was becoming very noisy, with jetskis, etc.
If you’re in St. Thomas long enough, you can go over to St. John on your own, although this is a bit involved to do. The Linde Point Trail down to Salamon Bay Beach and Honeymoon Bay Beach was neat and the beaches were deserted, for the most part. No facilities whatsoever, though. We then hiked over to Caneel Bay and got a cab back to Cruz Bay for the ferry. St. Thomas can be absolutely mobbed, especially if there are more than a couple of ships in port – check the cruise port website [there are two ports in CA - Havensheight is much more convenient to do the trip to St. John].
In St. Marten, we grabbed a cab to the beach near the butterfly farm, while the rest of the people in our van were going to Orient Bay [which is where "everybody" seems to want to go]. There were very few people at our beach. There’s a little bar/cafe where you can rent a chair, but we just put our sheet down under some trees. Snorkeling here wasn’t great, either, although we didn’t go very far out.
You can get lots of great, current info about all your ports at CruiseCritic.com. Click on “Boards” then go to “Ports of Call”.
Meanwhile, back at the Batcave……..St. Lucia, 5/08