As I mentioned earlier, we had been to all of the ports in the Caribbean before. When this happens, we may elect to just stay on the ship.
The pros to staying on the ship when most people are heading to the port – sleeping late because you don’t have to be up for an excursion, a leisurely breakfast in the main dining room, uncrowded pools and hot tubs, faster bar service, spa appointments easier to get, more seats in the Lido, and shorter lines at the restaurants.
The negatives – the shops and casino are not open while in port, ship activities are limited, the crew drills might happen so you have to put up with the loud announcements and very loud alarms (but I am glad they do them since we will depend on them in case of a real emergency), and you miss the experience of exploring the port.
Grand Turk – I can highly recommend snorkeling, a tour of the island, walking down the beach to Jack’s Shack, or just relaxing/swimming/snorkeling or shopping at the beach/pool area right next to the ship. We’ve had fun doing all of those activities in Grand Turk.
We were going to get off the ship and just snorkel in the area next to the ship, but it was so windy that the water looked too murky and choppy for snorkeling. Instead, we stayed on the ship and had the pool almost to ourselves. Later that afternoon, we participated in some general knowledge trivia. We weren’t winners but we weren’t terrible.
San Juan – We have taken the Old San Juan city tour including the two forts. We did it on Segways but there are other methods too. We also hiked in the tropical rainforest – El Yunque. And, we have enjoyed strong coffee and quesitos near the port. We have never been to the beaches there. Today, we spent most of the day poolside.
St. Thomas – I can recommend snorkeling, an island tour, and shopping in St. Thomas. If you do an island tour, be sure you take something for car sickness if you are prone to it because the climb up and down the mountains are very twisty and the local drivers go pretty fast.
We were going to do an excursion here – a HAL boat ride over to St. Johns and snorkeling there. But the excursion got cancelled. This cancellation was probably the 3rd time that we have signed up for this particular excursion only to have it cancelled for one reason or another. Instead, Chuck slept in and I went to the gym (my one and only time 😒). The rest of the day was spent poolside.
Half Moon Cay (HMC) – This Cay is Carnival Corporations’ private island in the Bahamas. It was once owned solely by Holland America but became Carnival’s when the Corporation took over Holland America. It is currently a tender port which means that the ship anchors away from the island and smaller boats shuttle people from the boat to the island and back. I think the beach is one of the softest and prettiest I have ever seen (Grand Cayman 7-mile beach being one of the other ones).
I’m not a huge fan of tender ports because you have to wait for an available tender, the lines to get on and off the tenders can be long, and stepping on/off the tenders can be tricky if the waves make the tenders bob up and down too much. The tender boats can be small too, especially if they have to use the ship’s life boats. HMC has its own double-decker tenders which are pretty large so they can cram a lot of people on each one (which they do).
If I know there are going to be tender ports (the itinerary will show you which ports are tender before you book a cruise), and I really want to see the port, I will either take a HAL excursion (they have priority on tenders) or I won’t plan anything and just go to the port when the rush has died down. I have heard too many stories of people missing their independent scheduled tours because the tender process took too long.
Today, we and our Canadian friends decided to take our snorkel gear and go to the island to snorkel in the beach area. We were sharing the island with another HAL ship – the Rotterdam – which got to the island first. I was concerned that we would have a hard time finding loungers because of the crowds. We did have to walk farther down the beach than planned, but we did eventually find loungers.
We donned our snorkel gear and entered the water. Crap – the water was much colder than I expected. Our Canadian friends thought nothing of it. Eventually we made it out deep enough to snorkel. I was surprised at the number of fish there were, but I was not surprised that the variety of fish was minimal.
We stayed on the island until 1:00. We didn’t participate in the free Bar-B-Que island lunch (but it did smell great). We ate a late lunch at the ship’s Dive-In burger place. The afternoon was spent by the pool.
HMC was the last port before we returned to Fort Lauderdale to start the second half of this B2B cruise.
Next up – The ports of the February cruise – Western Caribbean
