Shore Excursions/Port
Visits
A part of cruising experience is also to visit places like West and East Carribean
ports, Hawaii & Bahamas which are famous for their nice, world class beaches and
historical places. You can either opt to take Shore Excursions arranged by the Cruise
line for a good price and avoid or plan your itinerary by researching on places
to visit that can save a lot of money compared the earlier option.
Carnival Ecstasy lands on to famous ports like Cozumel and Progresso. There are
other cruise lines which has schedules to go to 7 ports on 7 days, a port/day. That
would be little hectic but you can still have fun if you plan properly. You will
better off doing your own research about the places your cruise is going and plan
your day around it instead dedicated by the cruise lines.
The only downside of arranging your own schedule, you will only have shorter period
to do anything and you got to plan to return back to cruise on time. Cruise lines
won't wait for you. If you went with cruise arranged excursions, they will wait
for the group to come back.
We visited two ports Cozumel and Progress on Carnival Ecstasy. I planned my two
days in advance and it worked out well. The Carnival shore excursions were not recommended
by many veteran cruisers for lot of reasons. They are expensive to start with, crowded,
time limitations and you can't have time alone. That's we choose to do our own.
For your benefit, here the
Excurions Price list for Carnival Ecstasy for Cozumel and Progreso.
Let me share my plan. First Port Cozumel, (Cozumel
Map) we decided to check out beautiful beachs so we choose the beach which
was recommended by many regular cruisers, Paradise Beach. We spent the whole day relaxing, playing
some fun games like volley ball, tree climing, took beach rides and experience the
thrill of our life time. We went Kayaking together (all 3 of us with my toddler
son). We also tried Water Jet Skiing and had a blast. Food and Customer service
was friendly and good. Bathrooms and change rooms were clean and well maintained.
I would strongly recommend checking out the beaches which are not public. You can
also take snorkling, scuba diving seperately from this beaches.
Cozumel
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section for more flyers.
Progresso(Progresso map) is our second
port. We didn't have concrete plan but do want to visit a ruins & historic places.
We went to the town via city bus, took town bus tour which wasn't that great as
we expected. Then we took a cab for $40 roundtrip to near by ruin called Dzibilchaltun.
It was so hot when we reached the place. We checked out some old temples and got
back to town again. Had our lunch and cooled off little by having Tender coconut
for $2 which I strongly recommend. We took the city bus and boarded the ship back
on time.
To see some more useful flyers and pamphlets for Parks and Fun places in our collection,visit
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