Ctravelwriter

THANK YOU for all the info guys! It is much appreciated. :D

It gets confusing when dealing with so many islands - and islands such as Tahiti that aren't actually countries - but you've been really helpful. :-)

Any other info still gratefully received, of course, if anyone else has anything to add!

For someone looking for a place of Caribbean beauty Maho would not have been my suggestion to you especially given the sheer number of cruisers and holiday vacationers that would have been on the island. Le Galion, Anse Marcel or Grand Case would have made for a much nicer day for you I think. We like renting a car and heading to Grand Case when on a cruise stop. It's a lovely old fishing village that now has many restaurants and small boutiques and cafes. Beaches not inundated with cruisers are much easier accessed when you have a car as well. To me St. Maarten is a great place for a vacation because its easy and relatively safe even at night getting around, and all of the great dining choices as well. I too would have hated to be at Maho and of course that awful drive back on my cruise stop day as well.

Oh, we did go round the whole island before Maho! Sorry if I wasn't clear. And I've been there before and explored it all. Grand Case is fairly nice ... but still, I haven't seen anywhere on the whole island that isn't overdeveloped and overcrowded (and I always go way off the beaten track), or even very picturesque, compared with the rest of the Caribbean. I've been lucky enough to visit a HUGE amount of the Caribbean, and it's definitely right at the bottom of the list, sorry... :-( And the whole of the Caribbean is safe and easy with incredible food, and far more beautiful, although there are a few bits of Jamaica and Trinidad that I'd exercise a bit more awareness in. I guess, for us, St. M was fairly pointless to visit or for a holiday, as it looks 'just like anywhere else', has those awful traffic problems, is vastly overdeveloped and seems to have lost most of its identity. I'm afraid I'm with the famous writer who described the island as "a graceless monument to vulgarian greed". We couldn't get out of there fast enough! Still, each to their own!

The bridge had JUST opened, I believe the day before (they were still finishing off the roundabouts at one end!). So, when we reached that junction, there were definitely people who were using the bridge pouring onto the road too, without it apparently easing the problem... Sadly I think it was just pure volume of people. Eight or nine - or even five or six - ships is just too many, for everybody's sake (and in our opinions, St M was definitely not worth bothering with at all in any case!). That day was a horrible picture of what the Caribbean will turn into if reasonable measures aren't take to prevent overdevelopment and overuse...

There will be an ABUNDANCE of taxis waiting to take you to Nelson's Dockyard the minute you get off the ship, don't worry! There will also be loads waiting around at Nelson's Dockyard - it's a very 'developed' place these days (maybe too developed!) and you won't have any problems at all. There was a whole rank waiting there when I went recently.

The other thing is that your driver might want to wait for you and take you back again when you're done anyway. They often prefer that (and it's not like a cab elsewhere where you'd be paying for all that time in between).

To be honest, it won't make much difference as either way you'll be sitting in a traffic jam for most of the day! I was there two weeks ago - there were NINE cruise ships in port - and it was awful. We didn't like the island at all in any case (except for Marigot), but the traffic definitely made it worse.

It took two hours to get from Maho beach back to the cruise port, a journey which usually takes 30 minutes. A LOT of people were late for their ships that day.

The island is very easy to navigate and the roads are fine, so it just kinda depends whether you want to sit in traffic jams just with your family or with a few others/a local taxi driver!!

Hello!

Hope this is in the right place.

My head is about to explode, trying to research this. I'm trying to find out which cruise(s) visit as many as possible of the 11 actual countries of the Pacific Islands (not counting Aus and NZ). So, the actual countries being the Marshall Islands/Solomon Islands/Palau/Tuvalu/Vanuatu/Kiribati/ Micronesia/Samoa/Tonga/Nauru (yes, I know I missed off Fiji!).

For the purposes of this query, the specific islands or ports visited within those countries is irrelevant. I'm just after finding out which cruise/itinerary visits the most Oceania countries!

Thanks in advance for all help. :-)

Caroline