carriepride

On 2/13/2020 at 7:11 PM, mimmy52 said:

Found my excursion group and the buses were nearby.  A couple of photos taken from the bus on the way to the caves.  There's that pointy hill I saw from the ship

 

 

The cave is near the airport

 

 

One of the things mentioned on the bus was Mancinella trees.  They are extremely poisonous and we were not to touch any part of them, not the bark, not the fruit.  The fruit is the size of a cherry but is green and looks as if it would be hard like an apple.  A Mancinella tree

 

 

There was a pavilion that served drinks and snacks and had a free bathroom.  We waited while some folks made the trip.

 

The tour description warned there are 50 steps to enter Hato Caves but there's a hand rail.

 

At the cave entrance

 

Looking down

 

well someone must have touched that poisonous tree to string lights on it!! guess they used gloves.....

for St. Johns Antigua, we are booked through Nexus Tours (via Viator) on the Island Safari and Stingray City tour. https://www.viator.com/tours/St-Johns/Island-Safari-and-Stingray-City/d22047-65562P9

For St. Lucia, we are doing the Soufriere by land and sea, booked through NCL.

For Barbados, we booked Breathtaking Wonders - Harrisons Cave and Hunte's Gardens, also through Viator.  https://www.viator.com/tours/Barbados/Breathtaking-Wonders-Harrisons-Cave-and-Huntes-Gardens/d30-23885P2

Tortola - the Virgin Gorda and the Baths tour through NCL, and on St. Thomas, just going to the Coral world ocean park excursion, again through the boat.

it's referred to as Stingray City on all the maps i've looked at.  We are going on NCL in March, and I booked a Land Safai and Stingray City combo tour through Viator.  You can Youtube it as well, some great videos out there.

My son and I just returned from a 7 day Mediterranean cruise on the NCL Epic and used Italy tours for two of our shore excursions - Best of Rome and Best of Florence & Pisa. Both tours were excellent - very much seen in a very compressed timeframe. You have to be prepared to move fairly quickly from site to site, but if your goal is to see as much as possible then these tours are excellent. Our driver in Rome, Joseph, was very charming, knowledgeable and and all around good guide very attentive to his passengers. The challenges with these very time intensive tours is that you need to be very respectful of the times you are asked to be back to the Van. It's a delicate balance of being given some free time to explore what you want to see and getting on to the next site. We had 2 instances in Rome where passengers did not return on time, and as a result we were not able to see one of the sites (the Pantheon). It was further complicated by the President Trump's visit to the Vatican on the same day in port, which the driver/tour company could not control. The Florence tour was also very good and we saw all the big highlights, and Pisa was also very cool. Great Tours, guides and drivers, and I highly recommend Italytours.eu.