Travellingtaff

Thanks for your info would you be able t recommend any trips.We love the beaches but would like to see some of the other aspects of the carribean.

Depends what you like doing really. We get bored sitting on the beach for hours on end so we tend to have a good look around wherever we find ourselves.

Not sure which of the two Azura routes you are doing, but Tortola, St Maarten and St Lucia are common to both routes so I'll concentrate on those. This will be our first time to St Kitts, Bonaire and Curacao, so no experience as yet.

In Tortola it’s easy to walk around the town, we visited the Governor’s House; not much to see so we took an open bus/truck type of thing, which did an island tour, including a stop at Brewer’s Bay for swimming/eating. Then we cut across the island with beautiful views of the ship in the port below. Lots of these vehicles to-ing and fro-ing, from the port area, they leave as soon as they are reasonably full. This year we intend taking the ferry to Virgin Gorda on our own.

At St Maarten we caught a service bus to Marigot, which is the capital of the French side. (Hadn’t planned it, just saw the bus and jumped on!) The bus stops on demand so you don’t need to know about bus stops. Marigot is a nice place to visit. It has a small harbour, marina and plenty of shops and places to eat. If you just want to swim there’s a beach in Philpsburg, on the Dutch side, where the ship docks.

On our first time in St Lucia we took a tour with one of the mini buses waiting outside the port building. Drove down the coast to the Pitons , then inland to the Soufriere Volcano. This is probably the “signature tour” for first time visitors.

Last year we took a local shared taxi to Pigeon Island, which we may well do again this year as we liked it so much. http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Attraction_Review-g147342-d149211-Reviews-Pigeon_Island_National_Park-St_Lucia.html

Hope the above is of some interest, we have also done tours on Antigua, St Vincent, Grenada and Barbados, if you are interested.

Thanks for sharing Lodge 173 we are thinking about using the local transport,but am a bit scared if we were late and missed the ship. So we may just book excursions this time and to be on the safe side .Any advice gratefully received.

We are doing our first P&O cruise to the Caribbean on Ventura in January.

This is our 3rd cruise to the Caribbean, also been on cruises to the Far East, Alaska and South America and have never booked a ship's tour yet.

We have always been back in plenty of time, but you do get to hear of people being left behind and there are examples on You-tube, but these is very rare.

As far as the Caribbean ports are concerned there are taxis and mini-buses waiting outside the port, which you can share with other cruise passengers. Quite often, if a particular mini-bus needs 2/3 more people to fill it you can negotiate a cheaper rate.

Also, as a general rule of thumb, the further you walk away from the ship, the better the deal you will get. We found this particularly true in St Vincent and

Antigua.

Seasonal felicitations to one and all from good old Blighty. :o)

 

The Luvly Soozeesoo & I take our first P&O cruise just after Xmas and would appreciate any advice/tips any of you can give to maximise our "vacationing experience" ;-).

 

Many thanks to you all and stay afloat.

 

Capt. Kev.

There's Roll Call up and running on this cruise, should be a good place to start.

http://cruiseforums.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1895996