The Baths Excursion

[beachgrl4sun]

Last summer Iwent there with my daughter. We booked with a private operator, and we were taken directly to Devil's Bay Beach by speedboats. They cruised in fairly close and we jumped onto the beach. We beat the cruise ships, and when we goth there, there were only two people on the beach. It was the best beach experience! The clearest water! Swimming through the boulders, seeing fish! We got there early, and because we were being picked up right from the beach, we had a longer day there. We had to wade out a bit into the water to get back on our boat. Then we were brought back to the ship area with drinks on the boat included. This was very memorable and one of the best excursions I have been on!:)

[HeatherC430]

You'll LOVE the Breeze! I was on the ship this past January. Here are the snipits from my review with Antigua & Tortola from this trip. I don't think the walk down to the Baths & beach area would be a problem, however it might be difficult to maneuver in the closed spaces if you were to explore the caves area. My husband & I only went so far because it was so overcrowded. And while My comments on the excursion below could be deemed as semi-negative - The Baths themselves were one of the highlights of the cruise. They were beautiful! The tour itself could have been organized much better IMO. Have a great cruise!

 

Antigua – This was our second time in Antigua. On our last visit we had done the Carnival Snorkel & Catamaran tour so we decided to try something different. We had signed up for Carnival’s ATV adventure. I was a little nervous about this in advance due to my lack of experience with motorized vehicles. I had a 3-wheeler when I was a youth and took it over a hillside (my last memory of it). Anyhow, we were pleased to see that there were only 10 people on our tour. There was a short mini-bus ride over to the ATV location. About half of the group had experience ATVing before. The guy in charge of the excursion must have taken note of me closely paying attention to his every word during his instructional tutorial because he put me on the ATV right behind him (at the front of the line). Next he filtered my husband behind me (who’s had lots of motorcycling, dirt-biking, and ATV experience). The rest of the group was behind us, and another tour operator was at the very end. I’m still in shock of how much fun this excursion was! Not to toot my own horn, but I did great! My husband said I exceeded his expectations! The ATV tour took us all over the island. Mostly we were on trails but we were also on the roads at some points too. He took one stop about mid-way and were given bottles of water. Afterwards we were mini-bused back to the port. We went back onboard the ship to change clothes and grab something to eat for lunch. Once off the ship again, we contracted one of the taxi drivers to take us to a close beach. He took us to Dickenson Bay. The beach was really nice. It was right next to a Sandals resort. Again, he waited for us for an hour or so until we were done and took us back to the port. Afterwards we browsed some of the shops before getting back onboard.

Tortola – This was the only port we had yet to visit – which is why we had originally selected this cruise and respective itinerary. We signed up for the Carnival excursion to the Baths at Virgin Gorda. The ferry ride was approximately 45 minutes as the tour description had stated, followed by a 5 minute ride in safari vehicle. I had seen plenty of pictures beforehand and was anxious to see this for myself. It was beautiful! Like I had read on the message boards beforehand, the beach and cave areas were very overcrowded! Way more people than you would have liked to have been there at the same time! And also not enough time to really explore. Our tour leader had pushed back the departure time by one hour (I assume because there were so many people there) and even that still wasn’t long enough. It was definitely worth seeing though! On the ferry ride back, we sat on the ferry waiting for the final safari vehicles to return to the ferry for at least 30-45 minutes! It kills me that the whole ferry had to wait for people who can’t follow the timeframes given! If you’re not back on the bus on time, they should leave without you! Once back at the port, we walked to the few kiosks that were setup each appeared to sell the same junk. Maybe there was more shops but we couldn’t see any from the port and didn’t feel up to exploring more (after waiting for 45 minutes on the top deck of the ferry in sweltering heat – followed by the 45 minute ride back to port).