Coral Breeze cave tubing review

[Kipp-n-Aika]

Sorry this took me so long to post on here... I'm just cutting and pasting from my uber-long Miracle review on the Carnival board. This is from the week of Sept 11, 2005:

 

Day 5 (Belize) – Today DH and I had a cave tubing excursion booked through Coral Breeze. It turned out we were the only 2 people booked that day, so we were going to be getting a private tour! We met our guide, Ivar, and followed him to the van. Just as we were leaving the city, we got a call that there was another couple who wanted to join us, so we went back to pick them up.

 

The drive to the caves took about an hour and 15 minutes. We then went on a hike through the jungle to the river, which took maybe 45 minutes. Ivar was a great guide, he was very knowledgeable and pointed out all kinds of interesting plants and wildlife along the way. We ran across a large termite mound, and he even convinced my extremely picky husband to taste one (but only after Ivar and the other guy ate some). He said it tasted like wood - I decided to take his word for it, and passed on the termites myself.

 

Once we reached the river, we jumped off a small cliff (I would guess it was maybe 15ft high) into the water. There was also a place to walk directly in if jumping wasn’t your thing, but we all decided to jump. The water was pretty cold (Ivar called it refreshing), but we had a great time. Most of the time we were all hooked together, but at certain points the river turned into rapids (not too fast or wild though) and we unhooked for those sections. For some reason, no one else seemed to have any trouble paddling or steering, but I couldn’t paddle to save my life. I kept running into walls, rocks, stumps – you name it, I hit it. No injuries though, it wasn’t a big deal because you could just push right off whatever you ran into. Once Ivar figured out that I couldn’t steer, he stuck with me and pushed me along whenever the river got a little more fast and rough. I really appreciated him sticking with me, I thought that was really nice of him.

 

After the tubing, we were able to quickly shower and change clothes before lunch. Lunch was amazing, I enjoyed the food much more than any of my meals on the ship. We had barbecued chicken, rice, some kind of slaw with pineapples in it, herbed bread, and pineapple-banana bread with caramel glaze for dessert. Everything was amazingly delicious!

 

Any questions, let me know and I'll try to answer them!

[excitedcruiser]

We took the same tour 3 weeks ago with Coral Breeze. Our tour guide was Carlos "Speedy" Gonzalos. It was awesome. I would highly recommend it to anyone. We had 12 in our group.

[Susky]

Ivar was our guide when we went. Great guy.

[Tarheelbelle]

Kipp-n-Aika,

How "fast and rough" was the river??

[Kipp-n-Aika]

Oh, not very... it wasn't raging white water rapids or anything like that! Just certain parts moved a little fast, so it was easier to go one by one instead of staying together in a group (so no one runs into each other or anything like that). I'm a big wimp when it comes to extreme sports, and this wasn't anything that made me nervous.

[RDH]

how dark is it in the caves? I am scared of tunnels if I can not see the light at the end. I was wondering if there was light coming through the top of the caves, like sky lights.

[Kipp-n-Aika]

RDH - It's pretty dark in the caves. There are points where you can't see the the entrance or exit, and Ivar had us all turn off our lights for a minute so we could see how completely pitch-black dark it was. However, I'm sure if you explain that you have a phobia, they would let you keep your head lamp on.

[RDH]

Thank you for your reply. I was in Belize this past July and did the snorkling with the sharks and rays with coral breeze and we had a great time. I was wanting to do another tour with them because they were so great but I will have to give it some thought. Thanks again.

[awdl2000]

this was 5 1/2 hours right, i am booked in 2 weeks. Did you find that you had time to look around in the village before or after the tour or did you feel to rushed? Also, carnival's website says that their tour is 7 hrs, did you have enought time in the water on the coral breeze trip?

Thanks

[excitedcruiser]

We left the dock at 9:30 am and returned from our tour at 3:00 pm. The last tender doesn't leave until 5:15 pm (Elation). We felt we had plenty of time to shop and we did.