JudiH Posted June 4, 2006 #1 Share Posted June 4, 2006 My husband, daughter and I are sailing on the Miracle 7/16/06. I was wondering if some of you who have sailed on the Miracle would let me know what port is best for snorkeling. My daughter has never snorkeled before and I want this to be a fantastic experience for her. I like to snorkel from a Cat or off of some type of boat as opposed to walking into the water. Any help you can give will be most appreciated. Any other "Must See" or Must Do" on the cruise would also be most helpful. Since I can never find my thread on this board please email me at GaMamma@hotmail.com. Thank you one and all Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
starketcher Posted June 4, 2006 #2 Share Posted June 4, 2006 Belize or Cayman or Costa Maya. From your description, I would say your best bet would be Cayman due to the catamaran..there's just not many of those in CM or Belize. Check the port of call boards for more info. Cayman and Belize are both extremely well known for diving, and CM is at the tip of the reef that runs thru Belize. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JiminyCricket Posted June 4, 2006 #3 Share Posted June 4, 2006 We snorkeled in Grand Caymen, Belize and Costa Maya and scuba dived in Cozumel when on the Miracle in 05. Tried to snorkel in Cozumel this year with our Conquest cruise but bad weather stopped us. We had good snorkeling from shore in Grand Caymen at the wreck of the Cali (ship wreck with some nice fish) which is a 5 min walk to your left from the pier and Eden Rock (nice coral reef a short swim to the bouy) which was a 5 min walk to your right from the pier. Costa Maya was ok, did cat ride from ship shore excursion. Did a very nice cat ship excursion to a small island. Lots of fun, great fish and coral. The cat picked you up right from the ship. Rum punch on the way back. We wanted to do a snorkel trip with Rosi Flury from Mystic Snorkeling tour when in Cozumel. http://www.cozumelmycozumel.com/Pages/CozumelSnorkelingTour.htm She does a 3 snorkel tour starting from mild to more advanced. She will customize the trip based on your needs. She goes to some less heavily traveled areas so you get better coral reefs etc. We want to try her when we get back to Cozumel. Hope this helps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare 01Sweetpea Posted June 4, 2006 #4 Share Posted June 4, 2006 In 7/05 we snorkeled in GC and Cozumel, hands down Cozumel was our favorite...HOWEVER...this was BEFORE the hurricane hit. GC was nice, but the waters were choppy that day (Hurricane Dennis was off in the distance) so it was tough to snorkel. The sting rays were really fun to swim with. Both ports we did independant excursions. Check out of the port of call boards for these two stops...tons on opinions and info. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DqALEX Posted June 4, 2006 #5 Share Posted June 4, 2006 My husband, daughter and I are sailing on the Miracle 7/16/06. I was wondering if some of you who have sailed on the Miracle would let me know what port is best for snorkeling. My daughter has never snorkeled before and I want this to be a fantastic experience for her. I like to snorkel from a Cat or off of some type of boat as opposed to walking into the water. Any help you can give will be most appreciated. Any other "Must See" or Must Do" on the cruise would also be most helpful. Since I can never find my thread on this board please email me at GaMamma@hotmail.com.Thank you one and all I scuba, and I will tell you that that was the best cruise I have ever been on. The only place I diden't on that cruise was CM. The Miracle was the best ship I was ever on. If I was going to do one over again the CARNIVAL MIRACLE. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
momofzeke Posted June 4, 2006 #6 Share Posted June 4, 2006 We did a ship sponsored snorkel, the Reef & Wreck snorkel, in Grand Cayman. You snorkel right in the same area where the ships are anchored. The water was very calm there. Friends who went to the stingray area said the water was very choppy on the way out, and at the snorkel sites. We enjoyed this tour very much. To find your posts, you can subscribe to the thread. That way, whenever there is a new post you will get an email. Once you are on a thread that you want to subscribe to, at the top of the thread it says "thread tools". Click on that and then click "subscribe to thread". :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SockMonkey Posted June 4, 2006 #7 Share Posted June 4, 2006 We did the Stingray City thing in Grand Cayman, and that was NOT to be missed. We also snorkeled in Belize, which is the 2nd largest reef in the world - VERY cool. I heard the snorkeling in Costa Maya was not good. We toured ruins there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
longgone Posted June 5, 2006 #8 Share Posted June 5, 2006 My wife and I just returned from our trip on Miracle in May, and we snorkeled in Grand Cayman, Belize, and Costa Maya. Now this is just our opinion, and only worth as much, but GC by far had the best offering. We went with Captain Marvin’s, and it was fantastic, two stops for snorkeling then on to the sting rays....it was amazing and there were only 15 people on the boat (unlike the Carnival excursion boats (can you say sardine time)). The wildlife was amazing, it was like swimming in a stocked aquarium, puffers, sea anemones, rays, nurse sharks, eels, I even have a scorpion fish pic, etc, etc...... it was utterly and completely fantastic, DO NOT MISS THIS ONE. -Costa Maya was a close second, it was beautiful, but there was far less fish action.....Uvero Beach and fast boat excursion, don't miss it, I still catch myself randomly giggling about it. Then after that you get an open bar with great friendly service that is all that needs to be said. -The ultimate let down was Belize, we heard time and time again how fantastic the snorkeling was, and the excursion was a complete joke (it was the snorkel and private beach excursion), they might as well have taken us to dead coral for all there was to see. We were thrown into the water for about 45 min (only one stop) with snooba and jet propelled people on the same excursions, after 15 min it was so cloudy you couldn't see anything anyway, then on to a "private" beach for all of an hour were you couldn't even find a lounge chair (though the BBQ chicken was very good I hear, and the spiked punch on board the boat served it’s intended purpose (so I wasn’t that upset at the time))......unless your go with a private tour just do the cave tubing in Belize (everyone who did that appeared to have a great time). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JudiH Posted June 8, 2006 Author #9 Share Posted June 8, 2006 Thank you all so much for the info. If anyone has more info please post it as I will keep checking the board. This is my first time using this board, never knew about it before. There is a treasure trove of info here thanks to a lot of good hearted folks who take the time to share their experiences. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
beansatw Posted June 8, 2006 #10 Share Posted June 8, 2006 We snorkeled in both Costa Maya and Cozumel. Costa Maya was nice, but not a whole lot to see where we were. Cozumel was Fantastic (with a Capital F!), but as someone else mentioned, this was before the hurricane hit. In Grand Cayman we did the stingray jaunt, which was tons of fun. You could snorkel there, but I found myself so caught up by the time with the rays that I forgot to snorkel at all. Be sure to take along some underwater cameras - I came home with some pretty cool photos to show off. :D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
walkswife Posted June 8, 2006 #11 Share Posted June 8, 2006 I was on the tour with momofzeke (Sue) and did the reef & wreck snorkel from the ship and really enjoyed it...... lots of fish and the Cali shipwreck was cool..... I had a lot of beginners with me and they had no problem going off the boat .... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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