Captain Your Boat

[IamCdn]

Has anybody tried the "Captain Your Own River Boat" tour offered by Coral Breeze. I've done a search of this thread but can't find anything. Any reviews or links would be appreciated.

[mikvie]

Has anybody tried the "Captain Your Own River Boat" tour offered by Coral Breeze. I've done a search of this thread but can't find anything. Any reviews or links would be appreciated.

I don't know what happened to the thread about this tour, but we were an the NCL Sun in early november and this was the highlight of the cruise. Great people, great wildlife and a lot of fun. We booked through Coral Breeze. I recommend it highly.

[IamCdn]

I did book this tour in October and went and had a great time. I posted a review but the threat got pulled. Several postings into it I posted a link to pictures of the tour. There were not my pictures (but I was in several of them). I think this was offside for the moderators. Sorry. My review was as follows:

 

We met the guides from Hammer Head Sports at 10:30 on the pier in front of The Wet Lizard. There were three guides with our tour. There were six pax on our tour - one couple stayed on the guide boat and the other two couples each had our own boat.

We left The Wet Lizard in the Guide Boat and went up river for about 10 minutes to meet our individual boats. We were given a brief orientation to the boats and we were on our way. I have never driven a power boat of any sort in the past while the other couple were experienced boaters. It was very simple and easy to get the hang of. The boats were a “zodiac type” with a hard fiberglass bottom and inflatable sides (the website has pictures) with a 40 hp Honda engine. Each boat has a two way radio to communicate with the guide boat and for the guide to narrate over a speaker.

The guide boat led and we followed along in single file. We soon came across “the tunnel” which is a narrow route through the mangroves. We traveled very slowly through here observing birds and termite nests. Eventually we came to an open river and we were able to throttle the boats up and really move. Every now and then the guide boat would slow down and stop to allow us to view alligators, monkeys, iguana, birds etc. We traveled about 22 miles up river where we stopped at a little place to have drinks and/or lunch. The place had a little souvenir shop with very reasonable prices. There was also a little pet monkey who was quite cute. At one point he jumped down and landed on my wife’s head. I’m not sure who got the bigger fright, him or her.

We then traveled back along the river a quicker pace to the mouth of the river to look for manatees. We waited for a little while but had to head back without seeing them. We once again entered the tunnel, but now it was high tide. We ripped though the mangroves zooming from side to side. It was quite exhilarating.

At this point it was about 10 to four, ten minutes to last tender. We parked the individual boats, hopped in the guide boat, and raced to dock. We caught the last tender. In fact the cruise staff was putting everything on the boat to head back. I still had time to grab a couple of beers.

This was a great tour and well worth the money. When we ran into the other couples on the ship we went on about what we had seen and done.

One thing to improve on would to have the guide talk to us more over the two way radio instead of just pointing. When we would pull up to look at something we would look into the trees, into the water, on the ground trying to figure out what we were supposed to be looking at. I mentioned this to the guide and she thanked me for the input.