Can You Pay In American Money For The Cave Tour And Tips To The Guides

[tgzshopper]

Just wondering if you can use American money to pay for the cave tour in Belize. We are going on the Pearl, Jan. 14.........after reading the post, we are going to use cave-tubing. com for this. Thanks to everyone who has helped us.....so much good information on these boards.

 

One more question......what is the average tip for the guides???? TIA

[susanNjay]

Yes, you can pay and tip with American dollars. We were on the Grand Princess November 25-December 2 and we used cavetubing.com for our excursion. They were terrific. We had our two daughters, ages 9 and 17, with us and this was their favorite excursion. I don't know what the average tip was, but we gave the bus driver and our guides $10. They really acted like they didn't expect the tip.

You might want to consider bringing extra money for a t shirt--they will ask if you want one on the way back. They cost $10. each. We have washed ours a few times already and they are good quality.

 

Have fun! You will love cavetubing with them!

 

--Susan

[lnew1gd1]

Yes, America money is fine. We tipped Tim from cave-tubing.com $20.00 cause we had such an awesome time and fabuous guides!!

[luvmy2doxs]

Susan, we are taking the Grand Princess 1-20-07 and booked with cave tubing.com and are so excited. Can I ask how easy it was for you to get off the ship in Belize for a private excursion? Did you have any problems getting off early enough? How does getting off the ship work when you have a private excursion booked, espeically when tendering?

[susanNjay]

I believe that our time of arrival in Belize was set for 7 am, so a bunch of us all met near the excursion desk at 6:45. One of our group went to the staff worker at the tendering lounge to tell them that we had a group of 17, and they asked us to wait in the lounge until our tender was ready. We were on the first tender and were the first ones ashore. They were filling the second tender as the first tender began moving away from the ship. The tender ride in Belize is rather long, but we were excited so it didn't bother us. I think that the announcement on the ship that morning was something to the effect of those with early ship-sponsored excursions make your way to the tendering lounge, but our group just went to the lounge right away and it didn't seem to matter that we were doing a private excursion. We had a similar experience in Cozumel and were on the first tender. We don't usually book excursions through the cruise line, because I like to save money!

 

--Susan

[luvmy2doxs]

Where is the tendering lounge, do they tell you where that is? I guess you said they didn't seem to care if you were ship sponsored or not so I guess they didn't check any paperwork or tickets or anything? We are going to plan on being up early too and get to where ever we need to be and try to get out early. But any of your tips is great to know. We have a party of 8 but I know some other people on my Roll Call boards that are cave tubing privately also. I don't mind doing some stuff through the ships but cave tubing was about twice as expensive as privately. Thanks fory your help.

[susanNjay]

I will have to check the deck plans to see what the name of the tendering lounge is...but they did announce it. It was just around the corner from the excursion desk and lobby bar where they sell pretty decent coffee. ;) They did not check our tickets or paperwork...also on our first sea day, my older daughter and I had met one of the staff, Andre, at the ceramics at sea class and he happened to be at the tendering lounge doorway, and just greeted us by name and ushered us in. I kind of wondered if he did so for everyone.

 

One of the reasons we choose to do our excursions privately is the reduced cost, but we have also noticed that we have had much smaller groups and more personalized service by doing private excursions. I know that some people have concerns about returning to the ship late and being left, but we have had very good results by using tour operators that have been recommended on cruisecritic boards.

 

Oh, another tip...we were able to get a tanzanite ring at the D.I. store in Belize for a lot less than the price we were given in Costa Maya. Also the little restaurant inside the cruise terminal next to the D.I. store had really delicious quesadillas!

 

--Susan