1st time snorkerlers..Coral Breeze or Star Tours

[dancinsssy8556]

Hi

A friend and I will be in Belize City December 6, 2007 with the NCL Spirit.

Neither of us has snorkeled before but really want to.

We're not real gung ho about the excursions through the ship.

Any help here? We have been to Coral Breeze and Star Tour websites and both seemed impressive.

Thanks

[gammasip]

We just returned from our cruise and used Coral Breeze tours. We were very pleased with them. They took the time to explain and help those who had never snorkeled. They are very safetly minded and professional. We had a wonderful time and will use them again.

Bannister Island is georgous!

The manatees are adorable!

[astridwilson]

There is no snorkeling on you own, you must do an excursion.

I used shore trips in Belize in October of 2007, they are not associated with the cruise ships but do cater to the ships.

The vendor was actually wet & wild or ecotoursbelize. I pre paid $57 for the snorkeling trip with shore trips. If you go direct to ecotoursbelize dot com you can get the trip for $55; however, if you wait and book it when you get there you can negotiate down to $50. This would be risky if there are a lot of cruise ships in port. You can check how many ships are in port at cruisecal dot com. Ecotours is right there at the dock to meet you. Because I prepaid, they actually had a sign with my name on it. Very nice touch. The advantage with shore trips is it is paid in full and you have a reservation. Keep in mind, that in Belize you have to tender to the docks, so the small boats could all be full if you do not have a reservation. With Royal Caribbean you have to get a tender number to go ashore. Carnival does not adjust thier ship time. Royal Caribbean adjusts ship time; however Belize does not observe day light savings time so they are one hour earlier than ships central time. We were told to meet at 10AM local time; we got there at 9AM local time and left at 9:45 local time which was 10:45 ship time. The last tender for the carnival boat was at 4PM, the last tender for Royal was at 4:30PM, we got back to the port right at 3:45 PM. It was approximately a 5 hour trip. We spend ~45 minutes getting to the reef, at least an hour at the reef, ~30 minutes to get to shark alley and ~45 minutes there. ~60 minutes at Caye Caulker and ~45 minutes coming back to the tender port. I did not actually check times, these are estimates.

Ecotours were very VERY good and everyone was pleased. There were 24 on the boat and more then half just went to Caye Caulker to spend a few hours there. So there was about 10 of us that went snorkeling. Ecotours have a small boat so you get a small group which is what I preferred. The max on one of their boats is 35. The trip was some of the best snorkeling I have ever experienced; LARGE schools of blue tangs, large schools of jacks, some of the biggest parrot fish I have ever seen.

At shark alley we only saw one shark but were surrounded by rays and we saw a 5 foot barracuda, he more than made up for the lack of sharks. He hung around and watched us. He was only 5 feet away. Tip, remove your jewelry before snorkeling, barracuda are attracted to anything shiny.

If I had to do it again, I would use shoretrips again. They provided clear instructions and the trip was pre paid with an email confirmation.