turtle tours with children

[erin1998]

Good afternoon everyone...:)

We will be sailing on the Victory in November and will be stopping in Barbados. My son (11 years old) and I really want to swim/snorkel with the turtles so I am looking into the different tour companies. Is there an excursion that is better suited to families with children. I am looking for a tour that is relaxing and peaceful and one that my son won't feel uncomfortable at (not a heavy drinking, loud music tour).

Any advice would be greatly appreciated! :D

Thanks

Erin

[dna1990]

From a general crowd sense - I would tend to avoid your cruiseline offerings. Most turtle stops seem to have a lot of folks swim near the boat - and they all wanna see the few turtles that come up. This 'sometimes' makes for som crowding, pushing, feet kicking/swimming, etc.

 

I have not taken them myself, but CC has good reviews for Shasa, ThrillerTours, and one lesser known Calabaza. These all take very small groups and try to time themselves in between the big cruise ship cats.

 

You don't get fins when swimming at the turtles, a) not to knock around a turtle and b) not to kick your fellow pax in such proximity. But this can make it hard to position yourself in the currents, etc. or for Mom/Dad to help steer/position a younger swimmer if they need a little help. So again, a reason to seek out a smaller more private tour.

 

On the ones I have been on or passed by - yes there is music and drinking, but the turtle trips are usually not a booze cruise wild times.

[Caribbean Sunsets]

I did the Thriller Tour. Their boat is a high speed one, and they offer 2 trips daily. I would select the morning tour because they can arrive at the turtles much faster that some of the other boats and catamaran and that would mean less boats and people in the general area. They limit the number of passengers to either 14 or 16. There is rum punch served but by no means is it wild...more like folks sitting in their seats sipping their punch. You do have to get yourself to their dock. I think the taxi fare was $15 in total each way. Good Luck!

[pxy cda]

We did a snorkel tour with Hightide. On Tuesdays, they take out marine biologists to scuba and bring the turtles on board. They weigh, tag and take notes on them. Non scuba divers are welcome.

 

Our day started at the Falcon and nice sized motor boat with Winston and James as crew. We travelled up the coast and picked up a dive instructor before getting to our snorkel spot. There was one or two other boats there but we were a small group of four and our dive instructor stayed with our one "weaker swimmer" and kept an eye out the entire time for the rest of us. He also pointed out where the turtles were to see. I followed a five foot long turtle about 20 30 yards. We saw lots of turtles and they were surfacing as well. Afterwards, we met up with their dive boat and the marine biologists had a smaller turtle captured. They told us about the turtles, the PADI program and we even got to touch the fin (very gently) before we headed off again back to port.

 

Total time about 31/2 hours. $60pp. Not bad for virtually a private excursion. I liked feeling the safety factor of having the dive instructor with us.

 

I would strongly recommend this company as they did a great job looking after us "non divers" and showed us a great time.

 

Good safety factor, No loud music, no drinks (although we did have a catamaran throw us some beer on the way back - but that was very impromptu).:)

 

Email: info@divehightide.com

[mrspjotter]

We visited Barbados in Feb this year with our son aged 8 and twin daughters aged 5 and I wanted to do the glass bottom boat with the turtles so that my hubby and son could swim/snorkel if they wanted to and then me and the girls could stay in the boat and still see the turtles.

 

We booked the Glory Tours (who have had bad press on here) but our experience with them proved to be the highlight of our cruise.

 

We were picked up at the terminal and taken to Holetown and we got on a boat which already had another family of 5 on there and it took us out to the turtles. The guide was great - vests were provided for the kids if you didn't have them - rum punch and soft drinks were free. As there weren't many turtles about we were taken to another area where the kids could feed the fish - which they thought was fantastic - all in all the trip was very relaxed and we weren't pressurised into snorkelling if we didn't want to - it was the best way I have ever spent a Sunday morning!