Snorkelling Gear with RCI

Hi fellow cruisers...

We are going on a South Pacific cruise with RCI in January where there looks to be a few options for snorkelling at different ports. Does anyone know if the ship hires snorkelling gear if you were going to go off and do your own thing, or do you need to purchase the actual shore excursions to get gear?

Thanks...

As far as I can recall they don't hire out snorkelling gear, but did have sets for sale on the cruise we did a couple of years ago. I usually take my own gear, that way I don't have to worry whether it has been cleaned properly.

At some of the Pacific Island ports you don't need to pay expensive prices for excursions, you just go ashore and do your own thing, and those ports don't have gear to hire either. What ports are you going to?

As far as I can recall they don't hire out snorkelling gear, but did have sets for sale on the cruise we did a couple of years ago. I usually take my own gear, that way I don't have to worry whether it has been cleaned properly.

 

At some of the Pacific Island ports you don't need to pay expensive prices for excursions, you just go ashore and do your own thing, and those ports don't have gear to hire either. What ports are you going to?

Cool thanks. Might be a trip to the sports store I think.

Mare, Noumea, Mystery Island, Suva and Lautoka in Fiji are the ports we are visiting.

Cool thanks. Might be a trip to the sports store I think.

 

Mare, Noumea, Mystery Island, Suva and Lautoka in Fiji are the ports we are visiting.

Mare is a tender port. The wharf area doesn't have any swimming beaches. Shuttle buses are provided, at a cost, to take you to a lovely lagoon where you can swim or snorkel. No snorkel gear available for hire.

Noumea has some lovely beaches on the HoHo route, Lemon Bay and Anse Vatu, however I don't think there is much snorkelling there. You can get a boat across to Duck Island from Anse Vatu (I think) and I believe you can snorkel there. They may even have hire gear.

I haven't been to Mystery Island but I think you can snorkel there, and will need your own gear.

Suva really doesn't have any nice beaches close by. Do a tour to a village or something instead.

I'm not sure what is at Lautoka. If you want to snorkel you might have to do an excursion to one of the smaller islands nearby. We did this when our cruise went to Port Denerau.

Do make sure you have reef shoes. There can be a lot of broken coral on some of the beaches.

This thread has more info about the various ports. http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2267858

Excellent info thanks OzKiwiJJ