Excursion questions

My boyfriend and I are cruising on the Carnival Fascination out of San Juan in December. We're visiting St. Kitts, St. Thomas, Barbados, St. Marteen, & St. Lucia. Does anybody have any suggestions on what excursions are a "must do" on each island? We're a young, active couple and this will be our first time visiting them so we are very open to suggestions. Also, we want to book a chartered fishing trip for one of the islands if anyone has any idea which one would be the best. Looking for suggestions not booked through the cruise to escape tourist and cruise traffic. Thank you!

Well..what do you WANT to do and see? Do some research...a guidebook is VERY helpful...and decide WHAT you want to do...we can help with HOW to do it! Also...google your ports, and "deep sea fishing"...lots of options pop up!

A bit of research will give you good options, and save you a bundle, if you can do it on your own...which most things can be done that way...few things require an excursion!

Check out Glory Tours in Barbados they have some great options...we visited the Harrison Caves...Saw the Green Monkeys...Bathsheba and some on our tour continued the day with them and swam with turtles.....This is a great company...worth a look see. We also visited the other ports you will be at but we usually prefer DIY...Barbados was an exception.

Thank you for your response! I was looking for personal experiences from the island to decide which types of excursions to book for each one. I will look into the Barbados one it sounds fun. We want to do an all inclusive beach day at one of the islands as well. Just want to make sure we hit all the highlights at the island but didn't know what they were.

I highly recommend the Calabaza catamaran in Barbados. Awesome time, we've done 4 times...swim with turtles, snorkel and have lots of food and drink!

Here is a link to the Caribbean Ports of Call forum. There is a separate sub forum for each of the islands you are going to. You should be able to find lots of info on private excursions or activities as well as opinions from cruisers who have done them in the past.

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/forumdisplay.php?f=587

Another excellent source of information is TripAdvisor. I have used them a lot to find places to see/things to do/tour operators on our various island visits.

As for using guide books- at least for Caribbean vacations- that's about as current as using a rotary dial phone in this day of Internet information. Any book is out of date by the time it's published and hits the shelves.

ETA: We used Glory Tours on our last cruise and highly recommend them.

Here is a link to the Caribbean Ports of Call forum. There is a separate sub forum for each of the islands you are going to. You should be able to find lots of info on private excursions or activities as well as opinions from cruisers who have done them in the past.

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/forumdisplay.php?f=587

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Please do check out the Cruise Critic Ports of Call Forum (per above) under each of your port stops. You can also ask questions there.

Lots MORE information there than you'll get on this post. ;)

Great itinerary! Enjoy planning! :D

Some friends and I just did this itinerary (on the Liberty) in May 2015. You can read the full review in my signature, but our excursions were:

St. Thomas - taxi to Sapphire Beach

Barbados - taxi to The Boatyard

St. Lucia - Carnival's Kayak Pigeon Island excursion

St. Kitts - Carnival's Rail and Sail excursion

St. Maarten - taxi to Saraphina's and Maho Beach

Can't help too much with those ports, but I wanted to say welcome to Cruise Critic from a fellow Mississippian! :D

Here is a link to the Caribbean Ports of Call forum. There is a separate sub forum for each of the islands you are going to. You should be able to find lots of info on private excursions or activities as well as opinions from cruisers who have done them in the past.

 

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/forumdisplay.php?f=587

 

Another excellent source of information is TripAdvisor. I have used them a lot to find places to see/things to do/tour operators on our various island visits.

 

As for using guide books- at least for Caribbean vacations- that's about as current as using a rotary dial phone in this day of Internet information. Any book is out of date by the time it's published and hits the shelves.

 

ETA: We used Glory Tours on our last cruise and highly recommend them.

I do borrow guide books from our local library to get some ideas to start with. Then google any that I think might be right for my family and often find the info still current.

Thank you all for taking the time to reply! They were very helpful since I have never visited any of these. I am looking into them all and having fun planning. Thanks again!!

Thank you everyone for the responses! Has anyone heard of which island is the best to fish at? Or know of any charters that are well liked?

St. Marteen

Taxi to Maho Beach.