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Boudicca - Indian Ocean cruise from Mauritius 13th Dec 2018


Gymbod
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Hi everyone - first time on Fred Olsen page.

 

Just looking for any advice on this cruise next year. Has anyone done this itinerary or similar?

 

The ship is smaller than we're used to so my oh is a bit concerned about there being a lot of movment?

 

We are looking at a suite on deck 9 so I know we will feel more rocking up higher [emoji1] Any cabin tips would be great too.

TIA

 

 

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  • 1 year later...

We did Liverpool to Mauritius last year. What ports are you visiting?

 

Be aware Fred allows smoking on Balconies that are not on prom deck, there were some complaints about smoke last year, but did not affect all cabins. Boudicca is fairly stable because it is an old style ship, so mid ship (ish) should be fine on that itinerary as long as you are not there in their cyclone season (Jan - March).

 

Braemar is the Fred ship to skip if you are concerned about stability. because stable is something Braemar is not. More modern ship - flat bottomed and is particularly bad at the back. We love that boat though for the right itinerary.

Edited by tring
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Can anyone advise please,we are going on Boudicca on to 13th December to quite a few places in the Indian Ocean one port of call is Zanzibar and been told by guest relations that we pay onboard 50 dollars for a tourist visa, we are only in port for few hours,if right do you still pay if you stay on board,thanks for your advice.

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Can anyone advise please,we are going on Boudicca on to 13th December to quite a few places in the Indian Ocean one port of call is Zanzibar and been told by guest relations that we pay onboard 50 dollars for a tourist visa, we are only in port for few hours,if right do you still pay if you stay on board,thanks for your advice.

 

I cannot think why on earth you would want to miss such a wonderful port as Zanzibar (according to your itinerary you appear to be in for a full day), but it is a question you would have to put to Fred. I am fairly sure the ship arranged the Zanzibar visas and just debited from our accounts. We needed a few visas for our cruise last year, but the cost was tiny compared to the overall cost of the holiday.

 

I would not see the point in the cost and time taken to travel so far for a cruise if you do not see the ports. As I said Zanzibar is a wonderful port, very easy to just walk out from the ship, so no need for expensive trips, even if you just decide to stroll along the sea front and have a drink in a hotel. Some sites (e.g. slave cells) are easily reachable as well as long as you do not have mobility problems, but you would need to do a bit of work to plan your day - we usually find a map on the internet and print it out along with any other info. we can find.

 

You can look at the sort of tour offerings available on the website link below - we cancelled the tour we had arranged with them ourselves as our 2 day stop was cut short, so we only had time to do the things we wanted to do in town, but they have been highly recommended to us by other people who had used them and were very helpful when we booked and subsequently cancelled a tour. For one day may well be easier to use a Fred tour if you want one, but that website still gives you a flavour of what will be on offer:-

 

https://www.amozanzibartours.com/zanzibar-tours.html

 

The Trip Advisor forums are also a useful place to ask questions, as very few ships visit Zanzibar, so limited help available on these forums. A morning city orientation tour with Amo Tours, followed by an afternoon on your own. There are some up market hotels, so easy to pick up a bite for lunch in a relaxing environment, so you do not waste time going back to the ship (you could get Amo Tours to drop you off at one of the hotels).

 

If you have any questions I would be happy to help, but a bit busy at present so may not reply immediately.

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The ships dock in Stone town, which is the only cruise stop in Zanzibar, you can see a map and click through to other things from here:-

 

https://www.whatsinport.com/Sansibar.htm

 

You will see very few ships call there and they are the smaller ships, so if you want to travel out of the town I suggest you do have something arranged ahead of time, rather than risk picking up a local taxi, (which my not be a reliable form of transport), but Stone town itself is within walking distance if you are able bodied.

 

If you do wish to use Amozanzibar tours, I can say I found them very helpful regards answering questions about the tours by email and giving quotes, though it would have been less of a problem for us using a local tour company as we were there overnight, so rush to get back to the ship, though they do reputedly use reliable transport. Also a good idea to look at tour reviews on Trip Advisor, for instance Prison Island does not appear to be as idyllic as it sounds, with the Turtles kept in very poor conditions - Amo tours were honest about when I mentioned that I had seen bad reports about the turtles there. I find Google Earth very useful with the less visited ports, which are hard to find info about, along with the Trip Advisor forums.

 

 

In case you have not come across it before, the following link is the home page for What's in Port (the site with the link I gave above), so you can click through to other ports (I find it a useful link to keep on favorites). Zanzibar is part of Tanzania, so it is necessary to click Tanzania, then Zanzibar after that to get to the page linked above:-

 

https://www.whatsinport.com/

 

There is a roll call section for Fred. so you could start a roll call for your cruise if one is not there already, though sometimes there is very little, if any, response on Fred's roll calls. We had a group of 8 from the roll call of our 6 week Liverpool to Mauritius cruise last year had the oportunity to arrange things together and a lot of info. was exchanged. We had a good plan for Madagascar, but sadly we missed the port due to the Plague epidemic.

 

Happy research,

 

Barbara

Edited by tring
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