What to do during Ryndam port calls?

[Plankton1]

I'll be going on the Ryndam in late December and the ship stops at Belize City, Costa Maya, Santo Tomas (Guatamala) and Key West. I plan on taking a few excursions but often like just walking about towns exploring and shopping. I have already been to Key West but was wondering what these three other towns would be like without the excursions. I would love your opinions. Thanks.:confused:

[CowPrincess]

We're doing that itin in January. From research, and from the helpful posters here, we will definitely be doing an excursion from Belize City. What I've found so far is that Costa Maya isn't really a "town" but you can catch a cab to Majahual (which is a town nearby, and also has a beach) and spend a fairly pleasant wandering/low cost few hours there.

[TSC]

We normally like to just get off the boat and wander, but I don't think this is the cruise for that (except Key West.)

Here's what we ended up doing. We did not pre-book anything, but I had done some research. We didn't prebook because I was worried about the weather and whether or not my DH would be up to the excursions. Some days he moves better than others.

Key West - is... shops, bars, OK beaches (the nicest beach is the farthest away). If you get off the boat early enough, you can book a boating or snorkeling tour right downtown. Another option is renting bicycles. We stopped at one bike shop (Eaton's bikes- I think) and they will deliver the bikes to the ship and pick them up when you're done.

 

Belize - this is a tendered port - and we were tendered way off shore. We had NO plans, so just wandered for a few minutes on the wharf, where there are shops and a couple of bars. I hadn't read enough about Belize, and leaving the port seemed dicey because I didn't know where we wanted to go. It looked like you would have to take a taxi to the town.

So when we were approached by a couple of vendors taking people out to the beaches or to snorkel, that sounded good to me. We ended up doing a snorkel, beach break tour. They first wanted $49 to snorkel and $35 for the non-snorkeler, but we got both for $70 (from Ecotours - right on the wharf).

This was lots of fun. They took us first to Bannister beach which is a very tiny island. It looks like it was just a mangrove island, but it's been cleared and now has nice sand, beautiful clear blue water, beach chairs, bathrooms, showers, roped off swimming areas, a bar/restaurant etc. You can rent kayaks and maybe paddle boats. My husband really enjoyed being lazy on the beach drinking a beer.

After a brief stop, the snorklers were taken out to the reef, which is about 10-15 minutes from Bannister beach. The reef was amazing. It wasn't very deep and the water is so clear that you could really see everything. The rental equipment (included in the tour) was adequate. If you have your own, I recommend taking it. My biggest complaint was that they used these little short fins which didn't give you much power. There was a bit of a current there you couldn't just lay there without doing a bit of swimming. They gave out life jackets, the tube kind you just wrap around your waist, and that worked great to keep you floating on the water without having to work at it and without having the jacket get in the way of your arms. After about 30-45 minutes snorkeling we went to Bannister Beach for about another 30-45 minutes to rest and swim.

 

Guatemala - I don't think you could just go wander here and expect to see anything. This shipping port appeared to be some distance from any town.

Again, we had made no definite plans, and again we were approached on the wharf. This time by a Go with Gus tour sales person. Gus had already gone out earlier with the prescheduled group, so we didn't have him for a guide, but it was still very interesting. Our guide, Anita, is a school teacher, but their schools are out November and December, so she guides in her off season. We did the river boat trip and were charged $49 per person. There were about 12 of us on the boat. I learned later, that not all the people on the boat paid Gus. Some of them went with a different vendor, but we all went out on the same boat. The boat took us up the coast to the Rio Dulce River. This is a primitive jungle. Really beautiful. We went up the river about 45 minutes and stopped at someone's house. The neighbor kids all came out in their dugout canoes to meet us, and to get us to take their picture and pay them for that privilege. Really cute kids - from about 3 to 12 - each in their own little canoe. Then the lady of the house showed us how to make homemade tortillas on her stove and they let us see their house. Open air with only two side walls, one bedroom shared with the family of 8. - very primitive to our western eyes.

Then we went to the hot springs. They are just a roped off portion of the river where the hot springs boil up at the water's edge. At that stop we were offered the opportunity for $2 each to go into some caves. That was really interesting - and pretty strenuous, because you had to duck under low ridges, and climb up on different rocks. Also, it was really hot inside the caves, kind of like a steam bath.

After that, it felt good to get in and swim, but very few in our group did that because they thought the water was too murky. It felt lovely to me.

Next stop was the town of Livingstone. Supposedly it is only accessible by water. We ate lunch there. One group got lunch included - but not the Gus group (even though we paid the same) - so maybe bargain with Gus and see if you can get it less because he doesn't include lunch. ? There is some junky shopping in Livingstone, but I thought the shopping was better at the dock.

Back at the dock- there is a large steel building filled with Guatemalan vendors selling hundreds of things. Prices seemed reasonable and they were willing to bargain - a bit.

 

Costa-Maya - They are really building this area up. The dock side shops are nice and numerous. Diamonds international included. You could certainly wander around these shops and then just swim in the large pool in the shopping portion, but if you want the beach, you need to go to Mahahual (Ma ha well - phonetically). You just walk through the shops and go buy a ticket for the taxi to the beach. Our taxi tickets were $3 each, and ended up being an air-conditioned bus that took a large group to the beach. It offered to let us off at Tequila (I think that is the name) which is the most northern restaurant on the malecon (sidewalk). I think the malecon is more than a mile long? The bus/taxi would also have taken you farther in if you preferred. The vendors on the malecon were enthusiastic "come here and just look" "please sit here and we'll get you 6 beers for $10." etc. Enthusiastic but not aggressively scary. They'll bargain here too.

We ended up at the El Dolphin which was quite nice. I got a $20 -50 minute massage. (The first quotes were for $25 for 30 minutes, but all the vendors would come down to the $20 for one hour.) It was fabulous but she included my head - and so I ended up with lots of massage oil in my hair. I figured it was like a hot oil treatment. Also, it started raining really hard during the end of my massage, so they moved me into the restaurant to finish the massage, then they called a taxi to come to their back door for us and walked us out to the taxi with an umbrella. Seemed above and beyond service to us. We'd definitely go back to them.

We were content to just sit, drink and be massaged, but there were lots of other options. You could rent jet skis, go fishing, parasailing, kayaking etc.

Enjoy! We did!:D