We Did Nativeway on March 17th, just a quick report

[LAFFNVEGAS]

Hi, I thought I would report back that we did go on the Stingray swim with Native way. We were there on a day that there were 7 Huge ships in port. We were on the Holland America Westerdam which was small in comparison to the others. We had arranged to do this with Nativeway in June of 2004 way before the hurricanes. The weather was not the best it was warm and some what sunny but waves were high and it was quite windy. When we got the the Stingray Sandbar we were the last boat to get there and there were already about 7 or 8 large boats there with 100 passengers in them. Wow am I glad we only had 25 people on our boat. Nativeway was actually pretty good for the price. They explained a lot and everyone had lots of chances to hold the stingrays, kiss the stingrays and get a back massage froma stingray as well as feed the stingrays. The next stop was to take us to the Coral Reeg area to snorkel, this was not great but not Nativeway's fault. The waves had gotten worse and made it quite difficult to swim, plus a bit unsafe due to boats that were anchored closely that were almost hitting swimmers. Many of us decided it was not a good idea to try to snorkel.

 

Over all it was a great day and I would definitely do it again. I did make one major mistake. I had put on plenty of sunblock but after swimming with the rays and getting a back massage from the rays I did not reapply sunblock to my back and I suffered from a very bad sunburn that is just now starting to feel better. So word of warning put on plenty of sunblock even if you are very tan.

 

If you are interested here are pictures from our cruise on Web Shots. The pictures of the swim with Stingrays were taken by my husband using the Zoom from the boat. I have not developed the underwater camera pictures yet.

 

Here is album one

 

http://community.webshots.com/album/302966749jkBMKW

 

Here is album two also the album with the Grand Cayman pictures.

 

http://community.webshots.com/album/303046320JbsMHH

 

If you have any questions feel free to email me.

[roomsu]

Did it take a long time to get back to the ship? We want to use every last second doing things, and want to make sure we are back in time to get on the boat. What time should we be in line to be safe? Was it the same type of deal in Grand Cayman and Ocho Rios?

Thanks so much for all your help,

Laura:D

[softballmom]

We went on the Nativeway shore tour on March 21st and highly recommend them the guides are very patient with everyone and the groups are smaller so you get individualized attention and plenty of time with the stingrays. I would not have liked being with the really large groups we saw because I was nervous and appreciated the time they took with me and my family.

[disneylynn]

Thanks for sharing! loved the pictures, We had the same guides, they were great!

[LAFFNVEGAS]

Did it take a long time to get back to the ship? We want to use every last second doing things, and want to make sure we are back in time to get on the boat. What time should we be in line to be safe? Was it the same type of deal in Grand Cayman and Ocho Rios?

Thanks so much for all your help,

Laura:D

 

Laura, we took the morning swim with Nativeway which was a good thing to do.We were able to get on the first tender into Georgetown. We luckily had a suite so we had priority tendering. Nativeway got us back into town about 12:30 which gave us a few hours to shop. We then got in line about 2:15 to get back on the ship. It took us about 45 minutes but I understand it took a lot longer later in the day. As long as you are in line the ship will not leave with out you. Not sure how long it took with the bigger ships because they had larger boats taking the passengers back to the ship. In Ocho Rios we docked to there was no problem with tendering.