Cartagena Chiva Party Bus..reviews?

[rhonda819]

Has anyone taken the party bus tour in Cartagena. We are going NCL Sun in Feb and I have seen a couple reviews that don't favor it? If we decide not to go, can we cancel our booking before the cruise?

[2boyzmom]

Hi- we have it booked for our March trip. Some reviews are great- some not. I have been to Cartagena before and personally enjoyed the beauty of the city, but many cruisers seem to fear it and dont like the pushy sales people on the streets. The party bus is only 3 hours so if it's lousy- its only 3 hours, but i think it will be lots of fun. I have read reviews on other sites (not NCL) and the reviews have been good. Please fill me in when you return!

[llachance]

and it was a total mistake. Didn't go to half the places it was supposed to. Sat over 45 minutes waiting for Empenadas that were stuck in traffic (they were too hot to have been stuck i traffic), if we had known at least we could have continued to look through the stores that we were sitting at.

 

Busses meet you at the ship. As you get on the bus the there is a trio of music players, loud and not great but give the party feeling. You are given plastic cups with ice, a small bottle of rum and a bottle of coke. There was also water and beer if you preferred.

 

Drove from the port to the fort. Off the bus and the tour guide gives you some information. There is not time to visit the port but you can buy any number of souviniers from the folks that are around and as pushy as I have ever seen (and I have traveled around the world).

 

Continue driving through town, our guide told us what to look for, routinely after we passed it. Stopped and other Chiva busses were there. Supposed to dance to the bad musicians and compete against the other busses. I would rather have seen more of the city.

 

As the tour progressed they kept talking about their beautiful beaches. The ones that we could see weren't and they stunk of garbage. There may have been nicer beaches but we didn't see any on the tour.

 

Now to be fair there were four busses that morning and the three other busses got to see everything we were supposed to - don't know what happened with us. We did comment to NCL about our experience.