How much time to allow to return to a tendered port?

[herbanrenewal]

Puerto Montt, Chile is a tendered port, and our ship arrives at 8am and departs at 5pm. We have booked an excursion with Southexcursions for a 7 hour tour, to Petrohue Falls. The guide picks us up at 9am and brings us back to the port at 4pm for a scheduled 5pm departure.

 

Will we be back in time for boarding the tender in time for the ship's departure? I would prefer to not cut it too close since I don't want to miss the ship! I don't think we will know the time of the final tender until the night before the tour, but i would definitely prefer planning on returning to port at least 30 minutes before the last scheduled tender.

 

I am also concerned about a lunch stop during the 7 hours - it seems to me that a lot of time could be wasted if we don't have arrangments made for a quick lunch stop. How have other groups/guides handled this?

 

Is it realistic to have a planned return time 1 hour before scheduled departure of the ship in a tendered port?

[phoenix_dream]

I have not been to this port, but in general the last tender time is a half hour or so before departure. As long as you are in line, they will not leave without you. It is always a risk to do private tours, as if the tour is late the ship will not wait for you. An hour seems enough time in general, but I would say it depends on the logistics of the tour itself, as well as the back-up facilities of the tour operator. Is this a port where you could fairly easily catch a taxi back if the tour was running late? If not, does the tour operator have back-up options such as other buses or taxis or so forth. Does the tour go into remote areas of the country where it would be difficult to find other transportation, or does it stay fairly close to the port? You can go onto sites like TripAdvisor and check their reviews of the tour company and get a read on their reliability but of course even a slew of good reviews does not guarantee there will be no incidents. Last and not least, how far away is the next port and worst case, what would be your options to get there. All of these are points to consider. Sorry I could not answer your specific question.

[Fouremco]

I have not been to this port, but in general the last tender time is a half hour or so before departure. As long as you are in line, they will not leave without you. It is always a risk to do private tours, as if the tour is late the ship will not wait for you. An hour seems enough time in general, but I would say it depends on the logistics of the tour itself, as well as the back-up facilities of the tour operator. Is this a port where you could fairly easily catch a taxi back if the tour was running late? If not, does the tour operator have back-up options such as other buses or taxis or so forth. Does the tour go into remote areas of the country where it would be difficult to find other transportation, or does it stay fairly close to the port? You can go onto sites like TripAdvisor and check their reviews of the tour company and get a read on their reliability but of course even a slew of good reviews does not guarantee there will be no incidents. Last and not least, how far away is the next port and worst case, what would be your options to get there. All of these are points to consider. Sorry I could not answer your specific question.

Some excellent points. On our last cruise, we took a private excursion with a company that is highly rated both on Cruise Critic and TripAdvisor. The 12 passenger van experienced a flat tire which gave the driver/guide a lot of difficulty and took about 3/4 of an hour to change. Fortunately, that occurred early in the day and we were able to make up for it by cutting a few minutes here and there, but had it been on the final leg, while returning to the ship, it would have been touch and go to get back in time.