Altun Ha Mayan Site & River Wallace

[ncarolina111]

Going on Carnival Dream in a couple of weeks and wanted to take the tour of Altun Ha Mayan Site & River Wallace and usually do not book through cruise lines on tours but was told by friend we should book this through cruise line they were not sure locals offered this tour. Does any one know if they offer this tour when you get off ship are people standing outside with signs offering this tour or do we need to book through cruiseline? Thanks

[soccersharon]

Check out the Ports of Call board here on CC. Tons of great information there :)

 

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[wantocruisemore]

We did this tour through Carnival this past sept. We enjoyed it. There are some reviews over on the Belize section of port of call! just do a search with Altum Ha and River Wallace.

 

I'm not sure if any private co. do Altum Ha with River Wallace, but cavetubing.biz has a tour that does the ruins combined with cave tubing. I would not wait til you get on shore.

 

The carnival tour is a long day. You pay for lunch and it was good. But if you go do take mosquito repellant and a hat that you can secure to your head. The boat is not covered and goes fast at times.

[jones4664]

We did this with smugglersrunbelize.com a few years ago. Very nice people and the tour was great.

[krunch]

We did this tour with Carnival this past November. It's a long day but found it wasn't hard. Great tour, I highly recommend it.

 

Krunch

[Jen1000]

Altun Ha on its own, yes. With the river I am not sure. I would suggest you book with Carnival for longer trips though. You get priority with the tenders and that makes a big difference in Belize as the tender is pretty long. Some of the tours really are not that cheaper through the cruise line vs. on shore, others are.

 

Going on Carnival Dream in a couple of weeks and wanted to take the tour of Altun Ha Mayan Site & River Wallace and usually do not book through cruise lines on tours but was told by friend we should book this through cruise line they were not sure locals offered this tour. Does any one know if they offer this tour when you get off ship are people standing outside with signs offering this tour or do we need to book through cruiseline? Thanks

[pokerpro5]

I looked into this myself.

 

It was very hard to find a private tour that did Altun Ha and the River Wallace, and the few that did wanted a lot of money for it (and/or appeared unreliable).

 

I ended up just dropping the River Wallace part of it, and doing a private Altun Ha tour.

 

The River Wallace part has mixed reviews, anyway. There are complaints that the boat is uncomfortable, and that often it has no cover (so it gets hot). Some also said it was boring because there wasn't enough wildlife. I was going to take a swamp tour in New Orleans anyway, so I decided one river tour was enough.

 

However, I would suggest that you DON'T take the Altun Ha tour with the ship for several reasons.

 

First, it's far more crowded. Second, you will often just get dropped off at Altun Ha, and will not get the backstory of the ruins. Even if you do, it will be very hard to follow when part of such a large crowd.

 

I took a private tour to Altun Ha, and we arrived around noon -- kind of in between the morning and afternoon bus tours there. It was by no means empty, but it wasn't very crowded, and that really made the experience better. We had a great guide who knew so much. That was definitely the way to go, and we paid about the same for this private tour that we would have with the ship.

[Jen1000]

Altun Ha I did privately. There were tours from Celebrity and Carnival there at the same time. They were with guides, not roaming around on their own. Is that true 100% of the time? No idea, but the day I was there is was not going on. Most guides give you information on the drive in addition to what you get at a site.

 

I do a mix of cruise line and privately booked excursions. I have only had 1 cruise line tour that was not great (about 1/3 of the tour was not good). On my last cruise I repeatedly heard mixed reviews on some of the private tours, be careful with who you book with if you go independent.

 

I looked into this myself.

However, I would suggest that you DON'T take the Altun Ha tour with the ship for several reasons.

 

First, it's far more crowded. Second, you will often just get dropped off at Altun Ha, and will not get the backstory of the ruins. Even if you do, it will be very hard to follow when part of such a large crowd.

[Boof80]

chukka.com/location/belize/ offers this. I found it during my research as it is the tour that we are thinking of doing. I haven't done any research into the company as yet as we still have 9 months til our cruise.

[mom2kids00]

We are using Island Marketing but it's for Altun Ha only and not the river. It is much cheaper than booking through the ships and you also get lunch.

 

I've not used Island Marketing before but they seem to have excursions on many of the islands that cruise ships stop at so hopefully all will go well.