Carnival Magic - Sergeant Cay Snorkeling Excursion

[2Okies]

Since I could not find any good recent information about this excursion we booked through Carnival, I wanted to tell you about our experience on our January 23 excursion through Carnival Magic.

The excursion ferry picked us up right at the ship so we didn't have to tender ashore & then catch another ferry. This was very convenient. The ferry was a double decker type ferry w/an open top on the top deck. It was probably a 20-25 minute easy ride to the reef which is out in the middle of the ocean, and probably 15-20' deep in most places. They insisted we wear the snorkel vests, which I was personally kind of glad for because the current was pretty strong and I'm not a very strong swimmer. They had 2 guides in a kayak, and 1 with a life preserver out in the water. They do try to keep you all together, and there might have been around 40-50 on our excursion. So, sometimes, you were getting kicked in the face or brushing up against someone else. More crowded than I would like. The reef formations out to the breaks were hit & miss, and I saw few fish. We had snorkeled the day before in Roatan at Maya Key - and this Belize snorkeling was in no way was as beautiful. My husband did snorkel out closer to the breaks and he said it was starting to get more pretty, and there were more fish. However, the current was so strong, so I didn't even attempt to go out that far. After about 45 minutes, I came back to the ferry boat. My husband stayed out until it was almost time to head back.

We thought we had read that this excursion went to an actual island, but we never docked on land. We did pass a a very small island that looked like it had a beach, some chairs, maybe a restaurant or bathroom facilities. We asked one of the guides about it, and he said that on some excursions they do take guests to that island. I guess ours wasn't one of those excursions. ??

We rode on the top deck on the way back, because we finally did have sunshine in Belize, and the warmth felt good. They served rum punch on the way back to the ship. The entire excursion took about 3 hrs. We were back about 11:30am.

After the excursion we went to our room, cleaned up, and took the ship ferry into the mainland to shop at the little port of shops that Carnival has built. We picked up a few Belize souvenirs and we were back aboard ship by around 3. The last tender was 4:15.

Edited January 27, 2014 by 2Okies

[2Okies]

Picture of the reef - it pretty much all looked like this. Not a lot of color.

 

Sorry I haven't figured out how to post multiple pics or anything bigger than a thumbnail. Help anyone?

Edited January 30, 2014 by 2Okies

[2Okies]

Here are pictures of our Sergeant Caye Snorkel trip. Again, this was a cloudy day, so if we had sun, the pictures could have been better. But, it definitely wasn't as pretty as in Roatan the day before.