Just back from Progreso

[okiefarmer]

Just got back from our cruise on Carnival Ecstasy,sailed 5/15/06, out of Galvaston. When we first found out we were going to Progreso instead of Playa Del Carmen we were disapointed. We got frustrated trying to find out what there was to do in Progreso and then we found Cruise Critics. Thank you all for your reviews and information, it was extremely helpful. H Dawson your knowlegable answers to other posters questions helped us decide to go to Dzibilchaltun.

We docked in Progreso about 7 am and frittered away about an hour getting our party of 6 off the boat. We had decided to try an independant tour guide.Carnival wanted $55 per person for the tour to the Mayan ruins at Dzibilchaltun.

When you first look at the port at Progreso you think man thats a really long pier. Takes about 5 minutes on the free shuttles to get to Progreso proper. When you get off your cruise ship you walk a ways and pass a cluster of shops. There we found people holding signs with various tours on them. First ones you see are the ones that are collecting the Carnival booked tours. Walked by them after they politely smiled and told us to go around the corner. Sure enough in the crowd are another bunch of signs. I saw at least 3 for Dzibilchaltun. I smiled at them and held up 6 fingers and said tour for 6? One of them smiled back and said follow me in perfect english. We went over to his counter and I noted the name. Out of Progreso. They have all the major tours listed with prices in a three ring binder. He offered the Dzilchaltun for $30 per or offered to include a tour of Merida for $40. We took the combo, I paid him and he escorted us to a bus that took us to the Out of Progreso compound where we were told we would depart at 10. They have a flea market with reasonable souvineers where I bought some Cuban cigars for $15. Of course they were all smoked and none made it back to the USA, because it is illegal to bring back Cuban Cigars.:rolleyes:

:o A side note here, if you are the type of travelers that just love to eat at McDonalds or Burger King while in a foreign country, just buy your tour through your travel lines. Do not buy through an independant vender cause you will be out of your comfort zone. If you like tour guides that will tell you things that you won't get on mainline tours and offer authentic Mexican meals then you might give Out of Progreso a try.;)

They assured us that they would have us back to the boat by 2:30. Thats when Carnival said to be back for a 3pm sailing. Twas very close.

At 10 am we climbed on an air conditioned bus that would have seated 40 people with 14 people in our group total. I did not know any of the other folks,just our 6. Our tour guide introduced himself as Eban, he laughed and said thats like Ivan in English. Eban told us point blank that since we were trying to do 2 tours in 4 hours that we would have to hustle.

Dzibilchaltun is located between Progreso an Merida. Hard surface roads all the way. Eban kept up a running dialog about Mayan history and things in general. We loved the Dzibilchaltun tour. My wife had given me a new camera for an anniversary present and I took 198 pictures at Progreso total. I having a huge memory card really gives you the freedom to take lots of pictures. The ruins there are huge. Most have damage from when the Spanish civilized the Mayans. The ball court at Dz was the same size as the one at Chichen Itza but the Spanish tore most of it down and used the limestone blocks for their building projects. You will see evidence of this in the old building at Merida. There are still a large number of ruins with even more that heve not been excavated. We did a fast walking tour, my group climbe a pyramid,took various pics and then went to the cenote. Eban mentioned that the Cenote had not been fully explored, said that the last 2 divers that went deep never came up.

Then it was off to Merida. On the way Eban said do to time constraints that we would not have time to have a sit down meal in Merida but that he could call ahead and get us our choice of chicken or beef tacos, chips salsa ,bean soup and hot sauce with a drink. $9 for each meal, I grinned to myself, I figured he was making about $5 per meal but what the heck, the man had to make a living and we had already planned to tip him. Anyway we did a whirlwind tour of the old buildings around the town square. Beautiful buildings all dating from the 1500's. Eban made sure we were all there and all safe as we crossed the streets, matter of fact ,Police cars would stop and stop traffic while we crossed. Eban laughed and called them the tourist cops.

Back on the bus at 2:10 and I was nervous as a young mother. He gave us our meals, only 8 out of 14 took him up. My chicken tacos,well back in the USA we would have called them soft tacos . Lots of chicken,peppers and seasoning. They were the best thing I had tasted in a while. There were 2 sauces included, a green and a red besides the bowl of salsa. The green will light your life up, but good. The bean soup was pinto beans that tasted so good my 18 year old daughter ate them.

Now the bus is stuck at a trffic light in Progreso and I am preparing the speech to my family that we could rent a car to Cozumel. We rolled back into the terminal at the end of the pier at about 2:38. I am one of those techno geeks with the watch that gets set every day by the atomic clock up in Colorado. We could see the huge line waiting to get back on the Ecstasy when we were pulling up so we were reieved. As we walked through the shops on our way to get in line the shop keepers teased us saying things like,"They already left, or You better hurry they will leave you." This was said with a smile ,and some of our group actually stoped and bought some stuff. We trucked back to the gate where we showed our ID's to the Mexican guards and I realized that 30 or 40 of the people who had done the Corona Beach Break were still hanging around drinking more free beer. We were not the last in line because when those folks saw that there were about 40 people left in line they came weaving back to get in line. They all acted like that they had had a really good time, so I guess if you want to do something on the beach and drink lots of beer the Corona Beach Break might be for you. We did it the next day at the San Fransisco beach break in Cozumel. My review for that is on the Cozumel board.

Summing up I would have to recommend Out of Progreso(just get arround earlier than we did) tours and highly recommend Eban. If you are lucky enough to get Eban as your tour guide tell him That the really tall red bearded man says hello and that he should keep listening to his grandmother and keep telling her stories to the tourists. Eban tells you the official line and then says, My Grandmother told us that.....

Have fun in Progreso. Okiefarmer:D

[hdawson]

What a great review of a Progreso port call. I really enjoyed it alot. So glad you enjoyed your day.

[centralcalicruzer]

Thanks for such a great review. Did they have tours departing at different times in the morning? I would like to go to Dzibilchaltun, but am not that interested in Merida for this trip. It sounds like a beautiful city, but I don't think my 12 and 16 year olds would be that interested, plus I would rather just do the ruins and then perhaps have a little time to shop or sit at Corona beach before getting back on the ship. Did you happen to see how long the tour to Dzibilchaltun only took? Your review of Cozumel was great too, would love to see a review of the ship itself, dining, entertainment, etc.

[texasrosebud]

Hey Okiefarmer,

Glad to hear you had a great day at Progresso. We were on the same cruise as you. We also had a great time in Progresso. We took the free bus into Progresso. Just before the bus arrived at the market, our bus driver told us of a tour that we could take for $10 a person. We decided to take this tour because we had decided to take a more expensive excursion the next day at Cozumel. The tour took us to a small ruin site. I dont remember the name of the site, but it was still very interesting. On the way out there we saw pink flamingos and salt flats. Our bus driver stopped at one of the salt flats and our guide ran out of the bus and grabbed a bunch of the salt and brought it back for us all to taste. Very salty....from the ruins we went to a small fishing villiage where we saw an old cemetary with all the original grave sites. It was very interesting. From there they dropped those of us that wanted to do some shopping back at the market place and the rest went back to the ship. We ate at a restaurant that was right on the beach front. I have to say that I did not enjoy the food. I realized I like Tex Mex food not the real Mexican fare.

 

One thing I would do different myself is to get off the ship earlier. There were eight of us and we took awhile to get off ourselves. With that and the tour we had little time to do any shopping or to enjoy the water.

[texasrosebud]

Centralcalicruzer,

 

I thought the ship was in great condition. It has just been refurbished and looked really nice. We ate all of our meals in the main dining room. Every meal was delicious and large portions. I have cruised before and expected small size portions, but not on the Ecstacy. We went to most of the evening shows and for the most part they were very good. The first night the show was so so, but the rest of the time they were very good. We missed the show on the very last night, we had to pack our bags so we could get them outside of our room in time. We were very impressed by the new beds and bedding that Carnival has gone to. Very nice thick bedding and the bed was comfortable.

 

Because we have done several cruises before, we skipped alot of the things that were going on and just relaxed and took our time on this cruise. It was a nice five day cruise with two ports of call that we enjoyed very much.

 

The only thing that I would change is the seas were a bit on the ruff side for most of the cruise, but I have been when it was a lot ruffer. Our friends that were with us all had to use the patch. After the first day of letting their bodies get used to it they were fine.

[okiefarmer]

Hello texasrosebud, I think you were posting on kellybellys roll call earlier? You may have seen me wandering around ship with my wife, I was the large bearded man in either a John Deere cap or a white cap with OSU in orange.:) Met quite a few folks that were down from Stillwater on the cruise too.

This was just our second cruise so I am far from an expert more like a dangerous rookie-just knowing enough to get in trouble.;) We managed to eat at a couple of places that were "authentic" mexican cooking. Enjoyed most of it but the chips take a little getting used too and just like you I do lean towrd Tex-Mex. Heck the differance is why we are there ,isn't it?

Centralcruiser, hello there, they do a tour of dzibilchaltun-that tour was ahead of us by at least 30 minutes. I kinda wish we had done it alone but my kids(22,21,20,18) that were with us liked it all. They seemed to really enjoy touring the old buildings and getting a look at a non-Oklahoma city. You just don't see the statues and fountains that are common in Mexican cities in Oklahoma. They also do the tour that texasrosebud was talking about, we saw somw folks taking off for that one.

:p Biggest tip is if you are on a Carnival ship and get there at 7, be ready to get off the ship as quick as you can.

:confused: Question for you experianced cruisers, We heard that the Norwegian Cruise line ships stay in port for 12 hours? That would be a lot nicer than the 8 that carnival seems to stay. We are thinking about one of the 7 day cruises that hit Jamacia,Grand Cayman then finish at Cozumel early next year. Thanks ,okiefarmer

[centralcalicruzer]

Yeah, I wondered about how early we should get off the ship. 7:00 seems pretty early for a cruise, but I guess we could do it for one day out of 5! Do you think if we planned to be off the ship by 8:00 that would give us enough time to do the Dzibilchaltun ruins and a little shopping time afterwords? In Mazatlan we had to be off the ship by 8:00 to meet up with Randi's Happy Horses, we just ordered room service breakfast that morning and got ready and got off. But that was just the two of us, this time we will have my teenage daugthers with us, that's pretty early for my 16 year old, but I'm sure she can do it!

[crazybill]

Hey, if any of y'all are coming to Progreso, drop by and see me. I am in Uaymitun which is 16 km east of Progreso. The beaches get better as you go east. Pictures at http://www.drennon.org/yucatan/pictures.html Things to do are at http://www.drennon.org/yucatan/thingstodo.html

 

Othere links to help you learn about the area can be hit from those pages. Hope that helps.

 

Bill

[Carolinamamasita]

I just wanted to say that I really enjoyed your review .

Thank you :)

[mountaingurl]

Thanks for this review. This was just the kind of info I was looking for.

[39august]

Wow, just the info I wanted. Our cruise dropped Costa Maya and has extended our time in Progress to a whopping 12 hours. So this tour sounds like exactly what I want. We will not be rushed as the OP was. And I'll still have time for a massage on the beach!!

[SqueakyDust]

I was worried when Costa Maya was dropped from our schedule and even more worried we'd land up with a sea day (still might, I guess). However, currently, we too are destined for Progreso.

I really enjoyed your review especially as you went to a ruin, which is what I'd like our family to do too.

I'll bear in mind we'll need 4-5 hours if doing the 2 tours, once I know our shore times.

 

Many thanks.