Shark/Ray Alley - enough time?

[rthudy]

My ship (Carnival Miracle) docks at 8 and leaves at 5, and they don't offer shark/ray alley as an excursion. So my question is a two-parter - 1) At the dock, will there be companies/tour guides offering trips to shark/ray alley, even though its not offered by my cruise line, and 2) will I have enough time to do this trip (I know you have to take a 80 minute ride to San Pedro and then another long boat ride from there) and be back to the ship/dock around 4 so I can board on time?

 

Thanks....

[mayrashke]

We are thinking about doing the SharkRay Alley with Coral Breeze in Jan./07. Email them(check the email address but I think it is:coralbreezelimiteddotcom) and ask them if you have time, and if they already have booked people that day. They need a minimum of 8 for this excursion to go. The fellow at Coral Breeze is very prompt in his emails and the excursion sounds great!

There probably will be companies for this at the dock. Last cruise(Jan./05) we booked and paid for the Sharkray excursion with a company in the cruise compound/dock and they said they were waiting until a certain time for more people. We waited a while and lucky I went back to check as they were waiting for a certain number and if they did not get the number, we would be excursion-less!!! We got our money back(with no problem I might say, as I am sure they do not want to make cruiseship passengers mad at them) and got a Goff's Cay excursion that was just about to leave with a different company. That was a great excursion for our family to do too.

Please do a review when you get back and let us know (if you went on it)with who, and how it was. Thanks!

Have a great cruise!

[wrinklesandme]

Hi all,

 

Coral Breezes caters to the cruise passengers. You will have plenty of time for the tour and get back in plenty of time to tender back to your ship.

 

We used them in August and it was absolutely wonderful! The people are excellent, the boat is perfect and the weather could not have been better. We did the Shark/Ray Alley tour with lunch. You pre-order the lunch and it's ready for you when you are done snorkeling. We also rented golf carts for $10 per hour on Caulker Caye. Had an absolute blast.

 

Go and enjoy!

[WASailorGirl]

I will be in Belize on Dec. 20th on the Grand Princess and we will be going to Caye Caulker by way of water taxi. www.cayecaulkerwatertaxi.com It is 15.00 RTand is 45 minutes each way. There is a 9:00 am water taxi to Caye Caulker. I have a pre-arranged 3 hour snorkeling tour wtih Tsunami Adventures that leaves Caye Caulker at 10:30. It makes three stops, one being Shark Ray Alley, one the Coral Gardens and I'm not sure of the third stop. The tour is $25.00 pp. (They will meet you right at the water taxi and take you by golf cart to the boat.) We then plan on taking the 3:00 pm. water taxi back to Belize City. We should have a little time to shop or eat after our tour gets back to Caye Caulker at 1:30. There is a 1:30 water taxi back to Belize City but that might be cutting it short. Do a search for Tsunami Adventures or email Heather Martin at heather@btl.net. So for 40.00 total, you have a great day and it's a lot less expensive than any ship tours (and no cattle call - Mooooo!) Plus, as the OP said, the tour isn't offered through the ship anyway.

 

Hope that helps! Have fun!

 

Beth

[wrinklesandme]

WAsailorgirl,

 

The excursion that you are planning on doing sounds very much like what Coral Breeze offers. Might I suggest you look into the tours offered by Coral Breeze. I only mention this 'cause you are relying on "public" transportation to get you back to Belize City from Caulker Caye. If for some reason the water taxi does not run, or is late, you are in big trouble.

 

On our cruise, there was a family of 5 who missed the ship! They did their own tour and also were confused about time changes. They were very lucky as they were able to charter a boat and catch up with the ship at the Pilot House about an hour from Belize City. I don't know the exact figure, but I heard that the charter cost them around $150 PER PERSON. (X5)

 

We watched as the boat pulled up along side the ship and they lowered life vests to the family. They then tied a rope around each person as they climbed up onto the ship. (our captain had announced that the family had missed the ship and would be catching up to us. He then invited us all top side to welcome them back aboard!)

 

I'm not telling this to scare you. Just telling you what did and can happen. Coral Breeze caters to cruise passengers. Just about all of their business is via word of mouth on the various cruise boards. If they were unreliable, they would be out of business in a heartbeat. They will make sure that you are back to Belize City in plenty of time to catch tenders back to the ship.

 

Either way, you will love Caulker Caye and Shark/Ray Alley. Both are just plain awsome.

 

Enjoy.

[msd760]

Be careful about your times in Belize. If your ship sails from Miami or Tampa you will be 1 Hour ahead of Belize time. Belize is on central time, not EST.

We ran into that problem in Belize. We sailed from New Orleans so we were on CST, but we booked a snorkel tour with Ecological Tours for both spots. We shared the tour with people from a Carnival ship and they got panicy about times. We ended up cutting our trip short so the Carnival people could get back to Belize City in time to get their boat. We got back at 230PM Belize time which was 330PM Carnival time. Many were upset with this but we still got to do both snorkel spots, just didn't get to do lunch and beach stop.

[WASailorGirl]

WAsailorgirl,

 

The excursion that you are planning on doing sounds very much like what Coral Breeze offers. Might I suggest you look into the tours offered by Coral Breeze. I only mention this 'cause you are relying on "public" transportation to get you back to Belize City from Caulker Caye. If for some reason the water taxi does not run, or is late, you are in big trouble.

 

On our cruise, there was a family of 5 who missed the ship! They did their own tour and also were confused about time changes. They were very lucky as they were able to charter a boat and catch up with the ship at the Pilot House about an hour from Belize City. I don't know the exact figure, but I heard that the charter cost them around $150 PER PERSON. (X5)

 

We watched as the boat pulled up along side the ship and they lowered life vests to the family. They then tied a rope around each person as they climbed up onto the ship. (our captain had announced that the family had missed the ship and would be catching up to us. He then invited us all top side to welcome them back aboard!)

 

I'm not telling this to scare you. Just telling you what did and can happen. Coral Breeze caters to cruise passengers. Just about all of their business is via word of mouth on the various cruise boards. If they were unreliable, they would be out of business in a heartbeat. They will make sure that you are back to Belize City in plenty of time to catch tenders back to the ship.

 

Either way, you will love Caulker Caye and Shark/Ray Alley. Both are just plain awsome.

 

Enjoy.

 

Thanks for the info. I had already thought about Coral Breezes however, because they are nearly twice the price as doing it more or less on our own I decided against it. The company that we are using on Caye Caulker has membership in the water taxi and has assured me that they have back up boats and no one is ever left behind. It's unfortunate that the family you wrote about had such a harrowing experience. It seems their trouble stemmed from getting confused about time. Our ship leaves from Galveston so we will be on the same time as Belize. We have two choices back to the ship 1:30 and 3:00 by water taxi. Our ship leaves Belize at 5:00 so I think we'll be fine. I've read on the boards here many people have used the water taxi service with no problems. I'll hope for the best!

I'm looking forward to our trip in December! I'll be sure to post a review and let everyone know how the water taxi situation worked out. I sure don't want to be one of those people being hoisted on to the ship with a life jacket on. How tacky! ;)

[janeher]

Thanks for the info. I had already thought about Coral Breezes however, because they are nearly twice the price as doing it more or less on our own I decided against it. The company that we are using on Caye Caulker has membership in the water taxi and has assured me that they have back up boats and no one is ever left behind.

 

What company did you decide on? I'd like to check them out too. Thanks

[WASailorGirl]

Thanks for the info. I had already thought about Coral Breezes however, because they are nearly twice the price as doing it more or less on our own I decided against it. The company that we are using on Caye Caulker has membership in the water taxi and has assured me that they have back up boats and no one is ever left behind.

 

What company did you decide on? I'd like to check them out too. Thanks

 

Tsunami Adventures on Caye Caulker. See my post #4 above.

[deenanmoose]

Wrinklesandme

We booked the same tour with Coral Breeze in January. How many people were on the boat with you? Were there good shops at Caye Caulker? Do you recall about how much time you had at the Caye after snorkeling? We decided to do the lunch too - sounded like it would save some time. Thank you fot all the information!!

[wrinklesandme]

deenanmoose,

 

Caulker Caye is very primative but wonderful! There are not a lot of stores, but there are street/beach vendors. The vendors had a lot of handmade jewelery and shells. DD bought a very large conch shell for $2.50US. We had about 90+ minutes on CC. Our group was four families but there were about 30 on the tour total.

 

By the time we finished our yummy lunch, we rented golf carts for an hour and just tooled around. You can see the island twice in that amount of time! The scenery is just awsome!

 

If you are looking for a lot of shopping, do it in Belize City. We had about 90 minutes there too before the last tender. Enough time for DD to get her hair braided and for us to get some shirts and the like. (FYI. If you do the hair braiding, bring your own comb and small change. It's $15.00US for half head, but amazingly, they don't have change!)

 

We love Belize City and Caulker Caye as it is so laid back and beautiful!

 

Enjoy!