Snorkeling in St Maartin

[jsd0330]

Has anyone ever done the CATAMARAN SNORKEL & BEACH W/LUNCH in St Maartin? Are there alot of things to see where they take you? It's a pretty expensive excursion at least for me an my family and I want to have a good experience.

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[BEnfield4]

We did it on our Jan 14th cruise! This was our first snorkeling experience in the ocean and my first time actually swimming in the ocean. We did the early morning excursion around 8 AM. In our experience the snorkeling was not very good. The water was not clear at all and there was nothing to really see. Its a nice catamaran and the crew is laid back. He never deployed the sails and ran on the diesel engines the whole way there. Our time played out like this, first thing in the morning we got on the boat and went directly to the snorkeling site. Swam there for around an hour and got on the boat and went back to the pier by the boat. We then boarded a bus to go to the beach. (the later tour uses the boat to go to the beach) The bus ride was interesting to say the least. The beach is in a harbor and is a shared beach between a resort and a Restaurant. Its a nice beach but the water did not look to appealing to swim in. The staff made us a nice lunch of BBQ'd pork ribs and beans an rice. it was a great lunch. We had a nice time in the sun on the beach just relaxing and talking with a nice group of people from the midwest. We all enjoyed the sun since its cold where we live. The boat came back and picked us up and we were ferried out to it via the little dingy boats. The ride back was full of so so rum punch and we were back to the dock about a half hour late. So our impression was that the swimming was not worth it but the beach time in the quiet was better and the lunch was great. This tour did not leave a lot of time to go to town and shop so if you want to shop a lot in Philipsburg you may want to reconsider this long of a tour.

 

FYI if your going to St Thomas we did the Turtle Cove Sail and Snorkel and it was way better. The folks on the Dancing Dolphin were great the water was not crystal clear but you had good visibility. The rum punch was better and the crew was a lot of fun.

 

It was our first time doing a cruise and all of this stuff so we just rolled with it and it was fine. I have heard that orient beach is better for snorkeling in St Maartin so you may want to consider that. Frankly for the money you could just get a taxi to orient and hang out there and do your activities and go back a lot cheaper than that excursion. Just my opinion.

 

Enjoy your cruise! I know we sure did.

[mrjcharles]

Power snorkel is good boat called the Dancing Dolphin.