Reply To: EXCURSIONS: Make plans with other Sea Monkeys!
Not crazy at all. What I’ve done in the past on “new” destinations, and indeed on “old favorite” destinations, is just that: head for the shopping district or what have you. On my very first cruise, We rented a Mini Moke at the port (did a bit of research beforehand) on Barbados, leading to a One Lap of Barbados tour that was confounded by both a lack of functional maps (we ran into another couple that had all the latest British Geological Survey maps and proclaimed them “bloody useless”, so we didn’t feel bad about our free tourist map) and quaint road signs that didn’t tell you what road you were on or what road you had come to, but what was down thataway. Which, often as not, was NOT listed on our map.
It was a glorious adventure.
I have a dislike for bus tours, and between cheap rental cars and the interwebs for some pre-trip research, there’s frankly no reason to not hare off on your own in most of the places cruise ships go. I would NOT drive in: Jamaica, Colombia, Costa Rica, or Panama without being part of a large group, but that’s more owing to local conditions (and local drivers) than anything else. That said, I’m someone who made a weekly round-trip between Monterrey and Saltillo, Mexico, in a rental car despite warnings that it was (and I quote) “suicide”. I don’t know that I’d do that today given the increase in the nacro traffic in that area, but in 2002, it was tolerable.