Cruise stopovers in the Caribbean aren't really designed to give you much of a taste of culture. The focus for Caribbean cruisers is generally all about the ship. The stopovers are a chance to do something a bit different on the day, spend some cash and make money for the cruise line.
So to our first stop Cozumel. An island of the coast of Mexico that, as we would find with our other ports on this voyage, exists to service the cruise ship industry. Tourists from both cruises and fly ins make the local economy go around. To be fair, Cozumel does have a number of attractions that make it worth a short visit though and plenty of day tours are available to satisfy cruisers and longer stay tourists interested in snorkelling, fishing, diving, shopping and visiting Mayan ruins. While tours organised by the cruise lines are expensive, it does guarantee that you get back in time to catch the boat!
We choose a tour to the local Mayan ruins with secondary stops at a beach and a chocolate factory. After waiting ashore in the brutal sun for 45 minutes with hundreds of other cruisers trying to dodge the hawkers from the tourist shops we were on our way.
The ruins were ok, nothing special although the guide gave us an interesting insight into the Mayan society in the area. The nasty bighting midges which seemed impervious to repellent did make it hard to concentrate on the story at times.
The 10 minute beach stop was pretty but blighted by litter and the touts hawking their faux "authentic" totems at a range of stalls.
The tour of the chocolate factory was a bit interesting but (keeping with the underwhelming theme) poor in comparison with the much more immersive chocolate experience we had in Peru. The chocolate was also super expensive and while nice, was clearly not worth the money.
So the conclusion is that the tour wasn't really that exciting and we would have been better off going ashore and doing our own thing - which we resolved to do at the next port.
So to our first stop Cozumel. An island of the coast of Mexico that, as we would find with our other ports on this voyage, exists to service the cruise ship industry. Tourists from both cruises and fly ins make the local economy go around. To be fair, Cozumel does have a number of attractions that make it worth a short visit though and plenty of day tours are available to satisfy cruisers and longer stay tourists interested in snorkelling, fishing, diving, shopping and visiting Mayan ruins. While tours organised by the cruise lines are expensive, it does guarantee that you get back in time to catch the boat!
We choose a tour to the local Mayan ruins with secondary stops at a beach and a chocolate factory. After waiting ashore in the brutal sun for 45 minutes with hundreds of other cruisers trying to dodge the hawkers from the tourist shops we were on our way.
The ruins were ok, nothing special although the guide gave us an interesting insight into the Mayan society in the area. The nasty bighting midges which seemed impervious to repellent did make it hard to concentrate on the story at times.
The 10 minute beach stop was pretty but blighted by litter and the touts hawking their faux "authentic" totems at a range of stalls.
The tour of the chocolate factory was a bit interesting but (keeping with the underwhelming theme) poor in comparison with the much more immersive chocolate experience we had in Peru. The chocolate was also super expensive and while nice, was clearly not worth the money.
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