Cozumel cruise excursions

You will find many Cozumel cruise excursion options through the list of excursions that Carnival Cruise provides to all its passengers. Its important to find the one that works for you based on the time you have on shore as well as the group you’re traveling with.

Check out this post to know what to expect if its your first Carnival cruise trip.

Booking an excursion trip
When you book your cruise it clearly mentions the number of days ship will be at sea and the days when it will be visiting ports. The cruise line will also share with you all the different options you’ll have to book an excursion tour through the cruise ship or on your own. For most of the excursions cruise line excursions will be more expensive than the ones you book personally.
Recommended to book an excursion trip of your choice in advance else sometimes the highly rated and preferable ones may run out.
If you book a personal excursion, one of the best ways is to check out for the ratings of these excursions on Tripadvisor. Also read carefully through the details to make sure your requirements are met. We were on this cruise with extended family – three generations and hence we had both the elderly (my parents) and young kids (youngest being 3yrs). In this situation we had to pick the Caribbean excursion with someone with a good rating, trustworthy and who was willing to do all the activities with novices.
Similarly for us, a big question was Chichen Itza, Uxmal or Dzibilchaltun in Progreso and you can read about our shore excursion experience in Progreso here.

What are the different options?
The options in Cozumel range from ancient Mayan ruins (Tulum ruins) which is a long day trip, to a relaxed Plaza Mia grand beach and water park, to snorkeling and diving in the Caribbeans, 3 reef snorkeling and some other beach clubs. The beach access is not free on any of the beaches and there are a lot of operators to choose from

What did we do and our experience:
Snorkeling in the Caribbean is almost a given and is provided by a lot of tour operators which can be pre booked. Unless you prefer to just relax on one of the breach properties. Do note that most of the beaches are paid beaches including any water parks on them and we were not interested in going to just a water park. We opted for the 2 reef snorkeling trip with a bonus stop at El Cielo.
We were a large family so we did not opt for one of the larger tours offered by the ship as we wanted a customised tour for our family with all ages and different levels of swimming proficiency including a toddler

We opted for Misty snorkeling, fantastic guys, we went to three places – El Cielo Sandbar and Starfish sanctuary (great for touching and seeing starfish), Palancar reef and Columbia Reef.
We started off with the Palancar reef where there were loads of schools of colorful fish and beautiful corals, followed by Columbia reef which was quite good too.
We went to El-Cielo in the end with waist deep water where everyone could stand in the blue water and powdery white sand. Just be careful, stay put and don’t move when you see a Sting ray.

If this is your first time snorkeling, I recommend getting your snorkeling gear and practising breathing from your mouth under water (in a swimming pool) before jumping directly in the Caribbean and trying it out for the first time. First rule, you have a life jacket on so don’t have to be scared as you wouldn’t drown or get drifted away. A little practise might really come in handy.

Don’t forget to carry
Apart from the things you need to pack for the cruise, make sure to carry sunscreen, moisturizer, sunglasses, sun hats, a waterproof cover for your mobile phone to take under water pictures if you don’t have a water proof camera like go-pro. It will come in very handy when taking pictures of star fish which you may get to hold and touch, or Sting Rays which you may see floating by at a distance.

Shopping for Souvenirs
You will find streets full of souvenir shops selling sombreros, ceramics, masks and the like all along the port of Cozumel. We picked up masks, some ceramic and dream catchers. Do make sure to pick up something of your choice before getting on the cruise ship back when you visit Cozumel.

This was the last stop on our excursion which lasted almost 8hrs and we made it just in time back to our gangway.