Oceania offers wonderful oppotunities to explore each port with several choices of excursions. It was our job to pick the ones we felt would give us the feel for the place as well as have a good time. Our travel agent sent us the .pdf file of the excursions offered. We printed it out and it is over 260 pages!
Printing it was the first hurdle.
Dividing them by months helped in the notebook we started.
I created a spreadsheet listing each port and underneath each excursion offered. I listed the amount of time, the start time, and the price. We wanted to have an idea how much this was all going to cost!
We found out that Oceania offers a 25% discount if you pre-purchase at least 25 excursions each. The catch is, they are non refundable after you board the ship. But you can switch them around, if you decide to, onboard ship.
We took several weeks, each week picking a month or two, to look at the descriptions and pick what we thought we would like. I eliminated things like the bus tour into town, or wine tours since we don't drink wine anymore. Also, no glass bottom boats. Although we ended up picking one in Scarborough, Tobago because they go to this cool nylon pool - sort of like the sandbar in Kaneohe Bay.
We ended up choosing 86 excursions! Sometimes, David and I go on different ones. Snorkling, kayaking, beaches, plantations, voodoo ceremonies, living desert trip, temples, folkloric shows, Mekong River cruise, "Good Morning Vietnam" tour, National Parks, Komodo Dragons, Great Barrier Reef adventure, Art tours, village way of life, sacred sights, jeep safaris, hiking, and the Sydney Bridge Climb! Of course there will be regular sight seeing, museums, colorful markets, distinctive architecture, and as little shopping as possible.
There are 5 special events for world cruisers:
Event: Open-Air Dinner At Swakop River Canyon in Walvis Bay, Namibia
Event: Traditional Thai Extravaganza in Bangkok
Event: Exclusive Tour & Lunch At the
Great Wall of China
Event:
1940s Patriotic Evening Aboard the Battleship Missouri on Oahu
Oceania also included for world cruisers an overnight trip in Myanmar (Burma) to the temples of Bagan.
