Shore excursions

All the cruise companies organise shore excursions at the ports of call. In the case of Costa Cruises, since they passengers come from many countries, they have an additional challenge of organising excursions in the various languages.

There is information on the website on the excursions available for each port of call and they encourage passengers to pre-book excursions via the Internet. I did this but, in retrospect, it’s not a great idea. Pre-booked excursions cannot be changed after the first evening of the cruise and there’s no problem booking the excursions on board, best the day before. That way you can decide whether you really want to take an organised excursion, go off on your own or even(in the case of the elders) have a rest day and stay on the ship.

I haven’t taken organised tours anywhere for years preferring to tour independently but that, of course, requires more work and time to plan. I happen to enjoy that (and be quite good at it) but it doesn’t suit every one.

I went on a tour in Casablanca and Lanzarote and although each had their good points (in Casblanca the guide and the Hassan II mosque and in Lanzarote the camel ride and the volcanic park) that was enough for me. In Funchal (Madeira) Costa made the decision easier for us by cancelling the tour in English because too few people had signed up for it. They offered us some other tours, none of which seemed attractive so I suggested that we hire a car for one day in Madeira and do our own tour. This however was not trivial compared to my usual planning.

So where does a man go when he knows virtually nothing about Madeira? To the library of course, except that the modest Costa Romantica library was already closed for the day. But my predicament was dire, the Costa staff was understanding and a librarian on emergency duty arrived and photocopied some pages from a guide on Madeira in German for me. But booking a car was going to be tougher. It was already Saturday evening and we needed the car for this morning. Fortunately the ship has a satellite connection and I succeeded in theory in booking a car but I was rather doubtful that it would work.

I downloaded and printed a list of phone numbers of car rental agencies at started calling them early in the morning. I was the first off the ship at 08:00 and walked in the direction of the centre of town. The staff at the first car rental agency I found explained nicely that to have a car I should have booked 2 months before. I kept looking and finally got a cabriolet at an exorbitant price and headed back to ship to collect my group and we had a fun 6-hour self tour (including an excellent fish lunch) for less than the tours would have cost us.

On future cruises I’d probably make the effort in most places to bone up ahead of time, order a rental car and do our own excursion.