This section supplements the other cruising-related pages. Here we describe strategies for enhancing your overall cruise experience – mostly for those seeking to see more nature and who don’t have extreme mobility issues. We give some specific examples of possibilities for various countries, but by no means attempt to be comprehensive. There may be a few items that some of you haven’t considered, despite your frequent cruising.

For World and longer cruises select your segments carefully as to where you embark and disembark the ship. Most cruise lines have certain ports where you can get on and off the ship, though certain arrangements are possible from almost any port. This is because entertainers are getting on and off almost anywhere. For the Holland America Cruise line the following ports are the main ones to consider when booking a cruise: Barcelona, Dover, Rotterdam (or Amsterdam), Athens, Lisbon, Rome, Trieste, Reykjavik, Miami or Ft Lauderdale, Seattle, Anchorage, Boston, San Diego, Brisbane, Sydney, Perth, Auckland, Singapore, Hong Kong, Tokyo (or Yokohama), Santiago, Buenos Aires, and Cape Town. There can be others, and for long cruises there may be segments sold separately.

Although most passengers will fly directly to and from their embarkation ports, a smaller percentage will take advantage of their already considerable airfare expense to explore around their ports of embarking or debarking. And while the daily expense on land for a couple will probably be similar to the daily cost aboard the ship (roughly) for that couple, there are some benefits to land exploration. We discuss these below and then follow with a few suggestions of how to plan and carry out such land travel.

Advantages of land-based travel

No stress of missing the ship, stay out all night every night if you want to, change itinerary at the last second. Major photography benefits include being out during the best hours for photography (after sunrise and before sunset), nighttime animal watching.

What land-based travel costs

Taking additional time before or after a cruise will cost money. Accommodations, food, a rental vehicle and gas for it (or public transport), entrance fees to attractions all add up. So long before you buy your airline tickets, you should consider if it is worthwhile to spend time when you join the ship, or where you get off.

What do you really want to see? What are your interests? Do you want to send selfies to all your facebook friends to convince them you are having a great time? Or are you an introvert wanting to explore the landscape all by yourself? And do you have specialized interests? Are you a history buff? Archaeological sites? Beaches? Scenic views? Many people are into nature-focused subjects like birdwatching or visiting well-known parks to see their wildlife. A (very) small minority hunt for obscure cacti, reptiles, or insects at night. We fall into the latter category to a certain degree.

Given your personal interests, are there such interests close to the ports you join or leave the ship? If you leave in Hawaii and your passion is Egyptian archaeology, there isn’t much point in spending extra time on land. But if you have an interest in natural landscapes and wildlife, you can then do some background reading to see what is feasibly close to where you meet or leave the ship. Of course, feasibly close depends on your available time and money – you could leave a cruise ship in Miami, but then fly all across the US to visit California if you don’t mind the two days lost to travel to California and back. In fact, compared with the cost of a month-long cruise, flying round-trip across a continent may be quite affordable – if it gets you close to what you want to see.

SECOND: ideally, pick a port of where you can easily “escape” from via a rental car. two examples are useful to illustrate the problems you might encounter, suppose you want see Australia driving for two weeks. you have several cruise ports to depart from. Say you can depart from Sydney and that the available rental cars are at the airports in each city. And that you’ve never driven outside of North America or continental Europe where you drive on the right. Australians drive on the left. I wouldn’t recommend getting off and starting your trip in Sydney because of the urban driving needed at the outset and the difficulty in escaping the city.

If you are limited to large port cities to debark, consider flying from your debarking port’s airport to another city closer to where you want to spend most of your time. For example, suppose you want to see rural Argentina, but your debark from your ship in Buenos Aires. Consider flying to another city in Argentina (all are small in comparison with Buenos Aires) and their airports are usually outside of the city center. Renting a car in such a location is much less stressful – provided you have already identified and arranged your accommodations for the night and identified places to buy food and to eat.

Accommodations

In many countries most accommodations are not in the countryside, but in cities. This is natural, but it isn’t ideal for those wanting to experience natural environments. Fortunately, internet sites like booking.com or safarinow.com give you access to many more sites than in the pre-internet era. BUT, read reviews (trying to avoid obviously biased or simplistic ones) and use Google street view to see what conditions are like around your potential accommodations. Street view imagery can be years old, so also use the routine Google Maps imagery which is more frequently updated. Together, these can help you decide how conditions are at your accommodations – and how easy it will be to get out and around if you are spending multiple nights there.

About the philosophy of traveling around and spending each night in different places – we don’t recommend it. We, at our age, prefer a less stressful experience and multiple nights in the same location aids in this. However, this does limit the total distance you can cover in a given time. The ideal solution to see the most in the least time is to sleep in your vehicle! We rented a camper van during our first trip to Australia in 2010 and it did have some advantages. You could pull off and sleep most anywhere, and on long outback roads there may be no accommodations. You could also cook and there was a small fridge. But there are major disadvantages to a smaller camper van. They don’t have air conditioning – which was needed many nights in northern Australia. With the van open to stay cool at night there were lots of biting insects entering. And the van’s fridge barely kept things cool – we didn’t have electric sites.

In many countries that follow the English system (former colonies) the campgrounds tend to also have cottages, complete with cooking facilities and fridges. These of course cost more than pitching a tent, but offer much more comfort. For students on an extreme budget, camping and shared cooking and bathroom facilities are the way to travel inexpensively, but if you can afford the cottages, they are more comfortable.

Food

We enjoy eating in our accommodations during our land travels. Many people don’t prefer this, but Rosario likes to cook, it allows for us to eat what we want, and it reduces overall eating costs. While she is preparing food in the evening I am downloading photos from the cameras or otherwise doing something like preparing the set-up for the evening’s insect photography. Although food costs are not the dominant cost of land travel – rental vehicles and accommodation are – finding nearby restaurants might be difficult or time consuming when you are in the countryside. And time is the most important commodity when you are on your “vacation”. Remember, you are paying something like $200-400 a day to be on vacation (car, accommodation, food, gas, misc) and this translates to something like $25 per hour. You could spend easily 2 hours a day driving to restaurants, waiting for food to arrive, eating, and then paying for your meals. In many countries restaurants are slow (something the well-to-do savor). Thus your indirect meal costs can amount to $50 a day in lost “vacation time”.

If you are doing mostly “self-catering”, then you will want to stop at a larger grocery store on your first day to not only buy food, but to buy an ice chest. Look for a relatively inexpensive one since you likely won’t fly home with it. Be sure to obtain bottles you can freeze in your self-catering accommodation’s freezer. Either bring a few empty bottles from home in your luggage or buy water bottles in the supermarket. Then, when you have drunk them, fill them with tap water (usually very safe in most countries) and freeze them overnight. You can then have cold drinks all day with these in your ice chest, and the ice will also keep your food cold during the day. Although you can also buy ice, having an ice chest full of ice cubes takes space away from your food and makes it more difficult to keep things dry. The ice chest is very convenient when you drive between accommodations in hot climates, and with the frozen bottles you can keep your left-over food cool until the next accommodation’s refrigerator.

If the trip is short and we don’t anticipate the need for a larger, more expensive ice chest (that we can’t take back with us when we fly home), we take a portable, foldable ice chest that we have. They fit in our suitcase and although they are not as insulated as solid ice chests, they work for day excursions and the drives between accommodations.

Some examples for select ports

Suppose you arrive in Buenos Aires and debark your ship. If you have a week or more and you want to see Argentina at your own pace you should have already done your homework. For ourselves, we would fly to a smaller city in northwestern Argentina, rent a car at the airport, and drive to our first night’s accommodation. Key here is making sure you arrive with 3-4 hours of daylight, otherwise airport and rental car delays may put you onto unfamiliar streets at dark. This isn’t something you want to do – if you can help it. We often spend a night at a hotel in the port town, leave non-essential luggage at the hotel, and then fly, or get a rental car and drive, the next day. Then you can travel lighter – without the formal clothes you might have used during your cruise and without gifts you might have picked up. Of course, be sure in advance that the hotel can store these, ideally in one of your suitcases or in an extra bag you have brought along, while you are on your land vacation.

In Europe, if you debark in Rotterdam or Amsterdam, you can fly or take a train to almost anywhere. Extreme discount airlines are common in Europe, but some almost charge extra for the air you breath, and if you are traveling with any luggage (even a carry-on is not free), want a reasonable seat, and would like a soft drink or snack, the fare quickly add up. But most normal airline flights are still less expensive than the trains. Of course, the taxi ride from an out-of-town airport to where you want to stay in some cities (perhaps close to the city center) can exceed the cost of the airline ticket! Trains and then walking can get you to most places – if you have plenty of time, energy, and a small suitcase you can walk with or board a train with. Trains have the advantage of going right into the center of many cities, minimizing long, costly shuttle rides from the airport. Unlike the US, getting around larger European cities doesn’t require a rental car – that can be costly and have difficulties in parking.

Although it may be better to plan a land exploration after the end of your cruise – to make sure you don’t get sick or have some problem that prevents you taking your cruise, occasionally it may be ideal to do land travel before a cruise. Consider a cruise leaving from Miami or Ft Lauderdale, Florida. You never want to arrive the same day as your cruise departs, so why not add extra days before your cruise to visit some of Florida’s attractions? I don’t recommend flying into Miami’s airport because of it’s congestion and size, smaller airports in Florida are much easier to get around, rent cars and such. But then you have the problem of getting to your ship in the Miami area, so MIA may be the most convenient airport, despite its disadvantages. Or if getting a visa to visit the US was a hassle, why not fly farther – say to Arizona, California, or Washington state? It will realistically take a day (with airport transfers, rental car hires and such) but you can then arrive in a small town’s airport where everything costs less (especially accommodations) and you can start your land travels.