For our first excursion we tried the Rio Secreto in the beautiful Cozumel. At least we thought it was Cozumel. Let me tell us exactly our journey to this amazing river.
We disembarked from the Breakaway, walked down the pier and we’re greeted by an enthusiastic tour guide. From there we were carted off into a taxi, which took us to a ferry. This seemed okay at the time. While on board the ferry I noticed that they had a playlist queued up for approximately 35 minutes. This put our travel time at approximately 45-50 minutes. Not too bad right??? Then we were escorted through a shopping district in Playa de Carmen and given some “instructions.” At this point I’m checking in with my husband. His was already annoyed. I was too. Why the hell is it taking so long to get to this excursion?
From there we get he instructions that we will take a van for approximately 10 minutes to the bathrooms and then another 10-15 minutes to the site. Well I would say it was more like a total of another 45 minutes. In my mind I’m thinking alright we are finally here and we can get started. YEAH!!!
Wrong. We get a safety briefing and gear up. We get a wet suit, helmet, and walking stick. Then pictures and then another 10 minute walk to the “entrance.” WOW. How can this have taken close to 3 hours??? Then the tour guide tells us we have approximately two hours inside the cave.
Okay, let’s move on…. the caves were pretty incredible.
I really enjoyed getting to float around and swim in the water. It was nice and cool inside the caves. The temperature was just right. The stalagmites and stalactites were incredible. What I found the most interesting was how expansive the network of these caverns were.
Part of the trip included some great information about the cave formations and the impacts humans are having on this underground treasure.
We got back up top and traveled back to the camp. There we got a shot of homemade “liquor” and go to view the photos. Drew and I decided to purchase them. On photo was $25 and $100 for all of them. We paid for all the photos. It’s vacay am I right? Then we traveled to get some food. They had a buffet set up. Not exactly my favorite cuisine. But my husband loves Mexican food so he was thrilled!! His eyes literally lit up when they said “Buffet.” It was hilarious. They had a cute gift shop and then we head back to the ferry, back into a taxi and back to the cruise ship.
I will say if the travel time had even been an hour each way I would say it was worth it. I’m not naïve to think that everything is going to be right off the cruise ship. But a 5 1/2 -6 hour journey for a 2 hour excursion is NOT worth it. I’m disappointed this information was not included in the description. Unfortunately, I wouldn’t recommend this excursion for anyone. We were exhausted by the time we got back to the boat and most of the day had been lost. To boot at the very end we had to wait for each one of the five vans to drop of guests and walk together to the boat. We were not allowed to walk by ourselves. This added an additional 20 minutes to our trip. Just waiting on two vans. RIDICULOUS
