Carribean Explorer II Travel Questions

Rand · Jan 26, 2009

I'm researching travel options between a couple different liveaboards. One is the CEXII.

One of the issues I'm encountering with this itinerary is the fact that the ship starts in either St. Kitts or St. Maarten and ends in the other. The result is that you need to island hop on either the front end or back end of the trip, as St. Maarten is where most airlines fly to/from.

My question for anyone who might know is is there a ferry or small boat service that could get me and my gear back to St. Maarten if my trip ends in St. Kitts or vice versa?

I'm just trying to avoid the Otter flights. It's not that I mind small planes. We encountered a lack of space for luggage issue in Little Cayman last November and had to leave the island without our dive gear. We did get it back 3 weeks later (whew!).

The other obvious advantage is saving the cost of booking multiple destinations as it is much cheaper to book a round trip flight on the same carrier.

Can anyone help?

divengolf · Jan 26, 2009

No need to island hop. I flew AA into St. Martin and out of St. Kitts. Cost was the same as a RT to St Martin.

robint · Jan 26, 2009

Rand:
I researching travel options between a couple different liveaboards. One is the CEXII.

One of the issues I'm encountering with this itinerary is the fact that the ship starts in either St. Kitts or St. Maarten and ends in the other. The result is that you need to island hop on either the front end or back end of the trip, as St. Maarten is where most airlines fly to/from.

My question for anyone who might know is is there a ferry or small boat service that could get me and my gear back to St. Maarten if my trip ends in St. Kitts or vice versa?

I'm just trying to avoid the Otter flights. It's not that I mind small planes. We encountered a lack of space for luggage issue in Little Cayman last November and had to leave the island without our dive gear. We did get it back 3 weeks later (whew!).

The other obvious advantage is saving the cost of booking multiple destinations as it is much cheaper to book a round trip flight on the same carrier.

Can anyone help?

I had wondered about that too until I checked on Expedia and found that it was just as cheap to fly in to one and out from another. No issues at all and no puddle jumpers, regular planes fly into and out of both destinations. Go for it!!!

robin

Rand · Jan 26, 2009

Thanks for the help! I did some more checking and came across Liat airlines that operates a 50 passenger inter-island plane that could get us back to St. Maarten. We try to fly Continental whenever possible and Liat sounds like it could make that work for us. It's bigger than the 18 passenger or so Otter that we had issues with previously.

I'm still looking over the roundtrip options on regular planes at the two airports, though. I've got some time to work out the details, this trip won't be until 2010.

Also, Robin, I checked out your Roatan videos. Nice. Sorry to hear about your camera flooding. We're going to Cocoview in about 70 days. Can't wait.

Gwen1011 · Jan 28, 2009

Just did that trip the week of Jan 10 (been delinquent with the trip report, sorry, it's coming - in a nutshell, it was fantastic) and flew from St. Maarten to St. Kitts via Liat. No problems with our gear. Each of our check-in bags made it easily, although they were not oversized or overweighted. We flew into St. Kitts a day early because we were concerned about making connections. We made every one, albeit one very tightly. We stayed at the Bird Rock Beach hotel which was perfect for what we wanted, a place to stay not far from the boat.

Damselfish · Jan 28, 2009

They often nail you for open-jaw flights, but as said this is a place you can do it no problem. But unless I was getting free flights on Continental or the difference was huge, personally I'd lean towards taking the big planes since it's an option. I've only flown LIAT once that I can recall and didn't have a problem that time either, but 50 seaters can still have a good share of luggage capacity issues and LIAT's reputation on luggage and schedules isn't so good. (I just came back from a trip where I heard so many people complain about problems with LIAT.)

DCDivenut · Mar 21, 2009

Damselfish:
They often nail you for open-jaw flights, but as said this is a place you can do it no problem. But unless I was getting free flights on Continental or the difference was huge, personally I'd lean towards taking the big planes since it's an option. I've only flown LIAT once that I can recall and didn't have a problem that time either, but 50 seaters can still have a good share of luggage capacity issues and LIAT's reputation on luggage and schedules isn't so good. (I just came back from a trip where I heard so many people complain about problems with LIAT.)

LIAT = Leaves Island Any Time
LIAT = Luggage In Any Terminal

At least that is the way it used to be when I lived down in that neck of the woods which was admittedly a while back.

Damselfish · Mar 21, 2009

or LIAT = Luggage In Another Terminal

I heard several new ones this trip, should have written them down.

robint · Mar 21, 2009

Rand:
Also, Robin, I checked out your Roatan videos. Nice. Sorry to hear about your camera flooding. We're going to Cocoview in about 70 days. Can't wait.

thanks! You will love Cocoview! It is the closest thing we have found to a liveaboard.

Carribean Explorer II Travel Questions

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