Nancy Zupancic A Trip to Stingray City We arrived at 8am and the other ships in port with us were Carnival Imagination, Carnival Inspiration, Splendour OT Seas & Veendam. The day was pleasant at 80 degrees and partly cloudy. All the scuba diving was cancelled. The excursions through the ship as well as anything through the dive shops. Nobody was quite sure why, it didn’t look that bad. I guess there may have been a heavy surge or something. In the main town of Georgetown, there was not much visible damage from hurricane Ivan. They had a sign at that said “Ivan has gone but we are still here”. That made me a little emotional. In the main centre where obviously there is a lot of money, they have re-built very fast. This area appeared to be business as usual. But once you traveled away from Georgetown the damage was evident. Anything that had a tin roof was pulled and turned like a can of opened sardines or torn off completely. Strip malls I remembered from previous trips, were gone or looked like they were just being newly constructed. Debris and piled up bushes and brush were all over areas that were previous very manicured. It was emotional to remember how beautiful it once was, however, I know they will recover and be just as beautiful once again! We were all going on the ship’s stingray city tour. Normally I would not go on the ship’s tour I would book a private excursion. In this case, we did not even know if we were going there for sure so I didn’t want to have to contact the tour company and cancel. This way, if the ship wasn’t going, our excursion would be cancelled by the ship. The other factor was we were also not there a full day. Since we had to be back on a tender at 2-2:30pm and stingray city is quite far I didn’t want to worry about this. The ship’s tour was fine there actually was not as much of a cattle boat as I was expecting. We had plenty of time with the stingray’s and the 2 handlers on our boat made sure everyone who wanted to feed or hold the stingray’s got to do so. As it was, hardly any people actually did want to feed or hold them. Some people didn’t even get off the boat. One of the handlers, Ed brought my nephew back to boat because he was terrified by the stingrays, so my sister- in -law and I somehow became in charge of the stingray feed. These stingray’s recognize the bucket the food is in and they all came running, or should I say swimming. I had been there before but they did not let us feed them, this time I was feeding those stingray’s all kinds. At some point I would have two climbing up my front and one climbing on my back! I just love sea creatures so I was not worried about them harming me I was more concerned to not hurt them. I think they are marvelous and I love stingray city. The fact still remains that you pay more for the ship tour and they are crowded. But if you feel more comfortable with the ship’s tour, take it vs. missing out on the stingrays. I did notice one big catamaran called ‘the Buccaneer’ from my research. That one looked good and it was a nice vessel. There were even many stingray tours being offered at the pier so you could go last minute if needed. You must make sure if you want to go to the area that is only 3-4 feet of water that is called the ‘sandbar’ there are areas of stingray city that you can snorkel or scuba dive and it is in about 15 feet. My boss went to the deeper area on a last minute trip booked on the pier and they just snorkeled while the handlers feed the stingrays. So keep this in mind so you get what you want. The other thing I was told from our tour operators are the stingrays are more relaxed as the morning goes on because they are fed more – makes sense. They are still hungry but earlier in the morning they may be more aggressive. So again, which ever you prefer. We went on the 10am tour so they were already very well feed, they were still very hungry but they were not aggressive by any means. I am wondering if that was why the last time they wouldn’t let us feed them because I remember it was very early in the morning. The sandbar is very crowded so much more than the last time I went, but I was pleasantly surprised that there were so many stingrays, more than enough to go around. We had enough time do some shopping before we went on the excursion. The only thing I had to get was Tortuga rum and my brother and his wife love the rum cake. If you buy the rum approx $7.95 or 8.95 or buy it with a cake for approx $20-$25. They will deliver it to the ship. If you are just buying the rum cake you must bring it on the tour with you. There were quite a few rum cakes going on the boat to stingray city. As for the rest of the shopping, depending what you are interested in they offer all the regular duty free shops in the Caribbean and they are all around the pier area in Georgetown.