Rex Ungericht

Since the Carnival excursions all started early (around 8 – 8:30), we decided to get up at our leisure and head into Progresso, and try our luck at finding a tour in town. When you leave the ship, you enter the terminal on the pier, which has several shops, including an auto rental agency if you want to head out on your own. There are tour operators here, but we bypassed them and boarded the free shuttle into town. (It is illegal to walk into town, but you wouldn’t want to – the pier is five miles long.)

The shuttle drops you off at a market square, where merchants in outdoor booths hawk various items for sale (with prices in U.S. dollars). We wandered the square and my wife and daughter bought brightly-colored fans for a dollar each. Later my wife would comment that this was the best purchase she made on the trip, since they were quite useful in the hot weather.

There were tour guides in the square, and we purchased a tour to the Dzibilchaltun Mayan ruins at almost half the cost of the same tour from Carnival. We boarded a modern air-conditioned bus and headed out to the ruins. The tour itself was only a couple of hours long, which was good in the hot and humid weather. There is a museum and gift shop on the grounds – we passed through the museum during the tour, but not the gift shop.

On the return trip, our guide gave us the option of stopping back at the market square in Progresso, but everyone was hot and tired and we all opted to proceed back to the pier. By the time we got to the terminal, the air conditioning in the bus had cooled us down enough that my wife and daughter spent an hour shopping before we returned to the ship.

Later, my wife talked to some folks who had left the market square and walked around Progresso. They said that they felt uncomfortable in the city.

Check out the shore excursions available in Progreso.
Progreso Shore Excursions

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