We booked the Beaches, Caves & Conch Burger excursion through Carnival priced at $89.99 per person. The tour lasts 5 hours from 7:30am - 12:30pm.
As with all excursions in Freeport, when you get off the cruise ship and walk through the security gates of the port, you'll walk straight out to a tent to find your tour respresentative holding up a sign with your excursion's name (tent is shown in the image below to the right of the yellow building).
Once everyone has checked in, you are led to a double decker, open-air top, bus. You get to choose if you'll sit inside on the bottom level or go upstairs. We elected the top level.
After a 40 minute ride, the first stop is the Lucayan National Park where you get to go inside two different caves. Lucayan National Park is currently 40 acres and protects the two entrances to one of the longest underwater karst cave systems in the world.
The first cave is about a 5 minute walk from the parking lot. Please note, this excursion is not wheelchair or stroller friendly. The parking lot and path is made of loose stones, boardwalks and stairs to go down into the caves.
The first cave you visit is Ben's Cave. To enter, you must go down a spiral staircase that can only accommodate up to 3 people at a time with a maximum total weight capacity of 500 lbs.
At the bottom of the staircase is an observation platform over the pool of water. The water is clear and beautiful shades of blue and green.
Ben's Cave holds a total of 60 feet of water with the top 30 feet being freshwater and the bottom 30 feet saltwater. It's closed to visitors in June and July of each year as the cave is used by bats as their nursery.
Our tour guide brought bread that he threw into the water to show us the saltwater grey snappers that have adapted to the freshwater environment. They travel back and forth between Ben's Cave and Gold Rock Creek through the numerous submerged tunnels. After about 10 minutes inside Ben's Cave, you exit and continue on to the next cave.
The second cave you enter is Burial Mound Cave where the remains of several Lucayan Indians were found. This cave is the home to the rare Speleonectes lucayensis which resemble swimming centipedes. These blind Remipedes have existed in Grand Bahamas caves for millions of years!
To enter the cave you must walk on a boardwalk and then go down more two stories of wooden steps.
Once inside, there's an observation platform. You can see some water, but mostly you see the cave and vegetation. Our tour guide got very emotional telling us the story of the Lucayan Indians that used this cave as their hidden place from Christopher Columbus and died here while hiding. My one year old daughter was very uncomfortable in this cave and got extremely fussy so we didn't stay very long.
The next stop is Gold Rock Beach which is also a part of the Lucayan National Park. You'll walk back to the parking lot and then cross the street to access the paths that take you to the beach.
Our tour guide had us veer to the left and take the short (and more direct) route to the beach. This way takes you through the shrubland then across the Gold Rock Creek and through the mangrove swamp.
The path ends at the absolutely beautiful Gold Rock Beach! This beach is completely natural. There are no chairs, no umbrellas, no huts selling you anything. Only a few picnic tables, benches and BBQ pits. It's truly a beautiful beach! White soft sand and clear water. It's no surprise that it was voted the best beach in the Caribbean by USA Today in 2018. There's nothing on the horizon except for the large rock that the beach was named after. Our guide told us that when the sun is on the horizon it hits the rock illuminating it making it look like gold, hence its name. Another neat fact, apparently scenes from Pirates of the Caribbean (2 & 3) were filmed on this beach!
We got to admire Gold Rock Beach for about 15 minutes before heading back to our bus. Our tour guide was so sweet and at one point asked for my phone so he could take pictures of us.
On the walk back, we saw fish swimming in the creek. The walk from the road to the beach is about 5 minutes each way.
Once back in the bus, it takes 25 minutes from Lucayan National Park to Banana Bay Restaurant. It's a super cute restaurant with a large ocean front deck with lots of seating. The views are breathtaking!
We got to pick any table we wanted and then a server brought out a bottle of water and their conch burger with a side of fries. YUM! It was delicious!
Once we finished eating, we stepped off the dining deck and walked right onto the beautiful beach. The waves were very small and the water was shallow (about 2-2.5 feet deep) for 100+ feet. It's the perfect beach for little ones! The water is crystal clear and my son even found the most beautiful conch shell! If you're into collecting seashells, there are many beautiful small shells on the shore as well.
We got to spend a little over an hour at this beach. We arrived at the restaurant at 10:15am and left the beach and headed back to the bus at 12:06pm. Once back onboard the bus, it took another 25 minutes to get back to the port.
I've been to Freeport so many times and honestly, have never been much of a fan of this island. My opinion completely changed after this excursion! The two beaches we visited were absolutely beautiful and not crowded.
We got lucky and had a semi-private tour as it was just us and another couple who booked this excursion. I don't think my opinion would change much if there was a bigger group. I think it simply would cause a shorter amount of time at the restaurant since you can't fit too many people in each cave. I could see that eating up a a lot of time at the caves and cutting into beach time at the restaurant. My only complaint is that we did not have any time left to do some shopping in the port after the excursion. Not at all a deal breaker though! If I had known, I would have done some shopping prior to the excursion leaving the port.
This was a great excursion and it showed us parts of Freeport that we never saw before. Most of the excursions take you to the a beach near Taino Beach.
The next time we visit Freeport, I'm thinking of simply getting a taxi to take us straight to Banana Bay Restaurant and spend the day there. It definitely left a lasting impression on us!
Pictures of the Margaritaville at Sea Paradise as we were leaving Freeport:
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