Hounding in the Caribbean?

I don't think you'll have much time to rockhound but when I was there I just scoured the beaches for tumbled stones that had washed ashore and found some interesting stuff, very few rocks but I collected some seed pods that were just about as hard as rocks and they were wild. If its your first trip to the Caribbean, spend as much time in the water as you can......Thats my advice anyway. You can buy a snorkel, mask and fins at Costco for about $30 and you'll see things, fish, coral, turtles, stingrays, things you probably won't see again unless you happen to go back sometime. They rent the fins, masks and snorkels on the ship but that adds up quick when you rent them everyday. We saw so many cool fish in the shallow waters near the reefs, baracuda, tube fish, turtles and about a hundred other kinds that lit up the ocean floor with their neon colored stripes and bodies. Lots of shipwrecks too.

Most of the islands you will be visiting are tropical and so lush, you would have a hard time finding anything in the countryside.. Grab a few kids that live on the island and have them pick a mango off a mango tree for you. That was one of the most amazing things I experienced while I stayed on St Lucia.

Stay out of the fresh water, many of the caribbean islands have a parasite that lives in slow moving fresh water, I think its called bilharzaria.....Something like that. It can be absorbed through the pores of your skin and once it gets inside, it attaches to your intestines and starts to reproduce at an incredible rate. (makes the bunnies look like they are standing still). Its nasty stuff.

Good luck and have fun.

Oh, one more thing.....On the days that you are stopping at an island, check the night before to see if the ship will dock right in port or if you'll have to take a tender, (small taxi boat) to the island. If you have to take a tender you'll want to get up as early as you can so you can race down to the lobby and get your tickets for the tender boats. The passengers have to disembark in numerical order and it takes quite a while to get everyone to shore so the earlier you can grab your tickets, the sooner you'll be able to get off the ship and into port.

That was the only thing I didn't like about cruising the Greater Antilles and West Indies, lots of those islands don't have ports big enough for a cruise ship to dock at the shore.