TravelwithMitsugirly

RHINO RIDERS

We really struggled with what to do here this time around. We have been here multiple times and the last time, we had our very own personal tour guide (Kia), who used to live on the island for years, take us around to every location possible around the entire island. I mean, who can top that right? So what is there left to do?

I searched and searched and found a tour online (boating) that looked interesting and posted it on here and didn't find anyone that had ever done it. I thought that was extremely odd. While I'm very grateful for the suggestions that people on here mentioned, I had either already done it or didn't interest me. So back to checking out the boating again and decided to throw caution to the wind and blindly book. We needed something "different" to do this time around (since we didn't get a chance to do any dune buggies and I had to endure listening to Kendra the entire cruise talk about it).

This tour was called "Self-Drive Boat Tour and Snorkel from Simpson Bay" The cost was $75 a person, so not bad at all. You book it using Trip Advisor (and I will say there are TONS of great reviews on there...which is what convinced me to book). It is your responsibility to get yourself to the place however.

We caught a cab and off we went to Simpson Bay to the "Rhino Riders"

Once we arrived, we checked in (which is a building located along the water and you walk from the front of building that is a restaurant (outside) to the back.

After checking in, they gave us life jackets and fitted us with fins and anything else we needed...including giving us a bag to use to put all of our things in that we were taking with us. All items we didn't want to get wet went in totes and stored in a locked building.

We were given a quick lesson on how the boats worked and how we were to follow each other in a line in certain places, the no wake zones and most importantly the hand signals. Then everyone was assigned their boat.

Now these are "blow up" LOL boats (using that term loosely). They have a hard bottom so it's easy to get in and out of and not at all what I had pictured (honestly it was hard to picture anything about a "blow up" boat).

We had a 3 person boat (but they also come in 2 people boats). We were able to add Shawna with no problems and they switched one of their 2 person boats for a 3 person. We managed to be put in the fastest boat they had and oh was it fun!!!

We first had to do some circles in front of the place to get used to how the boats handled.

They also had us stop and pose for pictures for the paparazzi (which happened to be their photographers that sit on the second floor of their building).

Then off we went. As you can see, some of the pictures are Kendra's...which she ended up handing the camera off to Shawna at some point. Shawna took some very nice pictures of the floor, shoes, peoples legs and ....well you get the picture (well actually, you don't get the picture itself lol).

These boats could really move!

Now the 3 person boat is like this...2 people sit in the back (this includes the driver and a passenger) and then the 3rd person sits in a middle chair (which is where I sat). The only issue I had with this is that there's no back on that chair and of course the faster you go, the more it throws you back and you have to keep your balance since there's nothing to lean against. But weight distribution it is....