If you always wanted to go on a month long cruise to some great locations but didn’t have the cash, you may want to consider taking a cargo ship cruise.
Cruising on a freighter isn’t for everyone – in fact, it’s probably more for a select few.
You may be giving up the formal dining facilities, but there are still three scheduled meals a day that you share with the ship’s crew. Also, with only around 8 other vacationers on board with you, there are no crowded sun decks or long lines for embarking & disembarking.
The Cargo Cruises go all over the world – though they typically dock in the industrial ports, since their main reason for the stop isn’t for your sightseeing, it’s to load and unload shipping containers. This can make transportation once in port a little challenging, since there won’t be a line of taxis and vendors that are typical with traditional cruise ship ports. Lengths of cruises range between two weeks to 124-days and range in price from a couple thousand to nearly $18,000 for the 124-day cruise.
For clothing, one Cargo Cruiser suggested taking one nice outfit along, and scrapping the rest at the end of the cruise!
“As for wardrobe, take one ‘very nice outfit’ to wear ashore and put it in your closet immediately. Then wear all your oldest clothes. We quickly found out that we were on a working ship where the men are constantly washing, scraping, painting, and greasing cables. Unless we were willing to remain in our air-conditioned cabin, we had to cope with all this activity including smudges of whatever was being used on the ship, as well as occasional soot deposits from the smoke stack.
The crew always washed the ship the day after leaving any port, but while it was being loaded and unloaded there was no way to avoid some dirt. We wore boat shoes constantly since the decks are frequently wet and slippery, darker color T-shirts and cotton pants for most of the trip, and were able to donate a bundle of cleaning rags to the oilers in the engine room when we departed. That left us plenty of luggage room for the great souvenirs we picked up all over the world.”
If you think you may be the right type of person for a Cargo Cruise Vacation around the world, check out freightercruises.com.
cargo cruising sounds OK please send details