Explora Journeys Caribbean Cruise Review – Day 15: December 26, 2025

Day 15 on Explora Journeys’ Explora I brought us to our final port of call on this 17-day adventure, and we wrapped things up in Road Town, Tortola, in the British Virgin Islands. Explora I was anchored out in the harbor this morning since the pier was already occupied by Virgin Voyages’ Valiant Lady and P&O Cruises’ Arvia. This port can only accommodate two ships at the dock at a time, so once again we were back to tendering, with the ship’s lifeboats ferrying guests back and forth to shore.

Tender service kicked off around 8:15am for those with ship-sponsored excursions and anyone wanting to be among the first ashore, which meant tender tickets were required early on. Open boarding started around 10am, and from that point forward it was the usual free-for-all where you could come and go without worrying about tickets.

Now, a quick lesson, because this always causes confusion. When most people hear “the Virgin Islands,” their brain immediately jumps to St. Thomas or St. John. Tortola is not that. Tortola is part of the British Virgin Islands, which also include Virgin Gorda, Jost Van Dyke, Anegada, and a bunch of smaller islands scattered around. These are a British Overseas Territory, meaning they fly the UK flag but govern themselves. English is spoken everywhere, and the U.S. dollar is the standard currency, which automatically makes life easier especially since we were at a few places on this cruise where the Euro was the only currency accepted.

Tortola’s roots go back to sugar plantations, but today it’s a huge sailing and megayacht hub. Tortola is generally considered one of the safer Caribbean ports, especially around the cruise terminal, main roads, and beaches. It’s not a place where you need to be paranoid, but it’s also not a town designed for aimless wandering deep into residential neighborhoods either.

The cruise port area itself is actually pretty well done. It’s modern, clean, and very compact. When you arrive, you’re immediately dropped into a small complex with souvenir shops, local vendors selling their stuff, a few bars, and a long row of food stalls along the waterfront. There’s also a small stage where live music or entertainment is often set up, and today there was a band playing.

If you’re just looking to grab a drink, something to eat, and just chill. you can absolutely do that without ever leaving the port area. It makes for a  very low-effort day ashore.

That said, Tortola is a shore excursion port. This is not a “walk around town and discover hidden gems” kind of place. The most popular excursions here tend to fall into a few categories. The big one is The Baths at Virgin Gorda, which is usually the top-selling tour.  Catamaran trips and snorkeling are also popular. Beach days are another go-to, with Cane Garden Bay being the most common option since it actually has restaurants and bars instead of just sand and water.

This is one of those ports where I actually recommend booking through the ship unless you really know what you’re doing. Boats, timing, weather, and distances matter here, and if something goes sideways, you want the ship handling it, as if you’re late getting back to the ship, the ship isn’t going to wait for you like they would if you were on a ship sponsored excursion.

If you’re not doing an excursion and still want to explore a bit, taxis are easy to find right outside the port, and drivers are very used to cruise passengers. You can arrange a short island tour, head to a beach, or just get dropped somewhere specific without much hassle. On foot, there really isn’t much to do beyond the immediate port area. Road Town itself is not scenic, and once you move beyond the cruise bubble, there isn’t a lot that’s even worth walking to.

For me, Tortola was never going to be an exciting day ashore. I’ve been here before and, honestly, nothing about it really sparks my interest. This was a stop to just stretch my legs, get some steps in, and go back to the ship. So I wasn’t in any rush to get off the ship and didn’t head ashore until around 1pm.

With three ships in port today, things were a bit on the busy side. The food stalls inside the port were doing very good business! There isn’t much seating in that area and each stand only has a handful of chairs, so a lot of people were standing around eating.

The shopping area, however, was a completely different story. Dead.  And as I wandered a bit farther out of the port, it became very obvious that something was off. Office buildings were closed. Banks were closed. Restaurants were closed. Entire streets were empty and there was very little traffic.

At first, I honestly thought I had lost track of what day it was. I had to double check my phone to make sure it wasn’t still Christmas Day. And then it clicked.  It’s Boxing Day.

Since Tortola is a UK territory, Boxing Day is very much a thing here. For anyone who isn’t familiar with it (which was clearly a lot of us Americans onboard), Boxing Day is December 26th and goes way back to old British traditions where servants and workers were given “Christmas boxes” the day after Christmas filled with gifts, money, or leftovers from the holiday. These days it’s still a public holiday across the UK and many of its territories. So like Christmas day, everything shuts down.

This became a hot topic of conversation onboard, especially with our UK passengers who were more than happy to give us Americans a quick history lesson on Boxing Day.

After wandering around for a bit and getting my steps in, I headed back toward the port area. All aboard time today was 5pm, which also happened to be when the final tender from shore was scheduled. Once again, Explora didn’t linger around. The tenders came back on time, were hoisted up and secured, and you can see exactly how that whole operation works in the short video below. Not long after that, we did a quick turn and Explora I headed out to sea, officially starting the journey back to Miami.

Feeling Hot, Hot, Hot!

Alright, let’s take a moment to talk about hot sauce, I know… a very weird transition and topic, but one that I must address!

As I’ve mentioned a few times now, the buffet onboard Explora Journeys is not your traditional buffet. This isn’t trays of questionable stuff under heat lamps and people lining up with plates like it’s their last meal. Instead, think of it as a collection of food stations: fresh seafood, sushi, pizza, pasta, carving station, burgers, and more. Everything is plated and served to you, and in many cases actually cooked fresh while you wait. There’s no self-service here at all.

Well… almost no self-service.

Because when it comes to hot sauce, Explora apparently decided, “You know what? You’re on your own.”

Right next to the lineup of hot sauce bottles is an actual hot sauce menu, complete with names, flavor descriptions, and Scoville heat ratings. Not just “mild, medium, hot” either. We’re talking everything from “yeah that’s pleasant” to “this might be a bad life choice.” It’s one of those things you don’t notice at first, but once you do, you kind of have to stop and read it.

The fact that there’s a formal menu for hot sauce made me laugh. But it also makes sense. If you’re going to offer sauces that climb all the way up to a million Scoville units, maybe a little warning is in order.

It’s a small detail, but it sums up Explora Journeys in a weird way. Everything is thought through and a little bit extra… even the hot sauce.

Don’t do that…

Now, besides hot sauce, there’s something else that feels very… Explora that I need to talk about, because it’s noticeably different from just about every other cruise line I’ve sailed.

Normally, with all of my reviews, I do deck-by-deck video walk-through videos of the ship. Not for YouTube clicks, not because the internet needs yet another ship tour. I do them mostly for myself. It’s a way to document the ships I’ve spent time on so that years from now I can look back and remember what they were actually like. There are already thousands of ship tour videos out there, so mine aren’t breaking new ground.

That said, Explora is a completely different animal when it comes to filming.

I tried multiple times on this trip to do simple walk-through videos of public decks. Nothing fancy. No narration, as I usually add that in after. Just walking, documenting the space. And more often than not, I was met with looks that clearly said, “What are you doing?” A few times, a crew member would politely step in and say, “Please don’t video.”

Even taking photos inside some of the public areas felt… awkward. You could feel eyes on you. Not in a hostile way, but in a very clear “this is not acceptable here” kind of way. And honestly, I get it.

Explora really leans hard into privacy. This ship attracts a crowd that values discretion, low-key luxury, and not being someone else’s social media content. People are here to unplug, not to end up accidentally starring in a walkthrough video on the internet.

So because of that, this trip looks very different from my usual coverage. I don’t have a lot of interior photos. There won’t be deck-by-deck video tours. And that’s intentional. I’m not here to push boundaries or make anyone uncomfortable, and I definitely don’t want to violate the privacy of guests who didn’t sign up to be filmed while sipping a cocktail or quietly reading in a lounge.

This isn’t a place where people are filming TikToks in the stairwells or narrating pool decks. It’s a place where cameras tend to stay in pockets, and experiences stay personal.

So if you’re wondering why there aren’t full ship tour videos this time around… now you know.

And along with that, there’s another very unspoken but very real rule on Explora: FaceTiming and speakerphone use is very much frowned upon, and I sincerely LOVE that.

And I don’t mean “kind of frowned upon.” I mean hard no.

There was an incident the other day at the pool that really drove this home. A woman was loudly FaceTiming a friend back home, phone on full speaker, walking around the pool area giving her a live tour. Out of nowhere, a middle-aged couple made it very clear that what she was doing was not acceptable. And when I say clear, I mean they started yelling at her. Literally yelling. Telling her to stop FaceTiming, take the phone off speaker, and knock it off. This was a full-on public shaming, and honestly, rightfully so.

Now listen, I absolutely hate people who think it’s appropriate to have conversations on speakerphone in public. Hate it. I’ve told people myself to either put headphones on or take the phone off speaker, because I simply do not care about being polite when someone is forcing their conversation on everyone around them. But even I wasn’t expecting that level of enforcement.

Then there was another night in one of the bars. A woman walks in, sits down, and starts watching videos on her phone at full volume. No headphones. No shame. Just blasting away like she was in her living room. I made it very clear that I wasn’t there to listen to her TV show or movie and that she needed to use headphones. She told me to do something to myself that was physically impossible and walked out.

Problem solved.

And just when I thought I’d seen and heard it all, we get to the Emporium Marketplace. I’m sitting outside at a table when a husband sits down nearby with his soda, minding his own business. Suddenly his wife comes barreling out of the buffet area absolutely losing her mind, screaming and yelling while holding her plate of pizza. She’s furious that someone cut in front of her in line. Going off about how disgusting it is, how the crew member took the other person’s order first, how her husband needs to go back in there and “say something.”

It was a full-blown adult tantrum.

The husband’s only goal in that moment was to get her to shut up and stop making a scene as she pretty much already embarassed both of them in front of half the ship. Honestly, if this had been Carnival, that line-cutting incident would have turned into a full-on brawl over chicken tenders in about 30 seconds.

This is one of the many reasons I just… hate people in general.

But here’s the thing. On Explora, behavior like that sticks out immediately. It doesn’t blend in. The mood onboard is quiet, calm, respectful, and very low tolerance for nonsense. Loud FaceTiming, speakerphone conversations, blasting videos, public meltdowns – they’re not part of the culture here, and other guests will absolutely let you know it – loudly, if necessary.

Dinner at Marble and Company Grill on Explora Journeys

Alright, time to talk about food, because let’s be honest… what is a cruise without food?

Since tomorrow is a sea day and there won’t be a whole lot of “we docked here and wandered there” to report on, the next write-up is going to be a dive into all of the restaurants onboard Explora I. And no, there aren’t a ton of them, which honestly makes it easier to wrap your head around. I’ll also be sharing menus so you can see exactly what’s offered, so make sure to circle back for that one. But for now, we’re sticking with a familiar favorite: Marble & Co. Grill.

Last night, Christmas night, Marble was an absolute madhouse. Every table full with multi-generational famlies having their Christmas dinners. There was lots of celebrating except from the staff. They were hustling hard and you could tell it was one of those nights where everyone just wants to make it through service and collapse afterward.

Tonight was the complete opposite.

Things were much calmer, much quieter, and honestly, you could almost feel the collective sigh of relief from the staff. No holiday chaos or giant family tables. Just a nice, low-key dinner service where everyone seemed far more relaxed.

There weren’t any special featured entrées tonight, but there was a featured starter: shrimp cocktail. Three jumbo shrimp, chilled, served with what can only be described as a couple drops of cocktail sauce. And I mean literally drops. It was good, don’t get me wrong, but I’m actually surprised this isn’t part of the everyday menu because it feels like such a steakhouse staple.

Next up was something I never thought I’d willingly order: roasted beets in salted crust served with goat cheese Sainte-Maure and an Alps apricot balsamic glaze.

Beets. Really? Who eats beets?

But the couple at the table next to me ordered it and immediately started raving about it. And since it comes with goat cheese, I figured worst case scenario, I eat around the beets and enjoy the cheese. What could go wrong?

Turns out… nothing.

A few bites in and I had to admit it was actually delicious. The balsamic glaze added a nice contrast to the sweetness of the beets, and the goat cheese tied everything together perfectly. I did not expect to enjoy this dish, and yet here we are.

For the main course, I went with a filet. My server mentioned he was going to add a lobster tail to it for a little surf-and-turf moment. And who am I to say no to that?

Well… apparently the kitchen said no for me.

The filet arrived cooked a perfect rare, exactly how I like it. But the lobster tail? Nowhere to be found. I didn’t ask about it. I didn’t push it. Sometimes it’s just not worth the back-and-forth, and the steak was good enough on its own.

When it came time for dessert, I kept it simple and went with a single scoop of vanilla ice cream to wrap things up.  Just something cold and sweet to call it a night.

After dinner, I headed up to the Malt Whisky Bar, which I’ll say again and again is hands-down the best spot onboard if you’re looking for quality cocktails or whisky. An Old Fashioned followed by a Negroni was the perfect way to end the evening.

We’re now officially at sea with two full sea days ahead as we make our way back to Miami. Tomorrow brings something I’m really looking forward to: a Super Tuscan wine tasting lunch at Anthology, featuring five courses all paired with wine.

So yeah… more food, more wine, more on that tomorrow!  Until then, as always, thanks for following along.

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