Cruise Continued-Underwater Camera

Note for next time... Get the special waterproof bag that will fit any camera inside to take underwater pictures!

The pictures turned out alright, but they definitely dont capture half of how bright, colorful, and beautiful this coral reef was!!
**Again Sorry Colby for having my finger in front of the camera in every single underwater picture of you!! Guess thats why I like digital better!! :)

Colby Kissing a sting ray

Me not sure what to do with the stingray!

Crazy jellyfish in the lagoon in Roatan.

The nurse shark Colby & I spotted in Roatan.

School of Fish

Cruise Take 2

We were lucky enough to go on our cruise before all the chaos of moving sets in! It was definitely a nice break after a very long and stressful April!
So we embarked on a 7 day cruise out of Tampa and went to Cozumel, Belize, Roatan (Honduras) and Grand Cayman! It was pretty much amazing!
After getting lost, twice, in the middle of the night somewhere in South Carolina ( I am not a fan of the roads in this state by the way), we made it to Tampa by mid morning and heading onto the ship.
By the time we got on the boat we just wanted to take a nap. So we did! This was the first of many!
The first day on the boat was fun we played some games and had a great table at dinner and made some new friends! The food was delicious, as expected!
The next day we were in Cozumel. We hadnt planned an excursion and had decided to just rent a scooter like last time and drive around stopping at beaches and ending at the Mayan ruins of San Gervasio. So we started out and went to a beach spent a couple hours and headed towards the Reggae bar on the tip of the island to eat lunch. We had eaten here last time and wanted to make another stop in!

After we left the Reggae Hut we started the ride to San Gervasio. FOr most of the ride you are right on the coast but then the road turns and goes through the middle of the island where its kind of a wasteland. There is a random house and cow but thats about it until you get back into Cozumel. So We finally get to The entrance for San Gervasio and there is another 10 minute drive to the ruins. The road is a long, dirt path, with lots of pot holes, and also a surprise 90 turn. When I say surprise I mean there are several signs that state in english and spanish, dangerous curve, slow down to 20 km.....
this is what happened there...



Ya so we totally crashed!! Not sure exactly what happened but we went to fast around the corner and the scooter hit a rock, I flew off the scooter stopped and fell over and 4 Jeeps full of people were there to witness it! It was pretty embarrassing!! They did give us free drinks and cleaned up my wounds though so that was nice of them! Other than the purple stuff didnt come off all week!!
So we still headed to the ruins and checked them out. They were cool but not as cool as the ones we saw the next day in Belize.

Here is a video of us cruising on the highway in Cozumel! It is so beautiful there! Just turn down the volume for this one!



The next day was spent in Belize! WOw, what wonderful people! Their way of life is so much different than ours and I know that they just look at americans as wasteful! Which we of course are! This is definitely a third world country. We took a bus tour of the city and then to the mayan ruins. We passed many houses (shacks) on stilts, side street restaurant tents, and tons of little kids in their school uniforms! We did not pass one single fast food restuarant (they had a subway but it closed because it was too expensive) and gas here was close to $6 a gallon, probably more now!
The ruins here were AMAZING! When I picture mayan ruins in my head, this is what I pictured!



You can tell how hot and humid it was by the nasty back sweat on Colby! :)

So after we walked around and heard stories of why the world is going to end 12/12 we went to the shops off the side of the road and bargained for a gorgeous hand carved wood bowl! Originally $150 sold for $40!
Then we went to find a magnet (we collect them) and the lady who sold one to us was telling us that she sees jaguars roaming across the road on her way home! Crazy!!

On the way back we toured more of the city and saw some of the parts that were destroyed by a hurricane this past year.
We also learned about cashews. Did you know that the cashews have a fruit attached? The juice is like bleach! ALmonds also come from a fruit which we learned in Roatan the next day!

All in all we really enjoyed Belize. We wish we could have gone out to the islands and seen more but maybe next time!

Day 5 - Roatan Honduras

By far our most favorite stop of the trip! We went to a private resort on a little island that had its own lagoon and beach! We were greeted by monkeys when we got off of the bus! They were adorable and right in your face!
We went snorkeling on the reef and it was so beautiful! The colors of the fish and coral were so bright! We saw a ton of fish and a pretty large nurse shark that Colby and I spotted! We were in the back of the group doing our own thing and I look down and swam back up really quick and started yelling shark!!! Colby started laughing and and the whole group came over to check it out! Since they are non threatening sharks! All of the snorkeling pictures are on an underwater camera that still needs to be developed!

After the snorkeling we kayaked in the lagoon, saw a jelly fish, and met some pretty nice people!

Day 6 - Grand Cayman

We weren't too impressed with GC the last cruise we took. We had a much better experience this time! We waited until we got to shore to choose an excursion and ended up going snorkeling and to sting ray city! Basically you go to this sand bar and a hundred sting rays stay there and swim all around you! It was kind of scary! But really exciting! The craziest thing is you would just be standing there and all the sudden this slimy thing would be going across your leg! You look down and its a HUGE ray! We held giant star fish and snorkeled here too but it wasnt anything in comparison to the day before!

Still can't get over the bright blue clear water!!

We were wiped out afterwards and headed straigt back to the boat to take a nap!

Ever night we had a great time kareoking, eating great food, trying to avoid crazy girl, and checking out the shows! Everyone we met was so much fun!

I am so glad that we were able to take this vacation! It was a life saver!

Now we are almost all packed up and leaving in exactly one week to Phoenix!!

p.s. So if you read all that then you are awesome!

Cruisin'!

**THIS IS REALLY LONG**

Well we just got back from our wonderful cruise the other day! It was the BEST and most Relaxing vacation I have ever been on! I am ready to book another one for next year!

We headed down on Friday night after Colby got off of work and made it there around 9 in the morning. We couldnt start boarding the ship until 1230 so we decided to get some breakfast and headed back to the port so we could get in line to get on the boat.

It didnt take as long as we thought to get on board and we started to explore! The cruise ship was massive and I know we still didnt get to see everything there was to see on it!

We played a round of mini golf and went to a game show they held on board and I made a fool of myself by going to be a contestant! I did win a ship on a stick though so it was worth it. (a plastic gold ship trophy) We then ate dinner and then went to bed since Colby had been up since 9am the previous day!

The next day was a full day at sea, we had lots of fun just relaxing by the pool, walking around the boat, eating..., and going down the waterslide! This was the formal night so I had to go in and try to completely towel dry my hair since there wasnt a blowdryer in the room ( I later found out that all I had to do was call guest services and they would bring me one..oops!) We went to dinner and found out they had switched the group from the day before and brought over 2 new couples! We are so glad they did! We had the funnest table! We all became quick friends and hung out everyday after that.

ice sculpture in 15 minutes

Monday we arrived in Grand Cayman. The water on the side we docked on was beautiful and clear! Colby, Tyler, Claire, and I walked through the shops and walked a little ways to find a beach we could hang out at until our snorkeling session started! We eventually found one after being honked at 10,389,430 times by taxi drivers offering to drive us to a beach. We didnt want to get all the way wet so we just walked around in the shallow waters. Since we were in the bay there were no big waves.

We headed back to the docks to meet with our snorkeling group and got honked at another 23,058,235 times offering to drive us to the beach... We even stopped at a gas station  to get some drinks and a taxi driver followed us inside to offer us a ride! They are pretty pushy over there!

We had to take a van ride to the boat that would take us to the reefs and to where the sting rays were. The driver of our van was singing gospel songs with a really thick cayman accent. We tipped him he was so good! Once we got to the boat it was a 40 minute boat ride to the reefs. We saw tons of Mangrove trees and Iguanas! The Mangrove trees were neat but make the water a greenish color and leave it semi murky. It wasnt as pretty as the other side of the island, and definitely not as pretty as Cozumel the next day! Snorkeling was awesome I got a little sea sick with all the action from the waves though but it was still neat to see all the little and big fish, a barracuda, and 2 stingrays! There was apparently a shark in the water that bit one of the stingrays earlier in the day so the rest of the stingrays were hiding and wouldnt come out to eat.

They boat captain told us how the Native Island People would go fishing and stop in the shallower water to clean and gut their fish. They have done it for hundreds of years and now the sting rays associate the sound of an anchor for meal time. So they all come up to eat! Pretty cool I thought!

How many can you see??

Anyways after waiting in a ridiculously long line to get back on the tenders to take us back to the boat we went in took a nap and got ready for another delicious dinner! I think we went to some show or something afterwards but I cant remember...

Cozumel was Tuesday. It was AMAZING! We rented a scooter from a sketchy mexican man and drove around the main freeway on the island. It goes in a big circle and follows the coastline for the most part.  We stopped at a small beach and did our own snorkeling and collected shells and dead coral. I almost found a fully in tact Bonka?sp Shell but it had a whole in the very top so we didnt keep it! We kept driving and stopped to eat at a little Reggae Hut that sold mexican food...The tacos and chips and salsa were delicious! We watched to ocean waves for awhile and headed back on the scooter. We checked out some deserted turtle nests that had recently hatched, saw a cool black iguana, a bald eagle, countless lizards, and a dead crab. We tried to go see they Mayan ruins however we only had $6 cash on us at this point and it was going ot be $13 so we werent able to go in. We saw some smaller ones on our way to San Gervasio though which was cool. We headed back tried to bargain with a old man for a blanket, since we only had $6 and the blanket was $23 we didnt get very far. We kept on and ended up getting one for $5 from a lady down the road. It wasnt cool and hand woven but it is still nice! We got lost once we got back into the city which was a little crazy. So. Many. Scooters. There was even a family of 4 on 1 scooter! craziness! We  eventually found our way to the main road and hung out at the shops before heading back towards the ship.

We decided we wanted to get back in the water before so we stopped on the side of the road and went down to the water. This was a rocky, squishy beach.. not a sandy one. So we got in with who knows what squishing between my toes and started to swim. It didnt last long. The water started to get really deep really fast and I got nervous a shark was going to get us and we were going to be lost forever!! ok not really but there were some really big bright blue fish and i was worried about a shark (Colby was too but he wont admit it ) so we headed back, turned in our scooter, and walked back on the ship. We were the only ones at dinner that night because the return time from the island wasnt until 730. After that we went to take a nap that turned into me sleeping the entire night and colby going to hang out with everyone by himself!
**My camera wasnt working this day unfortunately...)

The last day on the boat was fun. We got to sleep in, lounge around, Colby won the ping pong tournament, played a few games on board, and then played farkle and monopoly deal with Caleb and Lauren. I actually won a game for the first time ever! we relaxed some more, went to dinner, then decided we had to kareoke! Which was a blast! We went to the comedy show afterwards which was alright and then went to bed because we had a long drive the next morning!

Playing games

                                                      Colby being intense at the ping pong table

Katie, Trent, Lauren, Caleb, Jacob, Kathry, Me, Colby, Tyler, & Claire on the last night! 

 

The dessert I had every night.. Im sure it was really good for me too.

Colby and Jacob singing My Sharona!

Disembarking was even easier than embarking! We were off in less than 15 minutes. We had a pretty good drive back minus no air conditioning and having a blowout on the freeway.. We survived though!

I cannot wait to go on another cruise! It was by far the best vacation I have ever been on and So relaxing!!  Im not going to lie... I started to look up cruises for next year the day after we got home... haha!

I have some funny videos but blogger wasnt behaving.  Plus this post was probably long enough!! haha!!