Cruise continued....

So we left off with Tuesday in Grand Cayman.

Wednesday we were supposed to stop at Roatan Island off the coast of Honduras, but due to protests about local labor laws, they decided not to stop. Bummer! We spent the day on the ship sailing really slow to our next port. We played volleyball with our buddies from dinner and anyone else who would walk by and want to play. The court was miniature so it was kind of tough and playing in a mesh cage was interesting. It was fun though.


We tried to make the most of it. We did get $20 back for port fees. That was not quite enough for me to make up for not stopping. We were really looking forward to stopping there. We had scheduled to go out in some glass bottomed kayaks and then to a nature sanctuary with birds and monkeys. The refund just wasn't enough.

Thursday we stopped in Belize. It was a pretty good day. We rode the crazy bus through Belize City and saw three of the six stop lights in the country. We went to some Mayan ruins. The road was a one lane paved road. When another car came, both vehicles just drive two wheels off the side of the road and keep driving. They don't really slow down to do this. It wasn't too bad until we came around a corner to see a semi truck pulling a dozer on a trailer that stuck out three feet each side. The ruins were pretty interesting. It is not a very big place. There are some other ruins that were a lot bigger, but there were no empty spots. They told us at the ruins that every 50 years they would build over the top of the buildings and start over. Kind of like an onion. The 50 years was like the life cycle of the buildings and the people just built over it. Weird. We climbed up to the top of the biggest building and had a look around. Pretty awesome. It was fun to be in the jungle. Here are a few pictures.



Now for the exciting part. When we walked down the backside of the big building, there was a kid with an alligator, which he asked if I wanted to hold and take a picture and give him a tip. I was all over that like stink on a skunk, so here I am holding a ferocious alligator, with a string tied around his mouth to keep him from eating me alive.


We bought most of the stuff we brought back from Belize. Erica wanted to buy one of everything. There was a lot of cool stuff. We brought back a carved parrot, a sailboat, a stone Mayan calendar, and some sea shells. If you come over we'll show you.

Friday we spent at sea because we didn't get to stop in Cozumel Mexico. Stupid swine flu. Bunch of hogwash if you ask me. We played volleyball and took a nap. The ocean was pretty rough that night as we were eating dinner. It was kind of funny. We were walking down the hall to our room and there was another couple walking towards us and they were weaving back and forth across the hall together. I couldn't help but giggle watching them as the ship rocked back and forth.

Saturday we stopped in Key West. This was probably Erica's favorite port. The people were not as crazy about trying to sell you stuff. It is actually part of Florida so it is an American port. We rented some cruiser bikes and rode around for the morning. It was a lot of fun. We rode to the beach and then to a museum.


At noon we went out on a catamaran to go snorkeling. It was really pretty out where we went. The coral formations were huge. The water was 20 or 30 feet deep with these huge formations where the water was only 6-8 feet deep over them. It was fun to swim over and see what was down in the next valley. There were some really cool fish. We tried to take pictures with our underwater camera but they didn't turn out really great because the water was deeper and didn't reflect back enough light. Here are a few that turned out alright. This was a really cool trip.


I like this picture of Erica. So that was our snorkeling trip in Key West. It was pretty rad, for lack of a better word.

Sunday morning we sailed back to Miami and got off the boat. We got to the airport at 9:30 am and our flight didn't leave until 3 pm. Erica was feeling ambitious so she called her mom, who was two hours behind and still asleep, to look up the closest church so that we could go to church. The closest ones were all Spanish speaking. Out of the eight wards, five were Spanish speaking. We found one about 20 miles away. A cab would have been almost $80 round trip but we could rent a car and drive for $40 or so. Anyways we had a good adventure getting there. We got to church a little late and had to leave before the end of Sunday School to get back and catch our flight. But it was good to go to some church since we had missed the week before too.

We were wiped out from the trip home and it took us a week to recover. But, the memories are sure great. The kids were pretty happy to see us. Gavin was really tired and about asleep, but on the drive home he started to become more animated. McKinley was just really excited.

I think that about wraps up the cruise. I have a few other pictures that I may post from the ship someday when I have some time. That's all for now.