Tuesday, 10Feb / Wednesday, 11Feb

Mayan Ruins

Our turkey for the night.

After dinner picture.

Ted and his happy face with his chocolate desert.

Britt’s plate. Notice the bubble bath by her carrots. The green thing in the back is a pea terd with bacon bits. We believed the white circle on top was a marshmallow.

Britt with her fancy shrimp cocktail.


On the last platform. We obviously got a little wet in the rain forest.

Britt has her game time face on.


Ted is ready to go!

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

We skipped a day in the blog!!! Too much to do and too little time. Today is actually Wednesday and we just got back to the ship from our excursion for today. I’ll start with our adventure from Tuesday, in between bites of my chex mix which I’m starting to finish off. A true sign of too much food on a ship-I still have chex mix left after six days. I actually plan on going to the gym this afternoon to at a minimum, weigh myself. Anyhow, on to less depressing subjects.

Tuesday we ported in Belize. We actually had to sink the anchor a ways away from the city, as they have many coral reefs they don’t want destroyed by huge mother ships such as ours. Therefore, we all had to ferry in about 20 minutes to the city. Our planned excursion for the day was a Canopy Tour-zip lining and rappelling through the rain forest. Ryan and Lee were on the same tour-so it was nice to have someone to talk to along the way. They bused us over an hour to the rain forest. We drove through part of Belize City, and what we saw, was a city full of waste and poor people. The houses were all run down shacks needing major repair, but appeared as though that would never happen. When I get upset seeing others throw gum out a window, this is nothing in comparison to the amount of garbage strewn around the city. Our tour guide for the trip to the rain forest was a nice woman likely in her 20’s. A few interesting facts she shared: Belize is only 130 miles long and 65 miles wide at its’ widest point; over 50% of the population are under 20; there is only 1 man to every 10 women. The last 20 minutes of our ride was all off road-not a great feeling in a school bus whose shocks were likely lost the first time the bus took this section of road. Our tour guide said it’s likely the only massage we’ll ever have without hands!

Once we finally hit the rain forest we were fitted with our gear. I had turned around to look up in the forest when I heard someone calling my name. Not recognizing the voice, I turned back around to see that it was Ted, all fitted in his gear. His voice had jumped a few octaves to an almost unrecognizable state. We trekked through the forest to our first platform and we were off. There were five platforms we zip lined from and two rappelling points. Overall, a fun experience, but not the best thrill I was expecting.

When we made it back to the ship, we grabbed a quick bite to eat for lunch (by this time it was already 3:30). Then, we sat out on the deck for a few hours relaxing and reading. Back to our room to shower and get ready for our Supper Club dinner experience. For a few extra dollars we could eat at their special restaurant and have a five course meal. An “ok” meal, but as I told Ted, my fillet mignon from Disney World was far superior to the fillet I had there. You’ll see a few pictures of the creations they brought for us to eat. We were likely the only obnoxious people who kept taking pictures of their food. Oh well.

That pretty much sums up our Wednesday. I’ll let Ted write about today’s tour.



Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Wednesday we woke up to breakfast in bed with some muffins and a tasty bowl of lucky charms. You are able to order room service whenever you like and could order anything and have it delivered to your room for no extra price. A pretty nice perk.

We found ourselves spending the day in Costa Maya, which is a port along the peninsula of Mexico. For our shore excursion today, we booked a guided tour of the Mayan Chacchoben Ruins. We hopped on a van and made a 40 minute trek to ruins. We had a tour guide on the van to provide some details of the local area. She was from Argentina and had only been working for the company for three weeks, so didn’t seem to know much and wasn’t able to answer many of our questions. We did stop along the way to what the locals called the best pineapple in the world. I was willing to give it a try, but I thought it would be hard to beat the pineapple in Hawaii. I was correct. It wasn’t much better then the pineapple that we eat in the States. Once we arrived at the ruins site, we hit up the bathrooms before we started the tour. People here try to make money any way they can. There was a guy in the bathroom that would turn on the water for you, push the soap dispenser button and provide you a paper towel. Of course, he was doing all this to get tips and you felt pressured to give him a dollar to get out of the bathroom, which I did. Next, we were thankfully greeted by our real tour guide David. David is an actual Mayan and had grown up in the Mayan village nearby, so he was full of interesting details regarding the ruins site and the Mayan civilization. The Mayan ruin site that we had visited was built in 600 B.C. There are many structures still standing and archeologists have repaired the structures that are deteriorating. The site consisted of three temples and the housing area for the elite. It was very interesting to learn about the Mayans and amazing to see how intelligent they were for their time.

After the ruins tour, we headed back to the port and did a little shopping. Pretty much all of these shops sell the same cheap garbage. Nothing that looks very nice and worth showing in your home. One shop that has been consistent between the ports is a store call Diamonds International. Every single port has had at least one these stores. It has been the first store once you enter the city. I think these are the stores where they get rid of the large poor quality diamonds to people thinking they are getting amazing deals on jewelry. We went through one of the shops and let Britt try on some of the bling. The salesman tried telling us this was their “Grand Opening Day” and he was going to offer one low price only” for the tanzanite ring Britt tried on. His selling price: 2200! Luckily, I got her out of there without spending any money. I have a feeling I might get a guilt trip from her since I wouldn’t let her buy anything and I will have to buy her something when I get home.

Tonight, we will go eat more food of course and watch a comedian and probably play some blackjack as Britt has seemed to gain a liking for it. Tomorrow we are at sea all day and will be likely lounging by the pool and enjoying the day in the sun.

Random thoughts from Britt:
I weighed myself. They rigged the scale. Shows I’m only up one pound. Is that really possible? Will try again later to see if I was delusional or not.
Just ate a vanilla ice cream cone since they didn’t have strawberry yogurt. I am declaring their ice cream better than Dairy Queen.
It costs $6.99 to call home from our room. I don’t see any pay phones anywhere to use a calling card. If I want to call home, I can use my cell phone for $2.50/minute. That’s ridiculous!
I am paying 75cents/minute to use the internet. I am wise and type this all up ahead of time so I only spend a few minutes actually on the internet. But, today it’s their “SPECIAL”! Half price internet. What a bargain.
Almost forgot to mention, Ted left our camera at a table one night. Luckily someone came running after us with it!

Brent-22Feb will work.