Caribbean Day 7: The Last Day

Today is our last day on our Caribbean trip.

My day has been a very relaxing day at sea. We woke up pretty late and ordered room service for breakfast. We lost an hour because we’re traveling back to Miami where we started.

We left the room for the Explorers Lounge so our room could be cleaned. The rest of our group met up with us and we discussed future trips and what we liked most about this trip. We didn’t leave until it was lunch time.

We had a quick lunch at the buffet, went to afternoon tea and started to pack. Packing is one of my biggest dislikes about traveling.

After we packed we had dinner at the Italian specialty restaurant on board. I got the veal scaloppini, the same one that I got on the last cruise, and it was as amazing as ever! It’s one of my favorite dishes that this cruise line makes.

Tonight’s show was an ABBA tribute show. They performed As Good As New, Ring Ring, Rock Me, Honey Honey, I Have a Dream, Winner Takes It All, Voulez Vous, Fernando, Money Money, Summer Night City, Gimme Gimme, Does Your Mother Know, Take A Chance On Me, I Let The Music Speak, Dancing Queen and ended with Thank You For The Music.

This trip has been a lot of fun. It started out pretty rough as most trips do but I was able to do some extremely touristy things, eat some amazing food, take some awesome pictures, learn some interesting history about Key West, Belize, Cozumel and Merida, ride an innertube through caves in Belize, watch some awesome shows, explore Mayan ruins, sample tequila, drive down Paseo de Montero, visit St. Ildephonsus Cathedral and meet some awesome people along the way.

This has been an awesome trip! Here’s to many more!

Caribbean Day 5 (Cozumel, Mexico): Mayan Ruins, Tequila and Downtime

We woke up before our alarms go off. I hate it when that happens! We had our routine breakfast at the buffet but this time we ate outside. How adventurous! It’s still super humid out here.

Today we were going to the Mayan ruins in Cozumel. This island is 32 miles long and 9 miles wide at its widest point making it the largest island in Mexico. On our bus ride out we passed through San Miguel the largest city in Cozumel. Most of Cozumel’s revenue comes from tourism. In 1974 the first cruise ship came through and returned once a month. Currently, the biggest ship in the world comes through once every other week, the Harmony of The Seas.

When we arrived at the Mayan ruins it wasn’t what I expected. The site was small and the structures were unrecognizable for the most part. I had a lot of fun exploring and taking pictures. We went to different structures and were told what each structure was used for. Everyone that lived here was a person of nobility—religious leaders, musicians, doctors etc. Common folk were allowed in the city but they had to bring an offering. Because there wasn’t any currency at the time goods were used. Farmers would bring produce, hunters would bring meat etc. It was their form of taxes. Our guide told us about Ixchel. She is the goddess of fertility and medicine. She is always depicted as an older woman with a snake. The Mayans respected the elderly and the snake is a symbol of knowledge medicine and wisdom. The Mayans had 2 types of calendars. A sun calendar and a moon calendar. Each had a different number of months and a different number of days in each month. They lined up every 54 years.

On our way back, we stopped at a tequila factory where we learned how an agave plant was grown and turned into tequila. It take 8 to 10 years to grow a single plant! I wouldn't have the patience to wait that long. We were also told about different types of tequila and which ones were more refined. Tequila is the only single ingredient alcohol and certain tequilas can only come from certain regions. I’m not a big tequila person but the samples I tried were very good. I didn’t care much for the flavored tequila and our tequila expert didn’t seem to be too enthusiastic about them either. The samples were much different than the tequila I’ve had in the states.

When we headed back to the ship we had a late lunch at the buffet, had afternoon tea and lounged around for a couple of hours before dinner. I fell asleep by the pool.

We were going to go to dinner at the sit-down restaurant tonight but some of us came in shorts and flipflops so our group split up between the sit-down restaurant and the buffet. I ended up at the buffet.

Dinner went by quick. Since we skipped the show we had a lot of downtime before we had to go to bed so we did a little more lounging around. We had a lot of downtime tonight. Time to get some sleep!