Wow – these are great pictures. It looks like you had a wonderful trip. We keep thinking of cruises and will have to do one “soon”. {grin}
I know this must take you a long time to upload all the pictures but they are great.
De’Etta
- By : Cynthia
- Category : Vacations - 2005
Vacations - 2005
1
YEAR IN REVIEW- January 2005:VACATION PART 3
EXCURSIONS:
One of the best things about cruising is waking up each day in a different location with all new excursions awaiting you. Our first full day of cruising was spent at sea so we were definitely ready for a little off-ship adventure by the second day. In some ports you have to use a tender (smaller ship) to get to shore. Here we are crowded onto the tender at Grand Caymen. Since our private excursion was the first one of the day we wanted to be sure and make the first tender. Needless to say, we were there early and were one of the first ones to board. 
On the way back we were able to get a few shots of how small the tenders really are compared to the big ships. The holes where you embark/disembark the ship are also quite small compared to the massive size of the ship. 
The “boys” enjoyed watching all the commotion around the ports especially when it involved large heavy equipment. 
CAYMEN ISLANDS:
Our first port of call was the Caymen Islands. I had researched tons of options beforehand and decided to book a private excursion since it seemed like the cruiselines would cancel the excursion to Stingray City quite often if they felt the weather was unfavorable. In researching www.cruisecritic.com it was noted that those who booked privately were often still able to enjoy the visit to Stingray City. Taking advice from various websites, we ended up booking with a private company that met us right at the dock where our tender unloaded. The first part of our Caymen Islands excursion was the land portion where we toured the financial district, beaches, and local points of interest. Here are a few of us on the tour bus:
One of the stops was the Caymen Islands Turtle Farm. Here they take care of many endangered turtles. Here Josh is holding one of those turtles:
Here Amanda is about to BARELY touch a turtle:
Nathan was sound asleep through most of the turtle tour, but we took a picture of him with one anyway. Later he woke up just in time to see one of the last big ponds of turtles at the end of the tour and he seemed to enjoy all the commotion in the pond.
We had a short lunch here while shopping for Rum Cakes (next door) before heading on to the next stop which was the town of Hell known for it’s unusual rock formations:
After the land portion came the water portion. We boarded a little tour boat and headed out in to the Caribbean. The water was SO CLEAR and warm! It was BEAUTIFUL. Here you can see the different colors of the water:
The boys sat up on the top with the boat driver and Josh even got to drive the boat for a short distance.
We were pleasantly surprised to see very few boats at StingRay City. We found out that the cruiselines had cancelled the excursion there today because of the waves being too rough. There were a few that would knock and adult over, but none that we felt made it dangerous or worth cancelling entirely. It did make our experience AWESOME because it wasn’t very crowded. Here Tim & I are waving at those still in the boat and Josh & I are just getting ready to jump in:
When we arrived at Stingray City the boat was quite bouncy in the water. Neither my dad nor Tim’s dad are particularly fond of water so they both stayed in the boat. Nathan fell right to sleep with the not so gentle rocking of the boat. Here are my dad and Nathan enjoying a nice little snooze in the middle of the Caribbean. 
Here Emily is being pulled in on the first picture and trying to get the hang of breathing with the snorkel gear in the 2nd picture. 
Snorkeling was definitely our favorite excursion. We don’t have a lot of pictures because there was a professional videographer on board who gave us a very nice hour long video of which most of us are shown underwater. If you want to see the video, you’ll have to stop by for a visit sometime! If you ever take a snorkeling excursion I HIGHLY recommend just paying for the video and spend your time enjoying the water instead of trying to take pictures… unless, of course, you are INTO photography *and* have the waterproof camera extras.
COZUMEL: Our third day of the cruise we woke up to find ourselves in Cozumel. We didn’t book any excursions here since we mostly wanted to shop and look around for a little bit and then spend the majority of our time on the beaches. Here we are walking through Cozumel which we found dirty and noisy unlike Grand Caymen which was very neat and clean.
After deciding we’d had enough of the Cozumel shopping and sightseeing we found a taxi to take us to Paradise Beach where we spent the rest of the afternoon leisurely soaking up as much sun as we could. Notice that the older ones (girls) are sleeping and the younger ones (boys) are playing and going all day. Is this a boy/girl thing or an older/younger thing? 
The sand on Paradise Beach was AMAZING! We’ve never felt sand like this before. It was so soft and squishy and it just stuck to your feet and clothes. They had these handy little foot showers so you could get all the sand off your feet.
It was so nice to be able to go back to the ship, clean up, and sit down to a very nice meal without having to do anything. No restaurants to go to, no driving to/fro, no luggage to pack/unpack and load/unload before arriving at our next destination. I think we’ve decided that we LOVE CRUISING! 
