Cruise Day 6, 7 and departure (Jan 16-18)

Days 6 and 7 were both at sea days. After getting up early and exploring the Mayan Ruins the day before, no one wanted to get up early on day 6. When we did get up, we had a very fine breakfast. We did not do much after breakfast but we had a very fine lunch in the main dining room. The made to order salad was incredibly good. Joseph was getting really good at the art of making ice cream cones. Here is one of his creations.In the afternoon we found a deck of cards and played hearts. I won! I got to 100 points first!! Oh wait a minute, that’s not winning.

We saw a couple of dolphins swimming along side our ship, so I tried several times to take a picture. This shot was a little late, but it was the best.

This was the sunset through the clouds as viewed from our balcony.

On day 7, we ate breakfast in the main dining room and had Juan for our waiter. He was our waiter for dinner each night. He was great. He really took care of us.

One of the guys at our dinner table each night was Snider York. He and the rest of his group were very entertaining. He had entered in the Texas Hold’Em tournament on the ship and won his table in the first round. The final round was on the last day at sea, so we all went to watch him and root for him. If he won the final round, he would win a cruise for two, and the big championship tournament would be on that cruise and the winner would get $100,000. He said if he won both tournaments, he would take us all on a cruise with him, so we wanted to cheer him on.

This is Joseph not sure if he is allowed to be in the casino.

This is the tournament in process. I did not want to photograph too closely while they were playing and have anyone get cranky. Out of 7 people in the final round, Snider was the 3rd to be eliminated. I guess we will have to pay for our next cruise.

We got off the ship early Sunday morning. We did the express checkout where you leave early and take all of your luggage with you. We were through customs about 8am. We were dressed in our church clothes and planned on going back to the same 9am sacrament meeting we attended the week before. As we were standing in line for customs, a lady in a dress came up to me and asked which ward we were planning on attending. I told her and then got her cell phone number so we could call with the details on how to get there after we got back to our car. They got to church the same time as us.

This is the last photo in the parking lot with our ship in the background.

In spite of the rainy and colder than normal weather, we really had a great time.
It was still way warmer than the -2 degrees Fahrenheit in St. Louis.

Cruise Day 5 (Jan 15) Costa Maya, Mexico

We scheduled an 8 hour tour visiting two different Mayan Ruins that turned out to be closer to 9 hours. The ruins were spectacular and even though it rained a lot, we still loved visiting the ruins.

The first site we visited was Dzibanché. Discovery and excavation began about 15 years ago and so far only about 6 of the largest buildings have been uncovered. Before they are uncovered, they look like huge mounds of earth, but when the dirt is removed, the buildings are exposed. Most of Dzibanché has not yet been uncovered, but in all, the city covered 40 square km or 15 square miles. The city was started about 200 BC and became a great city around 200 AD. This website and others have some interesting information: http://www.mayanbeachgarden.com/dzibanche.html)

We will have to go back again in the future to see what else has been uncovered. This first picture is Mom in front of Dzibanché 2.
We are climbing Dzibanché 1
In this photo, we are on top of Dzibanché 1 with Dzibanché 2 in the background.

On the top of Dzibanché 1.

John is “out on a ledge” on Dzibanché 1.

Looking in the “window” at Joseph on top of Dzibanché 1

On our hike, back toward the bus, we heard a loud noise in the jungle. Our guide said it was a howler monkey. It sounded very close, but we kept walking toward it and it got louder and louder, but we walked about 2 tenths of a mile before we actually got to the monkey. He was a large male trying to scare us away from his family. This is a photo of the loudmouth monkey. The grey streaks are rain drops going by.

This is a video clip with sound from John’s camera. It was a lot louder than it sounds from this video.

Next, we took the bus to Kohunlich. This site was discovered and excavation began about 35 years ago, so it is more developed than Dzibanché. When it was first discovered, the leader of the expedition had a tree put in the ground upside down as a marker to make it easier to find again (no GPS in those days). This is the upside down tree with one of the largest buildings in the background.

One of the most famous buildings at Kohunlich is the Temple of the Masks. This is Mom and john looking at some of the masks.

Mom and John are at the top of the Temple of the Masks. It is pretty obvious that it is raining.

Mom, Mark and Joseph in what is left of another building at Kohunlich

On the road back to the ship, we passed a small LDS church building.

We really enjoyed seeing these ruins. This was way better than Tulum. Tulum was the Mayan ruins that we saw close to Cosumel several years ago.

Unfortunately, we spent most of our time traveling on the bus. I wish we could have had more time at each site to climb on and explore the ruins. There was a lot of Kohunlich that we only saw for a couple of minutes.

From my reading on the internet about Dzibanché on the internet (http://www.mayanbeachgarden.com/dzibanche.html and other sites), it is named for the wooden engraved panels on the top of Dzibanché 6. We passed by Dzibanché 6 but from I read on the internet, people are no longer allowed to climb on Dzibanché 6. The howler monkey was close to Dzibanché 6.

Cruise Day 4 (Jan 14) Roatan, Honduras

On day 4, we were on the island of Roatan which is of the coast of, and part of Honduras. I had read about Roatan and have been wanting to go there for quite some time. The island was beautiful. It has lush green jungles and the scuba diving is world renown. We booked the scuba shore excursion with two dives. The bus took us through the hills and jungles to the cruise operator, Anthony’s Key Resort. Their website is: (http://www.anthonyskey.com/en/index.html

This is Joseph, John and Mark after the first dive.

Jon Paul and John took over a hundred underwater photos with Jon Paul’s camera. I wanted to post a few of them to give you an idea of what we saw. I know this is still a lot of photos, so you can scroll past them if you get bored. There were so many amazing fish and other creatures; it was hard to not post them. John Upside down.

Joseph

This is Mark and Joseph coming up after the 2nd dive.

When the boat returned to the dock, it felt good to rinse off in the fresh water shower.

By the dock, there were some pretty flowers. I believe they were bougainvillea. The flowers were even prettier when Mom was next to them.

Back on the ship, we had real showers and changed clothes. These are Mom on the balcony with Roatan in the background.

When we got off the ship there was a group of local people singing and playing local native music in traditional costume. They stayed there all day and continued to play as our ship was departing. This was taken as we were leaving.

Cruise Day 3 (Jan 13) Cozumel, Mexico:

We had planned on scuba diving in Cozumel, but they were sold out by the time we signed up. For some unknown reason, the ship was only allotted half the normal scuba diving openings. So we decided to do the ATV Jungle Tour instead, which turned out to really be a lot of fun.

When we got off the ship, we were photographed with one of the descendants of a scary Mayan. We were docked next to Grandeur of the Seas, which was the ship we were on for the first cruise for most of the family when we had the big family

We arrived at the ATV Ranch in the jungle all nice and clean.

After watching the video on how to drive the ATVs, we were given orange bandanas to put on our heads before we put on our helmets. We got on our ATVs and we were ready to go.

Since it had been raining, there were lots of muddy puddles. The information about the ATV tour said that we should expect to get muddy. In spite of that information, at first we were cautiously going around the mud puddles to keep from getting our clothes covered in mud, but after a while, we went right into the puddles and got lots of mud on ourselves and had a blast.
We had two breaks where we stopped at some small Mayan Ruins. With our helmets off, you can see our cool bandanas.
They also had goggles to wear when it was dusty. We did not really need them because the road was wet, but Mom wanted to try one on. Doesn’t she look like the coolest mom ever?
We were still pretty muddy when we got back to the ship. Our clothes were so dirty that we used the ship laundry to get our clothes cleaned. We had a lot of fun and would do this tour again.