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Published: January 25th 2010
Ok so here is my second blog about the cruise covering the ports ad our excursions. The first morning we pulled into the Costa Maya was pretty exciting for me, not going to lie. Again, I got very camera happy and took a ton of pictures of the port and things, but at least it was beautiful this time and not some ugly ship lol. Sooo we wake up and realize that we are docked next to this huge ship called the Independence of the Seas, which is also ran by Royal Carribbean. So we get off the ship, walk down to the port (the first of many trips lol) and it is nothing but tourist stuff, I mean right down to a lady holding a monkey trying to get people to get pictures with it ha. We walked passed all the people waiting for their excursions because we didn't have to leave for our bike and clear kayak excursion until like noon. So we walk around and we see all these shops, which actually all have the same things in them but some of them are cheaper than others which is interesting, considering they are right next door to the
other one lol. The amount of jewelry stores at the port was impressive to me, but that is probably because I have never been to any ports. But anyhoo, as we are all walking around the ports we see all these clocks that say "Ship Time" and "Land Time." So this obviously poses an interesting question... which time do we go by for our excursions? Obviously ship time right? Why else would they have those clocks posted.. oh I know lets go ask some chic that is in charge of the excursions.. so we did. Her answer... land time. Oh.. huh well I guess that makes sense too, locals are giving the excursions so we obviously go by their time. Ok cool, so after we asked this lady the answer(who apparently was from the Independence of the Seas), we decided that it gave us plenty of time to go back to the shoreline and relax and then go get lunch on the boat (since it's free and all). The shoreline was not that great at Costa Maya, there really was not a "beach" it was all just rocks. Ryan and I walked along the shoreline for awhile, I got some
cool pictures of some real snails and stuff on the shoreline. Then we go back to the boat, go through security again and all that good stuff. We eat lunch, we come back, it is now 11:30ish land time and 12:30ish ship time... so essentially we should still have about 30 minutes before we need to line up for our excursion, but nevertheless we look for our sign.. it's not there. So we ask another shore excursion lady.. when does our excursion leave? She tells us it will leave from "right over there" in about 30 minutes. Awesome! We go walk around for like 15-20 minutes.. come back.. still no sign. Interesting. So paranoid we ask a guy when it leaves. He proceeds to ask us what ship we are with... hmm no one else has asked us that, does it matter? So we tell him, and he sends over to the same lady we talked to 20 minutes ago. Mind you, it is now about 12 land time, and 1pm ship time, and our excursion leaves at 12:15. The lady looks at us and tells us that it is 1pm and that we have missed our excursion. So since
this is the same lady we just saw 15 minutes earlier.. we were all just a bit PISSED. To top it all off.. she states that she has never seen us and that she didn't tell us that! So we go back to the boat again. Complain to some girl who has absolutely nothing to do with the situation, but she is able to explain to us that our ship (The Grandeur) is going by ship time for everything because it is very difficult to switch to land time while on the cruises for the staff and even the people on the cruise. Which makes sense. What doesn't make sense is that the Independence (the other big boat) still switches to Land Time.. so they go by Land Time. What!? Wow.. ok well we didn't know that, so we're even more ticked. Then she tells us that we can't really do anything until like 6pm (ship time) when the shore excursion manager comes back, but she is going to write the manager an email with the time we came by and our story so the manager knows that we didn't actually go on the excursion. We are satisfied with that
Ryan on the bridge
This is the first bridge we hd to cross.. it just consisted of ropes you had to go acrossand all but want the chic who saw us 2x and told us 2 different answers fired! So we go back to the port, hang out on the beach, go swimming in the ocean (it was my first time and let me just tell you, it was salty! lol) The shoreline at Costa Maya wasn't the best and we almost killed ourselves getting in and out of the water, Paul did a very graceful entrance however, apparently he was trying to attract sharks with his scrapes and scratches and the blood he was leaving in the water, but thankfully none were in the area lol. Ryan bought a pink snorkel for 20 bucks for us to share, I lost one of the pieces and he lost the other, but at least we still had the goggles right? lol. So when its time we go back to the boat, for the last time and hang out in the room, we are all kinda tired from the day, but not as tired as we would have been. We go and wait in line at the shore excursion desk, and guess who turns out to be the shore excursion manager? That's right, the
lady who told us 2 different answers. Wonderful. Well guess what, she didn't recognize us again! How crazy is that? Anyway, she stated it wasn't her that told us that on the shore, even though she also stated she was the only one down there, but ultimately we got our money back and we got a discount on our other excursion too. It was pretty crazy the way it went down, and we weren't real happy, but at least I got to swim in the ocean a bit, and I could use the boat credit for like 4 drink of the days! woot! haha.
Anyway, our excursion day at Cozumel went much smoother! We were first in line for our excursion (lol Sara made sure of that!). We did a zipline/snorkel tour. It was pretty cool. We went to this resort like place way outside of the port. It was gorgeous! We had to sit in this room and get debriefed on things and we look up and there is a sign that says "snorkels, 4.00" hahahaha we poked a little fun at Ryan for that one. Anyway before we did the zipline stuff we did a rock climbing
2nd bridge
Ryan crossing the second bridge, this is the one with gaps, and you only had your own rope to hold on to.. wall. We climbed the walls and then went across these rope bridges that were kinda crazy, some of them you didn't have anything to hold on to so you had to step over these gaps (which were really not that big, but when the bridge shakes and you have short little legs like me.. they seem big ok?! lol). I think the most work out I got during it was climbing to the top of this huge tower to rappel down.. I personally don't like the rappelling part, something about trusting your entire life to some dudes you don't know and some ropes just doesn't seem right to me.. that and the fact that you can't even see where you are going. But I did it.. and it was ok, except that the guys would like drop you towards the ground for like 10 ft before catching you... not cool. lol. After that was the snorkeling part. That was pretty neat. It wasn't like a reef or anything, but more like in the middle of no where with tourguides that had a lot of fish food lol. There were fish everywhere. One of the guides went under the water to
Ryan
I think this is where Ryan was ziplining down to the other tower. the bottom and he sprinkled his fish food all over the place and the fish did this circle thing around him as he went up to the top, it was actually really cool. We saw a stingray, but it was like an orange and white one, it was patterned really cool, not like the black and white ones I'm used to. We also saw berracudas, those things were really creepy actually. They were way out in the distance just lurking over there lol. The guy sprinkled food around me too and there were soo many fish there it was crazy! Then.. came trying to get out of the water at the beach. LMAO .. it didn't work out so well for me. I lost my flipper and in the midst of trying to get it came a strong wave thing that swept everyone that was still in the water off their feet and I couldnt find my footing. Needless to say when I stood up I had SOO much sand in my swimming suit! It looked like I was trying to hide tennis balls all over the place! hahaha. Soo funny, but not because it took FOREVER to get all
Sara
Sara and Paul climbed the tower again, this is where Sara was cheating haha that sand out and I had to almost flash people at the shower thingy. lol wow. Anyway it was pretty hilarious. After the snorkeling we laid out on the beach soaking up the warmth (it was probably the first day that was actually pretty hot and the wind wasn't too strong). It was sooo awesome and relaxing. The resort was beautiful. When we went back to the port we went shopping and all of these shops had the exact same things at Costa Maya, except a little more expensive. I didn't realize how many people went on cruises to buy jewelry. That's crazy. One guy almost had Ryan talked into a $20,000 ring that because we were so cool he was going to give it to us for $3000 lmao. *rolls eyes* yea whatever. Well that's kinda it with the ports. Of course I'll add pictures again, cause that's kinda fun 😊 Next Blog... Texas. 😊 I have so much to write about lately, I don't know how you guys are going to keep up.. I'm going to get tons of messages to slow down and stop talking so much! 😉
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Lil Bitty
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Uhh about the pics
Ok, so the pictures that go with the text.. they are all from Cozumel's excursion.. so they don't really go in order of the story, I don't know why it does that, but I put them in order lol.. so sorry. if you have questions on the pics, just let me know.