Today was the first of four consecutive port days, but we weren’t scheduled to arrive at Costa Maya until 12 noon.  In general, I prefer when my port days start first thing in the morning so I can make the most of my time there.  By arriving at noon, it gave us a mini-sea day in the morning, and then we scheduled a tour for the afternoon.  There are lots of cruises that do our last 3 ports but do not go to Costa Maya, so this was kind of a bonus port day (and was one of the reasons I picked this specific cruise!).  After I booked the cruise, I started researching a bit more details about each port.  What I noticed about Costa Maya was that the pier was only big enough for 3 cruise ships to dock there.  Some people reported that they were doing construction on the pier, but that it was a slow process and unlikely to be finished by the time of our cruise.  The problem was, there were 4 ships scheduled to dock in Costa Maya on this day, and we were the last to arrive.  I called Carnival to inquire about it and they said that we should be fine and that we never use tenders in Costa Maya so there will definitely be dock space for us.  Honestly, I was still skeptical because everyone kept saying that they’d never seen more than 3 ships dock at one time at this port, but I just crossed my fingers and hoped for the best. 

With us being in port from noon until 8pm, I did not know what to do here.  Many people like to use of the free pool in the port area, but I really prefer to get out and explore the ports, especially when I have never been there before.  There are several beaches and all inclusive places that get good reviews, but with sunset at around 6pm, and considering that we probably wouldn’t get to the beach until around 1pm, it felt like we would only make use of half our time in port.  Plus, we had 3 beach/water sport days for our other 3 ports, so this was a good day to do something different.  Neither of us had ever been to any Mayan ruins before, and there are 2 or 3 places to see that within an hour drive from the Costa Maya port, so that seemed like a good idea for today.  I looked into all of my options and decided that Chacchoben was our best bet.  While none of the options are as big as Tulum or Chichen Itza near Cozumel, Chacchoben was said to be well excavated, they allowed you to climb up on the ruins, and it was only a 45 minute drive away (as opposed to 2+ hours to reach ruins in some other ports).  I found a tour through Island Marketing which included around 2 hours at the ruins, plus a stop at a butterfly farm for $1 less than a tour of just the ruins with another popular tour company (Native Choice).  The butterfly farm seemed like a good way to break up the drive in 1 direction, so why not, especially since it was basically free! Haha  Best of all, while Island Marketing required a small deposit to hold our space on the tour, the deposit was fully refundable if our ship did not dock for any reason (so that eased my concerns about overcrowding at the dock making us miss this port altogether!).  Here is the description of our tour from the Island Marketing website…

Join us on an exploration of the Costa Maya Mayan Ruins site of Chacchoben, one of the more recently discovered Mayan sites in Costa Maya.  Learn about the advanced culture of the Mayans and see the Temples built hundreds of years ago including a delightful visit to the Costa Maya Butterfly Farm!  Chacchoben offers manicured paths and an easy walk suitable for all ages and group needs.  This is the most accessible Mayan Ruin site in the area due to its proximity to the port and layout of the site.  Located a short 40 minute drive from the port, the Chacchoben Temples are a beautiful example of the intricate Maya construction during the Maya Classic period.  The excavation of Chacchoben began in 1994 and a great deal has been discovered about the importance of this site and its people.  There are still many secrets waiting to be unearthed!  Chacchoben, which means place of the red corn, is believed to have been inhabited around 200bc.  However, the structures now visible at the site have been constructed around 300-500ad.  Journey into the Mystical realm of the Maya, walk through the ceremonial grounds and temples that have been traversed by Mayans over 1000 years ago!  Keep your eyes open for the other residents of the jungle surrounding Chacchoben.  Spider Monkeys, Peccary, deer, and armadillos inhabit this area so keep a look out!  On the way to the Chacchoben Mayan Ruins you will visit the butterfly farm.  The butterfly farm breeds the most exotic species of butterflies, like the astounding “blue morph” and the mysterious “owl butterfly”.  Discover NATIVE butterflies and their amazing pupae hanging on the plants like precious jewelry crafted by nature.  The butterfly farm also breeds the endangered Maya “Pygmy” Deer which was once plentiful in the Land of the Maya.  Make sure to have your camera ready to capture these amazing moments with nature.  Learn from our expert butterfly farmers about the life cycles of butterflies and the role they played in the ancient mayan vision of the universe.

I filled out the booking form on the Island Marketing website, and they replied with details on where to meet the guide on the day of the tour.  Now all that was left to do was to wait until March 12 rolled around, and hope for the best with the docking issues!

Today’s Fun Times

Since I am incapable of sleeping late, even on vacation, I was awake around 7am today.  I didn’t want to wake DH (especially since I did promise him that he could sleep late today given our late arrival into port), so I got dressed as quietly as possible and left the cabin in search of a light breakfast to hold me over until DH could join me for a full breakfast.  I ended up trying a chocolate muffin and I was not disappointed.  It was warm and had just the right amount of sweetness for a breakfast pastry. 

It was shaping up to be a beautiful day in the Caribbean today! 

It was only 8:20am at this point, so the decks were still pretty empty, but I imagine the aft pool became much more crowded as the morning went on.  I just noticed the guy in the pool seems to have spotted me taking this photo haha

A rare site… tons of open deck chairs and not a towel in sight!

Even Serenity Deck was empty at this early hour!!

I couldn’t resist so I snagged an empty clamshell and spent some time scrolling through the Thumbs Up site and using iMessage to text my close friend because today is her birthday.  That social media package was definitely fun to have, as much as I knew I should be enjoying my vacation and not reading up on what everyone was doing back at home haha

I stayed out there until around 9:15am, and then headed back to the cabin to see if DH was awake yet.  On the way, I passed by the Cherry on Top candy store.  It was still closed, but here are some photos in case anyone is curious.

The map showing the ship info looks like we are mighty close to Costa Maya!

When I got back to the cabin, DH was already awake and ready to go, so we went back upstairs to the Blue Iguana Cantina to try some breakfast burritos.  I ate these nearly every day for breakfast when I cruised on the Carnival Sunshine in 2013, but they didn’t have a Blue Iguana when we were on the Valor in 2015 so DH has never tried it.  Spoiler alert:  all it took was one bite and DH was hooked!  He ate here at least once a day for the rest of the cruise! Haha 

The menu has not changed since I last ate here 5.5 years ago…

I ordered a burrito with a wheat tortilla, regular scrambled eggs, ham, hash browns, Monterey jack cheese, and grilled onions.

Back in 2013, I did not know about the arepas, so I have been looking forward to trying one for a very long time!  I’m actually not surprised that I missed it on the Sunshine because I never saw anyone else eating arepas on the Dream this week.  They do list it on one of the menu boards (I think with the taco options?), but it’s not obvious and I have a feeling new cruisers just don’t know about them.  Unfortunately, that means there is not much turnover and the arepas were sitting out under the heat lamps for quite a while before we got them.  I ordered one for each of us and the server had to kind of man-handle them to get them to un-stick from the pan.

They were a little greasy, but I enjoyed the slightly sweet corn and gooey cheese, and I ordered one each day to supplement my breakfast burrito.  As for the burrito itself, it was just as delicious as I remembered from the Sunshine, with the crunchy hash browns and grilled onions being the true highlight!

I liked how they wrapped the burritos up like this.  If we had a balcony, I could definitely see getting it to-go and eating it on the balcony as we pulled into port each morning.

DH also tried one of the tacos and he loved it so much that he got two of them as part of his breakfast every day, and he tried to get them as a snack in the afternoons too.

The timing for our meals was totally thrown off today because we docked at noon and that is when all of the lunch venues opened, so if we wanted lunch before getting off the ship, our only options were the deli or pizza.  Not that we couldn’t find a good option at those two places, but everyone else on the ship would need to eat there too and I didn’t want to deal with the huge line that was likely to form.  Instead, we ate a big breakfast and planned to skip lunch.  If we got hungry on the tour, we always pack Clif Bars in our bags so we could snack on that.  Gary made some announcements about not being allowed to bring food off the ship in Mexico, but I have always found pre-packaged food to be the exception to the rule as there is no risk of bringing in bugs or contaminants to their country. 

After breakfast, we went back to the cabin to wait for the ship to arrive in Costa Maya, and we were greeted by this little guy…

We turned on the TV to see what options they had for TV stations and found CBS News.  The lead story on the news was about the Boeing 737 Max plane crash in Ethiopia.  We continued to follow this story all week because our flight home is on Southwest and they are one of the 3 airlines in America to use that model of aircraft.  A day or two later, President Trump grounded all 737 Max planes, so we kept trying to figure out if that would affect us and if that was the model of our plane.  Ultimately, we just had to wait until we got back to New Orleans on Sunday because there was no way to know which specific plane would be used for our flight several days in advance.  I’m sure all of those people waiting in line to park their cars at the cruise terminal parking garage were happy that they drove and did not need to worry about their flight home!  We kept flipping back and forth between CBS News and the forward deck camera station to monitor our progress with docking.  We could see there were several ships already docked, so I kept my fingers crossed that there was space left for us!

Looking out the window, we started to see land and knew we were getting closer to the port.

At some point while we were in the cabin watching TV, our cabin phone rang.  It was a manager calling from Guest Services to tell us that he was sorry we did not receive all of the services we paid for with FTTF on embarkation day.  He said he refunded the money we paid for FTTF in the form of onboard credit to our account, but that we could keep all of the perks for the remainder of the cruise.  We were very impressed by this resolution as it was far more generous than we expected.  If we counted up all of the various perks included with FTTF, the 2 things we missed out on account for maybe 25% of the value, so the fact that he refunded 100% of the cost was very kind and very much appreciated.  For what it’s worth, we had no further issues or complaints about FTTF for the remainder of the cruise and had that snafu not occurred on embarkation day, we would have found the program to be well worth the $90 fee.

Right at 12 noon, Gary came on the intercom to announce that we were docking!  We ran upstairs to the outside decks to see it for ourselves, and sure enough, they found space for all 4 ships to tie up to the dock!  This photo really shows how crowded it was as I was able to get parts of all 4 ships into one shot, with the Celebrity Equinox on the left, the Oceania Riviera in the middle, RCCL’s behemoth ship Symphony of the Seas on the right, and part of the Carnival Dream’s railing and deck long the front.

Another funny photo showing all 4 ships…

It looked like lots of people from the other cruises were coming back for lunch on their respective ships…

The water was so many beautiful shades of blue!

As I mentioned earlier, we got a letter yesterday explaining that people with FTTF could meet in the MDR on deck 3 to have priority exiting the ship.  We were thankful for this as we anticipated a big rush of people trying to get ashore ASAP due to the late docking time.  It was a little confusing figuring out where they wanted us to meet because the letter said to go to the forward side of the MDR but it turned out that they were using the mid-ship elevators and really needed us to meet back there.  Once we figured it out, there was a crew member in the mid-ship elevator bank to operate one of the elevators and bring us directly down to deck 0.  While we were waiting for the elevator to arrive, we noticed a long line of people walking down the stairs in that elevator bank, so it was nice to see that FTTF did actually get to ‘cut the line’, although there was no way to know how much time we saved.

We were off the ship by 12:15pm.  It was really windy as we walked down the long pier towards the cruise ship village.

Looking back towards the Dream…

Hi from Costa Maya!

We saw this tall pole thing when we were in Puerto Vallarta on the Pacific coast for New Years, so it was funny to see it again 3 months later on the Caribbean side of Mexico.  We didn’t wait around for the men to perform their ritual of climbing up to the top of the pole, spinning around in circles, then falling straight down hanging from the ropes, but I assume they did perform at some point as they were standing around in the background when we walked passed them.

There were lots of shops in the port area selling clothing, jewelry, and souvenirs.

Lots of lounge chairs near the swimming pool

Not surprising that it was very crowded at the pool at this time, with 3 other cruise ships who have been docked here for a few hours already.

It was very confusing to find our way out of the cruise port village because, of course, there were no signs that said “exit.”  It was like being in a department store at the mall… they never tell you how to get back to the mall and do everything they can to keep you trapped inside the store!  So frustrating!  I just kept asked the vendors where to go for a taxi in hopes that it would also lead me to the exit, and eventually we made it to the parking lot.  Our directions from Island Marketing said to exit the port gates, continue past the shopping centers, and their office would then be half a block away on the left side.  Ok, sounds simple enough.  We walked through the parking lot for the taxis and spotted the port gate.  When we walked through the gate, we could see a second set of gates up ahead, so we walked through that, and then saw a T intersection further up the road.  I had yet to see any shopping centers so I figured we needed to go up to that intersection and their office would be on the left.  By now, it was 12:30pm and we needed to meet at their office by 12:45pm.  It was extremely hot and humid, and there was no shade during this whole walk.  We finally got to the end of the road but we still didn’t see any stores so I asked a lady where the Mayan Trips office was located (that’s the name of the office per our instructions).  She said it was back the way we came from and we already passed it on the other side of the gate.  What?!  Our instructions said we had to leave the port through the gate!  As it turns out, the office was between the two sets of gates.  Wouldn’t that have been helpful information to share with us?!  The two gates are about 200 feet apart so it would be a very obvious landmark to tell us to look for their office between the two gates.  Anyway, we doubled back and sure enough, there was the office, tucked away on the side.

We checked in at the desk and our guide, Brian, told us to wait out front for everyone else to arrive.  There was a slight breeze outside, so it was definitely more comfortable to wait out there than inside the office with no air conditioning.  This next photo was taken with me sitting on the bench outside of their office.  That is the second gate… it would have been wonderful for the instructions to say their office was located a few steps before the second gate, don’t ya think??

Once everyone checked in a few minutes after 1pm, a 15-person van pulled up and we all got in.  Rocky was our van driver for the tour so that Brian could turn around and talk to us during the ride.  He explained some of the history of the Mayan Ruins and of Chacchoben, specifically.  One thing that I found interesting was the way they originally discovered these ruins.  Brian explained that the Mayans wanted to hide their temples to protect them from invaders so they covered them with dirt and leaves, basically creating what looked like a mountain.  The problem was that there are no mountains in this part of Mexico!  In fact, the land is extremely flat (as shown in the photos I posted from the ship when we first docked), so a random mountain in the middle of all that flat terrain really stood out, and it wasn’t hard to realize there was something hiding under there!  Oops!! 

We drove for about 30 minutes, nearly all on one or two roads, with very mundane scenery…

At 1:50pm, we pulled up to the Butterfly Farm.  Brian explained that we only had 20 minutes to spend here, so we could either go to the lab where they house the caterpillars or to the tent where they keep the butterflies.  Of course, we all agreed that we would prefer to see the butterflies.  After all, isn’t that why we were here?!

A lady came out to greet us and said she would give us a tour of the facility.  She led us inside the lab with the caterpillars.  Ummm, didn’t Brian just say we wouldn’t have time to see the caterpillars AND the butterflies?  Why are we in here?  I figured I’d give it a few minutes and see what happened.  I knew there was no way I was getting back in the van without seeing the butterflies! Haha  The room was very small, so with our whole group squeezed inside and trying to see the plants and caterpillars, it was hard to follow what the lady was saying.  I think she tried to explain how they grow caterpillars or something like that, but I honestly did not hear her at all.  I just looked around and made note that there were many different species of caterpillars hiding on the leaves of the plants.

At one point, the lady asked if we had any questions.  It was now 14 minutes after we first arrived, so I spoke up and asked if we could go see the butterflies now.  Luckily, Brian didn’t object and the lady led us over to the tent.

The lady did not really provide any information about the butterflies besides warning us not to let them fly out of the tent.  She just told us to walk around and keep our eyes open, and we were sure to see some butterflies.  Brian said we needed to leave soon so we could spend no more than 10 minutes in here.  There were trees and plants everywhere so it took some effort to find the butterflies at first, but soon enough we got the hang of it.  There were hundreds of butterflies in there!  It was really challenging to take a good photo because they kept flying around, but I think I took a few good photos.

This is the Giant Owl Butterfly that was mentioned in the description of the tour

I caught one of them mid-flight!  This was a Malachite Butterfly

One last Giant Owl Butterfly before we had to leave…

Brian rounded us all up and said it was time to go back to the van.  In the end, we spent 24 minutes here, so we pretty much stayed on schedule.  Sure, it would have been nice to spend more time searching for butterflies (especially because I only got to see 2 varieties and I think there were probably other kinds flying around in there if I had more time to look), but we had places to go, and Mayan ruins to see!

This was our van for the day, parked at the butterfly farm.  I think they had deer inside the fences behind the van but I never had a chance to look…

Once we were all settled back in the van, we drove for about 10 more minutes to the Chacchoben Mayan Ruins.  Brian said the tour would take about an hour, so he gave us a few minutes to use the restrooms, then he gathered us up and we walked along a flat dirt trail towards the ruins.  A few minutes later, we came to an opening and saw this:

It was so cool!  Just sitting there in the middle of a field of grass, there was a huge Mayan temple!  For perspective, look at the two people walking along the left side of the temple… they are several inches shorter than the first plateau, and then there are 4 or 5 levels above that.  This temple was huge!

As we were walking along the trail, we passed several larger groups who were gathered around their guide and listening to some information, so I was a little worried that it would feel crowded at the ruins.  To my surprise, it did not feel crowded at all.  Brian walked us past them so we got to the first temple before them, took our photos, then gathered around to listen to him talk as those other groups had their turn to take photos.  Our group had 10 of us, if I remember correctly, and those other groups had closer to 50 people each, so we were in good shape!

Brian pointed out the different color of stones to see what had been restored and what stones were original.

I thought these round palm leaves were neat

This was the tree of life, which had great significance in Mayan culture.  Notice the large tour group huddled around the tree… glad we had a much smaller group than that!

This was a hill a few feet away from the first temple.  Brian said there is probably another temple, or structure of some sort, hiding under all that dirt.  This was what the first temple would have looked like when the first people discovered it.

Walking along the trails between the temples.  The grounds were well maintained and flat, so it was very easy to walk around the property.  The instructions from Island Marketing said we needed to wear closed toed shoes on this tour, and I can understand why.  It was definitely easier to have on sneakers and not flip flops, especially when climbing up on the rocks.

A map of Chacchoben

Lots of big trees for shade

When we got to this spot, Brian told us we could climb up these steps the easy way or the hard way.  Of course, DH and I picked the hard way, which meant a steeper section of stairs and nothing to hold on to.  The easier way had shallower steps and was along a wall that you could hold for balance.

It’s hard to see how steep these steps were, but trust me, they were steep!

Looking back towards the ground

We made it to the top!

When we turned around, we saw this:

OMG!  This temple was huge!!  There were actually two temples up on this higher level… the one I just showed was the Temple of the Sun, and the one below is the Temple of the Moon.

Brian gathered us all in the shade to explain more about the Tree of Life and these two temples.

As he was talking, he heard some noise from above… there was a spider monkey climbing up in the trees!  Needless to say, he lost our attention as we were all excited to see the monkey!

We went back over to the bigger temple for some more photo ops.  Notice that there was no one else up here besides the people on our tour.  At some point, there was a fork in the path and all of the larger groups went right while Brian led us left so we were the only ones up here at that time.

After that, Brian led us back down the steps via the easier route, and as we got to the bottom, we saw the bigger tour groups approaching.  What great timing!  We made our way back towards the entrance, briefly stopping to see the houses where the Mayans lived.  We were back at the visitor center around 4pm, so we spent just over an hour walking around the ruins.  I’d say that was the perfect amount of time.  Sure, there are other Mayan Ruins sites across Mexico and Central America that are bigger and more developed than Chacchoben, but I don’t think I would have needed to spend any longer than an hour walking around the ruins.  We saw plenty, got to climb around and explore, and learned a bit about Mayan history and culture.  Overall, it was time well spent and I’m glad we booked this tour.

After another break to use the restrooms, we piled back in the van for the drive back to the cruise port.  Or at least, that’s what we thought!  Brian had one little surprise planned for us… a stop at a pineapple stand for a little snack. 

The van stopped on the side of the road and Brian told us to stay seated and he would pick up a treat for us.

He gave one of these bags to each pair of two people.  This was by far the sweetest pineapple I have ever tasted, even better than in French Polynesia!  The only issue was that this was way too much for us to eat, especially with less than 2 hours to go until our dinner time back on the ship.  We each had a few slices, but we had to throw the rest away because they won’t let you bring fresh fruit back on the ship.

We arrived back at the Mayan Trips office, promptly at 5pm as scheduled.  We thanked Brian and Rocky for a great tour, then walked back towards the cruise port.  On the way to the ship, I noticed some flamingos that I had not seen earlier…

There were lots of lounge chairs available at this late hour, which did not surprise me considering the Equinox and Symphony OTS were past all aboard time.

Then we made the long walk down the pier and back to the Carnival Dream

It was still very windy out there, as shown by my hair blowing everywhere in this photo!

The Dream looked so pretty in the late afternoon light

By the time we got back on the ship, it was nearly 5:30pm, so this was one of those moments when we were really happy to have two showers in our cabin.  We also took advantage of being on Deck 1 and climbed up the one flight of stairs to get back to our cabin as fast as possible, avoiding the long wait at the elevators.  We got showered and ready for dinner in record time, and made our way upstairs to the MDR just 5 minutes late.  The dining room was only 25% full, if that, so I guess a lot of people were taking advantage of the later sail away time and either eating dinner on shore or would eat at the Lido buffet later tonight.  Of all the tables in Prudence’s section, only one pair of women at the long table next to us were seated when we arrived.  I think one other couple showed up a few minutes later, but that was it.

Tonight’s appetizers

Dinner menu

Port of call menu for Costa Maya

Fried Shrimp appetizer

Romaine Caesar Salad

While we were eating, we noticed this ambulance coming down the pier.  When it got to the intersection between our pier and the one leading over to the Oceania ship, it started to turn around, squeezing next to the orange cone in the middle of the road.  The ambulance took several minutes of going back and forth, trying to maneuver on the narrow pier, and we just kept saying that we hoped whoever needed this ambulance didn’t need it too urgently because this was taking forever!  Why they didn’t move that orange cone to create more space for the turn was baffling to us (especially since we saw the port workers move the cone for their vehicles later in the meal).  The ambulance eventually succeeded in its turns and backed up all the way down the other pier to help a passenger from the Oceania ship.  About 30 minutes later, we saw the ambulance drive away, but it did not have any flashing lights.  We’ll never know if that was because the person no longer needed assistance, or what happened, but hopefully they received the care they needed.

Anyway, back to dinner.  I had Penne Mariscos for my entrée.

DH ordered the short ribs (he said they were just okay, but a bit dry)…

…and the beef lasagna (he said this was one of the best entrees he had all week)

Dessert Menu

I think DH ordered a cheese plate for dessert but I forgot to take a photo.  I ordered the cheesecake with strawberry sauce.  It was pretty good, but not nearly as good as the cheesecake from the steakhouse (no surprise there!)

We finished dinner by 7:15pm, and had a bit of time before the 8pm comedy show, so we went outside on deck 5 to catch the end of a beautiful sunset.

DH was hoping to see some pier runners, but I wasn’t surprised that the only people out there were dock workers.  I had a feeling that no one would miss the ship tonight as the sun setting is usually a good reminder to get back to the ship haha

The 8pm family-friendly comedy show tonight was with the other comedian on board, Just June, and the show was called “Moms Mabley”.  Since this was the first time we saw her show, we didn’t know what she looked like, and were quite surprised when this lady took the stage.

She doesn’t look like the usual cruise ship comedian, but she was entertaining and spent most of her act playing off the people sitting in the first few rows of the lounge.  When the cocktail waiter came around, I ordered an Angry Orchard cider.  He asked if I wanted to get a bucket of 4 to save $2.  Since it was only Tuesday and I knew I’d get through 3 more ciders in the next 5 days, I asked him to leave them closed and ordered the bucket.  I wasn’t expecting cans, but that did make it easier to open them in our cabin haha

She stayed true to her schtick through nearly the entire routine, but towards the end, Moms Mabry transformed back into Just June.  I definitely was not expecting that all of that hair was hiding under her wig!

After the comedy show ended, we found “our couch” on Deck 4 overlooking the atrium, and listened to Chris Ayden playing the guitar.

From “our couch”, we could see when the theater doors opened so there was no need to wait in line, and when the time came, we went over to the Encore! Theater to get seats for the Love and Marriage Show.  This show is only as entertaining as the 3 couples picked to participate, but these couples and Gary did a great job keeping us all laughing.

When the show ended, we were both a little hungry so we went upstairs to Lido to find something to eat.  At that late hour, our only options were pizza or the deli.  The line for pizza was crazy long so we went to the deli instead.  I ordered the classic grilled cheese, but wished they left it in the oven a bit longer to make the bread more crispy.

DH ordered a hot dog with sauerkraut and a reuben sandwich, and he said both were good (he actually ordered these a few times throughout the week, so he must have liked them!)

By the time we finished, it was nearly 11pm so we went back to the cabin to pack up our beach bags and get ready for sleep, as we had a very early wake up call for tomorrow in Roatan!

Step Tracker Daily Total:  16,054 steps; 6.48 miles; 12 flights of stairs