For our last few cruises, the idea has started to cross my mind that I want to try scuba diving.  We did an underwater helmet walk in Moorea in 2017, and the perspective from being several feet under water let me see so much more than snorkeling and looking down from the surface above.  When we booked this cruise, I knew this was the time to take to make it happen.  Cozumel is the biggest of the 4 ports we visited, so there were tons of vendors to choose from, and I liked that this would be our last port, making our first scuba diving experience the grand finale of our cruise.  We are not certified scuba divers, but luckily that isn’t a problem because there are discover scuba diving courses offered by many vendors where they teach you everything you need to know in the first 30-60 minutes of the tour, and then they closely supervise you during the dive.  To be honest, as excited as I was about this experience, I was also a bit nervous and scared so I liked that I would be supervised by a certified guide just to make sure everything went safely.

I read a ton of reviews on Trip Advisor and Googled the websites of a bunch of different companies, trying to find one with the best fit for us.  In the end, we booked with CozumelH2O for a 2 tank dive from their boat.  I liked the idea of diving straight from the boat because that meant I wouldn’t have to carry the heavy tanks across the beach, and as soon as we dropped down into the water, we would be right at the reef (as opposed to having to swim to the reef from a beach).  I was originally only going to book a one tank dive, just in case we didn’t like scuba diving or had some kind of problems that we needed to stop early, but they only offered a 1 tank dive if going from the shore, and I really wanted to go from a boat so that meant we had to do 2 tanks.  Go big or go home, right?  I emailed back and forth with CozumelH2O to ask them tons of questions, and they were always quick to reply and help me feel less anxious about the experience.  We paid a deposit of $20 USD per person via paypal and we were all set for our tour.  Here is a description of the tour from the CozumelH2O website:

Always wondered how it is to breath underwater, but you’re not scuba certified and not sure if you want to get certified? Or you are a snorkeler and just want to try it once? No problem! The Cozumel Discover Scuba Experience is a great introduction to scuba diving. Our professional dive instructors will teach you the basic theory, basic skills and safety rules you will need to know for a safe first dive, this will take around 45 minutes. After that it’s time for the fun part… your first dive to a maximum 40 ft.

The Discover Scuba Experience is a one or 2 tank dive. We do this course in the ocean where it’s very shallow, right before a beautiful reef, so after you learned the skills we will dive this reef.

We also offer this experience with a two tank boat dive. At the first spot El Cielo, we will practice the skills with you, after that your first dive will be at Colombia Shallow and your second dive at another beautiful reef, which one will decide your instructor based on your abilities. Expect to see beautiful colorful reefs and reef fishes, lobsters and big fish as barracudas, groupers, parrot fishes and probably even sting rays, turtles and so much more.

Can I do the Discover Scuba Experience?

Basically everybody who’s older the 10 is able to do this course. No experience needed. It will take a few minutes before you’re used to breathe underwater and get comfortable with it. But once you do, you’ll realize how easy and fun it is! If you like snorkeling then you will love diving as you will see so much more once you’re under water.

Price per person with 1 tank: $89 USD

Price per person with 2 tanks: $120 USD

Includes marine park fee, 1 or 2 tank from shore, weight belt and weights, fins, mask, wetsuit, bcd and regulator, no hidden cost!

Price per person with two tank boat dives: $140 USD per person

Includes marine park fee, tanks, weight belt and weights, fins, mask, wetsuit, bcd, regulator, fruit, snacks and purified water, no hidden cost!

Today’s Fun Times:

We had an extremely early wake up time today of 6:30am.  We were due to dock at 7am, so after I finished getting dressed, I peaked outside to see where we were.  I really wished the window was cleaner because this looked like an incredible sunrise over Cozumel!

It was our last port day which meant it was my last chance for a breakfast burrito and arepas!  Tomorrow, we planned to go to brunch in the MDR.

After breakfast, we made our way off the ship, through the duty free store that you are forced to walk through on the way from/to the ship, passed all the stores and vendors in the port, and out to the taxi stand.  By the way, at some point along that path, we had to go through an agricultural check point where they looked inside everyone’s bags to make sure we did not bring any food into the port.  We had bottles of water in our bag, but either they didn’t see them or they didn’t care about water because they didn’t say anything about it to us.

Once we found the taxi stand, we asked for a taxi to the Fonatur Marina.  The ride was probably only a mile and cost $8 total for the taxi, not per person.  We probably could have just walked, but I didn’t know exactly which port we were docked at and had we been at the further cruise docks, the walk may have been longer.  Also, I didn’t know if there was a sidewalk or if it was safe to walk from the port to the marina, so it was just easier to take a taxi.  Our instructions said to wait at the ramp by the water for our guide, and when we got there, we saw lots of other people waiting for guides for their tours too.  I guess this little marina is popular for tours for cruise ship passengers because it is so close to the port.

We checked in with one of the guides from another company and he showed us where we could sit and wait for our guide to arrive.  Right on time, a representative from CozumelH2O arrived at 8:45am and gave us all the release forms to sign.  After we signed away the right to sue them if we died while scuba diving, he walked us over to where our boat was docked and introduced us to Miguel, our instructor, and Lupe, who would be driving the boat.  We ended up having a private tour because while one other woman was going to dive with us (her name was Chantal), she was a certified diver and was just tagging along on the boat.  I love when it works out like that!  Miguel did try to find others to join the tour, but lucky for us, everyone else at the marina either had another scuba tour booked or preferred to go snorkeling.  I’m sure he would have liked to have more people on the tour so he could make some more money, but honestly, I was much more comfortable knowing that it was just DH and I on the tour so Miguel could focus on us and our safety.  I’m not really sure how it would have worked out anyway if he recruited more people to take the tour because the boat was all set up with equipment for us (notice the name tags hanging from the vests?), so I don’t know where the equipment would have come from if there were more people added to the tour.

As Lupe drove the boat out of the marina and south along the coast of Cozumel, Miguel used the time to teach us our introductory lesson.  I was kind of surprised that he was going to teach us this material while we were on a moving boat considering how loud it was from the motor of the boat.  It was a really good thing that he was only speaking to the two of us because there’s no way we would have heard him if we were sitting further away, and this was important information!  Miguel did a great job of explaining some basic concepts of how the lungs react to the pressure of being deep under water, and how to operate all of the equipment we would be using today.  He showed us a few techniques to equalize our ears from the pressure under the water like blowing our nose or swallowing.  He also suggested we could move our jaw up and down or yawn, but I’m not quite sure how that would have worked out without swallowing a bunch of salt water!  After that, he taught us some of the important hand signals so we could communicate under water.  This was something that really worried me because if there was a problem, it’s not like we could verbalize it to Miguel to get him to help us.  Miguel explained that most of the time, people encountered the same problems so he taught us how to communicate those problems to him using hand signals.

After about 30 minutes, we arrived at our first stop: a shallow section of water that was about 5 feet deep with a soft, sandy bottom where we could practice some skills.  Miguel taught us 4 skills that we needed to demonstrate for him before we could move on to diving in deeper water.  First, he demonstrated them to us on the boat and showed us how he would cue us to do them on our own when we were in the water.  Then we got suited up on the boat.  This was my first time ever putting on a wet suit, and suddenly I regretted my choice to take this tour at the end of our cruise.  Holy moly!  It was so hard to get into that wet suit!  Maybe it would have been easier at the start of the cruise before I ate all that food! Haha

After we were wearing our wet suits and fins, Lupe and Miguel helped us put on our weight belt and BCD (Buoyancy Control Device), inflate the BCD, and to sit up on the edge of the boat with the oxygen tanks supported on the edge.  It was all so awkward and uncomfortable, but mostly because I was nervous and this was a totally new experience for me.  Don’t I look happy to be scuba diving? Haha… maybe not!

On the count of 3, he told us to just fall backwards off the side of the boat.  It seemed so weird to wear such a heavy tank on my back but still be able to float, but I guess that was just the BCD doing its job!  We slowly lowered into position, kneeling on the sandy ocean floor, and went through all of our skills.  First, I had to remove the regulator from my mouth, blow bubbles, put the regulator back in my mouth and clear it of the water that got inside.  Next, I had to repeat that process and also show that I could retrieve the regulator in two different ways.  The point was that if it somehow fell out of my mouth under water, I would know how to retrieve it so I could breathe again.  Breathing is important!  The final skill was to let some water get inside of my goggles and then to clear it out.  While DH and I took turns demonstrating our skills, Chantal used the time to go snorkeling in the area, so I thought that was nice that she had something to do and it wasn’t like she was twiddling her thumbs on the boat, waiting for us to be ready.

After Miguel gave us both the thumbs up and high-five that we had passed our skills, we swam back to the boat and climbed on board.  Miguel removed my BCD and handed it up to Lupe on the boat so I didn’t have to climb the ladder wearing the tank.  That was much appreciated because DH didn’t get the same treatment and he said it was really hard to climb the ladder with all that equipment! Sometimes it’s awesome to be a girl! Haha

Lupe drove the boat a short distance away to the Palancar Reef, and Miguel said it was time for our first real dive!  I just kept telling myself to stay calm and keep breathing.  There was no turning back now!  We dropped backwards into the water and all gathered together to slowly lower down to the reef.  I actually did really well with it and was pacing with Chantal to get about halfway down to the ocean floor.

OMG! I’m scuba diving!!

When I looked around to see where DH was, I realized he was still close to the surface and Miguel was helping him with something.  I thought maybe I had gone down faster than I was supposed to, so I went back up to see what was going on.  Chantal kept going deeper and started to explore the reef on her own.

It looked like DH was having trouble clearing his ears, but it only took him a few seconds to work it out and then we were on our way.  Miguel looped one arm around mine and his other arm around DH’s arm and led us down to the ocean floor.  When he was explaining things on the boat, it sounded like we could swim independently, but once we were under water, he would not let us go off on our own.  I was okay with that because I was still unsure and nervous about the whole thing, but DH kept trying to wiggle away and Miguel wouldn’t let him.  Once again, I was glad that we only had two of us on the tour because I’m not sure how it would have played out with 2 more people… would we have made a big caravan of 5 of us all strung together??  That would have been a bit ridiculous! Lol

Luckily, Miguel looped under my left arm so I still had my right hand free to take photos!

Whenever I go snorkeling, I make sure to adjust my camera to the underwater setting so the colors will come out correctly.  I knew that going deeper under water would cause the photos to turn blue, but since this was only my first time scuba diving, I wanted to test the abilities of my camera and see what I could capture without an extra filter.  If I book a scuba excursion in the future, I will probably look into one of those red filters to neutralize the colors, but for now, here is just a small sampling of the hundreds of photos I took on this dive.

Thus far, we had seen a ton of coral but no fish at all.  Miguel pointed at something to my left… there was a small school of fish swimming a few feet away.  It almost made me laugh because that was so not exciting compared to the beautiful coral I was staring at on my right side!  I took a quick photo of it to let him think I was impressed…

Ok, now back to the amazing coral…

One of the downsides to being looped under Miguel’s arm was that I couldn’t get closer to things I wanted to take photos of, and I couldn’t linger to take the perfect photo.  I basically just snapped photos with one hand (which means the camera wasn’t very steady) and it was as I was floating past the subject so a lot of the photos came out blurry.

This was that spongy coral that I saw in St. Lucia between the pitons

If you look VERY carefully, there is a small turtle swimming just above the coral in the middle of this photo.  I really wanted to chase after him but Miguel led us in a different direction.

Here we go… I zoomed in so you can see the turtle a little better, just to prove that I didn’t make it up that we saw him hehe

We must have been getting closer to the surface because all of a sudden, the color came back to my photos

Towards the end, we saw a few more fish swimming around

Just look at the amazing bright yellow color of that coral!

A whole lot of those round spongey things… I’m sure they have a more technical name than that, I just don’t know what it is lol

I just loved how everywhere I looked, there was SOOOO much to take in and see.  This was a wonderful place to have my first scuba diving experience!

Hi Mr. Fish!

Oh look! There’s another fish poking out of the coral!

I wish we could have gone in between those rocks as I’m sure there was some amazing stuff in there.

Around this time, DH looked down at the meter monitoring the oxygen in his tank and saw it was in the red zone, so he pointed it out to Miguel.  That was our cue to start heading towards the surface before DH ran out of oxygen, but afterwards, Miguel told us we were going to finish around that time anyway.  I slowly kicked up towards the surface, equalizing my ears along the way.  When I reached the surface, both of my calves started to cramp, but Chantal and Miguel were right there and each grabbed a leg to stretch me out while I floated in the water.  They knew exactly what to do and they were amazing!  The whole time we were diving, Miguel held a line attached to a flotation device that hovered on the surface of the water so Lupe could follow us with the boat.  They purposely planned our route that we were drifting underwater with the current, so we really didn’t have to swim at all, especially since Lupe was just a few feet away when we came up to the surface at the end.  Miguel had told us from the start that scuba diving is not a sport, it’s a leisure activity because if you do it right, it is not strenuous and can be very relaxing.  He was right!  When I reached the ladder for our boat, Miguel helped to remove my weights and BCD, and I slipped off my fins and climbed back on board.

In total, our first dive lasted 45 minutes and Miguel said we reached a depth of 32 feet, and I loved every minute of it!  The one issue I had was that every time I tried to clear my ears, I pinched my nose to blow out as Miguel told me to do.  When I did that, it let water get into my goggles because pinching my nose made a gap in the seal of the goggles, so then there was water in my eyes.  I knew how to fix it, but it got really annoying to have to stop every few minutes and clear my goggles.  While we were on the boat heading towards our second dive site, I asked Miguel what to do and he suggested I should try swallowing instead.  Ok, that’s a good idea, I hope that works out!

I forgot to take photos of it, but Miguel passed around a container with cut up melon, papaya, and mango.  It was a much-appreciated snack and helped to get rid of the salty flavor in my mouth.  They also had bottles of water for us if we needed it, but we had brought our own from the ship.

Lupe drove the boat back to very close to the marina where we started the tour.  At first I was a little confused and thought maybe that was the end of the tour?  I thought we signed up for a 2-tank dive, but maybe I misunderstood something?  Just as I was about to ask Miguel about it, Lupe stopped the boat.  Our second dive was at the Paraiso Reef, located very close to the marina and where the cruise ships were docked.  Time to suit up for round two!

Back in the water, I felt a lot more relaxed this time around

DH is getting his mouthpiece in place, and you can see the cruise ships in the background.

Miguel started to loop his arm around my right arm so DH and I would switch sides from the first dive.  Nice try Miguel… that means I won’t be able to take photos because I need my right hand free for that!  I let go, grabbed his other arm and looped my left arm through, then held up my camera in my right hand to show him why I needed to be on this side.  I think he understood, or if not, then he just thought I was crazy!

As we dropped deeper and deeper into the water, I was a little skeptical about this reef because it seemed very sparse.

Where’s all the coral?? 

We drifted a little further and started to see some colorful coral.

And then… bam!  A huge yellow spotted snake eel slipped right through the coral!  So cool!  Do you see him there in the middle at the bottom third of this photo?

That’s some funky looking red coral

This reef wasn’t as dense as the other one, so we’d see a whole lot of cool things, and then we’d see lots of sandy floor for a while.

Lots of little fish swimming around

We kept drifting a few minutes with nothing all that exciting happening, and then Chantal waved us over because she saw something hiding in the shadows… a HUGE lobster!  This photo is horrible, but as I mentioned earlier, we didn’t really stop to look closely at anything so I couldn’t focus on the lobster, but I did my best.  You can kind of make out one of his arms reaching up, and some of his smaller legs right in the middle of the photo…

A few seconds later, we came up on a huge crab hiding in one of the other cracks.  Again, this photo is horrible, but you can kind of see him hiding back behind the coral in the middle of the photo…

I wished I could stay still for just one second to take a photo… this was definitely the downside to Miguel towing us through the water.  Sure, he wanted to keep us safe, but it was hampering my chances for amazing photos!  Doesn’t he know that’s the most important thing to me???  Here is a very blurry photo of the crab…

At least the photos came out better when I had the camera zoomed out all the way!

This was something I’ve never seen before… a yellow spotted stingray!  So cool!!

Another first for me… a sea anemone!

A trumpetfish

I like how this one came out, with the trumpet fish swimming through the coral

a conch shell

After that, we entered an area with a whole lot of nothing.  All we saw were thousands of these little things poking up from the sand that looked like poppy flowers.

We drifting along for at least 10 minutes (based on the time stamps of my photos), and it started to get a little boring because there was seriously nothing around us.  I was kind of confused why we didn’t just loop around to spend more time back at that other section of the reef… surely this isn’t the first time Miguel dove this reef and he knew that there was nothing to see down here?

At some point, I looked at the screen of my camera and it showed a big warning sign that said “warning: depth”.  Oh no!  I forgot to mention it but my “waterproof” watch died during our first dive.  I wore it snorkeling in Roatan and Belize without incident, but I guess the pressure from being so deep underwater was too much for it and when we emerged from our first dive, the screen was blank and there was a big black spot in the corner.  Oops!  Good thing today was our last port day and the watch cost less than $8 from Walmart so it’s easily replaceable.  Anyway, I know my Olympus TG-5 camera has a waterproof rating for up to 50 feet, but I didn’t know exactly how deep we were right now.  I would be so upset if my camera died because it cost quite a lot more than $8, but there really wasn’t anything I could do about it now.  Spoiler alert:  my camera survived the dive just fine!  At the end, Miguel said we went down to 40 feet on this dive, so I wonder if the camera just gave me a warning that I was within 10 feet of my limit so I wouldn’t go any deeper?  I really have no idea how that little camera knows my depth underwater, but that’s another story lol

Finally, we came along this small section of the reef.  There were other scuba divers down here, so that was kind of fun to see them, but there really wasn’t a whole lot coral or fish in this area.

This coral looked kind of cool…

Funky pink spongey coral

A few sparse fish

Around this time, we had been in the water for 40 minutes so Miguel started leading us up towards the surface.  On the way up, we saw this really cool spotted wing comb jellyfish.  As it drifted in the water, it kept morphing into different shapes.  It was so elegant and graceful!

Before we started this second dive, I asked Miguel if he could take my camera at some point to take photos of DH and I scuba diving.  I had thoughts of beautiful photos of us with the reef in the background, showing us swimming along from head to the end of our fins, and really capturing the moment.  Miguel said he would do it towards the end of the dive, but when the time came, he was so reluctant to let go of us that this is the best of the 4 photos he took.  Not exactly what I had in mind, but at least it’s better than nothing lol

Right after he handed me back the camera, he looped his arms under ours and we continued our journey to the surface.  Then he stopped!  Why are we stopping?  There’s nothing around us… or is there?  If you look very closely in the middle of this photo, you can see a faint white line.  It was another type of comb jellyfish, called a Venus Girdle.

A few seconds later, we reached the surface of the water, where once again, Lupe was waiting for us with the boat.  This second dive lasted 45 minutes, and as I mentioned, we reached a maximum depth of 40 feet.  I don’t know which dive I liked better because they were so different.  Our first dive featured very dense and varied coral, nonstop for the entire dive, but hardly any fish or other creatures.  Our second dive was much more sparse and had limited coral, but we saw the most amazing animals… lobster, crab, spotted stingray, sea anemone, spotted eel, and 2 kinds of jelly fish!  I honestly think the combination of these two reefs made for the most perfect first scuba diving experience.  We got to see a little bit of everything and it left me wanting more.  I greatly regret not trying a discover scuba diving course sooner because I can only imagine what we would have seen had we done this in French Polynesia or Bonaire!  Of course scuba diving is very expensive and costs a lot more money than the typical snorkeling tour, but I know for sure that we will want to repeat this experience if/when we take another cruise!

Oh, one last comment about my ears… On the second dive, I took Miguel’s advice and tried the swallowing technique to equalize my ears.  It worked like a charm and I was able to clear my ears without getting any water in my goggles.  When the tour ended, I felt great, and I continued to feel normal until about 36 hours later.  We were on the ship on Saturday night and my ear started hurting whenever I sneezed or blew my nose.  Uh oh!  That’s not good!  I woke up on Sunday morning and the pain was worse.  I was worried that maybe I burst my ear drum or something, and we were flying home that night so I was really afraid that I would have problems during take off and landing.  Luckily, the flight was uneventful (I just chewed gum during the take off and landing like I usually do), but my ear continued to hurt and I also felt dizzy.  I showed up to work on Monday morning and felt so dizzy that I couldn’t stand in the hallway to talk to my manager and I needed to go find a chair to sit down.  She sent me home because neither of us thought I was safe to treat patients when I felt like this.  My hearing was fine, so I ruled out the idea of a burst ear drum, but the ear pain and dizziness were worrying me enough that I went to see my doctor.  She said I had some congestion built up in my nasal passages and that was preventing the congestion in my ear from draining.  She prescribed a nose spray to clear the congestion, and luckily, after 5 days of using it, the spray worked and my ears finally stopped hurting.  I was fighting this problem for about a week after the dive, so that wasn’t exactly the souvenir I wanted to come home with, but I still think it was worth it for such an incredible experience.  Next time, I will buy some Flonase and make sure all of my passages are cleared out before scuba diving!

Since the second dive site was so close to Fonatur Marina, we had a very short ride back at the end of the tour.  We thanked Miguel and Lupe profusely for a wonderful experience, then went in search of the bathrooms at the marina.  This map was posted on the wall of the waiting area at the marina.  It was cool to find the reefs where we had been diving on the map.  I marked them with arrows in the photo…

By now, it was around 1:30pm.  DH found a convenience store at the marina and they were selling bottles of local beer for $1 each.  Back in December, we had a few pesos left over from our trip to Puerto Vallarta.  Rather than trying to exchange them back for USD and losing money in the process, I stashed them away with plans to spend them on this cruise, knowing we had 2 ports in Mexico.  We hadn’t had a chance to spend them yet, and we knew that beer would cost more money if we bought it at the cruise port, so this seemed like a good way to spend our pesos.  We bought a few bottles, and found a taxi to take us back to the port.  DH wanted to walk back to save some money, but I was starving and wanted to get back ASAP to eat lunch (and we had to drink those beers before we could board the ship so if DH wants his beers, then I get my taxi!)

Back at the port area, we found a bench in the shade to drink our beers while people watching and using the free wifi.  While I did have access to my social media sites on the ship, I couldn’t read my emails so I did still need to use this free wifi at the port, at least for a few minutes!

They really did a nice job at decorating this cruise port, with tons of palm trees and wide sidewalks to handle the thousands of cruise ship passengers who visit here every day.

I wish I had seen this sign when we first arrived this morning because it would have made for a great photo with us in it.  By now, I looked like a drowned rat with my hair falling out of my braids and a slight sunburn on my face, so there was no chance I was posing for a photo! Haha 

After we had our fill of beer and email, we made the long trek through the cruise port, through the duty free shops, and down the long pier to reboard the Dream for the final time on this cruise.

At some point after we had left for our tour, the Carnival Vista docked next to us, creating a cruise ship canyon.  I wonder how many people accidentally tried to get on the wrong ship!

This whole week, I had been meaning to try out the meatball sandwich from the deli.  Now was my chance, and OMG it was totally worth the wait!  I’m not sure if it was because I was famished (it was now nearly 3pm) or because I still had salty ocean coating my mouth, but this sandwich was seriously delicious.

In case you were curious about what’s inside… there were 4 meatballs and a generous amount of provolone and ricotta cheese, with just the right amount of marina sauce to give it flavor but not make it all drippy and messy.

The buffet was closing soon, so I made sure to get to the desserts section before they cleared away all the yummy cakes.  Today, I tried the chocolate vanilla marble cake.  It was moist and sweet, with a good proportion of cake to frosting.

After lunch, I took a few minutes to walk around the outer decks and take photos of the port and the other cruise ships.  It was such a beautiful day, with the sun shining on the water to light it up to a beautiful electric turquoise color, and bright white puffy clouds dotting the sky like cotton balls.  We were incredibly lucky with our weather on this cruise, with bright sunny days in all 4 ports.

RCCL Harmony of the Seas docked at the other cruise port

 Puerta Maya Cruise Terminal

Lido deck wasn’t too crowded at this hour

Checking out the Carnival Vista

The Regal Princess was also docked near us

Lots of people walking back towards the ships

After that, I met back up with DH because we had one more mission to accomplish today… riding the water slide!  There have not been any water slides on my last 3 cruise ships, so I was very much looking forward to using the slide on the Dream.  This seemed like the perfect opportunity to accomplish that mission, while I was already in a wet bathing suit and the ship was still docked so it wouldn’t be too windy when I climbed up all the stairs to the top of the slide. 

Added perk: you get some great views from the top of the slide!

You can actually see parts of all 6 waterslides from this view (2 kiddie slides side by side, the giant twister slide, 2 medium racing slides side by side, and the drain pipe slide)

When we got up to the top, there were three or four kids on line ahead of us and a life guard watching to make sure the previous person exited the slide before the next person started.  I can only imagine what would happen if someone got stuck in the slide for some reason and then a second person came shooting down the tube and slammed into them!

Here goes nothing!

DH had gone down the slide yesterday while I was in the shower so he warned me to hold my nose when it got lighter inside the tube because that meant I was almost at the end and there’s a lot of water down there that can go up your nose.  He also gave me a pointer on technique that he figured out when he was a kid… if you minimize the amount of skin you have touching the tube then you will go faster.  He told me to press my heels and shoulders down onto the tube and to lift my butt up, and that would make me go faster.  Sure enough, that totally worked and I was flying when I went down the slide! 

I sent him down the slide first with my camera so he could take a photo for me.

What a rush!  I know these slides are more geared for children, but it was a lot of fun for me as an adult too!  With that mission accomplished, I went back to the cabin to get ready for the evening while DH went to the casino bar for happy hour.  I had read a few posts before the cruise with people asking about this elusive happy hour and wanting to know when it is held.  Some people said it was only on embarkation day, but at least on our sailing, they had it on a few of the port days too!  It always included the same list of drinks, and was always limited to the Casino Bar.  If you read your Fun Times carefully, they mention it there so you can plan accordingly.

When I got back to the cabin, this little guy was hanging out off the foot of the bed…

Hmm, something looks a little funny here…

Oh, look! There is a notice on the bed…

Ooooh, okay, that’s what looked funny!  I guess it’s a good thing they wash the dust ruffles, but we never saw it again so I guess they don’t put it back on the beds until turn around day in New Orleans.  It seems a little weird that we only get our dust ruffle for 5 of the 7 days on our cruise.  Does this happen on every cruise?  Or do they just usually not clean them and we happened to be here for the random week that our cabin was due for a dust ruffle washing?  Not a big deal, just something I never considered before.

Time for dinner!

Vegetable Spring Rolls

Seared Tuna (honestly, this was more like well-done tuna, but close enough!)

Veal Parmesan

Dessert Menu

Apple Pie

Funny side story… Remember the girl on our tender yesterday in Belize?  The one who accidentally boarded the FTTF tender instead of meeting her Carnival excursion group in the theater as directed on her ticket?  DH and I had been wondering what happened to her and if she was able to meet up with her group or not.  Just as we were finishing dinner, I noticed that she was sitting two tables over from us!  She was at one of the big tables in Prudence’s section who only showed up for dinner on the first formal night, but never again, so we didn’t realize who she was yesterday on the tender.  After we finished eating, we went over to her and her friend (they were the only two people sitting at the large 10 or 12 person table, but I think they were traveling with a large group and everyone else skipped dinner tonight).  They thought it was funny when we told her we were seated two tables over from her (what are the chances?!), and she said she did meet up with her group yesterday and enjoyed her ATV excursion.  On a ship of nearly 4,000 passengers, sometimes it’s funny how small the ship can feel when you run into new friends randomly.

Prudence and her team did a wonderful job of getting us out of dinner in under an hour, so we were able to make the 7:30pm show in the Encore! Theater.  We went into tonight’s final production show with trepidation considering how we felt about the prior 3 shows on this cruise.  The show was called America Rocks, and featured rock and roll songs through the decades.  Sometimes it is best to come in with low expectations because this was by far the best show of the whole cruise!  In addition to the core cast of 8 singers and dancers that performed in the other shows, they brought in Machine Company, the band who performs around the ship at night.  This meant we saw extremely talented musicians playing live on stage, and the lead singer sang for some of the songs alongside the Playlist Productions cast.  I wish they could have incorporated these guys into all of the other shows because it made a huge difference!

Apologies again for the blurry photos, but blurry photos are better than no photos, right?  We were happy to get our favorite seats with unobstructed views in the front row of the balcony.

I don’t remember what most of the songs were, but I do know that this was for Hotel California (we got a kick out of that song choice since we live there!)

They had everyone out on stage for the finale song, so you can tell there were a lot more people in this song compared to the other 3 shows.

The best part about seeing the earlier of the two production shows was that when it ended, it was only around 8:15pm so we had plenty of time to enjoy the rest of the nightlife on the ship.  They were doing karaoke in The Song lounge so we headed back that way hoping that DH could participate.  He loves karaoke and hadn’t gotten to try it out yet on this cruise, but when we got to the lounge, the host said it was over an hour wait.  That wouldn’t work because we wanted to catch the 9:30pm comedy show, so we decided to just hang out and watch the other people perform.  The Song lounge is kind of small for a popular event like karaoke, so it was standing room only by the time we arrived and we had to stand in the back.  To be fair, the event did start at 8pm so I imagine people who weren’t watching America Rocks at 7:30 could come back here, get their names on the list to perform, and have their choice of seats. 

At a little after 9pm, we went next door to the Burgundy Lounge to get seats for the 9:30pm adults-only comedy show.  It was already quite crowded by then, but we were able to find seats together.  The comedy club host came on the microphone around 9:15 to ask people not to save seats because it was already standing room only, but I don’t know how well she could enforce that if someone is saving a seat while their spouse/friend/etc. was in the restroom or at the bar or whatever.  I can see not wanting people to save an entire row of seats but no one was really doing that, and you can’t expect people not to save one seat for the person they are watching the show with. 

Tonight’s comedian was Jersey.  I did not really care for his act because he was just shouting out profanities for shock value and hoping to get a reaction, but he didn’t really have much content and the content he did have was not very funny.  Oh well, you can’t win them all!

After that, we finished out the night at the piano bar.  We spent at least a few minutes in the piano bar every night, and we were almost always able to get a seat right at the bar.  I need to make one complaint about Zack… he only played song requests when they included tip money!  I understand that in a piano bar on land, the performers work for tips, but we are on a cruise ship and we are already paying a lot of money per night to be here, so it shouldn’t be required to tip him on every single song request just to get him to play our song.  We submitted requests nearly every night and he did not even acknowledge them (except for one time when we requested a song and he just said he doesn’t know it and tossed our request paper aside.  The song was We Didn’t Start The Fire by Billy Joel which is a fairly easy song since it just keeps repeating the same melody over and over again, and we even told him not to worry about the lyrics because we know them by heart and would help him out!)  At the beginning of the week, we figured he gets tips from enough people that he doesn’t need to play requests that don’t include tips and we might have more luck at the end of the week.  Nope!  He didn’t play our requests then either.  You might be thinking, “well why not tip him if you want to hear your song that badly?” and we did consider that, but it got to a point where we were doing an experiment to see if he would ever play our song without money attached.  Sure enough, that never happened.  On our other cruises with a piano bar, our requests were always played with or without a tip attached, and on Paul Gauguin, the performer (Alex) went so far as to learn a song overnight when DH requested something he didn’t know (City of Stars from La La Land).  Now THAT was good service!

Ok, I’ll step down off my soap box now.  I just wanted to share that with you.

Step Tracker Daily Total:  11,862 steps; 4.79 miles; 11 flights of stairs (I definitely climbed way more flights than that because I couldn’t wear my fitbit on the water slide and you need to climb A LOT of stairs to reach the top of the slide… oh well!)