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Here we are in Roatan, Honduras!

Quick Facts about Roatan

• Roatan is the largest of the Honduras Bay Island
• Roatan Island is 36 Miles long, and only 4 miles wide at the widest point
• it is located about 40 miles off of the Northeast coast of mainland Honduras
• Population: 60,000
• The second largest Barrier Reef System in the world is just offshore
• Christopher Columbus discovered Roatan in 1502
• Residents of Roatan often have deer as pets
• Roatan is home to over 40 Reptile species, including several endangered turtles (Hawksbill, for one)

Can you see my hubby cracking up?

These people fairly pounced on me hoping for tips, which I obliged with.

My Aquagirl……….. she’s getting so old now. It makes me tear up.

Look at all the security for the harbor area. We were checked coming out and going back in.

People had set up tiny little shops in their side yards, hoping to cash in on the tourist action. And the tiny children selling jewelry were SO hard to resist: precious and persistent - they just looked at you with big old eyes and said, “Please.”

After extensive research on Cruise Critic, my dh decided that he was going to use a private tour guide for our day in the Honduras. We used Victor Bodden, and what a bargain! We probably saved a minimum of $50. per person on our day in the Honduras as compared to those who booked tours through the cruise ship. Plus, we got twice the value! Victor was knowledgeable, efficient, and extremely personable. And you can tell how much pride he takes in his beautiful homeland. He took us all around the island and arranged for us to ride horses, in shifts. The first to go off riding were my brother’s family. The above picture is of my sil, Tiny T and two of their boys. The other boy came with our group.

This is my sweet brother. He is everybody’s favorite in our family. And he deserves it, too. I love my brother so much!

This is an avocado tree. I just thought that was SO cool. I just kept thinking, here we are, in the part of the world where these exotic fruits just grow on the side of the street. How cool?

While we were waiting for my brother’s family to finish their hour and a half long ride, Victor took our group on a tour of the island and to a pier where we could watch the dolphin encounters. The water was so blue and clean and the air just felt so nice standing on that pier. I could have stayed all day just watching. But we had some animals to visit.

After the dolphins, we went back to Victor’s house and got to meet his pet monkeys. This is Kokie on my mother’s shoulder. Grampa can’t resist a pet on the neck. We also got to meet Victor’s lovely wife and his sweet family. They have a small gift shop that sells the same items that you can get when you are closer to the ship, but much cheaper.

Jabem is passing Kokie off to my dh. Doesn’t Jabem’s shirt crack you up? It says, “I gave up video games…. It was the worst 15 minutes of my life!”

The monkeys were one of GB’s highlights for the day. They were SO cute and personable. There were three White-Faced Capuchin’s, a Black Spider Monkey, parrots, katamundi, island rabbits (which look like huge rats to me, not rabbits, ugh!), pet deer, howler monkeys, night monkeys, raccoons, and a couple days before we arrived he’d had a new calf born to one of his cows. GB was in animal paradise!

“I think I’ll just chill out on this guy’s forearm.”

“No, maybe I’ll jump over here to this guy!” “Yeah, I’m cute!”

Back to GB because he couldn’t keep his hands off……..LOL!

“Hmmm, what’s going on over there?”

Here is a picture of Victor. He’s got a papaya tree in his yard. So he’s picking some for us to try. I couldn’t try one because I’m allergic to raw fruit, but Aquagirl and dh certainly enjoyed them.

This is the papaya tree where we are cooling off from the sun.

See the fruit?

Then it was our turn to ride the horses. First we rode through the little town. It felt a little hazardous to me because we were actually on narrow roadways with the cars going around us. But the horses didn’t spook and the guide acted like it was no big deal. This was the absolute highlight of the whole vacation for GB. When asked what his favorite parts of the trip were, he responds with, “horseback riding and the ship”.

Then we guided the horses onto the beach. Gymbabe has one of those lists where you list all the things you want to do before you die. And riding horses on the beach was on her list. So, cross that one off, Gymbabe! It was really cool to be riding on the beach. Parts of it were nice and flat and calm, and other parts we had to get down and walk our horses around some rocky patches. But they were very well-trained. I was a wee bit worried about MY horse in the beginning. His name was Spirit, which should give you a hint. At first, he wanted to show my that HE was the boss, but our guide showed me how to stop him from dancing around, and then he behaved for the rest of the outing.

Isn’t the scenery spectacular?

After our ride, Victor brought us to this out of the way restaurant. It was breezy, cool, and the food was yummy!

When someone else uses your camera, you don’t always get good results. We look a little shadowy here.

Now that I got my camera back I can get a decent picture of my brother and his wife.

On our way back to the ship Victor stopped at a good spot for us to get some pretty pictures.

Sadly, we had to leave Roatan. Here is our ship from across the harbor. I was really sad to leave Victor. He was such a nice guy and he seemed to fit in really well with our big old family. You know, I read on cruise critic that this one family’s luggage had been lost by their airline and it was supposed to be rerouted to Roatan to meet up with the cruise line. But after lots of paperwork and phone calls the cruise line and the airline decided the luggage was too lost, and they encouraged them to just take the reimbursement. In a last ditch effort, the family contacted Victor (he’d been their guide the day they were in Roatan) and asked him to check the airport. Well, he did,  he found the luggage, AND arranged for it to be shipped to his customer. Now THAT’S what I call customer service!

That night we all went to the show on the ship. I was a little worried about GB because it was a comedian. And you know how raunchy comedians get sometimes. But it was fairly tame, and GB along with everybody else, thought he was hilarious. One of GB’s favorite jokes was the one where the comedian is making fun of the toilets on board the ship. He said that if you flushed while still sitting on the toilet, it would give you a hickey from the pulling pressure!……….LOL!

Tomorrow will be another big day. We had booked another excursion through cruise critic for cave tubing. What a blast!

Cozumel, Mexico baby!!

This is the stunning scenery along the shoreline.

Getting off the ship, there was a market place with lots of little shops, and it was here that we waited for our guides to load us up on the bus for the l-o-n-g trip to Tulum; the ancient Maya ruins.

Here is GB getting off the ship, and Gramma is in front of him, and Grampa is the guy in the obnoxious Virginia Tech hat… jk Grampa!!………LOL! My aunt was around here somewhere, too.

We had a long, two hour bus ride to the ruins. But we had an awesome guide who spoke the entire time about the history of the Maya. She was one of their descendants, so that made it even more meaningful.

Want to hear a cute story? See that couple behind my dh and GB? Well, unbeknownst to her, he is carrying a diamond ring in his pocket. And after the tour, when we were given time to explore on our own, he took her to the top of one of the biggest ruins and proposed marriage to her. Doesn’t that just bring a happy tear to your eye? It did mine. I thought that was super-romantic and that he had to have gotten serious brownie points for that!

These are pictures of pictures, so you’ll have to forgive the quality of the photos. In the royal families of the Maya culture, it was considered beautiful, and a sign of royalty to do this to royal babies after birth. Their little heads would be wrapped very tightly with bandages while the four skull bones are not joined. This process takes about 18 months. The result is the cone-head look that is associated with Maya, and one of the reasons that many people thought they came from out of space. One of the other reasons was that they were academically so far advanced in mathematics compared to other civilizations of that age.

This was another sign of royalty. Small holes were drilled in the teeth, a very painful process that could take weeks. And then obsidian pieces would be hammered into the holes. Obsidian was their most valued resource.

The Maya people also thought that a cross-eyed look was attractive. So while in infancy they would lay a mortar-board on the baby’s head and dangle a piece of obsidian from it, directly in the baby’s line of sight, so that the child would develop that cross-eyed look.

This is a Maya calendar that was on the ground outside the marketplace where we stopped for a break. By this time we were all in need of some water or cokes.

I thought this tiny representation of the ruins was so cute.

These were some of the gorgeous items for sale inside the market. Outside the market you could see the artisans who made these items.

GB struggled under the weight of this sombrero. He was already getting hot, which makes him grumpy.

This artisan was hand rolling cigars. You can see them hanging over the wooden plank against the wall.

And this was the loom that helped create those beautiful blankets.

This man was carving stone into amazing little statuettes…..

……Like this one.

No vacation is complete for GB unless he gets to hold some kind of exotic reptile. Iguanas are all over the place in Cozumel. GB came away from this picture wanting to know how much iguanas cost. I told him that they were too expensive for us……………. get it?

This is the small market place with artisans and locals trying to make some $$ from the tourists. We only have a short walk left and then we’ll be in the ruins.

Up the steps, and through the small door way.

See! We found quite a few of these guys just running hither and there. GB was delighted with them.

This is the corbel doorway that leads through the famous Tulum wall, and into the city.

And when you come through the wall there is a literal gasp moment. I just was wonder struck. It was SO impressive and beautiful. In ancient times you would not have seen any trees at all. In fact, in ancient times you would not have seen this at all. Because one of the downfall to Maya civilization was that of the many thousands of people who lived here, only 300 were entitled to come into this sacred city.

This is the wall from the inside. Tulum (pronounced ‘too-loom’), in the Mayan language, means ‘city of wall’. Tulum, on the Yucatan Peninsula is just about 80 miles south of Cancun, Mexico. It is one of the two more popular Maya ruins here on the peninsula. The other, Chichen Itza is a little farther inland and also considered one of the new 7 wonders of the world. Tulum is a beautiful place because of its proximity to the Caribbean Sea. From all over the city you see glimpses of the clear blue water while admiring the ruins.

And trust me, we were fantasizing about those waters while on the tour. It was 110 degrees with 95% humidity the day that we came. And GB was in a total funk throughout most of the tour. I was doing amazingly well, if I do say so. Usually, I’m as much of a heat-wienie as the GB. But I wasn’t thinking about it nearly as much as he was. I don’t think he had the proper appreciation for the place.

Every building was situated in just such a way as to take advantage of the sun, the moon, and the stars. Windows and doors would be aligned in perfect symmetry to the sunrise or sunset; taking full advantage of the spring and fall equinox. I found a wonderful video of the Mayan beliefs and architecture on Youtube. It takes nine minutes to watch, but it is SO informational.

This is the beach where most of the land and water trade occurred. The water is a beautiful blue color. This area of the beach was closed off due to the Leatherback turtle nests; which are nationally protected.

The square at the center of the city was probably once used for sacrifice rituals or ceremonies and is flanked by the so-called Castillo (The Castle) to the West. The Castillo, sometimes referred to as the lighthouse, is the tallest building at Tulum and the most famous. At certain times of the year you can see stunning sunrise and sunset through the windows on top.

This is me, GB, Aquagirl, Gramma to the left, and in the back is my Aunt with her camera.

The House of the Columns is more complex than most of the structures at the city. It’s a palace-like structure with four rooms. Four columns support the roof of the main room and there’s also a roofed sanctuary. There is a niche over the entrance containing a human figure with its head downward. Because of its architectural features, sculptures and paintings, this building is thought to have had great social and religious importance.

The long stairway down to the beach. This aspect of the trip could not have come sooner for GB. He was dying to jump into the water. And my dh was right behind him!

The vista from the beach was just jaw dropping. I’m so glad that we have digital cameras so that I can always remember what I saw that day. We did a lot of really fun activities on our cruise, but this day was the most meaningful day for me. I will never forget my feeling of awe at standing in a city of such ancient people.

Can you tell how absolutely clear the water is? One thing we all kept commenting on throughout the trip was how amazingly clean the water appeared to be. You could see all the way down to the sandy bottom. If there was a pretty shell, you could see it under the water.

From the beach, I could look up the staircase and see my parents and my aunt watching us. They are the three bodies to the left on the balcony.

On our way back to the ship we passed this wall with the unusual feature of colored glass sticking out from the top. I guess this is a much prettier version of barbed wire? It was really pretty with the sunlight shining through the colored pieces of glass.

That night, for the evening’s show, the cruise line had a magician. GB was enthralled. Usually he hates music shows, but he put up with that because he was enjoying the magic so much. And in fact, ever since then he has been trying to do magic tricks on us!…………LOL!

Today was a fun day at sea. We spent the day lazing it up at the pool, reading, eating and in the boys’ case hitting the casino. They really loved the casino. J ended the week by earning several hundred dollars. Jabem started the week with $6. and at various points in the week he had gone up a couple hundred dollars and down to breaking even. By the end of the week he had broken even, but since he’d had a whole week of gambling and fun, he felt like it was totally worth it. J, on the other hand, was made for poker. He was a shark (!) and ended up buying all his family’s souvenirs with his earnings (several hundred dollars worth) and still keeping a couple hundred for himself.

Before the dinner preparations came underway, dh and I went down to the dining room (see pic below) and made reservations for the supper club for our anniversary dinner. The dining room is spectacularly opulent, and I could tell that my parents and the kids were really impressed with the surroundings and the unbelievable food. But the supper club is a level above even the dining room. I’ll post more about that later.

This is a picture of our room before we had messed it up. One of the cool things about cruising is how clean everything is. They clean your room at least twice a day and they are ALWAYS cleaning the public areas. Because let’s face it, people can be quite pig-like at times. Give them an unlimited buffet and they pile it on like they’ve been starving for weeks. If I were an employee of the ship that would gross me out. Since I was a patron of the ship, I took advantage of it! ……………LOL!

This was the view from the tippy top of the ship. You can see the water slide and a little bit of the pool down below. I never made use of the pool or the hot tub because there were just too many bodies in the water. But laying on a deck chair and reading a book with the ‘tropical breeze blowing through my hair’ (name that song) is my kind of paradise!

GB came shooting down that slide so fast than none of my action photos came out. But I love this photo of him getting off the slide.

This is my brother’s youngest son, B-man. He was loving the slide too.

After our fun in the sun, we came back to the room and went for dinner and the show. I liked this show a lot better. GB went with Aquagirl and Gymbabe to the arcade while we watched the show. This one was a ‘Rocking through the Ages’ theme. So there were lots of songs that I could sing along with.

When we came back to the cabin we were greeted by this little guy. And GB got a cookie from Camp Carnival. He went there for a couple of hours earlier in the day because they were having a video game tournament. But he deemed it quite lame because the only games they had were racing games. He likes war and action games. So he never partook of that service again on the cruise.

We began this day early by heading over to the Kennedy Space Center. We couldn’t board the ship until after noon, so we thought we could spend a few hours learning about space travel.

Our kids with the Kennedy Rocket Garden in the background.

My dh and GB stand in front of a full-sized NASA Space Shuttle replica -The Explorer. We saw this as we came out of the mock space shuttle launch. It was a very cool simulation, but not nearly as cool as the one at Disney World. I thought it was going to be the same thing because when we went to Disney a few years ago they said there was another one at Kennedy. But this one was a much tamer version, which suited my dh much better. He has problems with spinning rides, they give him head aches. But GB really enjoyed it, and it set the mood for the visit.

Here I am in front of the Mercury rocket.

You will see Gymbabe and Aquagirl in lots of photos, not because of them, or me, but because GB was being anti-photo, and Jabem and J oftentimes went off to do their own thing. So, here are the girls in the Gemini rocket.

………And the Apollo rocket.

Dh was a little freaked unexpectedly by this dude………..LOL!

Sometimes I work my camera to get maximum effect.

And here the girls were viewing a full-size Space Shuttle from the inside.

This is a very excited dh embarking on the Carnival Glory. Doesn’t he look thrilled?

Here is Aquagirl with passport and cruise documents in hand.

Jabem embarking. I like this photo. Doesn’t he have great eyebrows? I love good eyebrows. I don’t know why people would want to make them smaller. He’s a little camera shy too. But I could just kiss that face!

Ah! Jabem’s friend, J. For someone who doesn’t show much excitement, he looks pretty excited.

This was the lifeboat drill that is mandatory for all guests on the first day. Oh Lord! We were squished! If I had claustrophobia I’d have had a fit.

GB doesn’t do discomfort well. He just wanted to go explore the ship.

What a beautiful shot this turned out to be. That’s Cape Canaveral in the background, and we are sailing away. This was during the sail away party.

J is the only happy camper in this picture. See that storm in the background? Well, we left it in Florida! We had great weather the whole trip!

Gramma and Grampa came with us, along with my brother and his family, and my aunt and uncle. Here Grampa and I are having some fun with the cameras……….LOL!

The first day of our cruise happened to coincide with Gymbabe’s 21st birthday. So this was her first ‘legal’ alcoholic drink. Aren’t they cute?

This was my first meal on board ship. I know it’s cheesy to take pictures of food, but it wa so yummy. My steak was a perfect medium rare, and that is mac and cheese in the little dish; best darn mac and cheese I ever had. Even those peas were delish! I’m not sure what was in them, they were a tiny bit spicy, but mmmm!

Here, our waiters, Anthony and Zosimo are surprising Gymbabe with a cake and a song for her birthday. Can you see how red her face is? Oh, we all had so much fun with that!

Our dinner seating was at 8:15, so right after dinner dh took GB out to explore the ship and I went off with the family to see the nightly show. No pictures, because of copywrite laws you can’t take photos during the show. I really liked the lead girl singer, but the lead male singer was too weird for me to like. And the dancers were pretty good. One or two of them really stood out.

After the show, I was pretty tuckered and went back to our cabin to fall into bed. Dh was there with GB and they were watching the Olympics. Each night we managed to squeeze in a bit of Olympic viewing. I love the Olympics, especially the swimming and gymnastics.