First, two sentences of Kevin wisdom from the cruise
“Yeah, I saw the building on the horizon from the front of the ship” – We were in the middle of the Florida Straits….he saw the other cruise ship we were following…
“Hey, the words on this Coke can are in Spanish” – in Cozumel today.
He’s a mental giant at times….at others, it’s pot luck.
The first of the stops; Cozumel
Mr. Sancho’s: The first stop at Cozumel was at Mr. Sancho’s Beach Club; walked out to the taxi, 10 kilometers down the road, and the beach awaits.
The beach club, as seen from the water
The photos below are again presented by subject, not by time.
One of the reasons we came here was the supply of big inflatables to climb on and jump off. One of the things we had read was that it could be difficult to climb up onto the fun. Christopher, of all the boys, had the most trouble with this (his mass to arm strength ratio is lower….Dad had no chance of making it up any of the ladders/handholds). Dad spent a lot of time pushing boys up until they could get far enough onto the inflatables to climb themselves. I told Suzanne I had my hands on more boy’s asses today than I’ve had since they were in diapers….
Never mind the collateral damage to Dad….Christopher knee’d me in the head so hard I saw stars at one point. He was pretty frustrated by the whole deal early on but towards the end he got the hang of some of the ladders and some Dad assists produced the Christopher smiles we’ve come to expect…
The cream of the crop of the inflatables was the Iceberg; Kevin had no trouble climbing up and was up there early and often
I don’t have any pictures from the waterproof camera (where all these came from) of Matthew on the Iceberg, but, in the afternoon with multiple assists from Dad he figured it out and went off of that several times…..
There’s a fair amount of video from today (Boys on the Iceberg, bouncing off things, etc) that will be uploaded when we get back to the land of the ‘data’. Some of that video involves Matthew and Cpher’s attempts to cross this moonbeam type ride. Not a lot of success here
Parasailing:
The highlight of the day, from Matthew and Kevin’s perspective, was the parasailing trip.
Matthew and Kevin were both pretty geeked to be heading out to try this, but Matthew got more than a little apprehensive right before ‘takeoff’…”Dad, I’m not sure I want to do this….”. By then he was strapped to the bar and five seconds later he was up in the air…..
How high up in the air? I asked at one point….the line is 900 feet long, so, 500 feet is about the highest you are going to get. The winds were strong enough that I think they got every bit of that 500 feet.
The best picture of the bunch….as they are coming in for a landing. There is video of this coming as well.
Headed back to Puerto Maya with the family of lobsters (we all got some pretty good sunburns…). I wanted to get a t-shirt, Matthew and Kevin had no set plans, Mom had to get vanilla for a few people at work, and Cpher, well, he knew what he wanted before we even left the ship…..
The first chance I’ve had to get photos of the Dream
And some boys having fun on the Dream
Evening:
We had a pretty eventful evening too (a note: I’m trying hard to do one post a day so as to not fall behind…..tomorrow is an early morning and I’m so sun-tired this post is a stretch….and there’s a lot left to write about!). Got back on board, boys went to find food….Mom and Dad banish the boys to the inside cabin so we can relax in peace and quiet.
The plan is to go up for sail away at 5:30 but be back down on Deck 5 for 80’s music trivia by 6:30 pm. I don’t think we had left the port by the time we had to go down, but, we did enjoy watching the Royal Caribbean ship pull away.
Getting ready to pull out…
Suzanne knows that if this trivia quiz is literally name that tune I’m going to be hard to beat….the boys have some doubts as we go along. 20 songs, title and artist, a total of 34 points.
2nd place had 31. I had 34. Didn’t get a ship-on-a-stick for this success, but, did get a medal and points for our Carnival team (we’re on the Red team…we heard at the performance tonight that we were winning with 15,000 something points…our trivia wins are 1,000 of that!).
What did I miss?
1) a song by Kiss I’ve never heard of
2) I Want Candy by Bow Wow Wow (no words, just music at the beginning….just didn’t click)
3) The artist for “Word Up!”…I was thinking Romeo…it’s Cameo.
4) Don’t Leave Me This Way by the Communards (knew the song, wrote down Jimmy Sommerville because I couldn’t remember the band…)
Had dinner in the main dining room with the boys….Fric and Frac choose to go off the kids menu; Kevin has the steak, Mom has the spare ribs, and I have the Caribbean spiced pork loin.
After dinner we went to the ‘physical comedy’ show…juggling and that type of stuff. The guy, The Edge, was really good and the boys were entertained the entire time…always a plus
“Mom and Dad should have reapplied the sunscreen…and not trusted us to apply it…”
The Encore Theatre from the upper level……
The last event of the night, for me at least, was the blackjack tournament. $20 buy-in, you get $1000 of fake chips and seven hands to do what you can with it. Play-ins are all during the day, you can see I made to $6200 and was in third; I fell to fifth a little later but still made it to the finals.
Alas, the prize ($500) was not to be had….I had a lot of chips in the next-to-last hand of the finals band went all-in and my 17 lost to the dealer’s 18. If I had won that I probably would won the tournament. Instead, I got a t-shirt.
Where we are as of five minutes ago. The seas are very choppy and you can really feel the ship moving; we’ve only been on Deck 5 and lower since we’ve left and the motion is noticeable. It’s supposed to be worse the higher you go….I can’t even imagine what it feels like up on ten and eleven. Christopher was trying to fall asleep and complained that he was feeling nauseous….I had to explain it’s not him, it’s the boat….
Belize is on-deck!
