cozumel, mexico...

our last port of call and our last excursion was cozumel, mexico. we took a 30 minute boat ride on a terrible, terrible boat to cancun. it was rocking like nobody's business! nicole was getting a bit sea sick then a lady in front of us started throwing up. needless to say, we moved seats. i definitely wasn't feeling good, but nicole just about lost it. although, i have to admit... it was kind of a humorous situation... the people that were working on the boat were walking around with water and food in the beginning and then about 10 minutes into the trip they started walking around with little black barf bags... they've got it down to a science! haha... i think the worst part was knowing that we had to get back on it after our excursion was over!

 

i have some funny videos... they don't really show you how freaking ridiculous this boat was... but still. i'll try to figure out how to get them on soon!

after that we had a 20 minute drive to rio secreto! the secret river! it was an amazing adventure! it was a wet cave system, rather similar to kartchner caverns- only we got to swim in this cave! yep, you read that correctly... we were swimming in a cave! it was fabulous! once we got to the park, we got our aqua shoes on then we had to rinse off (to get the oils and junk off our bodies), then we got our wetsuits, life jackets & helmets with little lamps on them. i wish SO badly we could have taken our cameras in, but we weren't allowed to. we did get buy one picture of us in there that they took, but nicole has that... so i'll add that later. anyway... it was fabulously fantastically fascinating! our guide was really cool and loved his job... we saw some 3 inch catfish. we drank the pure cave water... we might die, but it was worth it. our guide was telling us that there is only 10% of the cave available to the public for tours and that the other 90% was protected. it really was such a cool experience though! i'm so glad we got to do this excursion!

afterwards, we got a few minutes to walk the shops and go to the beach... it was positively amazing how beautiful the water is down in cancun- no wonder it's so popular!

 

these dudes were playing volleyball on the beach... one took a picture for us and it wasn't till afterward when we were looking at the camera that we realized that some other dude was behind us. haha...

after a not as wretched boat ride back to cozumel, we jumped back on our ship to get ready for dinner. i opened our window and saw this....

for some reason, it was really funny to me that day. haha... there were hundreds of people on their balconies waving to us as we left the port. it was another carnival ship... this one was "legend" and kept following us around the whole week, maybe we were following them. haha... but either way we were always at the same ports together! and then... a beautiful sunset over the ocean. sigh. what a sight!