honduras...

the next day when we woke up we were pulling into the dock at mohagony bay in roatan honduras. this was our view as we were eating.

we didnt have any excursions planned for honduras... so instead we spent the majority of the time shopping and finding souvenirs for everybody.
 

we jumped on the chair lift and headed down to the beach. we didnt have much time after shopping all day, but we figured we ought to take a quick dip in the ocean. we swam out to the buoys... the water was a bit murkier here than it had been in the grand caymans... i don't particularly enjoy not being able to see. she swore she saw frogs or something as we were swimming back to the shore. i didn't want to try to see what was swimming with us. she snapped a couple pictures... turned out there were freaking baby squid in the water with us! haha... maybe i should have looked afterall!

and in case you were wondering... that was the window in our room. level 1 "riviera" with an awesome view of the ocean!

un-belize-able...

alrighty. so the next day we woke up before the sun. yep... we saw the sun rise, yet again.

 we had a fairly long, but very informative bus ride to our next excursion- cave tubing! we had a really fun bus. our guide was a hoot and a holler and apparently every group gets a team name. we were "major shrinkage." if you are wondering how we got the name, i'll tell you. there was a conversation during the ride about the "refreshing" temperature of the water... haha. was that enough clue for you? lol... anyway. afterward we had a little walk through a jungle with our guide miguel and two couples. it was kind of a funny system. we plopped into out tubes and then because the water was a little higher than normal we had to link together. so you tucked your feet under the arms of the person in front of you... the dude that was in front of me (his wife was in front of nicole) really had a good hold on my feet... i felt bad wiggling my feet in his armpits so i tried not to move. my right foot kinda fell asleep. haha... it really was a beautiful cave system. there was a waterfall in it... and we saw a lizard. no snakes or spiders, thank goodness!

all the houses in belize are built on stilts... in case of hurricanes and tropical storms. interesting, eh?

and this was their highway :)

 

 

 

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!

final day at sea....

we slept in a little bit on our last day at sea. we ordered room service for breakfast (per usual) and then we went and got a couples massage together. it was kinda funny... but still fantastic, who doesn't like massages? haha...

that last day was also the ship's chocolate extravaganza... although, it wasn't very extravagant... it was more of a mini all chcocolate buffet. haha.... definitely still yummy though!

that last dinner we took pictures with our table-mates. we had a mom & daughter from alabama (they were SO funny! and we ate with them every night). 2 girls from puerto rico also joined us for a few nights. this random dairy farmer was cruising by himself and was at our table for a few nights too. i thought he looked a bit like gob from arrested development! it was funny.

ps... nicole & i got virgin lemonade & strawberry daiquiris. mmm :) 

our servers were iputu & noel... they were awesome! all of the servers did a song and dance every night... they were a hundred times more fun to watch then the actual cruise shows!