A Picture Share!

We're back! Ran out of wireless time last night at 1am while trying to post a final day at sea message, so not sure if it made it. Now waiting to disembark.

Final day at sea.

After getting back on the ship from Cozumel, we all had lobster tails for dinner, and were pretty much too tired to do anything else. Sometime during the night, the Grand Princess entered the Gulf of Mexico on our way back to Galveston. We’ve had pretty calm seas so far, but it is definitely getting colder. We saw hundreds of flying fish skimming over the water away from the ship as we passed them this afternoon. They looked like birds at first flying over the water. I was amazed by how far they could travel in the air! They would hold their tails still until they began to dip back into the water, and then would wiggle hard to get a boost back up out of the water and keep going. Tonight at during dinner they turned off the lights and the waiters had the Parade of the Baked Alaska. It was pretty cool, but even better once we got to eat it. Bill somehow got lucky and was served a piece as big as his head. It turned out to be too much for him though, and he couldn’t finish it. I though I would help, but could only manage one extra bite. Soon we’ll all have to start thinking about diets and exercise again.

Before dinner tonight we saw quite a few oil platforms around us, but now it all looks dark again. I’m always surprised by how big the Gulf really is. Sometime around 4am we should enter what they refer to as the “Bolivar Roads” and turn up into the Galveston harbor, then be docked by 6am. No telling when we’ll get off the ship.

It will be nice to get back, but I think we all agree that one more day would be perfect.

Merry Christmas!

Cozumel, Mexico

This was my favorite stop on the cruise, mainly because I got to go scuba diving again for the first time in nine years! The first thing I saw in the morning was the Carnival ship Inspiration anchored next to us. Inspiration was the first cruise ship I had ever been on. The Cozumel pier was destroyed by the hurricane last year so we had to rely on tenders to get us to shore again. The tenders were huge but it still took for ever to get off the ship. Once we got to shore, Sheila tracked down a van to drive us and a family of beginning divers to the hotel where she had booked our dives. Unfortunately due to the time it took to get off the ship we ended up only having time for one dive, but it was worth it. The dive site was called Las Palmas, and it looked like it had a pretty good wall drop off around 60 feet, but we ended up staying mostly around 40 feet drifting along the bottom near the edge of the wall for the beginners. Wasn’t much coral to look at there, but we saw lots of fish, eels, and the biggest lobster I’ve ever seen. It must have been two feet long! (Four feet, if you count its antennae.) I saw four spotted moray eels, seven or eight puffer fish, a huge queen angel, several big French angels, and a huge silver fish that I think was a tuna. It was almost as big as one of us, and followed us for a while. Sheila, Bill, and I were diving, while Helena and Barbara snorkeled above us. We all had a great time! After returning to the hotel, we caught a taxi back to the port and had a few cervesas at a place that was called either Swingers or Fat Tuesday or maybe both. It was hard to tell. It had swings for people to sit on, but then they came around and put Mardi Gras beads around our necks with plastic pendants that said Fat Tuesday. While driving through town, we could see a lot of the destruction from the hurricane. Sheila and Bill had been in Cozumel shortly before the hurricane hit, and were shocked by all the damage. The hotel they stayed at was no longer there. Everything is being rebuilt, but one of our taxi drivers said that farther inland away from the tourist areas the recovery is much slower, and only about 40% of the damage was been repaired. It is really hard to believe that no one died in the storm. Our driver said it has been very difficult for people because so much was completely destroyed and now there are not as many jobs available.

Yar, we be in the Cayman Islands!

Well, Grand Cayman did not start off well as we were attacked by a pirate vessel before even laying the anchor. Luckily, the canon they fired at us didn’t seem to include an actual cannonball, so none of the crew seemed too concerned. It certainly made most of the rest of us jump though! Bill and Sheila had a fabulous time at Stingray City and on a dive on the North Wall. I visited Stingray City back in 1994, and really wanted to go again, but the shore excursion was sold out before we could sign up. Sheila was a bit annoyed by the stingray that mistook her finger for a piece of squid, but everything worked out in the end. The ray had a small snack, and Sheila still has most of her finger. Joy and Barbara took a ride in the Atlantis submarine and were quite impressed. Barbara reports that they saw a sea turtle, but no short Mayans who might have tried to sell her a musical instrument. I asked Joy if I could download some of her pictures, but as she is not a techie, she was worried that my computer would automatically delete them from her camera.Helena and I decided to skip the shore excursions and just take a taxi to Seven Mile Beach. It took us a while to get off the ship because Grand Cayman doesn’t have a pier so we had to wait for a tender boat to take to shore. Once we got off the tender boat, we immediately found a guy with a small bus going to the beach. We thought he was driving like a maniac, but he pointed out that this was how everyone drives on Grand Cayman. This did not make me feel much better because I had made the mistake of sitting next to him in the front seat, and I could clearly see all of the maniacal activity on the road. The driver dropped us off at a hotel on the beach, and when we walked around to the shoreline I though he had lied to us. I didn’t think we were really on Seven Mile Beach, but we later confirmed that it was. It was very different from the way I remember it. Not nearly as pristine and much more developed. However, the water was still beautiful, and we went for a brief swim (after Helena convinced me it really wasn’t as cold as I thought it was) and hung out on the beach for a while. We were in front of a lot where they were preparing to build a new batch of condos. Three bedroom/three bath for only 2 million US dollars! We had walked down the beach quite a way and didn’t feel like walking back so we cut through to the street and found a tour bus that was headed back towards the port. They gave us a ride, and refused to take any money from us for it, just wished us a Merry Christmas!We wandered around the shops near the port for a bit before getting back on the Grand Princess. The first taxi driver had told me that he didn’t hear too much about the Barefoot Man anymore, but I found a bunch of his CDs in a gift shop, so I bought one. If anyone complains that I didn’t bring back a gift for them, I’ll just claim to have brought back the gift of music and force them to listen to my new Barefoot Man CD.

Now back to Mexico for some scuba diving in Cozumel! Sheila has worked out a deal with a local dive company to charter a boat and take us diving. This should be especially fun since all of us will be going. I’m excited because this will be my first dive in about nine years, and my first dive ever in Cozumel.

Girls gone wild!

The babes of CRUISEAPALOOZA 2005!

Where is Bill's hand?

We think Sheila might know!

Fun, but no sun, in Belize!

Helena and I took a shore excursion for snorkeling at Goff Cay. The water isn’t deep enough for the Grand Princess to dock, so a boat picked us up, along with about 50 other people, and took us directly to the cay. It was about a 30 minute ride and the boat was really crowded. When we got to the cay we were given the option to snorkel either from the boat or from the shore. I thought the boat was going to be a madhouse, so we decided to do the shore snorkeling. As soon as we stepped on to the cay, two women appeared from out of nowhere in the middle of this tiny little uninhabited island and tried to sell us stuff. We put our snorkel gear on and followed our guide and the rest of the group out to some coral. It wasn’t terribly impressive, but we still had fun. There was a lot of dead coral but we spotted some live stuff here and there. Saw a lot of fish, but they were all pretty small. I haven’t been keeping up with the conservation efforts lately, but looked to me like it is still over fished. Helena said she felt a little panicky at times while we were trying to keep up with the guide, but overall she did a very good job. It had been overcast all morning, and as we were getting out of the water it began to rain and got us all wet. There were two thatched roof huts on the cay and everyone was huddled under them trying to stay warm. I wasn’t using my beach towel, so Helena gave it to a woman who looked like she was going to freeze to death. We never got it back, so now we probably owe the ship a towel. The whole trip was worth it though just for the grilled lobster tacos we ate for lunch! They gave us two lobster tails for $7 and we ate them while trying to stay out of the rain. Definitely the best lobster I’ve ever had!
No pictures from Goff Cay because we used Helena’s underwater film camera. Good thing too since her digital camera probably would have been soaked! This is a picture of the Grand Princess taken on our first day at sea. It is the port side looking towards the bow and was taken out a window in the Skywalker Lounge, so named because you have to take a skywalk to get to it. The picture is a little blue because of a tint on the window. I don’t have any software to correct the color here. Was going to download some pictures from Sheila and Bill’s camera, but don’t have the right cable. They took an airboat tour and looked for manatees. Unfortunately, didn’t get to see any, but still had fun. Joy and Barbara went to see some ruins, but I can’t remember which ones at the moment. They made it back okay but were worn out so we haven’t heard a full report yet.

Tomorrow we’ll be at Grand Cayman! I’m looking forward to walking along Seven Mile Beach with Helena!

P.S. We understand it may be snowing back in Texas.

Has Helena found a new man?

Life is good in Majahual!

Collecting Mayan musical instruments

Today we arrived at Costa Maya on the Yucatan Peninsula. We walked into the “port” and found a restaurant that served lobster burritos and mojitos. The mojitos were okay but the lobster burritos were fantastic! Then took a bus to the nearby village of Majahual where we picked up a small (well, 12 inch at least) gift for Joy who was feeling a little tired and stayed on the boat. It was an exotic Mayan musical instrument that we thought she would like. We could have gotten it for half price, except Barbara refused to take one for the team and spend the night in Majahual with James, the short guy from Belize who somehow ended up selling exotic Mayan musical instruments in Majahual. The picture shows James and Barbara “negotiating”. On to Belize!

She said yes!

The first formal dinner was a lot of fun! I was so nervous I couldn’t remember how to tie my tie! Why was I nervous, you ask? Because I’ve been smuggling around a diamond engagement ring for the last several days. I hid it in my suit jacket pocket before leaving our stateroom, but Helena immediately began snuggling up to my left side. I had to surreptitiously switch it to my right pants pocket. Then she almost immediately started walking on my right side and holding hands! At least I was able to keep her hand away from my pocket until we sat down at the dinner table, and then I moved it back to my jacket pocket without anyone noticing. Dinner was great, and after dessert Helena brought out several Christmas gifts she had bought for Bill, Sheila, Barbara, and Joy. After they all opened their gifts, I said I had one last gift that I had brought for Helena. I did a poor job of pretending to have dropped it on the floor so that I could get down on one knee, but I think I did pretty well in slipping the box out of my pocket without anyone noticing. Then I opened the box and asked Helena to marry me. At that point I sort of blacked out, but I remember someone (probably Sheila) screaming and lots of flashing lights which I assume were cameras. Eventually, I noticed that Helena was kissing me, and unfamiliar people were shaking my hand and telling me congratulations. I asked Helena to confirm that she had actually said yes. She said, “Yes, of course!”

Rock and Roll!

We got off to a rough start, but now everything is going well. There were three cruise ships leaving from Galveston yesterday which overloaded the port’s capacity, so they had all the Grand Princess passengers take a shuttle to the Hotel Galvez to check in. Only problem was that they didn’t have nearly enough shuttles, and it was cold and rainy. We waited at the car for about an hour, before we could get on the shuttle. Then we had to wait about another three hours outside the hotel in line. Once we finally got inside, it was probably another hour before we got back on a second shuttle that took us to the ship. All is now well, although the ship was late departing so is traveling faster than normal to make up time. That combined with rough seas has made this the roughest cruise we’ve ever been on. Luckly, I discovered that drinking enough wine at dinner cancelled out the rolling of the ship. Unfortunately, the wine wore off around 1am and I though I was going to be sea sick for the first time in my life. The ship alternated between rocking us gently to the verge of sleep, then violently shaking us as if someone had us by the shoulder and was trying to wake us. Now and then it would lean hard to port or starboard and try to roll us out of bed. But then we woke up (eventually) this morning, and the sea was much calmer, and it is actually warm outside. We are spending the day at sea on our way to Costa Maya on the Yucatan peninsula. We learned our way around the ship a bit, and Helena and I went to a wine tasting where they gave us some pretty bad wines to taste, then tried to sign us up for the more expensive wine tasting with the good wines. But we did get to keep a souvenir wine tasting glass.

May be another post later tonight after dinner with a special announcement…

Well, that didn't take long!

I have a picture of Joy wearing her lifevest that I took during our emergency drill. I was going to post it and claim that she was already drunk, but I lost my cell phone signal about half way though the transmit, and don’t have anyway to copy it from my phone to my laptop. Went to the pursers desk to ask about wireless internet access and was told it would be out for the entire cruise due to satellite problems, but that the internet café was open and working. I thought that sounded a little strange, and then saw people using laptops today, so I asked a different purser about it, and he gave me an access password. Seems like it is best to avoid asking questions when the night crew is on duty.

A Picture Share!

Ready to sail! No more blogging tonight. (Until Joy gets drunk.)

A Picture Share!

We made it! Only took us five hours. Now where is the nearest bar...

A Picture Share!

Still not on the ship! Check in is utter chaos. They say they wont sail without us. I hope not, as all my clean underwear is already on board.

A Picture Share!

Cold, wet, need to pee, and ready to party!