Day 5: Cozumel, Mexico. Our last stop was Cozumel, Mexico. Mexico was….F’ing Hot! We decided to go to the ruins in Tulum, which were actually on the main land about an hour south of Playa del Carmen (two hours south of Cancun).

We had a great time, though it was extremely hot out. The ruins were neat, even though they weren’t the ones we thought they were (I guess we were thinking of Chichen Itza) and we didn’t actually get to climb any of them. Probably a good thing cause, did I mention it was hot? Our tour guides were great, both of Mayan descent. We learned a lot of the culture and people, and weren’t too terribly annoyed by all the people trying to get “tips” from the tourists for all of their native displays….though I kinda wanted to get a picture of Keith holding the giant iguana (for a small donation, or course). And the air-conditioned bus rides back and forth were awesome! It was a little warm out…

The rest of the Tulum pictures, and a little Playa del Carmen & Cozumel

Day 6: The last day we spent at sea, getting back to good old Port Canaveral. The day was relaxing. We slept a lot and hung out in the hot tub one more time. All –in-all, we had a wonderful time

and weren’t exactly ecstatic about going home. Luckily, I had a whole other week to sit around at home doing nothing and recover! Woohoo!

Day 4: Grand Cayman: Was crazy! We went on this insane tour where you go to the Turtle Farm, then the Rum Cake Factory, then Hell, then Stingray City! It was insane! First, we only had about an hour at the turtle farm, which included the 45 minute tour. We had a great time,

but I really wanted to try the turtle stew, just to try it! Oh, and Keith almost lost the camera, and his hand, when he refused to listen to the tour guide tell him that the turtles will go after anything put into the tank as they will think it’s food. But he got a great shot!

So we got to the bus on time….but no one else did! We had to wait 30 minutes for everyone else to get back. So that started us off late. Then we went to the rum cake factory…which was actually just this average-sized tourist trap. Ok, fine, I wanted to get a bunch of rum cakes anyway. Except for one small problem. In addition to the 30-40 people on our bus, there were about three other tours that stopped there at the same time! You couldn’t move, let along shop! That’s ok….we waited for everyone else AGAIN but we’ll have plenty of time after the tour to go shopping for rum cakes closer to the dock. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

On to the next stop, Hell, Grand Cayman.

It was ok. The biggest attraction was the post office/gift shop. Yeah, that time it was my fault that we stayed too late…

So then we arrive at the dock for our boat out to Stingray City. Oh yeah, it’ll be here in 10 minutes. And it’s not big enough for all of us. And the next one has a bad engine…By this time we are all a little nervous about our ship leaving without us. No, seriously! But we are assured that the company has a contract with the ship to 1. Give us our full excursion and 2. Get us on the ship. And they did. We were the 2nd to last tender….about 15 minutes after the cruise line told us the last tender would leave. Ah well, they didn’t leave us there!

The stingrays were pretty cool. It was basically a shallow sandbar, about 3-4 feet deep, and the wild stingrays hang out there because the tourists feed them. Yep, we fed them. Or at least Keith did. I stayed in the water for, oh, about 15 minutes…until about 5 stingrays the size of a patio umbrella (open people, not closed) all came up to me at once. They passed right up against my legs.

Well, except for the last one. He realized his mistake and veered off, his tail scratching my thigh. Ok, time for me to get out! Course, I got to pet Frisbee first, the tailless stingray! That’s my kind of stingray!

But Keith stayed in. He got to feed a few, too. Here’s a decent video of him feeding the stingrays.

We decided, next time, to stick with one or two spots instead of four!

Here are the rest of the pictures of Jamaica.