Sunday, October 24, 2010

Wednesday: Part 1 Cozumel

Ok, I am wearing coco butter lip balm and coconut lotion while listening to Bob Marley... lets see if I can feel Caribbean long enough to finish this vacation blog.  Christmas will be here before I know it and I still have palm trees on my blog back ground.


Wednesday July 28th we woke early to give Les enough time to get ready while hobbling on one foot.  We again had breakfast at the Unicorn Cafe before heading out to our excursion.  We didn't arrive in Cozumel until 10:00am so we didn't feel rushed to eat breakfast which was nice.  After breakfast we maneuvered our way down elevators with the wheel chair to the bottom level of the ship to exit.             
Cozumel was beautiful.


We walked through the port of Cozumel to find our person holding the sign for our excursion....
They told us it would be a short wait so we stood in line in the shade...
We then proceeded around the dock to find our speedboat....
The Screamer.
This was written on one of the stairs... and of course I needed a picture of it. :)
 

It was a fun ride with very beautiful scenery.  We couldn't wait to get to our beach.  We met our excursion photographer on our way to our beach.  He was a very nice man  and I tried not to covet his job too much while we were with him.  He took pictures of everyone in their life jackets.


 




 The beach was literally paradise, and I never wanted to leave.



Check out all the shades of blue


This is was our little resort for the day.. we had snorkeling, hammocks, lounge chairs, kayaks and an authentic Mexican lunch.  It was amazing!

  
First was snorkeling...

 
I started out snorkeling by pulling Leslie along as I swam.  She only had one foot with a flipper and I didn't want her to get left behind. 
One of the young men leading our excursion quickly came to my side and told me I could not pull her along because I would get too tired.  I thought... seriously?  We are both wearing flotation devices, how hard can it be?  I was soooo thankful for that young man.  I was not aware of the distance we were going to cover during our snorkeling.  I was lucky to make it back to the beach myself much less than if I had been dragging Leslie along with me.  She did pretty good with one foot but she was tired too.  
This  young man stayed by her side the entire time with his red Bay Watch floater and helped her keep up with everyone.  
Plus, he would dive down and get stuff for us to see.  We had our own personal guide and it was awesome.
 







 Sting Ray




Immediately following our snorkel adventure  they were gathering everyone up to go kayaking.  Les and I were exhausted and didn't want to start kayaking right away so she and I chose to lounge on the beach while Greg and Nick went Kayaking.






Les balancing on one foot to get a photo without crutches.







After the boy's kayaking trip there was time to lounge on the beach before lunch was served.  I couldn't stop looking at its beauty, I knew the photos wouldn't do it justice.


  


They announced lunch was served and everyone made their way over to the restaurant area.  Lunch was amazing.  It was apparent that it was authentic because the flavor was nothing I had tasted before.  We were given chicken, rice, beans, cheese, lettuce, chips, salsa, mmmm it was so good.  We sat at a table with the breeze coming off the beach eating our yummy lunch.  We truly never wanted to leave this place.  

Our photographer came over to us while we were eating to show us the pictures he had taken while we were on the beach.  Most of them were really good except for the sports illustrated pictures he took of me near the water.  He kept saying "your husband is going to love these"... well little did he know we only bought the pictures because I didn't want him getting upset and posting those pictures somewhere on the web.  I deleted them and not even Greg is allowed to have them. 


I became a little saddened when I saw the Screamer heading back in to pick us up...






Our 3 guides who were amazingly nice and a lot of fun.

 These guys carried Leslie onto the boat and the one on the far right put her on his back to help her get back off the boat onto the dock.  It made Les feel a little uncomfortable because it isn't often strange men are swooping her off her feet and carrying her around, but they were very sweet and very helpful.  We couldn't have had better service.

Once we were back at the port we had time to do a little shopping for our free charms.  The port was very colorful and had great music playing.  It was a fun place and we would have liked to have had more time to hang out there. 








Nick decided he wanted to head back to the ship and get cleaned up because he had plans with some of his friends on the ship.  Greg, Les and I sat down at Fat Tuesday's for a Coke.  We like the swings they had hanging around the restaurant to sit on.








This excursion was incredible and we had a fantastic day.  Everyone was so accommodating to Leslie and her wheelchair/crutches.  Her injury didn't interfere with anything and she was able to enjoy her self just as much and we even received a few perks because of it.  


Wednesday night was just as much fun... too much to cram into one post.  Dinner and large ship party coming up on Wednesday part 2.