Cruise 2012 {Day 6}

~ Day 1 ~ Day 2 ~ Day 3 ~ Day 4 ~ Day 5:Part 1 ~ Day 5:Part 2 ~ Day 7 ~ Day 8 ~

Day 6 we got up early as we had a 7am excursion in Costa Maya, Mexico. In fact when we arrived it was still dark. Our adventure for the day was boarding a Catamaran for an exciting snorkel in the 4th largest barrier reef in the world called the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef at 585 miles long.

Here Monkey stands as we wait for everyone to gather so we can get on the bus.

Walking to the bus

On the catamaran, heading out. Look for our ship way in the distance in this pic.

Putting the sails up

Our ride out was super windy. We were starting to question our decision to do the excursion at 7am instead of 10am. But once we got in the water, you couldn’t tell too much that it was so windy. I haven’t talked about my new point and shoot that I got before the trip, but I will in a later post. Anyway, when purchasing the camera, I got it in a bundle with a waterproof case. Well, the day before while swimming at Mahogany Bay, I noticed a couple water droplets inside the case and I just didn’t want to take the chance again. Here are some pics that are from the same area where we snorkeled.

My best advice for beginner snorklers is to make sure that your equipment fits well and that your life jacket works properly. Teenagers mask didn’t seem to fit right and his life jacket wouldn’t inflate like it was supposed to which made for a very tiring time out in the water. Also, if you have kids Monkey’s age, I would recommend holding hands with them. I didn’t do that at first and ended up spending a great deal of time making sure he was with us. Finally I got smart and just held his hand so I could ensure he was with us. Beyond those issues snorkling was amazing! Rob and I discussed it afterwards and decided that each of our cruises need to have snorkling as one of the activities, because obviously the more you do something the better you get. There are just too many amazing things to be seen underwater and snorkling is one way to go about doing that!

Source: google.com via MagnoliaMom on Pinterest

Source: flickr.com via MagnoliaMom on Pinterest

The boys relaxing as we head back to shore.

We got back on the bus and headed back to port.

Here’s a few pics I took while riding back.

Once we got to port, we were able to explore a bit. There’s a nice pool area and lots of shopping.

There’s also the dolphin pool.

We decided we wanted to go get out of our swimsuits and get our money so we could come back and shop a bit.

Here’s some pics from our shopping excursion at port.

As we walked around we continued to see beautifully painted tiles with dreamy beach scenes. After walking around the entire shopping area we landed back at this one particular shop. This guy had a beautiful scene pained with a cruise ship in the background, but when we came back around it was sold. We showed him another scene and said we liked this one. He offered to paint a cruise ship for us for the same price. Here he is starting to paint it.