Anniversary Cruise

For our 10-year-anniversary Tadj planned for us a "Book of Mormon" cruise to the western caribbean. The Book of Mormon tour was supposed to include visiting the Mayan ruins in Cozumel and Belize with lectures from John Lund. But because of the swine flu outbreak, all stops in Mexico (Cozumel) were cancelled and several people backed out of the cruise, leaving only 6 people left from the group. As a result, the Book of Mormon part was cancelled entirely. Regardless, Tadj and I decided we would still be enjoying our cruise and we certainly did!

Days 1 and 9 were spent traveling. The cruise ship left from Tampa, FL and there aren't any straight flights between Seattle and Tampa so the journey was long.

Day 2 we boarded the ship. The process was a lot easier than I anticipated mostly because the lines weren't very long. This is susprising since it was a full ship with about 2200 travelers.

Life boat drill!

Day 3 was a "Fun day at Sea". We went to watch a trivia show and Tadj was called up to be a contestant. He didn't fair too well since the contest involved listening to a part of a song and naming the title. It just wasn't Tadj's kind of music!

Day 4 was our stop at Grand Cayman. We booked an excursion with two destinations, first to snorkel the barrier reef and second, to swim with the stingrays. We were excited to try out our new underwater digital camera.

Swimming with a bunch of "Dory's".

Let me just note that I had heard that the barbs were removed from the stingrays that were at stingray city. When I found out that wasn't true for where we were going I realized I had booked the wrong excursion. But it actually turned out great. The depth of the water was about 10 feet and the stingrays swam below us. I would say there were about 20 or so. We did get to touch them and they felt like a slimy mushroom.

Day 5 was another day at Sea. I honestly can't remember what we did this day besides taking a 3 hour nap in the afternoon and enjoying a hilarious comedy show. Entertainment on the ship was pretty good.

Day 6 we were in Belize. Even though our Book of Mormon tour was cancelled, we still wanted to see the Lamanai ruins. This excursion involved a 1.5 hour bus ride, followed by a 1 hour boat ride to the ruins. On the bus ride we found out there are 59 different types of snakes in Belize, 9 of which are poisonous. One of the snakes they call the 3-step-snake because after you are bit, you will be dead after you walk three steps. Yikes! Once again, I thought we booked the wrong tour.

But once I forgot about the snakes (pretty easy to do when you are pregnant with short term memory loss) I had an awesome time. The river ride was amazing. We saw a lot of great wildlife like spider monkeys.

Here I am standing in front of "High Temple". This is 33 meters high and is the one we were allowed to climb.

I wasn't going to climb it since I am really clumsy right now but was convinced otherwise. It is as steep as it looks in the picture.

At the top.

Getting down was more frightening than climbing up. (The ruins we saw in Cancun a couple years ago, Chichen Itza, were much more spectacular so if you are deciding between the two I would recommend Cancun over the ruins in Belize.)

We were at the sights with a lot of school groups when a boy about 5 years old fell and broke his hand. Since our boat was the first to head back, we took them with us. The boat driver was flying down the river and we see a crocodile right in front of the boat. It tried to quickly dive down to get out the way but we all felt the thump-thump. This is probably the only time in my life I will say, "We ran over a crocodile in our boat." Tadj was optimistic and thinks it survived. I'm not so sure.

Day 7 was our last stop and was in Roatan, Honduras. Roatan is still underdeveloped (but not for long) and had the most beautiful hand-crafted wood objects. We loved shopping here. For our excursion we went on a catamaran to a snorkeling destination. The tour guide was really proud to announce that this is a better place to snorkel than Australia because there aren't any sharks. He didn't mention jellyfish.

Despite the fact that I was stung atleast 6 times, I am still smiling in this picture. Even though there were jellyfish, Roatan was our favorite spot. When the snorkeling portion was over, we still swam in the water off the back of the catamaran. The jellyfish were really tiny and didn't hurt as bad as being stung by the Portuguese Man O' War in Hawaii. But I still don't understand why I was stung so many times and Tadj wasn't stung at all. It's a mystery.

Day 8 was our final full day at Sea. We tried to get some sun but I can only handle the heat for about 20 minutes. We did enjoy miniature golfing, shopping on-board, and just relaxing. I really enjoyed the cruise and we will definitely be going again. Maybe an Alaskan cruise since the port is in Seattle? We still plan to visit the Tulum ruins in Cozumel....someday. Here we are at dinner the last day.



A HUGE thank you to our parents for watching the kids. My parents handled both weekends and Tadj's mom took an entire week off of work to stay at our house and shuttle the kids back and forth to their schools and activities. We are truly blessed.