Honeymoon- The Rest

Yeah, oops, took too long to write about the honeymoon. We'll see if I can just cram it all together now.
First I'll say what we did at each port, then I'll talk about how I liked the ship, then we'll have to call it good because if I don't shorten it, it'll never get written.

Port 1: Cabo San Lucas
Wow, the water was so turquoise and beautiful, which was weird because the hills around it were so rocky and dry. The pelicans ran the place, they were everywhere! And there were some very large sparrow looking birds flying around the dock also. We got off the boat and started off our Mexican adventure with some shopping. Clayton LOVED to haggle with the people and we bought a couple of things. We went back on the ship to unload our spoils and then headed back out. With not a whole lot of time at port, we were kind of nervous to travel too far, so we walked around (got a little lost on the way) and made our way to the beach. We waded in the water and floated a little, then called it a day and took a glassbottom boat/taxi back to the dock area. Turns out what we should have done was take a boat taxi over to lovers beach. Oops, that's what you get for poor planning. Oh well, I was with my hubby, so I had fun :o)

Port 2: Mazatlan
We got off the boat and walked right into a little (yet very crowded) market that was pretty much just for people getting of cruise ships. We talked to one of the guys setting up tours and he told us that we should go over to the other side of town and shop, then do a tour of the town via taxi (instead of the trolley idea we had in mind). So we hopped in a taxi, and luckily we shared it with another couple so it was cheaper, and the woman and I had a nice conversation, although Clayton kept interrupting with the slug bug game. There were too many slug bugs, that we had to call the game off for this trip :o) We went around shopping, found a really nice chess set that I wanted, but honestly, we didn't have the money for it. If we wanted to get back to the boat, we could afford to pay the guy $30 for it, but he wouldn't take less than $40. Man, I really wanted that one :o( Anywho, we shopped and had a good lunch, and then went on the street looking for an open air taxi- not like it was hard. A guy said he could give us a tour for more than we wanted, and I told him another guy would do it for cheaper, so he lowered his a little, and I said I was going with the other guy and started walking away, so of course he took us for my price (which was a legit price, it's what the travel guy told us to pay, and he told us to not pay anymore than that). Our driver was funny. Couldn't understand everything he said, but the parts I could understand were pretty good. We got out a couple of times to take pictures, and the first time we stopped, the driver took my camera and just started clicking random pictures. Thank goodness it's a digital, it was funny though. After the tour he took us to the boat. We still had a couple hours til we had to be back, but we didn't want to spend more money on a taxi, and the port area was completely isolated from anything else. So we went back on the boat. I don't think we did the greatest job utilizing our port time at any of the stops, but we didn't know how to do it better.

Port 3: Puerto Villarta
At this port we had a tour arranged. We were looking at the explorations and chose a couple, but the one we really wanted was booked, so this was the next best I guess. We signed up for a jungle tour with hike and I don't know what else they promised to go with it. Anyway, first things first, we thought that the time that we were supposed to meet was local time, but we didn't know what the local time was, so we got off the boat and found out that we were 30 minutes late for the tour. We walked up to the meeting place and found out we were supposed to meet at ship time, so we actually still had an hour or two to kill. Wheh. That would have SUCKED. We walked around the mall, before the stores were open, and that's pretty much all we had time to do before we got on the tour bus. The tour guide, Leo, gave us lectures on Mexico's schooling, economy, poverty, etc. on the way down, and I could have definitely done with out that. But the nice thing about the drive was that we got to see all of the city because the boat docks on the north, and the jungle was in the south, so we drove through the three very distinct sections of the city. Alright, we get there and I'm all excited about this rigorous jungle hike where I'm going to see jungle animals and all this cool stuff... Nope, it was a 15 minute walk with no animals, just trees. The only cool part about the "hike" (that old old people were doing without a problem) was that there was a hanging/swinging bridge! But we couldn't bounce it because there were people on it :o( The end of the "hike" was at restaurant that prided itself on being the location of Predator, the movie. I didn't know what that meant, but Clay-dough was excited about it. After our complimentary quesadilla, we were given free time so that we could go swimming. Well, there were only kids swimming in a tiny little pool of water, and we had no body to watch our stuff for us, so we by passed the swimming (which was pretty sad). We decided to go back on the swinging bridge so that we could actually bounce on it. We headed back on the trail, but took a slightly wrong turn when a guy dressed up like the Predator popped out from behind a tree. I was in the middle of talking, so not paying a whole lot of attention, so he scared me, and I'm sure I jumped at least a foot or two. But after screaming, I started cracking up. It was funny! We went on the bridge, jumped, and then just went exploring on our own, taking random pictures of random stuff. It was kind of fun. So although I was EXTREMELY disappointed with the "Jungle Tour" we made it work out. Instead of having the bus take us back to the boat, we got off down town to do some shopping and looking. We didn't find much worth buying, although we bought a hammock, pretty much just because we got it dirt cheap, and we did buy a chess set, not because it was as good as the other, but because the guy chased us down and I was intimidated. There were some funky little statues all along the coast line, so we walked down the coast and took pictures there too. When we hit the end of the statues, we were done and used the last of our money to take a taxi back to the boat. We were tired and definitely ready to be back on the boat!

Boat:
Here's the thing about the cruise. I had fun, and I appreciate the chance we had to go, but I'm not much of a cruiser. There was too much down time for me. I mean, I was so used to being in full speed mode, with the end of school, planning a wedding, moving, etc. that to have time to just relax was too much of a change too fast. I didn't like not having stuff to do. Clayton just really wanted to sit down and watch a movie, and I wanted to be using our time wisely. And that was the other thing. I knew there was a lot of things to do on the boat, I just couldn't figure out what they were. I wasn't going to go to one of the hundreds of liposuction seminars they held daily, I wasn't going to go get a $100 massage at the spa, we did go rock climbing one day and we played mini golf in the wind, which was ridiculous. I'm telling you, who ever thought of putting a mini golf game on the top deck of a cruise ship was not the smartest guy ever. I was thoroughly impressed with the ice show they had, and am proud to say that I've been ice skating in the ocean, although we didn't last long because it was a tiny rink, and it's not like we know how to do anything other than skate in a circle. We tried to go find things to do, but honestly, nothing in the plans really tickled our fancy. Oh, we did learn how to salsa and swing dance, but those lessons were only half an hour each. Eew, and I hated the 8:30 pm dinner time. It killed me. By time we got done with dinner, it was 10 pm and I was done. Unfortunately, that's when a lot of the entertainment started, when it was late. That's probably why we missed out so much on what the boat had to offer.... they offered all the good stuff after my bed time.

Yeah, so that's it, with several details left out. Sorry. It was fun, but Clayton and I agreed that cruising isn't on the top of our adventure lists and we'd much rather travel by land so we can see more of the places we visit. Nice to know we're on the same page :o)