Caribbean Cruise 2014 - Part 1: Excursions

 Earlier this year David convinced me that we should go on another cruise to the Caribbean. I loved the last one that we went on, and this one was a pretty good deal, so there wasn't a whole lot of convincing involved. What I didn't know was that he had invited my whole family to go with us.
When I went out to California in July I was talking to my dad and he was asking me about the cruise that we were planning on going on. I started telling him all about and told him that he should come with us. He said something about being on a boat for a week with Mom might make him go crazy...totally understandable :) So I told him that Mom could come watch Eli and he could go with us. While we were having this conversation in the car, I was texting David, telling him I think my dad should come with us and also looking up flights to see if it would be reasonable. Well my dad tells me that he will have to talk to Mom and David tells me that he will talk to my dad and invite them. I honestly didn't think anything would happen from that. Little did I know that they had already booked the cruise and plane tickets out to Houston.
The next day I was talking to David on the phone and he finally told me that my parents were already planning on coming and he had invited my brothers, but they hadn't said yes yet. So I called all of my brothers and within 30 minutes everyone said that they would go. To say that I was excited is an understatement. This was the first time that my family had done anything big and crazy like this.
We stopped in Cozumel Mexico, where we took a ferry to the mainland, and then went to Tulum Ruins and then had an amazing authentic Mexican lunch on the beach and got to go swimming for a little bit.

There were tons of iguanas!

Its a little hard to see, but the carving under the awning represents the descending God. 

Outlook from Tulum

 

Having fun on the bus

Where we stopped for lunch

 

In front of our ship. 

The next day we stopped at Grand Cayman Island where we took a catamaran to Stingray City. This was probably our favorite excursion this time. There were so many stingrays, and although it was a little frightening, we eventually got used to the feeling of them rubbing against us.

Of course when I say "we" I mean everyone but Mom. This is her freaking out a little under water. She will probably disown me for posting this picture, but it is just that awesome that I couldn't resit.

 

And here again...

 

One of my favorite pictures of my dad from the cruise. 

And another good one!

Although there's a finger in the way, I like this picture because I think it shows how many stingrays there actually are there. 

These are from the catamaran. If you every have the opportunity to go to the Cayman Islands, I would highly recommend Stingray City and taking a catamaran to get there was awesome because we were in a pretty small group so we really got to interact with the stingrays. 

The last day of excursions we stopped in Jamaica and took a bus to Doctors Cove. This was a pretty relaxed just chilling at the beach and snorkeling.

   

There were some amazing fish and cool coral formations. 

Hard to see, but this is me diving for a shell. 

Back flop. That one hurt... a lot. David and Rachel made the back flips look so easy I thought it couldn't be that hard. It took me three tries to finally get something that might have resembled a back flip. 

And this is almost the exact moment I lost my sea pass card. I had it tucked away "safely" in my swimsuit and when I dove I didn't realize that it came out when my swimsuit didn't stay in place. It made getting onto the boat a little challenging, but nothing major. 

We had a great time everywhere we stopped. Stay tuned for part two of the cruise adventure.