Day 3 - Cozumel, Tulum, Xel-Ha - December 29th, 2014

Today was a fun day. We were in the port at Cozumel, Mexico for the day. We got a quick breakfast then left our ship at 8:00 am with Curtis and Kim. Mom had a different excursion than us. She had a tour of the island of Cozumel. The rest of us took a tender to Playa del Carmen (about a 40 minute boat trip). From there we walked to our bus and took another 40 minute trip to the ruins of Tulum, an ancient Mayan city built 1000 years ago. It was so busy and packed with people! We stood in line about 30 minutes to get in, but once in, it was still crowded but it was a big area so it was more spread out. Tulum was beautiful. The ruins are right on the coast and there were iguanas all over sunning on the ruins. Everything was all roped off though, so we couldn’t walk through any of the houses or buildings, like I’ve been able to do at most other Mayan ruins. After we walked through Tulum, we were walking through the shop area and there was a man with a couple baby monkeys. Dave and I paid him $5 to hold and play with the monkey for about 7-8 minutes. There was also a man trying to get us to pay him $20 to hold a baby lion. He was really cute, but we didn’t want to spend that to hold him for 10 seconds for a picture. Our bus then took us 10 minutes away to the resort called Xel-Ha. There were so many cool things to do there, like zip lining, swimming in the caves, snorkeling, and swimming with the dolphins, or manatee’s and sting rays. We only had 2.5 hours, and again it was super crowded with people. Curtis and Kim chose to do the dolphin encounter, so that took up most of their time. Dave and I were hungry so we went to a delicious Mexican buffet first. We ate fast, since we didn’t have a lot of time there, and then we got into our snorkel gear and went snorkeling for about an hour. The snorkeling was fun for a first time snorkeling experience. There were some beautiful fish. The water was a little foggy though. We then headed back to the pier to get on our boat back to Cozumel. The pier was packed with people. The week after Christmas is NOT the time to go to Playa del Carmen, we discovered. People were just standing in lines waiting for the tenders to take them back to Cozumel. Fortunately we had the red tickets, which gave us first priority, so we boarded pretty quickly. But then we sat in the boat at dock for about 30 minutes before it left. Our ship was supposed to leave Cozumel at 6:00 pm, but because of all the crowds, we didn’t get back on board until almost 7:00. Mom was at dinner by herself, so I hurried to go check in with her, and let her know we made it back on the ship OK, then showered and met Curtis and Kim for dinner. We were really late though, and our steward wasn’t very happy with us, so we ate really fast. There was an impressionist show that evening. The 5 of us sat together. We ordered a few yummy drinks. I loved the pina coladas on the ship. Curtis loved the strawberry daiquiris. Dave and Kim tried different drinks throughout our stay. It was a fun show. Then we went to the chocolate bar and everyone ordered a different flavor cup of chocolate.