Cruise in Review pt. II

Jamaica mon! The land of overly friendly young males who really just want money but act like they are inerested in you and really make you think that they may actually be genuine. No, not all of them were like that. Here you can get an idea of how freaking huge our ship is. If you take the antenna off the empire state building, it is only 5 stories taller than our ship on end. And oh yeah, Royal Carribean is currently building one 90 feet longer than this one called Freedom of the Seas. The joke was that it only has to pivot to reach all of its destinations. Yo ucan slo get an idea of how beautiful and lush the plants/grass were.


This is my dad with the beloved WillyBoy. He was out taxi driver around Ocho Rios (a town in Jamaica). He rocked. Opening lines in his city tour, "In my taxi 'Oh God' and 'Oh Lord' are swearing. No screaming in my van. Jamaica has more churches per square mile than anywhere else in the world. Right across the street from each one is a rum bar." And he rolled on from there.



Forgive the blurriness. This is at the top of Dunn's River Falls, the biggest tourist activity in Jamaica. Where strings of humanity crawl up treacherous rock formations (that have water pouring down them) while holding hands and being led by a guide. What had we gotten ourselves into? We knew there would be no hand-holding on our expedidtion. We got Chad (my bro in-law and accomplished rock climber) to lead our trek and sped up the falls, traversing areas that appeared near-impassable on our walk down (it wasn't as bad as it looked in general. There were lots of man-made footholds the whole way up. Still, there is no way any operation like this could exist in the States. Lawsuits would shut it down liek the Royals did the Yankees.) Good times were had by all in the end, and no one cracked open any skulls or got so fed up with the tourists that they shot anyone (unfortunately).




Ephraim's (our room attendant) handcrafted towel animals! These fellas were the high light of our post dinner conversation. "what do you think we'll have on our bed when we go to the room?" Towel animals were so popular in fact that the cruise staff decided to add a towel folding class to the regular on-board activities. Some of the not-pictured animals include a stingray (ruined it before ithought to take a photo) and a dog (not shown for obvious reasons).


The picaresque 7-mile beack on Grand Cayman island, where banks outnumber square mileage. Not really, but it is probably the most popular location for off-shore accounts besides Switzerland. The island in general was very corporate, especially compared to Jamaica. In these crystal clear waters, we went on the first of two scuba-diving excursions. Eleven of us and two crew members sardined our way onto the little boat with large block letters reading "8 Passengers Maximum." Despite that early bit of comedy/fear, the trip was very enjoyable. Our first dive was a "wall dive." Basically we descended to fifty feet, glided above some coral formations full of fish life, then BOOM, 6000 foot deep blue water as far as the eye can see. We made it as deep as 100-110 (the max regular divers can go is 120) as we hugged the wall looking to various nooks and crannies for sea life. Awesome. On the second dive we got to see a little nurse shark (3-4 foot probably) sleeping under a little ledge and some sea turtles, so that was quality. In the next week we should be getting a video our dive master made of our trip...neato.


Sara and i posing with the head chef after meandering in awe through the mignight buffet viewing. That's right, viewing. You couldn't even eat the food they had on display. Ridiculous, gaudy, and probably the greatest proof that cruises are way over the top and that Americans have too much money.


On the top deck of our dive boat in Cozumel Mexico. This baby was pretty big. In addition to our group of eleven, there were four other divers, and six crew members, some of whom were slightly shady. Our groups dive master, Jaimen (high-men) was great, despite his knack for giving excessively long dive briefings. The little guy was a great leader and i loved the little fisher-price etch-a-sketch style slate he took underwater to write us misspelled messages in english...good times. Again we saw a nurse shark (bigger, probably 5 foot) and turtles. But one of the reals finds, was a big spotted eagle ray feeding o nthe ocean floor...sweet. The coral formations in Cozumel were massive. It was like swimming through canyons, some of which got pretty narrow and fun at points. The coral here was probably better than in Cayman, the fish may not have been quite as good, but all in all, i liked it better.

No, that's not a pool, that's just part of the everyday scenery in Cozumel. Go ahead, be jealous. They want you to be.

Not the brightest moment for team Kansas. Here we are about to get stomped in pool volleyball by Team Navigator (a croup of cruise staff members), but hey we don;t care, we won on land, and that's where it counts :). This was our last day at sea, and i have to say i was definitely ready to come home. I can only take so much pampering, food, time w/o internet or ESPN, time w/o communication with friends, etc. Good ole Topeka really isn;t so bad guys, honestly. I'm sure i'll bring up mroe specific situations in coming posts, but for now, I'm out.