Cruise Day 5: Costa Maya

Danielle's turn with the camera!

We went ashore today with just a vague idea of what we wanted to do: play in the water.
We got off the ship and looked around the town center.  We found a booth called "Last Minute Tours" and decided to take their "Jungle Beach" tour, which gave us a bus ride down to a resort to spend the day. We had about two hours until our bus left, so we went back aboard the Sun and got our snorkeling gear, then went shopping and found presents for all the kids. Jon made the locals laugh with his "Tampequenos" joke (In Spanish: Por que no se puede ver la gente en Tampico? Porque son tan-pequenos... jaja..). It was great to get to speak some Spanish with the people there by the port and apparently we got "better prices" because of it...maybe...Random occurrence: met a Free Mason in the silver shop who knew about Joseph Smith. Unfortunately, I didn't have a Book of Mormon handy, let alone a Libro de Mormon, when he requested one...

After walking around the town center and taking pictures with some people dressed up as... something very cultural looking... we couldn't get them to tell us exactly what they were supposed to be...

...we got on a nice cool bus with another two families from the Sun with their kids.  They were jealous that we were here kid-less :) We rode the bus for about half an hour before arriving at the resort: Jungle Beach Club.

The resort was beautiful! White sand and Palm trees with plenty of chairs and a fun boat-shaped basket woven seat. There were kayaks, a little play structure, and motor boats to rent. We started our day there by gearing up with snorkel stuff and then swam out to a floating inflatable playground! It was awesome! Like Wipeout! We ran and jumped and climbed for a long time! Jon was the only one who could jump over some of the obstacles. He was willing to really throw himself into it! There was one tall tower with ropes and handles to climb up, and a slide and a 10ft jump down into the water! Jon finally figured out how to climb the handled wall.

After that, we snorkeled around a bit more, saw a few fish, lots of grass, and smelled some stinky mud by the shore...ew... I jumped on the trampoline, we read and sunbathed, and then went for a quick turn in the kayak. Drinks were "included" in the price of the tour, so we enjoyed Piña Coladas, Shirley Temples, a Miami Vice, and diet coke all afternoon! Some nice people watched our stuff while we were off snorkeling and playing around. Jon climbed a palm tree with coconuts, much to the amusement of other vacationers there, and got his picture taken by fellow cruise passengers while in the tree. Overall, a relaxing day of  fun!

But we both got sunburned.

Back on board, we ate at the Four Seasons restaurant and then went to a hilarious ventriloquy show. Kenneth Byrd was the performer's name.  At one point in his show, he chose a little boy from the audience to come up.  His name was Aiden and he said he was in first grade. Kenny asked him some first grader questions...like "Do you know your ABC's?" and Aiden sang his ABC's.  "What's 1+1?" and "What's 2+2?" and Aiden was quick to answer...  Then Kenny asked, "What's eight trillion three hundred thousand plus two zillion three hundred twenty three?" Aiden thought and then smartly said, "Well... I think that's in third grade..." What a funny kid! Even Kenny had to take a moment to regain his composure...

And that night, we found our towels in the shape of a frog!

Note for future cruises: bring walkie-talkies if traveling with kids... Or any group really... Easy way to keep track of each other...if they work on board... We've seen some very frustrated parents and parts of groups trying to hunt around the ship for each other...