Honeymoon Cruise~ Caribbean Style!!

Jeff and I returned home from our honeymoon cruise on Feb. 27th! We spent a luxurious 7 days soaking up the sun on a cruise in the Western Caribbean. Our cruise embarked out of New Orleans, LA on Sunday Feb. 20th. The cruise was 7 nights, and included Costa Maya Mexico, Belize, Roatan Island Honduras, and Cozumel, Mexico as the ports of call. 

We flew into New Orleans on Saturday the 19th, at around 8:30 in the evening. I already knew I was going to love our week in paradise when we walked off the plane and felt a wall of humidity! Aaaah, how I LOVE the humidity!! We got checked into our hotel at around 9:15 or so, and walked across the street to the McDonald's for some dinner. 10 pm and 70ish degrees felt AMAZING!! We must have looked like tourists, because when Jeff ordered a McChicken sandwich the lady goes, "Those are spicy here. Just so you know." Haha, that gave us a good laugh. 

The next morning we woke up around 10, and I went downstairs to the fitness center and worked out and Jeff went swimming in the hotel pool. Again, 10 am with 75 degree weather and not a cloud in the sky! We went back and got showered and called a cab to pick us up at 12:30. Our ship left at 5 pm that evening, but check-in on the ship was from 12-3. Our cab driver told us all about the parades that were happening down town, as part of the "pre-Mardi Gras" celebration. We passed the New Orleans SuperDome, home of the Saints, Sugar Bowl, and (some years) the Super Bowl. What little we were able to see of the city during the taxi ride was very.... diverse. We passed some ghetto neighborhoods, then an area of big, gorgeous, Southern-architectural homes, and then the "old" downtown, with old-style churches that looked like they dated back to the beginning of the city, and then the "new" downtown with the big business buildings. We saw a lot of the city that had been re-built after Hurricane Katrina, and we saw areas that still were in shambles from the devastation of it. It seemed like every other billboard we passed was advertising the upcoming Mardi Gras festival. The cab driver told us that almost every street in the downtown N.O. area gets shut down during it. I can only imagine how crazy things get down there when Mardi Gras is going on!!
So we finally got down to the check-in area, which was at the dock where our ship was, behind one of their big downtown conference centers that had been rebuilt after Katrina. We went through what seemed like 5 different check-in stations, and FINALLY boarded the ship!! While we were waiting in one of the lines, I looked out one of the windows at a giant white wall with windows and go, "Whoa babe! Look! There's the ship!!" Jeff started laughing and goes, "Um, actually that's the conference center. The ship is on the other side." And he turned me around- to look out the other side of the building- and then I really saw the ship! Haha the real thing looked a lot cooler than what I thought was the ship. 
The first thing we did when we got onto the ship was go up to the top floor and walk around the deck. 

This was the first picture I took on the ship!

We walked around for a while and then went to check out our (oh so spacious) stateroom! Once our bags had finally been brought down to our room we changed and headed to the food court and had some dinner. The ship finally took off right before the sun set that evening. It was beautiful to see the city from the river!

The ship headed down the river until it finally reached the open ocean at around midnight that night. The next day was our first day at sea. I woke up at around 8 am and was very anxious to see the ocean! We finally got upstairs at around 9:30 and had some breakfast. Then we headed outside to walk around the ship and check everything out. 10 am and around 80 degrees. Heaven!!! We found a couple of chairs at the back of the boat by the kids swimming pool, which was nice and guarded from the strong winds on the top deck. We basically spent the whole day laying out, reading books, eating, playing ping pong, eating, checking out all the different parts of the ship, eating, and eating some more! 

Here's a picture of how windy it was at the very front of the ship! The wind literally would blow you over!

We also found a room that had a wheel that directed those old time ships~ so I took over steering the ship for a while, gave Captain Evans Hoyt a rest for a bit :)

Our first day at sea was a lot of fun. We swam in the pool, ate a lot, walked around, and just soaked up as much of the sun as we could! We met a fun group of two couples that night while we were in the hot tub, and ended up doing stuff with them a couples times throughout the trip!

Alright, so our first stop was in Costa Maya, Mexico. Costa Maya is very flat, with miles and miles of sandy beach. When we entered the "city center" of Costa Maya there was a shopping center, with tons of shops, henna tattoo shops, and hair braiding shops.  

This is a "swim-up" bar right that was right in the center of all the shops! You could swim right up to it and order drinks!
I thought this was a really cool idea... but the more I think about it now, the more I think that mixing drunk people with deep swimming pools might not be the smartest idea....

We took a.... taxi?.... over to a beach about 5 minutes away from the shopping center. It was basically one long paved path with tons of little shops set up all along one side, with the beach on the other side. We found a little restaurant/bar that had free access to their beach huts and chairs, and then they had kids that would come out and take your order for drinks and food. It was so nice!! The ocean was a gorgeous turquoise blue color, perfectly clear, and there weren't any waves because of  a small reef about 100 yards from the beach. 

The... taxi... we took. Okay, really it was a bunch of plastic chairs that were clamped to the floor of a tiki hut that was stuck on the back of a VERY old pickup truck! 

I don't know if you can read the sign above my head, but it says, "You are allowed to tip me. Have a good day!" 

A picture of our ship from the beach where we stayed all day.

There was a pool right on the beach that had dolphins in it, and you could pay to swim with them. They had a rubber ball that they tossed around to each other, and they would jump over the little bridge in the picture. 

The next day we cruised down to Belize City, Belize. Belize is a gorgeous country that is very hill-y and full of lush jungles. Belize is 2 feet below sea level, so there aren't really any beaches. Also, Belize is the only country in Central America where the primary language spoken is English. 
While we were here we did a shore excursion where we went cave-tubing and zip-lining. We took a bus out to a natural park, which was right in the middle of the jungle. We hiked for about 20 minutes to get to the river, and then floated through the caves on big rubber tubes. Our tour guide was awesome! He was very knowledgeable about.... everything really. He told us the history of Belize, the different cultures and nationalities of the people residing there, and he knew every plant, animal, bug, bird,... that we came across. He also knew a lot, and told us a lot, about the ancient Mayans and their culture. 
After we finished our cave tubing, we went zip-lining. There were about 7 different zip-lines, that ranged from 100ft to about 400 ft long. 

We had so much fun in Belize!! We learned so much about the country, and got to experience so much excitement as well. All in all, we would say it was "UnBELIZEable!" :)

Our third port was Roatan Island, Honduras. We didn't have any plans for this port, so we just met up with some friends we had met on the cruise, and rented a van to take us to West Bay Beach, a 20 minute drive from the pier. We found a nice beach and just relaxed, swam, drank pina coladas, and got tan. The water was perfectly clear, no waves, and really warm!

The beach we stayed at in Honduras- very relaxing and warm!

We found a starfish! 

Our last stop was in Cozumel, Mexico. We don't have many pictures from here because it's mostly just a shopping/tourist place. We did visit Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville Restaurant. It was pretty sweet!

This was, by far, the best vacation I have ever been on! I absolutely LOVE cruising, and am in the process of convincing Jeff that we should skip Christmas this year and do another one- we'll see how that goes :)