Sailing the Es-cap-ay (Escape)- Western Caribbean Review June 24, 2017

[sgmamabear]

We are 9/30 as well!

 

 

 

Awesome! Have you joined the roll call yet?

 

 

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[usckatieh]

Here’s the view of the adults pool from deck 18, I think.

 

Kid’s pool

 

 

The yellow family slide

 

Margaritaville at night

 

Next stop was the Supper Club. If you are looking for a location, there are these handy maps by all the elevators as well as the electronic signs which you can see the Daily schedule and look up restaurants on. I think the touch screen ones even shows how crowded the restaurants are.

 

Escape Room- no spoilers

 

We arrived at our Escape the Big Top (escape room on the Escape) event at 8:00pm as instructed when I signed up at the Box Office on the first day even though the Freestyle Daily said 8:30pm. Good thing because they take the people with reservations first, let them into the theater, and if you don’t arrive within 10 minutes of the start time, they start taking people from the waitlist area. So if you do sign up, be on time/early and if you don’t, try the waiting area. People started waiting there at 8:00pm with us. I’m not sure how many got in.

 

First, they put us in teams by table, which was cool because we got to meet another family with kids and a school teacher. I think there were about 8 teams of 8 people. Most of the people we talked to had no idea what to expect just like us. I figured there would be logic games and puzzles and I was right. I don’t want to give away any details but we were given some props, vague clues and puzzles, and the goal was to get the key to Escape the Big Top. The whole game lasts about 45 minutes and at the end, they go over the solutions. None of the teams from our session escaped so that helped our deflated egos a little bit. The puzzles could be a little frustrating at times, but the little victories balanced it out. And it wouldn’t be fun if it was too easy. Our family really enjoyed the experience, although I think the older kids in the other family may have gotten a little more out of it than our 10 yr old, but she still was glad she came and she made some new friends.

 

After that, we picked up Patrick and headed to bed because we had our Mayan ruins tour tomorrow!

[usckatieh]

 

 

 

 

This will probably be a photo heavy day because the sights at the ruins were amazing to me! The day started with a beautiful sunrise over the water.

 

 

I found my son curled up on the tiniest corner of his sofa bed.

 

 

As I mentioned earlier in the review, my husband and I had tried to visit some Mayan Ruins the last time we were in Mexico on our Oasis cruise, but the excursion didn’t have enough people sign up so it was canceled the day before. I was excited to see that one of the top excursions for our Costa Maya stop were the Mayan Ruins, although a different location than we tried to catch in Cozemel. I knew that we wanted to go see Chacchoben so I didn’t need much more research there, but I did want to compare the ship excursion to some independent options.

 

The ship’s 4 hours tour of Chacchoben (1 hour drive up, 2 hr tour, 1 hour drive back) was $99/adult and $79/child for a grand total of $276 with our $50 excursion credit. I also saw great recommendations for Native Choice tours on cruise critic and tripadvisor so I decided to compare. Native Choice’s 4 hour tour was $55/adult and $45/kids for a total price of $200. That’s a pretty big difference for basically the same tour. The Native Choice office was about a 4 block walk from port but that seemed worth it to save $75. Native Choice also offered an option where they taught you how to make tortillas and you ate at a native person’s home, but knowing that our family can have delicate stomachs, I decided to pass on that option. A friend of mine just did that exact tour though and love it. So we paid our reservation fee for our Native Choice 4 hour tour online (refundable if the ship misses the port for any reason) and we were all set!

 

Packing Lists

 

You know me by now and so you won’t be surprised when I tell you that I have an excursion packing list! My take-anywhere-we-go-off-the-ship list includes:

 

• Sunscreen
  
• Ship card, drivers license, Copy of passports, credit card, cash
  
• Bug spray
  
• iPhone and charger, port authority phone number on photo
  
• Plastic bag for camera in case of rain
  
• Cheerios and fruit snacks
  
• Rewetting drops for contacts
  
• Big camera
  
• First aid kit, safety pins, motrin
  
• Sunglasses
  
• Watch
  
• Hand sanitizer
  
• Tissues
  

Pretty much all of that fits in my camera bag or the backpack that DH likes to carry. For each excursion, I write out how much cash we need and any extras that I also need to plan to bring, like:

• Ponchos
  
• Swimsuits
  
• Water shoes
  
• Towels
  
• Lifevest
  
• Booster seat (we have a travel one for Patrick when we’re in cars/taxis)
  
• Infrared Camera
  
• Gopro and possibly accessories
  
• Water bottles
  
• Snorkels/masks
  
• Digging toys for beach
  

[usckatieh]

Chacchoben

 

So the port of Costa Maya is a bit of a maze. DH gave me a bit of a hard time this morning because I wanted to get done with breakfast quickly so we could be ready to walk to our excursion and he thought I was just being paranoid. Low and behold by the time we get ourselves out the door, we’re only about 25 minutes until we’re supposed to start our tour. So we turbo speed it down the pier and instead of looking at the map instructions of how to get through port to the exit, DH follows the signs. Do NOT follow the signs. We pretty much walked in a big circle past all the shops before we found out way to the exit. The good news is that there were TONS of people from the ship walking to the same place we were going.

 

The walk to Native Choice office is about 4 blocks and it’s along a rugged sidewalk. If you have someone with mobility issues, you might prefer to take a cab but it wasn’t a bad walk. There were lots of people at the check in desk but a gentleman saw my confirmation in my hand, read off what I owed him, I handed him my cash and then he escorted us to our bus. Easy peasy. Nathan had his gps on his backpack because he likes to mark places and he calculated the walk from the boat at 1.12 miles and it took about 25 minutes, our slow speed due to the large group of people walking down the sidewalk and what we like to call “cruise mosey”. This is defined as “we’re not in any rush, we’re on vacation.” To the mosey-er’s credit, the bus did not leave without us...this time- dun dun dun. #might-be-foreshadowing

 

The bus started its 50 minute ride through the Mexican countryside and I could not help but feel a mid-morning nap coming along. Before we knew it, we had arrived at the ruins. The site itself has a neat recent history. A family had been farming on the site of the ruins from 1940 until 1972 when an archaeologist noticed some hills on what otherwise was mostly flat land. Upon further inspection, he found the Chacchoben Ruins which had been naturally covered by the jungle for 2000 years. In 1994, the Mexican government started excavating and restoring the site and it was opened to the public in 2002.

 

So that you’re fairly warned, the bathrooms on site are not what we’re used. Paper, including toilet paper, needs to be thrown in the wastebasket and our toilet did not flush nor did the sink have running water when we came in- there was just a bucket of water on the shelf. So you may want to use the facilities before you arrive. After a short potty trip and some bug spray, we met our fellow bus riders by the ticket counter. There were letters on the wristbands and group B and D (our group) were instructed to follow Pepe for their tour and group A and C went with the gentleman from our bus Hugo.

 

I think a lot of people decided to tour on their own because our group only started with about 15 people. We stopped by the first ruins and it was pretty crowded with all the people who had just arrived.

 

 

 

Pepe started to explain some things about the ruins but we found his accent very heavy and I had a hard time understanding what he was saying most of the time. He did have some photos to go along with his talk though.

 

 

As groups cleared out, he let us explore that area a little on our own so I grabbed some more photos.

 

 

 

[cruzqueen518]

Awesome! Have you joined the roll call yet?

 

 

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No not yet, have you?

[sgmamabear]

No not yet, have you?

 

 

 

Yes. There are plans for a meet & greet, slot pull, and possibly a cabin crawl. I don't know how to add a link to it here for you but there was a recent comment in the roll call, so it should be easy to find.

 

 

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[kaitysmommy2001]

Yes. There are plans for a meet & greet, slot pull, and possibly a cabin crawl. I don't know how to add a link to it here for you but there was a recent comment in the roll call, so it should be easy to find.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Forums

 

 

 

I'm on that sailing and in the roll call also! Yay! So enjoying this review - especially Daniel Johnsons as I have that reserved as well!

 

 

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[Tminish]

Could you take your own pictures with the Sloths, or did you have to purchase them?

 

 

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[usckatieh]

Could you take your own pictures with the Sloths, or did you have to purchase them?

 

Yes! I forgot to mention that but you can take your own photos for no extra charge. That was one of the reasons that I chose this excursion. They did not sell you any photos.

[usckatieh]

Chacchoben, cont.

 

 

While we were walking to the next area, one of those rainforest downpours came through, but luckily we had our ponchos so we threw those over ourselves just in time for the rain to stop and the sun to come back out. Oh, well better to be prepared.

 

It’s a little silly but I needed somewhere to stash items that held water, like water bottles, separate from my bag so they didn’t get my camera bag wet if they leaked, so I carabiner-ed a little Walmart insulated grocery bag (it’s smaller than regular grocery bags- just fits my Yeti cup) to my camera bag strap. This also worked perfectly to hold our wet ponchos on the go.

 

Our next stop took us up a set of steps.

 

If you have young kids, you’ll probably just want to hold their hands, but the trip up was totally worth it.

 

Infrared

 

The color version

 

[usckatieh]

The big pyramid

 

 

It was after we rounded the corner of this temple to gather in the shade we saw some spider monkeys in the trees. It was neat to catch a glimpse of them swinging around in their natural habitat. It was also at this point our tour guide started talking about aliens and started talking about strange events that happened at other pyramids around the world and showing us photo of alien figures on his phone. I caught something about Elton John and King Tut. Nathan and I were looking at each other a little confused and I realized that our guide fully buys into the aliens-traveled-to-the-earth-and-built-the-pyramids-all-over-the-world-theory, which I’m not saying couldn’t be true but I was hoping for more of an archaeological, scientific perspective.

At this point, our group dwindled to about 8 people. In retrospect, we probably should have wandered off on our own too, but I didn’t pay any attention to the map of the grounds and wasn’t sure exactly how to get back. Plus, there were more ruins to see so we stuck with Pepe.

 

Speaking of otherworldly, I love the color infrared version here

 

 

One temple with a covered archaeological site on the back

 

[usckatieh]

Archeological site on the back of the smaller structure

 

Along the edge checking out the archeological site. I wouldn’t take young kids on this ledge. It’s a long drop down.

 

 

Front of that structure

 

 

We walked for a while through a jungle looking forest.

 

 

 

[usckatieh]

Here’s the last pyramid on our tour.

 

 

 

 

Sweaty kiddo

 

 

The bad news is that Pepe kept talking until about 10 minutes before we were supposed to leave and I still wasn’t sure which path took us back to the bus and I was getting a little nervous.

 

The good news is he started walking back, which actually took us past the first pyramid so I got a cool photo of that with no people.

 

 

The other bad news was once we found our way back, pretty much everyone else was already on the bus. I had left my Yeti cup on my seat, but when I returned to our seats there were other people there. Count of the available seats meant there were 2 seats on the bus for our family of 4 on the last bus left in the parking lot. <Cue heavy sigh here.>

 

From overheard conversations, I gathered that the lack of seats is because a family was separated into two different buses on the way up to the ruins. That family wanted to ride together home so they all got on the same bus. The second bus left back for port with empty seats. Hence our predicament.

 

The good news is that the Native Choice folks were very reassuring and let us know that they had some vans and they’d work out to get us back, but I couldn’t help feeling a little anxious as the last bus pulled out of the parking lot. <Cue nervous squeak here.>

 

Fortunately, they ended up having room for us in the back of one of their vans that had been taking a local vacationing family from one of the hotels to the ruins. It appears that everyone else on the van spoke only Spanish but the Native Choice guide kept us informed that they would drop off the family and then return us to port. Problem solved. The van was a bumpier ride than the bus but I still managed to get a little nap in on the way back. DH told me I didn’t miss much because the scenery was mostly dust and cows. <Cue snores here>

 

The van dropped off the family at a hotel along Mahahual Beach, which looks like a beautiful spot to visit. Then they dropped us off at the terminal gate which was very close to the beach.

 

All and all, I would recommend Native’s Choice excursion because the ruins are amazing and overall, when there was a problem, I think they took care of it in a manner that was respectful of our concerns and kept us informed of the solution. Would I have preferred a different guide? Yes. But I could see other groups walking around with their guides getting much more of the tour that I expected. Considering that they were wearing Native Choice shirts and our guide would not, I’m guessing our gentleman may have been there for high volume days and not a part of the staff. I looked back when I got home to see if there were any reviews that correlate to the concerns with our guide and I didn’t see any. I also plan to email the company with our perspectives from the trip so their future guests can get the best experience possible. So if you decide to go with Native’s Choice, which I still think is a great option, my advice is to stick with a Native Choice shirt guide and you’ll have the best experience.

[usckatieh]

Here’s our ship from the pier

 

I had planned this excursion so that we could make it back to the ship for lunch, so we walked the pier and headed straight to the buffet. We were parked next to the Carnival Fantasy and DH overheard a couple say, “Let’s go take photos in front of that ship (the Escape) and tell people that’s the boat we were on.” Hehe.

 

 

We headed back to our favorite place on the ship, the waterslides but it was already getting pretty busy. I have a feeling that a lot of people made this a stay-on-the-ship day. What have I not done on vacation that I wanted to do? The mid-day nap! Ok, so I napped twice on the bus but walking and sweating in the jungle can be very taxing! After Mommy and Daddy took a little nap, we headed to our 6:30 Moderno (Brazilian Steakhouse- paid restaurant) reservations.

 

I wish I had taken photos here, but I was more focused on the food. That and hunks of beef really aren’t that photogenic. There was a very nice salad bar, but DH and I were both here for the meat. DH has been on the Atkin's diet for the last 8 months so a venue that just kept handing him protein was a dream come true. Every time something new came out, you’d play coy, like “oh, sure. I’ll try some of that” when what you really meant was “Mine! Mine! Mine” like the seagulls on Nemo.

p-3e0EkvIEM

 

Everything we had a Moderno was well cooked, well seasoned, tender and delicious. Some of our favorites were the leg of lamb and the filet. You have to try the grilled pineapple! It's warm and juicy and has a hint of cinnamon on the outside. Yum! Again, the kids were eating off the kids pineapple but the restaurant manager was nice enough to stop and chat with us and offer to let the kids try some of the pineapple. Nathan also wanted some more lamb and the manager made sure that they brought it over for us as soon as it was ready. This restaurant was top notch food and service and a great value (especially since it was one of our 3 free dining options!)

After dinner, the kids headed to kids club. I was going to try to catch the piano bar, but realized that there is no piano on the nights of comedy shows because it’s in the same venue. The comedy show was sold out, so we hung out and finished off a busy day with cookies at the buffet.

 

Here’s our Day 6 Cozumel Freestyle Daily

 

 

 

[alreadypacked]

Chacchoben

 

So the port of Costa Maya is a bit of a maze. DH gave me a bit of a hard time this morning because I wanted to get done with breakfast quickly so we could be ready to walk to our excursion and he thought I was just being paranoid. Low and behold by the time we get ourselves out the door, we’re only about 25 minutes until we’re supposed to start our tour. So we turbo speed it down the pier and instead of looking at the map instructions of how to get through port to the exit, DH follows the signs. Do NOT follow the signs. We pretty much walked in a big circle past all the shops before we found out way to the exit. The good news is that there were TONS of people from the ship walking to the same place we were going.

 

The walk to Native Choice office is about 4 blocks and it’s along a rugged sidewalk. If you have someone with mobility issues, you might prefer to take a cab but it wasn’t a bad walk. There were lots of people at the check in desk but a gentleman saw my confirmation in my hand, read off what I owed him, I handed him my cash and then he escorted us to our bus. Easy peasy. Nathan had his gps on his backpack because he likes to mark places and he calculated the walk from the boat at 1.12 miles and it took about 25 minutes, our slow speed due to the large group of people walking down the sidewalk and what we like to call “cruise mosey”. This is defined as “we’re not in any rush, we’re on vacation.” To the mosey-er’s credit, the bus did not leave without us...this time- dun dun dun. #might-be-foreshadowing

 

The bus started its 50 minute ride through the Mexican countryside and I could not help but feel a mid-morning nap coming along. Before we knew it, we had arrived at the ruins. The site itself has a neat recent history. A family had been farming on the site of the ruins from 1940 until 1972 when an archaeologist noticed some hills on what otherwise was mostly flat land. Upon further inspection, he found the Chacchoben Ruins which had been naturally covered by the jungle for 2000 years. In 1994, the Mexican government started excavating and restoring the site and it was opened to the public in 2002.

 

So that you’re fairly warned, the bathrooms on site are not what we’re used. Paper, including toilet paper, needs to be thrown in the wastebasket and our toilet did not flush nor did the sink have running water when we came in- there was just a bucket of water on the shelf. So you may want to use the facilities before you arrive. After a short potty trip and some bug spray, we met our fellow bus riders by the ticket counter. There were letters on the wristbands and group B and D (our group) were instructed to follow Pepe for their tour and group A and C went with the gentleman from our bus Hugo.

 

 

Loving the review! Thanks for posting!

 

DH and I toured Chacchoben in 2011 on a ship tour via Celebrity Solstice and really enjoyed it.

 

I remember using the restroom at the site (part of the shopping area when you first arrive) before the actual tour of the ruins commenced. Can't remember if I had to throw my toilet paper in the wastebasket or not (but I might not recall that, as I've had to do that often in Caribbean locales), but...

 

Yikes!

 

I think I remember sinks with running water! Certain I'd remember a bucket of water on a shelf, as OCD about hand-washing as I am. Thanks for reporting. Maybe things at Chacchoben have changed or perhaps they were experiencing temporary water/plumbing issues. I always carry sanitizing wipes as a last resort, but I prefer good old-fashioned hand-washing.

 

Love Cruise Critic--this is the type of info I like to get before going to a place the first time (or 2nd or 3rd etc.)! Things can change in the interim of course (positively or negatively), but it's nice to have some idea what to expect!

[sgmamabear]

I'm on that sailing and in the roll call also! Yay! So enjoying this review - especially Daniel Johnsons as I have that reserved as well!

 

 

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Great! Looking forward to meeting you!

 

 

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[tennisfanusa]

I haven't tried that before, but see if this link works!

 

Fantastic - you are PHENOMENAL.

 

Thanks! :)

[tennisfanusa]

I am so sorry you ended up with a not-so-tour guide with Native Choice.

 

We did the visit with the Native family tour back in 2011. Our guide was Ivan, the founder of Native Choice that actually grew up at Chacchoben back in the 1970s! It was a phenomenal experience.

[tennisfanusa]

I didn't make this request but....you have the calendar as "view only" so no changes can be made.

 

If you click, "File" and then "Make a Copy" it will create your own version that will allow you to edit it as necessary.

[oscardog]

Beautiful review.

[usckatieh]

Loving the review! Thanks for posting!

 

 

 

DH and I toured Chacchoben in 2011 on a ship tour via Celebrity Solstice and really enjoyed it.

 

 

 

I remember using the restroom at the site (part of the shopping area when you first arrive) before the actual tour of the ruins commenced. Can't remember if I had to throw my toilet paper in the wastebasket or not (but I might not recall that, as I've had to do that often in Caribbean locales), but...

 

 

 

Yikes!

 

 

 

I think I remember sinks with running water! Certain I'd remember a bucket of water on a shelf, as OCD about hand-washing as I am. Thanks for reporting. Maybe things at Chacchoben have changed or perhaps they were experiencing temporary water/plumbing issues. I always carry sanitizing wipes as a last resort, but I prefer good old-fashioned hand-washing.

 

 

 

Love Cruise Critic--this is the type of info I like to get before going to a place the first time (or 2nd or 3rd etc.)! Things can change in the interim of course (positively or negatively), but it's nice to have some idea what to expect!

 

 

 

Thanks for sharing your experience! I don't think the sink thing was normal but I was glad I had some wipes too!!

[usckatieh]

I am so sorry you ended up with a not-so-tour guide with Native Choice.

 

We did the visit with the Native family tour back in 2011. Our guide was Ivan, the founder of Native Choice that actually grew up at Chacchoben back in the 1970s! It was a phenomenal experience.

 

 

 

Thanks for commenting! I had a feeling with how well they always review that our experience was probably out of the ordinary. They seem to have a great team.

[usckatieh]

If you click, "File" and then "Make a Copy" it will create your own version that will allow you to edit it as necessary.

 

 

 

Thanks for sharing that tip. I've never tried sharing google docs but I'm glad you found a way to make it work!

[Hotspring]

Loving the review! Thanks for posting!

 

DH and I toured Chacchoben in 2011 on a ship tour via Celebrity Solstice and really enjoyed it.

 

I remember using the restroom at the site (part of the shopping area when you first arrive) before the actual tour of the ruins commenced. Can't remember if I had to throw my toilet paper in the wastebasket or not (but I might not recall that, as I've had to do that often in Caribbean locales), but...

 

Yikes!

 

I think I remember sinks with running water! Certain I'd remember a bucket of water on a shelf, as OCD about hand-washing as I am. Thanks for reporting. Maybe things at Chacchoben have changed or perhaps they were experiencing temporary water/plumbing issues. I always carry sanitizing wipes as a last resort, but I prefer good old-fashioned hand-washing.

 

Love Cruise Critic--this is the type of info I like to get before going to a place the first time (or 2nd or 3rd etc.)! Things can change in the interim of course (positively or negatively), but it's nice to have some idea what to expect!

 

 

Yes, my 11YO daughter, spouse and myself did the deluxe tour through the ship excursions on the very same day and found plenty of running water and the tip bucket for those that were keeping the restrooms clean and stocked. Maybe if you use the less expensive tour companies you do not get told about the public restrooms and are lead to the backroom restrooms. Our restrooms even had a Mexican cat snoozing in front of them to the delight of my cat loving daughter.

 

However, the Carnival ship was just coming in when we returned to the Escape versus the outstanding reviewer apparently coming back after the thing was already docked. So it is possible if you go too late in the day they run out of water.

 

Also, in our tour van it would been impossible to snooze for the 50 minutes or so trip to the ruins. The guide was constantly speaking and passing pictures providing a detailed history of the former people and culture in the area.

Just something intangible offered by companies that would not be allowed to service the ship directly unless they offer more.

[usckatieh]

 

Day 6- Play Mia

 

The last time we were in Cozemel, our table buddies told us how much fun they had just stopping at a local resort and enjoying the beach so that’s what I had in mind for our Day 6 excursion.

 

I researched a few different beach break options and Playa Mia came out on top! I had also looked at Mr Sanchos, Nachi Cocum, and Paradise Beach and this is where I decided to let my kids make the decision. We did google images for all the options and the kids loved the look of the water toys at Playa Mia. The reviews warned me that it was a bit of a long swim to the toys but we were prepared for that expectation so it worked out fine.

 

Now I compared Playa Mia from the NCL excursions or on our own. I had gotten the menu from Playa Mia and I liked the a la carte options (outdoor buffets make me a little nervous anyways), so I knew we didn’t need the option that included the buffet lunch. Looking at Playa Mia on our own it was $30/adult, $25/kids = $90 not including transportation. The NCL Playa Mia Day Pass & Transfer (5 hours) - $40 adults/child, no lunch= $110 with our excursion credit and it did include easy transportation so we went with that option. Our scheduled timeline was 10am-3pm so I budgeted for a lunch from the a la carte menu.

The NCL Excursion included access to beach, lounge chairs (umbrellas extra), La Cantina pool, shopping, underwater Mayan city for snorkelers, organized games (they had a balloon toss game while we were there), and, of course, the water toys.

 

After a lazy morning, we met our excursion at end of pier where they have little signs with all the excursion titles. The tickets said to arrive at 9:30 and we left the waiting area around 9:50 to walk about 5-10 minutes through port to the bus area. The bus to Playa Mia was much nicer than Natives Choice. The bus left port around 10:15 and we arrived at Playa Mia around 10:30.

 

Once on the beach we picked out chairs under a palm tree. The naturally shaded chairs getting scarce but there were plenty of umbrellas you could rent if you needed to.

 

 

The first thing we did was rented locker for DH’s bag and my big camera so we could all play in the water together. Locker rental is $4 with $4 deposit that you get back when you return your key (so $8 total). The lockers aren’t fancy but they do the job. It looked like they had more lockers by the pool area.

 

 

Here’s the crew all sunscreened up and ready for some fun!

 

 

With the cameras safely stowed away, we grabbed the lifejackets that they provided and headed out into the water. As the reviews had mentioned there was a lot of seagrass near the shore so you wouldn’t really want to hang out in the shallow part of the beach. There’s not much shallows either because the beach gets deep pretty quickly. We swam to the toys, which took a few minutes because the toys are as far from shore as they look on the photos. If you’re a strong swimmer, it won’t take you long, but DS is more of a bobber than a swimmer so it took us a while.

 

 

The water toys were very busy. There were people slipping and sliding everywhere. It looked like the lifejackets were required for the water toys because everyone was wearing one. They also had a jet ski going around the toys, I imagine to help anyone who gets tired or tell people to put on lifejackets. We got a few decent sized waves from passing boats that made standing up on the toys even trickier. Patrick seemed a little overwhelmed by all the people so we headed back to the beach for the snorkel gear.

 

There are little mini-Mayan ruins structures under the water that end up being pretty good fish hangouts. Here’s a video of the fish we found while snorkeling. My apologies that I’m not a steadier hand with the video.

XesP-rWlSMI

 

After DH and DD went down some of the inflatable slides and DS and I snorkeled, we had worked up an appetite. Here’s what the dining area looks like. It’s huge!

 

 

We ordered a shrimp quesadilla, burger, chicken tenders, nachos and drinks for 4 for a total of $32 (not including tip). That’s not bad for vacation food. DH said he thought the flavors were surprisingly tame on his nachos and quesadilla but the burger was yummy and DD inhaled her chicken tenders. Next time, I might try the kid’s virgin daiquiris. I didn’t realize that they were only a dollar more than the pineapple juice- which was also delicious!

 

After lunch, DH and DD hit the slides some more while DS built sandcastles and I read my book in the shade. Our scheduled time to meet at 2:45 so we started heading that way, just as they announced our group over the speakers. It was a short ride back to the port. I was very happy with this excursion and it was just what we had expected- a fun and relaxing beach day!