Last but not least...New Orleans on New Year's Eve!!

The final stopping point for our honeymoon cruise was in New Orleans on New Year's Eve. We arrived too early to catch the craziness of New Orleans on a major party holiday. It was perfect timing to enjoy the city a little bit before the craziness began. We got into port and were off just before 8 in the morning.

We walked around New Orleans for a while, long enough to see and take in the infamous Bourbon Street, the Riverwalk and a bunch of other things that I can't name. Look at the pictures maybe you can tell us where we were.





Of course what would a honeymoon be without a little bit of football? We just happened to arrive in New Orleans on the very day that the New Orleans Saints were playing the Carolina Panthers with the one and only Steve Smith.




Yes, the one and only Steve Smith who played for the University of Utah...Jimmy was a big fan before anyone else even knew who he was. We went to the NFL game in the Superdome and had a great time. The fans were crazy, the jazz music was great and the Panthers won...who could ask for more?





We had a great time in New Orleans but I must say our short stay was plenty long for me. I was excited to get
on the road to start heading toward our sweet home Alabama!!

A Few Random Cruise Shots

Here are a few random shots from our cruise.

Our last night on the cruise they had a chocolate buffet at midnight. There was so much chocolate it was overwhellming. We went crazy and loaded our plates up. It was soooooo good!

And then the braids came out....

This is the main lobby on our ship

And then there were sports...

Cozumel, Mexico

Our last stop was in Cozumel, Mexico. We had so much fun on this excursion. We drove in little dune buggies across the island. Our first stop was for snorkeling. It was so much fun!

Our guides took us to a swimming pool to get all of our snorkeling equipment and to give us some basic instruction. This little guy was in a cage and Jimmy convinced me that he could open the door while I took a picture of him. I was sure that he would jump out...he didn't and look at the great picture! He's always so full of good ideas.

Snorkeling was a lot of fun. It was my first time and so it took me a little bit to get the hang of it and relax. Here we are all dressed and boy do we look good! This was my favorite part of the day. We took an underwater camera with us but the pictures didn't turn out as good as we had hoped so these are the only ones I am posting from it.

After snorkeling we drove along a costal road to a secluded beach where we ate a good mexican lunch. After lunch we played in the water for a while and then we went back to town. We had a lot of time after the excursion to just do whatever.
I ended up getting my hair braided in tiny braids. I wish I could post videos on this because Jimmy took a video of the woman braiding my hair and it is unbelievable. It looks like the video is in fast forward. We took more videos on this stop than pictures...oh well.

Here we are on the dock, our ship is in the background. We sat on the dock and watched this man fish with a piece of fishing line and a hook. Every few minutes he would pull a fish up. Amazing. Cozumel was awesome! We had a great time and ended up with some killer sunburns.

Belize City, Belize

Our next stop was in Belize City, Belize. This was one of our favorite stops. Belize City is beautiful. We first got on a bus and drove through town. The road that we took went right down the coast line. It was yes...beautiful. The city that we drove through had many colonial style houses in different colors. I loved it. We rode on the bus until we got to Tower Hill. Once we arrived in Tower Hill we boarded a riverboat (this was a fun boat!) It skipped across the water and the weather was perfect!


We went on a river Safari down the New River, as opposed to the Old River. We navigated through creeks and lagoons and all along the way saw tons of wildlife. We saw hawks, falcons, Jacanas, crocodiles, turtles, bats, iguanas...just to name a few. One of the following pictures has a crocodile sunbathing on a rock. It was just so much fun to ride down the river. We had a guy on our boat whose job it was to look for wildlife and point it out to us. It was amazing what he could see.
That's our boat...and the crocodile on the rock. We road down the river until we reached the ruins of Lamanai (which means submerged crocodile in Mayan) We saw a lot of incredible ruins on our trip but I would say these were the best by far.



We were able to climb on one of the temples. It was soooo tall and pretty scary once you got to the top. In order to get to the top you had to climb some very steep stairs, so steep that there was a rope down the center to help you. The picture of Jimmy on the stairs will give you a good idea of just how steep they really were.
This is a picture of us on the temple, we are the tiny couple towards the bottom posing. And there they are...the steep stairs.
On our way to the Mask Temple our guide stopped to point out some howler monkeys in the trees. I didn't get a really great picture of them, but Jimmy got a video...I'm not sure if I can post it on here. Anyway, the howler monkeys were incredibly loud. The sound they make is almost eery. I can see how the jungle could be a scary place with sounds like that.
The Mask Temple was one of my favorites. This mask was one of the best preserved sculptures that we saw. They used these masks to depict dead rulers and gods. This one is a face inside of the mouth of a crocodile.

The Lamanai ruins also had a museum we stopped to look at a few things...not really we just stopped to take this picture of Jimmy. We'll call this his museum stance.


We ate lunch at the ruin site. Some natives of Belize made us some chicken, rice and beans. It was so good. I love going to these places and actually having the chance to taste authentic food. YUM!

That was our trip to Belize. My editor has advised me that I should try to keep these short and sweet so as to not discourage some from reading. I'm doing my best I promise.

Next is Cozumel. I know, the suspense is building.

Santo Tomas de Castilla, Guatemala

Sorry about the pause in posting for all of you faithful blog watchers. Things have been super busy and it has been difficult to find time to post. We have moved into our new house on post at Fort Rucker. We have a four bedroom house. Definitely more room that we could ever need but I think we can manage. The weather in Alabama has been perfect! You know it's a good day in January when you can wear shorts and flip flops. Between Jimmy studying and me unpacking our days are full. The good news is that we are almost done unpacking...Yahoo! I'll post pictures of our house when it is more put together. Now on to the continuation of our honeymoon adventures.



Jimmy thinks that it is hillarious when I post the historical facts about the places we visited. The truth is that we didn't learn any of it while we were there. The info that I have posted came from brochures (that would be why they sound so accurate and brochure-like) that we were given..hee hee..and you thought I was soaking up all of this knowledge. The truth is that the only things we were aware of were each other and the fact that we felt a million miles away from a care in the world. Don't worry, I will continue to give you the historical background, mostly because it makes Jimmy laugh and I love it.



Our second stop on our cruise was to Santo Tomas de Castilla, Guatemala.

We chose to do the Quirigua Mayan City and Dulce River Explorer excursion. We woke up early in the morning and got on a bus which headed toward Quirigua which is south of Izabal (for those who are savvy on the geography of Guatemala).



This is us on the bus ride. It was pretty long but it went through the country side of Guatemala and it was beautiful. Anyway, back to Quirigua...here comes the history. Quirigua has some of the tallest and most beautiful stelae from the Mayan period. The vertical monuments served as symbols of Mayan rulers and priests.

Here are some pictures of the stelae. They were very tall carvings, mostly with mask figures carved into them. Our guide told us that it is believed that many more carvings exists; however, they are too poor to fund the excavation of them. Pretty sad if you ask me, they are pretty unbelieveable. It started to rain while we were there which made the ground we were walking on really muddy. Something about this part of Guatemala reminded me of Brazil. After we finished looking at the carvings we went out to a little shop and bought a Mayan cloth...it's beautiful but I don't have a picture of it to share.

After the ruins and the shopping we got back on the bus and drove to a place called Mansion del Rio Dulce, which is a resort. We ate lunch there (yummy rice and stroganoff!) After lunch we got on a motor launch ( a boat) and went down the River Dulce.

We spent quite a bit of time on the boat. I think the total time on the river was about three and a half hours.

There were so many different kinds of birds on the river. I'm not sure what kind they were, but there were some birds that would fly as high as they could go and then do a nose dive into the water. It was pretty fun to watch.

This is Jimmy relaxing on the boat. During the river trip we went by the Castle of San Felipe, which is a fortress that was constructed by the Spanish to keep the Pirates of the Caribbean out of Lake Izabal. How's that for a piece of history?

This is a picture of the Castle of San Felipe. It was smaller than I anticipated it to be, but very beautiful. That was our trip to Guatemala. We had so much fun. I'll tell you all about Belize next. Stay tuned.

Costa Maya, Mexico

Costa Maya, Mexico was our first stop on the cruise. Costa Maya is situated on the east coast of the Yucatan peninsula. It is home to five ancient Mayan cities, some that are still being uncovered.

When we arrived in Costa Maya there were natives there to greet us. It's amazing how touristy this little port was. Jimmy and I just wanted to get out the port to see what Costa Maya was really like. We ended up staying in the port for a while. They had restaurants, little shops, every imaginable thing you could get your picture taken in front of for a small price of course. It really was great. The port was painted in bright pinks, purples, yellows and oranges. It was beautiful.

Our first little adventure was to the crocodile park. The tour started out with an interactive crocodile museum where they talked to us about the evolution of crocodiles and then we were off to the natural pond with the live crocodiles. We walked up stairs that led to towers that were connected by hanging bridges.

The view from the towers was beautiful. It was kind of scary considering we were dangling from hanging bridges right over several hungry crocodiles. The tour guide that we were with took a long rope with meat tied on the end of it and fed one of the crocodiles. Those things can jump!

The picture to the right is of us on top of one of the towers, you can see the port in the background.

This picture is of Jimmy on one of the hanging bridges.

This is one of the many crocodiles in the natural pond. They were pretty fun to watch but at the same time kind of eery.
At the very end we got to hold a baby crocodile. Creepy little thing. We did get our picture with it but it was one of those for a little price things that didn't really turn out that great.

Costa Maya is home to many Mayan cities. We visited Chackchoben which was one of the principal distribution centers for the region's precious woods and jade. It dates back to 360 A.D. and was until last year, largely unexplored.

The trip to these ruins was pretty exciting. We walked outside of the port gates and found a taxi. Jimmy used his expert bargaining skills to get us a great price. Our taxi driver, Giraldo, kept falling asleep while driving super fast down this incredibly long and thankfully straight road. Jimmy reassured me that he would wake him up if he swerved outside of the lines. Ha, I had a perfect view into the rearview mirror and caught every glimpse of his nodding head and heavy eyes. Poor guy. We luckily made it there and back in one piece.

Let's get back to the Chakchoben ruins. We didn't have a tour guide and so the two of us just walked around for a while reading what we could and climbing on everything. The ruins were amazing and beautiful and incredibly large. The ruins are in the Mahahual village.

We had such a great time in Costa Maya. The ruins were defnitely the highlight...well that along with the exciting cab ride. On the way back to the port we stopped and bought a pineapple from a woman selling them on the street. Jimmy ate it up and loved every bite, you can't really tell that through this photo. ha ha.