Cozumel

Cozumel was the one we had been looking forward to because Hubby had booked a special excursion for us before we ever left.

But first we wanted to check it out.

Fortunately, this time we were docked at a pier so it was no trouble (except the pier was super, super long) to go back and forth from the ship.

And we did a few times. That morning we spent doing some tourist shopping and seeing all the people dressed up to get pictures with the cruisers. Some of them were funny, some were interesting and some were downright creepy (like the black skeletons on stilts).

 They apparently really like to celebrate the whole Mayan culture thing. When we finished that we ran back to the ship and Chick carried our purchases up to the cabin so we wouldn't be carrying them around.

We headed back to find a cab and realized at some point that the time we had booked with our excursion (3:30 in the afternoon) was a local time not ship's time.

Ship's time was still set for Florida and would stay that way making it about an hour ahead of local time. We had a whole hour to spare still. After some debate, we decided to head back to the ship and just chill until time to leave again. Fortunately, the ship didn't leave until 7:30 (or 6:30 local time) so we still had plenty of time.

We ended up leaving early anyway and just took our Kindles with us. Had I realized it was in such a neat park, I would have taken my camera too. They weren't allowed for the Dolphin Adventure but I would have liked to had several pictures from the park.

This, however, was what we were excited about.

At Dolphin Adventure, we met 14 year old Frida and her 8 month old son, Diego. They were the two dolphins we got to spend some time with.

And, because it was one of the last appointments of their day, we were the only ones who were there meeting them.

You can't really see her but here the dolphin is pushing us. And may I say it was VERY fast!

Here she was showing us just how much bigger and heavier she is than we are.

Even on her back, she's pretty fast!

And she seemed to really enjoy getting petted.

One of the strangest feeling things we did was pucker up for a kiss. Frida didn't let us know how she felt about it but she was a good sport.

A little more petting for her.

 It was probably one of the highlights of our trip. I'm really glad we did it (and we managed to save a little money by booking it ahead of time and without benefit of the ship's shore excursion desk). They are so used to cruisers there that even the cab was no issue.

On the way back, I had asked the park's info man to get us a cab to Puerta Maya when a couple who had just walked up heard me. They asked to share and we did. He ended up treating us so I only needed to tip the driver on the way back.

And we were even able to stop one more time for a final souvenir before heading back to the ship.

The next day was an 'at sea' day as we made out way back to Tampa.