cruise story, part three
At Sea
Weather: bucketing rain and gale force winds
At this halfway point, cookieman and I were quite pleased with the cruise. We'd had many lovely trips, and were enjoying our routine of going to the gym, watching random movies, and meeting up with people for dinner and drinks in the evenings. The on-board entertainment was of poor quality, but to be expected I suppose considering that it was a budget trip. We were considering what other cruises we might want to take in the future. I gave what little help I could to our group on the quiz nights, which were mostly UK-based trivia questions but sometimes would have some odd question about an American First Lady or so.
Up until this point, we'd had an evening or two of slight waves while we were traveling, but not enough to cause many problems. A few people here and there appeared to be disturbed by the motion of the ship, but I was almost entertained by it, and got used to being rocked to sleep at night.
*foreshadowing* We were informed, at the end of the cruise, that one of the couples in our group had considered leaving the cruise halfway through (so, leaving in Montego Bay and flying home) because of the ship motion, but were convinced to stay by the fact that the itinerary for the second week follows relatively calm waters, unlike the first week.
Well, so we thought. Cookieman and I went to the gym early, and found that we could barely use the equipment properly due to all the tossing around. Every huge swell of the ocean would bring the ship up, then drop it as it passed. This resulted in a feeling of being pressed against the equipment, then ripped away from it. I could deal with it on the cross-trainer (I had the hand things to hold on to) but the treadmill was useless. Ditto the weight machines, as one minute the weight was nothing, and the next it would be 3x the normal weight. We had a laugh, anyway.
Meanwhile, others were clearly not appreciating this experience elsewhere on the ship, and I witnessed the aftermath of more than one incident, with a crew member in hazmat gear cleaning up the carpet here and there. We soon discovered strategically-placed sick bags on the brass banisters of the staircases. Cookieman got a photo of one tucked into some Christmas foliage.
I sat in on an hour-long seminar on our ports for the next week, and got very excited about a booking I made for snorkeling the barrier reef in Belize, which is a world heritage site. The trip I booked was for a very small group, unlike most ship tours which can have almost 100 or more people on one trip. The trip adviser told us about 80% of the ship was booked for Chichen Itza the next day, and that it was the single most popular trip on the itinerary.
The active entertainment was canceled for the evening (I say active as there was always one theatre with physical performances and live music, in addition to the pubs which had comedians or some such), to the surprise of no one. It was impossible to walk a straight line without being thrown sideways every few minutes, so one certainly couldn't expect the performers to deal with it. There were a few people missing at dinner, but only one of our regular dinner group gave it a miss. We did have fun having our chairs scoot away from the table periodically, as if to tell us that we really didn't need that second trip to the buffet. We spent the evening looking forward to our next stop, which was to be Progreso, Mexico, and one of the main events of the cruise, the aforementioned Chichen Itza.
At Sea, unable to port
Weather: shitastic, gale force 10 winds
The captain got on the intercom early to announce that we would not be able to dock in Progreso due to the weather, and that he had made the decision to turn around and move on to our next port, Cozumel. To say this was a massive disappointment would be an understatement. The mood on the ship was low, and only compounded by the fact that everyone was forced to be inside due to the weather.
After the initial disappointment faded, we realized that we would need to re-schedule some trips, if we were to see any Mayan ruins at all on this trip. I gave up my much-anticipated Mexican cooking class in Cozumel in order to book us onto the trip to Tulum. It's a much newer site than Chichen itza, and a lot smaller, but I figured it was better than visiting this part of the world and not seeing any Mayan sites at all.
The crew changed the schedule for the day to supposedly put some entertainment out during the day, but it was mostly beauty seminars, fruit carving demonstrations, and other endeavors which seemed to only annoy the few people who showed up for them. I wouldn't have wanted to be a member of the crew on that day.
The restaurants were half empty at dinner, presumably the missing passengers were off making use of those sick bags. A few of us filled our time by visiting both restaurant buffets and sampling one bit of each of the desserts on offer, before heading off to listen to the painfully unfunny comedian in the pub.
Cozumel, Mexico
Weather: sunny and warm
The weather perked up for us on this day, thankfully, so we were all up early and happy to get our feet on solid ground for a while. We met with our tour group and headed for Tulum via a 45 minute forced shopping stop along the way.
I should also note that compared with all of our previous ports, Mexico was by far the most developed, and we reveled in the relative smoothness of the roads and politeness of the crap-sellers.
Tulum is located on a small cliff, overlooking the ocean, and is extremely picturesque. We had our guide for the first half hour, and he spent an unfortunate amount of time showing us photos and comparing the site to the "much larger and more historically significant site of Chichen Itza." boo. We spent a lot of time exploring the site and, after this, climbed down the stairs to the beach to mingle with the droves of Speedo-clad Spanish tourists.
After Tulum, we spent some time at Playa del Carmen before taking the tender boat back to the ship.
Belize City
Weather: intermittent rain, wind
A quick perusal of sites on Belize City shows that this is yet another gateway city, and is cited several times as being a good starting point for visiting other destinations. You might think that I'm harping on this subject quite a bit, and perhaps I am, but when the first photo accompanying an article on a town is one like this, hopefully you can understand a bit of my dismay at being deposited there. I should note that in the photo, they've staged 4-5 motor vehicles which appear to be in reasonable working condition, which likely had to be brought in from other, more prosperous regions of the country. That minivan could very well be the front of the Presidential motorcade, for example.
WHY am I so bitter about Belize? ugh. okay. That's a fair question. I have happily tolerated crappier towns than this one. But, here was my day in Belize, short as it was:
We woke up to find that the weather wasn't ideal, but wasn't too terrible either, all things considered. I put on my bathing suit and got everything together for my highly-anticipated reef snorkeling trip. I could see that there was a bit of sun, as well as some patches of rain, and I was hoping for the best.
Upon arrival at the tour desk, we were told, with 5 minutes to go before departure, that all snorkeling trips had been canceled. I wasn't just disappointed; I was pissed right the hell off. I had no words at the moment. The perky staff told us they would happily re-schedule us onto any of the other available tours (tours which mostly consisted of other outdoor activities, as the town and surrounding region didn't have much to offer, otherwise.) I had to walk away to regain my composure, that is how upset I was at that particular moment. I knew they couldn't help the weather, but this on top of missing my other anticipated activity on the trip was just too much, and I knew there weren't many other options for this port.
Other members of our group were going through the same thing, though we didn't see them until a bit later on. By the time we decided what we should do (read: by the time cookieman guilted me into not looking so angry at the world), most of the ship tours had left, so we queued for a tender boat to the mainland to see what we could do on our own.
Answer: fuck all. There was a duty-free mall at the port itself, and once we were through that and into the town itself, we were again running the gauntlet of taxi drivers and persistent crap-sellers. However, they'd picked the wrong damn day to annoy me, and by the time we'd walked a few blocks and discovered the main sights of the town (the only manual swing bridge in the world is in Belize City! GO BOOK YOUR TICKETS NOW!) I was unimpressed and to be quite honest, not feeling particularly safe in the neighborhood we were in. The highlight of this foray into town was when some young teenagers yelled in our direction "we don't want you here, go home" and this was the point where I decided I was officially Done with Belize City.
After a bit more sight-seeing, we made our way back to the port, where we ran into a few of our friends. They'd also Seen the Sights and one of them was keen to try snorkeling, even though the weather was getting worse. I decided it wouldn't be worth it (our other friend there, who has also done a lot of snorkeling, agreed, but the first guy was very excited to officially check off his to-do list that he'd Snorkeled the Reef in Belize, so he was tagging along as a friend) and after hearing about their trip later, I don't regret the decision for an instant. They booked an independent guide who took them to a point which wasn't even on the reef, and visibility was poor. ah well.
Addendum: Even though we had a far shorter day than originally planned, and I'd hit a low point on dealing with surly locals, my mood improved measurably by the afternoon. Cookieman suggested about 100 times that we go to the gym because that always brightens my mood, and sure enough, it helped. We admired the drenching rain which hit by noon, and I was pleased to not be out in it. I gave Belize the same "you're number 1!" digit salute that our Scottish friend had given Jamaica a few days previous as we set sail that evening.
Don't worry, this was the end of my emo-ness for the rest of the cruise. It's all uphill from here.