cruise

we had a nice cruise Aug7-12 from New Orleans on the Carnival Triumph. We went to Progresso and Cozumel. Valerie, Theresa and I went. Andrea and Jacquelyn were in RI visiting Dana.

At Progresso, we left Theresa on the ship and took an excursion into Merida called "Salsa y Salsa" where we learned to make 3 different salsas and then learned to dance salsa. It was a lot of fun. Merida is quite historic (founded in 1540 or so on top of an ancient Mayan city). The salsas (technically only 2 since the 3rd was guacamole) were interesting, we got the recipes and will try them out.

In cozumel, we signed up for a beginner snorkel excursion. I picked this one because it was the only snorkel trip with a minimum age low enough for Theresa (6) to go. It was a taxi ride to a nearby beach where they had all the gear and gave a fairly extensive safety / training briefing before we got in the water. Theresa has never tried "for real" snorkeling before but she is a good pool swimmer; nevertheless, she struggled at first. One of the instructors (Julian) came over to see if he could help and he ended up basically giving her a 1:1 coaching and instruction for 15-20 minutes. Once she got the hang of not diving under water and filling her snorkel tube with salt water, she did great. As snorkeling goes, this was not the best. Fish were decent, with an ok variety and color (no clownfish), the coral/reef area was very sparse however. I'm sure cozumel offers some much nicer locations but the real point of this was to get some experience for theresa, and toward that end it far exceeded our expectations. Julian's help to theresa was amazing and we gave him a "personal" 15$ tip (which may have caused some tip drama among the other helpers). Oh well.

The at sea days were the typical gorge and relax of a Carnival cruise. Other major highlight on the ship was a magic show (Kevin and Caruso) which was extremely impressive and well done.

We are looking forward to the new Carnival Magic which should be based in Galveston come Fall 2011.