The cruise was planned by Bobbi and Walt Cory to celebrate their fortieth wedding anniversary.  They invited others from their family and old friends who were there at their wedding in Germany, back in the days when we were all either teachers or Air Force officers.  It was a wonderful opportunity to get together again after very many years for some of us.  Luckily we had kept up contact each Christmas since, so didn't have to start from scratch catching up. 

I flew to Miami, got a shuttle to the port and waited in line for almost three hours to get on board.  I got to the stateroom a half hour before Pat Fluck, my present and old Neubrucke roommate. I put my stuff away and relaxed for a little while, then Pat showed up.  Recognized her at once- even though she was the only one who would logically be knocking on the door.  We talked while she got organized a bit, then went out to look at the ship.  We met everyone else at dinner and Bobbi and Walt were much the same too.  Their two sons, Paul and Matt, were very nice as well as Paul's wife, Laura.  Joe Gross, an old friend from back then too, was there with his wife, Barbara, very nice as well.  We spent most of our time with that bunch- as well as Bill, an old college buddy of Walt's and his wife Judy.  Bobbi's sister, also Barbara, and her husband had three other couples they were friends with there.

We ate all our dinners in the formal dining room.  The meals were good but not excellent, but we all managed to put quite a bit away.  Breakfast and lunch we ate a cafeteria style restaurant which had lots of variety and went a lot faster than the dining room.  The ship was huge with a shopping street down the middle, three pools and three hot tubs, large casino, large theater, and ice skating rink, carrying about  three thousand passengers and over a thousand workers from 150 countries, they said.  Everything about it was pretty glitzy as you see in the pictures.

On the days at sea, we sat out and read, went to the fitness center once, and generally hung out.  We saw two big production shows that had pyrotechnics and all- very high tech and the performers were good as well.  One included music from Footloose, Sat. Night Fever, Flashdance, and Fame.  We also went to the ice show at the rink which again was spectacular and more fun than the other shows on the whole.  Saw a comedian one night, but I think he was more fun if you'd had a few.  I went to the passengers' Talent Show though and was blown away.  Three of the five performers were black, singing a blues song about life on the cruise that was pretty funny, The Greatest Love, and Amazing Grace, respectively, and they were outstanding.  An English guy did a very good job of Save the Last Dance, and a woman we had seen singing with the guitar player on a Mexican beach the day before sang Crazy.  It was probably my favorite show- even if it was only five numbers long.

So First Port- Belize (used to be British Honduras which I didn't know) had the second longest Barrier Reef in the world, but you couldn't snorkel from the port and I had signed up for the Cave Tubing Expedition.  I found the tour representative who showed me to their booth where I paid the rest of my $60 fee.   Then we got on a bus and rode an hour through the countryside, the final six or so miles on roads that reminded me of the ones in Costa Rica .  We got to the park where the tubing excursions leave and return to and found lots of other tour buses there-  a very popular place.  There were people renting beach shoes and a small souvenir shop as well as a restaurant.  We walked in a downpour- the second of the morning- over to the changing house and by the time we got out and were getting our tubes the rain was pretty much over and stayed that way the whole rest of the cruise.  We walked through jungly paths carrying our tubes, then waded a river holding onto a rope to help against strong currents, and through the first of the caves.  After a bit more walking, we launched ourselves into our tubes and had to hold on to handholds in the rocks to keep from being swept into the mouth of the cave before the guides were ready.  We put on our headlamps and started the trip.  The water was 72 according to our guides, and it wasn't uncomfortable.  There were some formations- the Virgin Mary which changed to an old woman as you floated past, The Thinker, and a woman nursing a baby.  But on the whole it was more the experience than the wonderful stalactites and such.  Several times we hit rapids and had to steer way over to one side to stay away from the cave walls, or lift our rears up to go over very shallow spots, or places where trees were underwater.  On the whole it was very good fun and we had a good lunch in the outdoor restaurant afterward with great chocolate rum cupcakes.  When we got back I met Pat in the village where she'd been waiting, sitting in air conditioned comfort for two hours, people watching.  We did a bit of shopping, then had to get the tender for the half hour's trip back to the ship.

In Costa Maya Mexico we both had picked the Cahchoben Mayan Ruins Trip.  The ship docked at the pier there, so we shopped first, went on the tour, ate lunch on the ship, then went back ashore and took a bus to the beach nearby.  But back to the ruins- It was a very interesting trip, lots of pyramids and temples as well as the walls from the housing street.  We climbed up and down the steps, and took tons of pictures.  The guide was very knowledgeable about flora and fauna and pointed out medicinal plants, trees scored to get chicle for chewing gum until the 1950's, strangler figs like we saw in Costa Rica and a group of black toucans- of which I saw about every body part except the beak!  It was very hot, but that's to be expected.  We shopped at the little area there, but couldn't buy much since they didn't take charges and I was hoarding my cash.

After we lunched on the ship, Pat and I tried to find a decent place to swim from the port, but there wasn't much (the town has only been developed for tourism for three years).  But I had read in my computer research that you could get a bus round trip for five dollars to a nearby beach that a lot of people had loved.  So we got the bus and were left off at the beach.  It was full of activity, people blowing conches, playing guitars, selling dried bananas and braided wrist bracelets (small girls peddling those), and drinking (bucket of six cans of beer for $10).  I bought a hanging chair for $11 less than the going price (but taking every dollar I had left which is why he let me have it, I guess), and all in all Pat and I both felt snorkeling would be minimal give the number of people in the water, so we took turns swimming and sitting with our stuff and watching the circus around us.  It was a bit more difficult finding where to get a taxi back to the ship, but we finally did.  We did some more shopping at the port, then headed back on board before the ship left without us.

Our last onshore day was in Georgetown on Grand Cayman Island- an English speaking place like Belize- which made things easy.  We had to take tenders from the ship there, too, but the ride was much shorter.  Pat and I walked around the village in the morning, poking into interesting little shops but avoiding all the high priced jewelry stores there.  Then Pat had to get back to meet with her tour group on the ship (she was doing a snuba expedition), and I poked around a bit more and found a little shopping center with cockatoos, iguanas, and two parrots, plus a statue of Big Black Dick, evidently a nasty pirate from that area.  I got back to the ship for lunch and back down to the tender line a half hour before my tour, feeling pretty confident because they had recommended only twenty minutes lead time.  However two tenders had just left which meant another wouldn't be coming around until one of them had done their drop-offs and returned.  In the meantime I listened to two men in front and back of me discussing the healing power of crystals and how one of them had established a meditation room in his house that was a vortex, so they always called down their angels for protection before doing things in there.  We had some tarot reading groups there as well, people doing workshops onboard while the rest of us were putzing around. 

Well, the time to meet my tour was getting short, but I thought I had a couple of minutes to spare, when I looked out at the gathering place on the shore and saw my group walking off, following a man holding up a Wreck and Reef Snorkel sign.  I tried to keep track of them as I hurried off the tender and down the sidewalk where I'd seen them, but they'd disappeared.  So I kept walking along the waterfront, hoping to spot them, and asking at the various ticket booths for other excursions if they knew where my tour left from.  One knew enough to tell me to go back the way I'd come, and just at the last minute (literally) a woman pointed to a walkway between two bars where she said the boat left from.  They were actually ready to throw the last line in when I ran up and asked if they were the wreck and reef group.  So I made it by the skin of my teeth.  The wreck part wasn't terribly interesting- just an old cargo ship from the forties or so that had to be sunk because it was too broken up to be repaired.  There were a few fish there including some big tarpons, but I was ready fairly quickly to move on.  We went a short way to what he called Hamburger Reef for the Burger King nearby (both of the sites just in front of where our ship was moored).  That was a really neat site.  Saw Sargent Majors and other fish I'd seen on other snorkelsand a lot of new ones, and generally had a great time going back and forth over the area they had marked off with buoys.  I was pretty far afield when I noticed the boat seemed rather full up again, so I beat it to the boat with a couple of others still in the water.  I guess most of them stayed pretty close to the boat, but I hit the outer limits.   So it was a very neat snorkel and I'd like to hit Belize and Grand Cayman with Dick sometime- no cruise ship- just lots of time to explore. When I got back to the ship, Pat was up eating lunch but planning to hit the town again- so I went back with her and we had a good time wandering around.

The last day I hit the bed a bit trying to lose some of the cold I had- but grateful that it hadn't messed up my fun.  We went back to the room after dinner and packed so we could leave our suitcases out to be taken off the ship .  The next morning we packed as we got ready and I carried my fairly heavily loaded snorkel bag with me.  I had no real problem getting to the airport or on the plane, but we had to circle once before we were cleared to land so I was about ten minutes late.  But Dick, bless him, was right there and we caught up on happenings while we drove home.

It was a great trip and wonderful chance to see old friends again!