ALWAYS FIND TIME FOR THE THINGS THAT MAKE YOU HAPPY TO BE ALIVE
Tampa, Florida
George Town, Grand Cayman Island
Cozumel, Mexico
Mahogany Bay, Roatan, Bay Islands, Honduras
Sunday, October the 12th of 2008 was the first day Lady and The Pirate stepped onto a cruise ship. They were invited and sailed with a lot of family, not knowing it would be the first step in their great adventure of seeing the World through cruising. Joining them were The Pirate's two uncles and aunts, along with The Pirate's cousin Tony and other extended family.
Cruising, as Lady and The Pirate found out, is a relatively inexpensive way to see the World. Most cruises visit multiple ports in multiple countries in a relatively short amount of time at a relatively inexpensive cost. Anyone trying to visit all the locales of any cruise by driving, flying and paying for lodging and food will understand the cost per day can be exorbitant. But as with all advantages, there are disadvantages. The biggest being the short amount of time any ship spends in any given port. It can be difficult to immerse oneself into a culture and many times the cruiser is just subjected to tourist based activities. Experience will help in avoiding that last point. Lady and The Pirate recognized that disadvantage early on and decided to use cruising as a means to explore locations for future longer lasting returns.
It takes a few cruises to begin assessing the ins and outs of cruising. Fortunately for many people today, social media sites like Facebook and YouTube have a plethora of content providers that can educate the new cruiser quickly. Lady and The Pirate were limited at the time in that aspect so they made mistakes and learned from them. They also learned what they liked most about cruising and adopted their cruises to those likes. Their first cruise was, as we see here, on Carnival Legend in the Western Caribbean. In that one sentence, The Pirate could dive deeper into a cruise line, a particular ship and all its uniqueness in that line, and a location in the World. Those are generally the three starting points cruisers use to book a cruise. But there are so many more parts that avid cruisers have learned to consider. The Pirate will point out some of these along the way on the site.
There's really nothing unusual about these ports of call on this cruise. If you choose a Western Caribbean cruise, you likely will stop at least at one of these if not all three. Cozumel, Mexico is almost a guarantee. In fact, there's so much cruise traffic at each of the three ports that the locals have built massive sized tourist areas with so many activities and excursions, you'll have to go back many times to see them all. What will be missing is anything steeped in local culture. Sure, you'll get some good Mexican food in Cozumel, but I promise you it will be Americanized. You can, however, find some good art and jewelry made by locals.
As of this writing, it's been almost twenty years since this cruise and The Pirate might have forgotten some of it. His memory ain't what it used to be. Lol. But come along and check out each of their cruises and check out the pics and a few stories. Hopefully, you'll find some diamonds in the rough that might assist you along your journeys.
Notes on this cruise:
If memory serves, this is the only time The Pirate wore a tuxedo on a cruise. He rented it from the cruise line and had to get fitted at home before. Years later, after booking the Queen Mary 2, The Pirate thought he'd have to don another tux. But he learned from social media it wasn't quite as formal on the QM2 as he was led to believe.
This cruise was one of two times that Lady and The Pirate cruised with a large group. They learned the second time it was not something they enjoyed as much as simply cruising alone or with a small party of one other couple. Traveling with a large group is okay as long as all the others plan their own activities and the group perhaps comes together for dinner to share their day. Lady and The Pirate also learned through the years that they really enjoyed the pleasure of sharing their lives and travels with strangers, strangers who became friends.
Carnival used to have a karaoke competition years ago called "Legends". The Pirate competed in this and won a role each of the two times. He played Elvis each time. Here's a link to the YouTube video of The Pirate in action on this very cruise...Fat Elvis on Carnival.
Lady and The Pirate found out just how dangerous it could be to wander into a Senor Frogs. Lol. The pictures below tell no lies.
It was blatantly obvious how poor Honduras is. Lady had a frank conversation with one of the tour guides there and discovered how little they earn. That being said, the people were friendly and the location was beautiful. Lady and The Pirate encourage you to spend your tourist dollars buying local goods and stay out of the ubiquitous Diamonds International stores at the cruise ports.
Lady and The Pirate would sail out of Tampa again on future cruises. The Pirate loves sailing under the Sunshine Skyway Bridge on the way out and always makes sure he's out for the sail under. On this particular cruise, the sky burst into heavy rain, but with a bit of ship cover, Lady and The Pirate still enjoyed the view from below the bridge.
Finally, Lady and The Pirate have not missed many cruise ports due to weather, but they did miss one in this cruise...Belize. A hurricane caused them to miss Belize and they spent an extra night in Cozumel. It would be several cruises later before they would finally make it to Belize.
