Cruise, Part 3

Hooray, Grand Cayman! For this stop, we had to take tenders, or smaller boats, between our ship and the dock because of the shallow waters.

I didn't enjoy this stop as much as the other two, it felt like a white people tax haven. It's a tax free territory of the United Kingdom, so they have a queen-appointed governor. We could start taking tenders at 7am, and our excursion started at 8:45am. We shuffled into a huge long line that was heading towards five or six buses. There were 21 seats on the bus, and we were numbers 21 and 22, so I had to sit in a jump seat, unable to sit with husband and having to prop myself up because there was no armrest or really floorspace for my feet. I had to be the first off and the last on at each stop, and though we were trying really hard to stick to the schedule, no one else seemed to understand that we had a timetable to keep and kept taking forever. After the first stop, we tried to trade seats, but the people who had been in those seats complained to the driver, and they made him switch us back. Unlike our driver in Jamaica, who was ready to talk about anything you wanted to ask about, and had tons of colloquial information and would get real if you wanted, the driver for this excursion shrugged off any questions I asked about politics or the history of very specific, what sounded like scripted topics. That having been said, the island is beautiful and we did a few really cool things, like the iguanas and wild chickens running around everywhere.

The first stop was a semisubmersible called the Nautilus that covered a bunch of territory of the area around where our ship was docked. There were two big shipwrecks to see, the Cali and the Barboa, and a whole lot of different fish. Mostly we saw tarpon, sergeants, angelfish, parrotfish, and coral, but I also saw some kind of shrimp, a puffer, a couple of turtles, and a moon jellyfish.

Next we were off to Hell, which is just a little rock formation. We got our passports stamped and sent my in-laws a postcard postmarked from there. It was a really weird place that was just a little shop and two decks to overlook the rocks. There wasn't really any real information given to us about what type of rocks they were, or anything.

We then headed to a gift shop where they had rum cake, keychains, coffees, shot glasses, mugs, and tourist junk. We bought some coffee and a shot glass, and headed out back to look into the tide pools. It was so pretty, but it was hard for me to focus because I was so mad at the other people on the bus, and frustrated at the lack of real information about what we were doing.

The next stop was the turtle farm/rescue/park. The goal of the park is to educate, encourage preservation, and care for the reproduction of the endangered turtles. They had several tanks that housed turtles at different age levels, had time out tanks for cantankerous ones that didn't want to get along with one another, and a huge laying beach where all the females could lay their eggs in peace.

We got to hold some juveniles, and they slapped our hands with their flippers really hard, but would calm down if you stroked them under the chin. It's a well known fact that turtles are jerks, but husband was trying to convince me otherwise.

On our way back into town, we went through a bunch of corporate sponsored roundabouts. Once we got off the bus, we went into the port area and I realized I'd lost my phone. This was really upsetting and we were both disappointed and mad, on top of the frustration from the other people on the bus. We both ran back to the bus to look around on the floor in case it'd fallen out of my pocket, but no luck. We decided to stop and get something to eat, so we got an appetizer plate at a touristy restaurant that had the best conch fritters I'd had all trip, it had mirepoix in it, unlike the others, and had a less voluminous batter so you could really taste the conch. It was tasty, but we were both still upset.

We decided to look for a phone to call the turtle place to see if anyone had turned in the phone, when a pickup truck screeched to a halt next to where we were walking on the sidewalk, and a guy jumped out asking if we were the Rossettos. His name was Waldo, he was with port authority, and he'd found my phone. He called the last person I'd been texting with from his own phone (I had no service), who happened to be my friend Alex who was also our travel agent for this trip. There was really no one better for him to have called, since she had all our booking information. Such luck! He turned in the phone to ship security, and they'd decided to drive around a bit to see if they could find us, and he recognized my shirt from the last couple of photos. We were so relieved, I was crying and we were just a mess.

Basically, we were just ready to be done with the day at this point. We headed back to the ship, stopping with ship security on the way to grab my phone, and took a couple more photos.

Once back on the ship, we headed up to the pool since we were still about two hours from leaving port and everyone was still on land. We went to the main show in the theatre that night, it was called Win! and was a weird combination of a bunch of different game shows. After heading to the seated dinner, we went to the 18+ comedy show, which was okay. It was the second cruise elegant night, so we were dressed up again, and we purchased a photo they had taken this night, to frame when we got home.

Cruise, Part 2

Wednesday, we woke up docked at Montego Bay, Jamaica. Immediately once you dock, there's not much to do because you're basically in a compound. There's a couple of stores, and places to line up for buses out of the terminal.

We docked at 9am and didn't have our excursion scheduled until 1:30pm, so we had plenty of time to get a hop on and hop off bus ticket and ride around town. The craft market was the first stop, and it was full of really pushy vendors who took it personally when you didn't want to see their stuff. We got an ironwood mortar and pestle from one guy, and from another we got a mahogany carved pig and a really touristy packable straw hat for husband with a band that says Jamaica.

While I was trying to pull him toward the van we got suckered into one more stall by a woman who called us over by saying "Grandma won't spank you if you don't buy, but looking is free." He bought two little keychains she'd made, and I was finally able to herd him back onto the bus. We then headed to somewhere more touristy, Margaritaville, and had a couple of drinks and conch fritters which were only okay, but it was relatively inexpensive and we just wanted to sit around.

We hopped back on the bus and went back to the terminal to get onto our 4x4 trucks for the excursion at 1:30. Our driver, Christopher, was really informative and also entertaining. We rode in the back of the truck (with seatbelts, don't worry, mom!) through some roads and up a hill into an area where there was new construction going in. There was an overlook from which the whole bay was visible, we could see our ship and took some good selfies.

We talked about plants, there was the touch-me-not, which closes when you tap it like in the video below, a plant they called the blood plant which is used to make a tea for erectile disfunction, and a plant called the life plant that's used as a base for a lot of herbal teas they use for medicinal purposes.

After this, we drank some rum punch and water and headed up to St Mary's Anglican Church that was built in 1847 to be used as a slave hospital for Old Montpelier estate, a plantation that was later burned. The original part of the floor, painted red, was made of ballast stones from slave ships. There were several of the original pews in the back.

On our way to the next stop, we passed a huge tree that was used to hang slaves, that had a huge strangler fig tree, a parasitic plant, all over it. It was very haunting, and it felt wrong to take pictures. We passed several different kinds of food bearing trees, breadfruit, almond, and ackee. Our next stop was the waterfall, we had to take a huge winding path past a lot of areas of non-touristy parts of the area. We learned that 45% of Jamaica's population is squatting on the land where they live, living out of makeshift huts, shipping containers, and structures of varying levels of security and stability.Some people who could afford land and could afford to build houses have been starting to squat recently, so there are some who are trying to make squatting illegal. There were a lot of little shops and little kitchens set up on the roadside, including one place the driver said were called "shoe stores" because once you go inside, that's all they're wearing. We turned into an unpaved road and it started to rain, on our way from the main road to the private entrance to the river leading to the waterfall. This cow wasn't having any of our shenanigans.

We parked at the top of a hill with the other trucks, and made our way down a slippery stone half-formed staircase to a river that was moving quickly because it had been raining for a while.

Back beyond the bridge, there was a really hard to navigate, slippery path full of fuzzy trees, mosquitos, ginger flowers, bamboo, huge spiderwebs, ferns, and complex above ground root systems. Once we got back to the actual waterfalls, the water was very cool and about waist deep, and nearly clear.

After the waterfall, we made our way back up the hill and trucked out to another little stream behind a store and cafe where they served amazing jerk chicken. We were a little behind schedule at this point so the driver hurried back down to the docks, telling us about his work, he had done his university studies in Jamaican history, and he know a ton about the ethnic makeup of the island, about the Maroons and their stealing of slaves, how they'd set up ambushes for the British forces and plantation owners.

Everything we did this day was really such a fascinating and full visit, I'd love to go back to Jamaica and do a real, in-depth historical visit and learn so much more, but doing it as a cruise destination again would also be welcome.

Cruise, Part 1

This cruise was amazing. Best trip ever. We both agreed that both cruises, wherein you get to experience a few places for a short period of time, and longer vacations where you get a more in-depth experience of wherever you go, have pros and cons. I think the cruise was a great way to get into traveling together more than just to see family, and a good way to get quick glimpses into different cultures. It really didn't feel like this was our last cruise, I have a strong feeling we'll be going on a few of them throughout our life together.

This cruise was on the Carnival Magic, leaving from Galveston September 22nd and returning the 29th, spending two days and change at sea, going to Montego Bay in Jamaica, George Town in Grand Cayman, and Cozumel, Mexico, and spending one day and change getting back to Galveston.

We drove down to Galveston on Saturday the 21st and had dinner at Gaido's, a seafood restaurant that's over 100 years old. We had grilled scallops and grilled salmon, and it was unbelievably good. If we go back to Galveston, this is definitely where we'll be eating.

The next morning we walked around a little on the beach and into a seaside store to look around, then headed up to start the check in and boarding process a little after noon. The process was slow but easy, kind of like airport security but without pat downs or nudity machines. That afternoon, we spent some time walking around to get a handle on the layout of the ship, looking around the shops, and had a beer in the pub. Later, we went to our seated dinner in the restaurant where we had assigned seating with the two other couples seated at our table.

We had very little in common with the other couples, they'd both known each other and been married a significantly longer time than we had, they both had kids (not with them), and they were mostly interested in getting drunk. They talked a lot about their supportive and close by families, and their churches. We're pretty culturally and politically aware, and were very interested in what's really going on in the countries we were visiting, but any time we tried to bring up things we'd learned during the day, we got blank stares. I used the word "equidistant" and one of the guys replied, "Well, I failed geography, so..." They were very nice people, and I'm sure on their own turf, they do well, it was just a very awkward place for us to be seated and made conversation difficult. Quality of the food as opposed to the other dinner options more than made up for it, so we continued to go back more nights than not.

That night, we did a lot of watching the tv channel with the map showing our location, our heading and speed, our latitude/longitude, and the windspeed and direction. Wind speeds got up to 75km/hr, and there was thunder and lighting outside, we heard several big waves hitting the boat making a big echoing noise periodically through the night so neither of us slept very well. I didn't anticipate being seasick at all, but I had a dizziness that felt like an alcohol buzz so I took the once daily Dramamine and was much, much better off. I kept taking these for the remainder of the week, just in case.

The next morning, we got room service for breakfast, and headed up to the Ocean Plaza for something called Super Trivia, part 1. It turned out to be general trivia with categories, the teams were men against women, and I volunteered to be team captain for the women. There was a big foam die that you tossed once to choose the category, and a second time for the score for that question. If you hit five on the score, you kept tossing until you got a number that wasn't five. Both sides did pretty well, but the women were up at the end by ten points. We had to go back for Super Trivia each day at sea.

Karaoke was next, he sang Rocket Man and I sang Faithfully, and people were still stopping both of us by the end of the cruise telling us we did a great job singing. This was our first experience with the KJ, Jay. He was hilarious, likely Korean, walked like he was wearing a girdle everywhere he went, and compared everyone's voice to someone famous in a way that made no sense. To me, he said, "I love the green streaks, very Nicki Minaj." and then "Wow, she can hit high notes like Celine Dion" after I finished singing. Others were "voice as strong as Christina Aguilera" and the like. Every time someone sang a country song (probably 90% of the population of the boat was from Texas, so this was every couple of songs), he said "yee haw" but the vowels sounded like "ni hao".

Monday night was steakhouse night, we had reservations at the fancypants steakhouse at the rear of the ship, and it was the best food, ever. We had surf and turf and a New York strip, the appetizers and dessert were amazing, and it was all unbelievably delicious. After this, we went back to the room and watched the ocean from our balcony until bedtime.

It was "cruise elegant" night, so everyone was in some form of fancy clothes, from some stuff that could be considered business casual to tuxes and prom dresses. We met the captain, Stefano, and got our picture with him.

Tuesday, another day at sea, we had room service breakfast on the balcony again, just looking out over the gorgeous water as far as the eye can see. We passed a few container ships during the day. We played some Name That Song: Cartoon themes, round two of Super Trivia and the men finished two points up. Husband went on the water slides for a while, I laid out in the adult-only Serenity area on a big round lounge chairs I was lusting after on the web before we left and read for a couple of hours. We mostly laid around this day, played $10 each in the casino slot machines. Husband played his most favorite slot machine ever, called Kitty Glitter.

The buffet was for dinner, and played pub quiz with the team name Pig People.

The Beginning

Ohai! We got married 28 October 2012, and I'm finally getting on top of blogging about our family.

We've had kind of a rough first year as a married couple, a few weeks after we got back from our annual road trip to spend the winter holidays with my in-laws, I was diagnosed with melanoma from a mole on my chest. It was only stage one, but it had reached a level in the architecture of the skin where it could have spread via the circulatory system. I had to go under for them to remove the skin around it as well as sentinel lymph, and everything tested fine and I'm completely cancer free, but we've been fighting an uphill battle with our insurance company for the last 8 months trying to get the bills paid, and it's still not finished yet. They "have to make sure" it wasn't a preexisting condition. Thankfully after this coming January, no one else will have this problem.

We're looking into buying a house relatively soon. We're also in the process of planning ahead for children. We just got back from our first cruise (and the husband's first time on soil not belonging to Canada or the US!), so I'll be blogging about that next, complete with pictures. Hooray!