Cruising the Caribbean 2008

Hi all! Ok so I am home from my amazing cruise and decided to walk you all through the play by play of all the awesome things we did.. so I figure its best to just go through pictures considering that between the 7 of us (me, megan, preston, mark, bre, amy, cherilynn) we have over 1500 pictures. I'll simply choose a few and go through it! Enjoy and try not to be too jealous... :)

Trip to Miami:

We flew out on a red eye on friday the 30th of may. I know the date well because it was also the last day of school for me. I was cutting it close, but a great jump start to summer. We had so much energy on the trip there which ended up feeling like 48 hours with no sleep. I was of course busy behind the camera and don't have any pictures of myself at the airport, but this will have to do.

Here I am at 9:00 am saturday morning May 31st. This is florida time, it was more like 7am utah time, and we had already stopped at the Atlanta airport at something like 4am utah time. So we were tired, but we were excited! Sleep deprivation only helped with our silliness. We rented a car and got a hotel and then spent the day in Miami.

We started off the day with a shower of course, and a nap. So the day started at about 4:00 and we went to California Pizza Kitchen in Miami. We had an interesting waiter, who told us his plans to become a model/actor, and took about 7 hours to feed us! We then went and spent a few hours at Miami Beach. I love the beach, and the water was beautiful. I'm used to california beaches where the water isn't quite so blue, but we swam in the ocean, and this began that inside joke about the "sneak attacks". Those sneaky waves that catch ya off guard and either take you under, or give you a mouth full of that delicious salt water. It was such a fun day, and thats the beginning of an amazing trip!

Excursions:
Now this is the really exciting part, we stopped in Cozumel Mexico, The Grand Cayman, and Ocho Rios Jamaica, and I loved them all! Here's some of the things we did! :)

First off Cozumel...

And the first stop in Cozumel is snorkeling. Thanks to my awesome friend Megan and her amazing waterproof camera we were able to document every excursion on the trip, and take sweet underwater pictures. So here we are snorkeling. We went to three different reefs and spent about a half hour at each reef. It was really fun, and the first time I'd actually been snorkeling- I love it.

Part 2 of Cozumel was parasailing. Now what we learned from this trip is not to book excursions through the cruise line. As we got off the ship there were people soliciting their excursions to us. We saw parasailing, and thought it would be so much fun. BUT they were saying something like 70 bucks to parasail and we decided to look around. Well we went parasailing and snorkeling to three reefs for 75 bucks... we thought we did a good job finding a good deal. The bargaining that we did in Mexico was amazing and added so much to the experience. Now, about parasailing... we were taken by taxi to this amazing resort where the boat was going to pick us up at. We got on the boat and it started to rain. The men that were on the boat and helping us it didn't seem to phase them, but I was drenched! Head to toe-wet! It again added to the experience, but once we were up in the air-300 feet above the water- the rain stopped and it was incredible. When you are up that high its completely silent. The wind isn't blowing, and you can see what feels like the entire ocean. My favorite part was seeing all the different shades of blue that were in the ocean. Dark blue at the deepest part, and it went almost turquoise at shallow points and sand bars. It was a beautiful view, and so much fun!

And to conclude my trip to Cozumel these are pictures taken while we were out on the town. A little margaritaville, a trip to the local grocery store (which was like a wal-mart style store), the city streets, and of course the amazing fresh churros- they put ours to shame. Overall it was an amazing port. We met amazing people, found some killer deals, and got a glimpse into their culture.

Next up Grand Cayman:
We all stuck together there rather than doing our own thing, and it was so much fun to have everyone there. Also, we met these two guys Alex and Matt while waiting to board the boat, and they ended up getting changed to our dinner time, and get this, our dinner table! So we all became good friends, and they joined the group for our Grand Cayman excursions! They're from Ohio and pretty much loved us from Utah!

Kissing a sting ray is supposed to give you 7 years good luck.. I guess we'll see!

The group was Alex, Cherilynn, Bre, Mark, Preston, Megan, Me, and Matt

Our first stop in Grand Cayman was at Sting Ray City. By the sound of the name you think its an aquarium or something where they take you to see the domesticated sting rays with their stingers cut off and you get to play in the water with them. WRONG! We went on a boat out into the middle of the ocean. There is a sand bar where the water is about waist high, and then about 150 sting rays hang out there. We were given squid so they would come up to us, and it was really a cool experience. We hung out there for about 40 minutes before heading off to do some more snorkeling (our new favorite pass time).

So while we were snorkeling our guide dove down and grabbed this conch shell. I happened to be near him when he did it, and he gave it to me. He check to make sure that nothing was living in it, and sure enough it was empty and I got a great, fresh from the ocean souvenir. Its a smelly souvenir however, but nothing a little lysol hasn't fixed! :)

And our final port was Jamaica:
We were warned about Jamaica and it being a scary place, but we were pleasantly surprised by how beautiful it was and how it was truly a tropical island! I would love to go back!

Ok.. this is jamaica! Just off the boat this is the beautiful view that greeted us! We then went to Dune River Falls. This was a hike, where you literally hike the falls. We were climbing on rocks, slipping on rocks, and getting drenched the whole time!

So we hiked up all 7 of us, we decided against having a guide because they took forever, and made everyone hold hands all the way up, and we wanted to go at our own pace and be able to go wherever we wanted to go. It was so beautiful, the water was amazing (mainly because it was fresh water-something we hadn't seen in a few days). And at about the end of the falls, I stepped on a slippery part of a rock, and fell down. Now I felt ok, looked ok, until you saw my hand. These silly nails of mine got in the way, I completely ripped off my nail on my middle finger and my thumb. I was bleeding, and trying to explain to everyone that I was ok, however the pain was ridiculous! Pictures don't do justice for the damage that was done.

But not to worry I was bandaged up, and even made it to the top of the falls! Even with the injury Jamaica was beautiful, and an amazing place to go- can't wait to go back!

We then went shopping in town (probably the most I've ever been hassled to buy things), and even found the church (so of course we had to take a picture of it), I even got my hair braided half way, but only kept it in for a few days. Despite the smile on my face, she pulled my hair so hard it hurt really bad, but I smiled through it!

This next group of pictures will be just of the good times on the cruises. Formal dinners, Karaoke, Ice Cream cones, and so many other amazing times!


Day 1 on the boat.. A great view of Miami, a Map of our trip (resembles a missionary map-I know) and the Rome Lounge where all the shows happen and we spent a lot of time there!


This is club hollywood where we spent many a night, and these are our hot life jackets that we had to do when we were doing our evacuation practice- good thing we never needed them!


Karaoke at its finest, and this amazing sunset we had after one of the formal nights. It rained all through dinner, and then when we came out it had stopped and there was this sunset.


The magic show, Reynold our waiter, And line dance class...we tore it up!


Mark and Preston at dinner My photo shoot at dinner. The ladies at the sunset


More formal night and sunset pictures! Amy, myself, and Megan.


The whole group with the sunset. Hollywood Dance Club! Last formal night w/braids.



The entire group on the last night. It rained again during dinner leaving a rainbow afterwards. Charlies Angels and Preston.It was once again a great night, and trip!


Waiting for a show-the lady who took this picture loved our pose! Ladies on formal night! The greastest dessert ever!!Chocolate Melting Cake- had it every night.


Megan and I one night! Our favorite place! 24 hour soft serve. We loved it late
at night after dancing. Literally drinking the chocolate cake!



Ladies again.. Dinner again.. A show with Alex...


Game show night just before Preston went up! Our one and only charge a strawberry pina colada virgin of course! Me and my crazy wind hair at sunset.


Outside Miami we were so sad to go home! Our room. We didn't spend much time there. Sunset and me!



The waterslides on the boat-although I don't think anyone of us tried them. Our dinner table and Preston and I in Jamaica.



The real dinner group... Our new friends Matt and Alex from Ohio. Amy and I at Karaoke.



Our amazing steward Clynton. He was the greatest! This is a picture of one of the towel animals he left us, and the last picture is Mark and I. We ended up winning parts in the final show on the last day because of our great singing voices (haha) I was Britney Spears and he was Ricky Martin. It was really hilarious.



The popstars with their fans. Dinner at CPK in Miami.

In all honesty I could go on and on talking about what we did, and believe it or not this is only a dent in the pictures that I have. Overall, as you can see, it was an amazing trip, and I made some really great friendships with so many great people! So this is probably the longest blog I'll ever write, but I just didn't want to leave out any of the fun that we had. I can't wait for my next vacation! :)