Last fall I went on a Mexican Riviera Cruise with some friends. I had heard of a guy in the Salt Lake City area putting together a group of LDS singles to go on a cruise together. I thought it sounded fun to be with a big group of people for a cruise and to be with an LDS group. I wasn't interested in going with the sole purpose of finding my knight and shinning armor; I was legitimately excited about going on a cruise with a lot of single people and having a lot of fun... and it was. I asked two girls from my singles ward if they'd like to come and one of them also brought a co-worker.
The cruise was a 7 night and 8 day cruise and it went to Cabo and Puerto Vallarta. We flew into LAX airport and took a shuttle for the cruise down to the ship. (Learned later it would have been cheaper to have taken a taxi... live and learn.)
ON THE BOAT
Our room! Haha, when we walked into our cabin and there were only two beds we were so confused where we were all going to sleep. We finally figured out that the other two beds were in the ceiling and just needed to be pulled down.
This was the wall art just outside our cabin room. I got a major kick out of it.
Life Jackets! During the hurricane (Story below) Krista and I wanted to put the life jackets on and run around with them on but we decided that could possibly start a panic.
We decided that we should have a fake room number so if anyone ever asked (for example), "Well what room are in, maybe we'll stop by." We would just give them a fake number which was 1612. We chose this because it would be on the opposite side of the boat because evens were on one side and odds were on the other AND because it didn't even exist. Lets just say we had a lot of fun with it.
The Towel Pets on our Beds Each Night
We were obsessed with the waterslide on the slide. Krista and I even spent so much time on the slide we trully believe we perfected the art of waterslide speed.
If we weren't on the waterslide then we were playing miniture golf... our other obsession. We made a goal to play miniture golf everyday and we almost did it execpt the day of the hurricane ruined our streak because it wasn't opened that day.
We went dancing everynight on the curise. Since we were with such a big single group it was a lot of fun and we were always dorks and extra goofy.
Our first day on the boat Krista, Heidi, Whitney and I went to the Kareoke night and we were the only ones who showed up. Haha. So Krista and I sang Journey's Don't Stop Believing and we threw in a leg kick here and an imaginary guitar solo there. As the week went on we continued to attend Kareoke events, which got really popular after the first day, and everytime we sang Journey. By the end of the week we had Don't Stop Believing impecibly choreographed and synchronized.
During and after dinner each evening there are "photo stations" with backdrops and a professional photographer to take your picture. The first night when all of the photographers were pestering us to take our photo we were annoyed but the next day we caught on that you didn't have to pay to have your photo taken, you only had to pay to buy the picture. Well that changed everything. We spent the rest of the week stopping at almost every photo station, nightly, to take fun and ridiculous photos. We had such a blast doing it. They got us in the end though, we ended up loving some of the photos we took and so we each bought a photo.
Pictures like these make us think this is why we didn't make more friends while on the cruise.
Every morning Krista and I would set our alarms to get up before the sun came up and we would go get hot chocolate and then go outside and watch the sunrise over the ocean. So beautiful! The last morning the daily agenda gave us the wrong time of the sunrise and when we got outside it was already up; we were pretty sad about it.
Sunrise
Sunset
THE FOOD
When people go on cruises they seem to always talk about how incredible the food was. We weren't in love with the food on the cruise, it was usually just "alright."
On the other hand, the unlimited Ice Cream made us feel like we had died and gone to heaven. If we ever passed the ice cream machines we always got ice cream and we usually would alter our routes so that we just "happened" to pass the ice cream. There was one time, when we were headed to the ice cream machines and I had to go to the restroom so I told the girls I would meet them at the ice cream machines. On my way to meet up with them I passed a different ice cream machine and got myself some ice cream. When I caught up with them, Krista had gotten me an ice cream cone. She was so excited to give it to me and then she saw I already had one and her face fell. I laughed so hard because it was the perfect example of "happy face" and "sad face." I took the cone from her anyway... I had no problem eating two. Because it was so warm I had to alternate my licks quickly back and forth between the two cones... it took a lot of concentration.
Dinner was fun because we were in the dining room with the whole group and our cute little waiter, Max. Every night for dessert I got a plate of fruit and the chocolate moulten cake. I felt like I could justify the cake everynight if I ate it with fruit, which was delicious too.
The group at our table with our cute waiter Max
All dressed up for one of the formal nights
HURRICANE PAUL
The route for our cruise got changed due to a hurricane, Hurricane Paul, which the ship went through. I was often heard during the hurricane saying, "Silly Paul." It was a truly rocky time. While the ship was going through the hurricane we went out on deck and "played" in the storm. Pretty much we would stand in one place and let the wind push us down the deck like we were on a slipping slide. Haha, we were sliding past the dining room windows while people were eating. A few times we slipped and hit the deck pretty hard... pretty sure we lost a few years of our life.
Greetings from Hurricane Paul... wish you were here!
OUR EXCURSIONS
Dolphin Encounter (the best part of this excursion was the boat ride back to the ship! We were flying across the waves in this boat)
Krista and I went and did a Extreme Zipline adventure. Bumpy speed bus ride to the camp, donkey ride up to the top of the mountain, 9 zip-lines and 2 waterfall rappels. BEST excursion ever! We lucked out and the other people in our group were a family from Utah which was a lot of fun.
After the ziplining these were the random "dry"clothes I put on. Krista said I looked like a child and I didn't believe her so she took a photo of me so that I could see... hahaha.
Snorkeling and Lovers Beach
PORTS
Puerto Valiarta: We spent most of our time at this port at excursions but while were not off playing hard we were usually bartering in the flea market.
The first thing Krista did when we got off the ship was walk across this grass and then found this sign that said, "Please Don't Step on the Grass." Well of course we had to take a picture. While taking the picture a security guard started yelling at us... oops
Cabo: We only had about 6 hours in Cabo because of the re-routing of the trip and so we went on our excursion and then quickly ran around Cabo to see a few things before having to get back on ship.
LAX
We ended up having to spend the entire day at LAX waiting to go home... and then our flight got delayed even more. UGH! We never wanted to see LAX again.
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