Our First Cruise: Day 4

I appologize in advance. This is the longest post of the cruise yet. The day could have been a disaster but we had such a great time and there are just too many pictures that I couldn't narrow it down more than this. 


Our second port was in Costa Maya, Mexico.

We scheduled an excursion through a non-Carnival company, Shore Trips, before we left for our cruise. In fact, we schedule three of our four excursions through Shore Trips.


To get to the excursion desk, we had to walk outside the cruise port security gates and up the road just a little. The pink building in the photo is where we needed to meet the excursion. The store on the left is "going out of business" and seemed to be the only thing open in the area.


We arrived early and waited. And waited. No one showed up, not cruise passengers nor an excursion guide. A local man called the contact number from our voucher but no one picked up. Fifteen minutes past the time we were supposed to leave on the excursion we decided to head back to the port and come up with a back up plan.


Unfortunately we never got to see the Chacchoben Mayan ruins as planned. The only "ruins" we saw was this fake ruin-like thing in the little town.

Once we got back to the port area, we rented a golf cart for the day to drive around the area. The town, Mahahual, is almost two miles from the port so we headed there.  

I have learned since being back home that Costa Maya is the tourist region and Mahahual is the little fishing village that is now catering to tourists.


The company we rented the golf cart from had a connection with a local bar along the beach boardwalk. We  probably spent three or four hours there, just kicking it on the beach while eating and drinking local fare.


The kids had free access to the bar's kayaks but found it was too hard to paddle against the wind and opted for swimming and snorkelling.


An ocean view, a hammock and a margarita. It doesn't get much better than that!










Do you see Walt?


The simple tacos were so absolutely delicious. My mouth is watering now just thinking about them.






I would love this view every day. Do you think you could appreciate it as much if you saw it every single day? I would like to have to chance to find out!

The clouds grew thicker and it started to rain so we packed up and drove around.


And Josh drove!

We had the okay from the man who rented the golf cart to us. Josh still didn't think he would get the chance. The roads weren't too busy but we did have cars pass us. Josh handled it all pretty well considering it was his first time driving a vehicle on his own.


He said it was harder than he thought it would be. Maybe he expected it to be more like a video game?


We drove past the town and down a dirt road along the beach. Once it got pretty desolate we turned around and drove back.


Since Josh drove, Carley wanted to try too! Walt let Carley sit in his lap and steer for a bit while  on the dirt road. She loved it.


All of the houses in Mahahual are shacks but still beautiful in their own right. The locals definitely have a simpler life.


Most of the houses had satellite dishes.


The catholic church.


We saw various lizards and iguanas sunbathing along the road.




So long Costa Maya.


We absolutely loved our waiter in the dining room on the boat. We told him the night before that we were going to miss dinner so we could watch a sunset, which always occurred during our dinner time, and that we would just grab dinner in the buffet. Gus insisted that he could still serve us if we got there as much as 45-minutes late.

So that was the plan.


This is as much of a sunset we got that night. The clouds were too thick down on the horizon. It was still beautiful.

Carley was off at Camp Carnival for a kids dinner. Josh ate a cheeseburger from Guy's Burger Joint. As it turned out, it was going to be just me and Walt for dinner that night.

Walt had gone down to the bar to get another drink. Once it was time to go to the dining room, I went to find him.


He was deep in conversation with a very drunk German, Reinhardt Schmidt Wagner (read: Vagner).


We missed dinner after all. Instead, we hung out at the bar with Reinhardt while getting a little drunk ourselves.


And later we soaked up the alcohol with some buffet dinner. It was a good night.

In case you are curious, I contacted Shore Trips who contacted the local excursion company about us missing the trip. The excursion said he went and actually left a little late. We think he is wrong. Somehow there was a mix up. Ultimately our excursion was refunded and the next two excursions booked through Shore Trips went off without a hitch.