This sailing was on the Sky Princess, a very beautiful ship. We had our favorite cabin, “the big, fat mini-suite on Marina deck.
On the Ship
Some of the food on the ship was as good as any we’ve ever had on a ship. Some of it was pretty good. And some of it was just okay. I didn’t take a lot of food shots this time.
Below shows the Club Class section of the Estrella dining room. Club Class mini-suites are more expensive than ordinary min-suites, but for us it’s well worth it when we can get our favorite cabin and the much better dining room experience that you get in Club Class. Suites, which we don’t book, also get Club Class.
We had a nice table for two by the window when this pic was taken.
Tulum
This trip was all about our wish to see Mayan ruins. We originally booked an excursion to Chichen Itza, but that one was canceled so we booked Tulum instead. Tulum was spectacular! I have no regrets on going there instead of Chichen Itza.
The excursion bus dropped us off in a shopping area. We’re not shoppers, but we did get to see something interesting there anyway. I don’t know what this is called. I suppose I’d think of it as the “pole swinging guys.”
I took so many photos at Tulum! It’s hard to sort out a few for this post. This site is spectacular. The ruins sit on a bluff above the ocean, and it’s absolutely gorgeous. It was a beautiful day, but very hot for us since we came from cold weather. At one point, we found some benches under a shady tree. We stopped and ate a snack. And cooled off! Other semi-melted and totally-melted folks were doing the same thing. There were other people there, but it didn’t feel crowded at all. If you plan to go, be aware that there’s a lot of walking and a lot of stair climbing.
When we arrived on the bus at the shopping area, we noticed a Hagen Das kiosk, and that started sounding really good. We walked back there and got two scoops of ice cream each for a huge number of pesos. I looked at our charge card when we returned, and we paid $17 and some odd cents for the ice cream! I guess we need to do more on-the-fly math in our heads before we buy ice cream in a foreign currency.
Roatan
We didn’t do an excursion here; we just got off the ship and walked. There’s a lovely little nature trail that splits off from the main drag that goes over to Mahogany Bay Beach. The nature trail humps up over a hill and was really nice. Not too many people go that way, which is a bonus to my mind.
This is Mahogany Bay Beach from our balcony on the ship. The color of the water was amazing!
The little nature trail had several side trails that dropped down for views across the bay.
Altun Ha and River Cruise
This excursion in Belize was in two parts, separated by lunch. The first part was a tour of the Mayan ruins at Altun Ha. The second part was a river cruise back down to the port area.
We liked Altun Ha a lot. It was calm and uncrowded, with a lot of nice ruins to look at. They allow people to climb to the tops of some of these, and Bob did that on two of them. I passed on that, since I have an uncooperative hip thing going on right now. Some of the steps are very tall, and I could see that would be a problem for me. Darn.
The lunch we were served at the lunch stop sucked. There just isn’t a way to put a positive spin on it. But we did get a nice visitor crawling under the table and nuzzling around Bob’s leg. We fed the nice iguana some lettuce, which he seemed to enjoy. We never feed wildlife, but this guy honestly didn’t seem all that wild.
I didn’t take any photos on the river cruise portion because I was too busy swiveling my head back and forth to see both sides of the river and bank. We did see some good things, including a couple of crocodiles.
We also saw a jabiru stork. Seeing the stork was special, but even more special was that it was standing in a nest feeding a little storklet. Or whatever a baby stork might be called. We could see the little head popping up and down.
We also saw manatees! That was a biggy on our list of animals to see, since we got a poster for Christmas that you scratch off animals you’ve seen and places you’ve been. We were able to scratch off the manatee, leaving only two animals unscratched.