Cozumel

Today we set the clock back and got up around 8. By 8:30 we were at My Fair Lady restaurant on Deck 4, before getting off the ship. Puppy liked Krista!

The ship is so pretty from here - looks like the dock was built with this view in mind.
We walked around the area a bit and got some meds for Randy and earrings for me.  Then we found a place to book an island tour that seemed like a nice way to spend the day. 
We hustle back to the ship to get ready, pick up a few sodas for the road, and we were ready! Our van driver spoke very little English so he didn't talk much. He drove us through a rough-looking town and a rough-looking stretch outside of town. We were starting to wonder if this was such a great idea when he stopped at a homey-looking location, settled in a small clearing in the forest.  This is a great place!
The dog's name is Bacardi. Good dog.
The man in charged walked us out behind the building to a small area with visual aids. This man is passionate about his business and his tequila. He even passed around some mosquito spray so we would be safe and comfortable. 
He said the area of Jalisco is the source of tequila, and the purpose of a worm is to check the quality; if it's alive to the bottom, the stuff is good. Blue agave is one of the best - it takes 12 years to make. 

He introduced us to "Mexican yoga" - swallow, breath in through nose, lift the chin, and breath out through mouth. We had about 8 samples and they were all excellent. I don't really drink but after all that none of us felt even tipsy!
This one is the one I liked the best.
This was a great stop!
Next our quiet but friendly driver took us to Punta Morena beach on the other side of the island, where we wanted to spend the rest of our tour time. This is a beautiful small beach. 
Today it was too windy to brave those waves but we weren't here to swim anyway. We were here to relax!
After a while a guy came over to take our food orders. OK, we'll split some nachos. $31 was more than we expected but there was a lot of food and it was good.
We were supposed to leave soon to see more sites but we all wanted to spend the rest of our tour right here. I looked for driver to tell him but couldn't find him. Oh well, he'll find us. We snacked on what Glenda calls Puppy Chow and lay in the sun.
The driver came to see if we wanted to leave or stay here until it's time to just go back. Great! And I'm glad we did because soon a guy came along with a couple of animals, asking if we wanted photos.  Who told him that I ALWAYS want animal photos? His macaw is named Blue and she was very sweet. In spite of those big claws, she was very gentle and didn't dig in. 
His other pet was a big iguana named....Princess! I just love a big scaley lizard named Princess! I gladly forked over $10 for this.
Krissy got her photos, too.
Blue had a trick: at the "bang" cue she pretended to get shot. So cute!!!
Eventually we did have to leave this bit of paradise. We rinsed the sand off via a home-made shower and went back to the ship.
Onboard we got a real shower and another nap before heading out to dinner. We really like the staff - they are so nice.
My dinner was excellent!

Belize

Ship time was set back 1 hour today. Our gang met up on Deck 4 at the My Fair Lady restaurant at 8:30 for a good breakfast.

We went back to our rooms to change shoes because it seemed unusually cool and wet outside and we were scheduled to take City Bus Tour with Rum Factory today. We waited in line for a tender to take us ashore, followed by a surprisingly long tender ride in the rain.

Our bus driver Victor wasn't going to let a little (or a lot) of rain get in the way of his tour. He pointed out the tall monument that marks the grave of Baron Edward Bliss, who spent 3 months anchored here and wrote a will that left the bulk of his fortune to Belize. So far it has provided over $900,000 to Belize - pretty good for a guy who never set foot on it!

Lots of English actually settled here, attracted by the natural beauty and the vast fortunes to be made from local Mahogany trees. Now the trees are protected and harvesting is managed. 

Victor pointed out that the Mosquito Coast movie was partially filmed here. And he spoke a little Creole for us, which he said is really just their normal English, just spoken really fast and slurred together. 

He pointed out an old English-style house of an elderly English woman who, after she passed, was embalmed and put under the house in rocking chair. 

Victor said this area is a little below sea level, which makes for good fishing but can be tough in bad weather. Hurricane Lisa (2022) was hard on lots of houses here. But people are still living houses like this one:

The Nazarene high School is this long yellow building; it would look better in nice weather.
Victor talked a lot about life in town. I thought it was interesting so I made a lot of notes. 

Laws: You get 15 years in prison for robbing a tourist. If you have an unauthorized gun, you get 5 years plus 3 months per bullet. And there is a $500 fine for littering, or 3 months in prison. There is an 8 pm curfew for girls and boys, and if they don't comply the parents have to appear before a judge. And the police don't carry guns, and they drink beer instead of coffee!

Housing: You can find a nice hotel for under $600 a month and $275,000 can buy you a middle class house on the ocean front. This area looks poor and run down, but this is old capital; Victor said the new one is modern. I like old better than new but poor is always difficult. 

People: The population is about 50 percent young people. Every Friday night there is a big party for singles, and currently the attendance ratio is about 10 women to 1 man. There are 5 languages here: Creole, Spanish, English, Garifuna, and Mayan. Unfortunately they have several gangs in town, including Bloods and West Side Crips. 

Travel: Gas costs $8.06 a gallon. When the bus made a turn, Victor would tell us where the road led to: 92 miles to Mexico, and Princess Margaret road would take us to Houston, Texas. There are only 4 traffic lights in town. Taxis here have green license plates.

Food: The locals eat a lot of rice, beans, and chicken. Generally they go home for a big lunch, then eat lightly at night. There are mostly Indian stores and Chinese restaurants here.  Mennonites supply the chicken and milk and make great ice cream. They don't have many fast food chains, only Subway and Pizza. The other fast food for burgers and chicken is Chicken Express, which are owned by the Mennonites.

Stores: The big cigarettes factory is surrounded with rolled razor wire. There are a lot of Guatemala sidewalk stores. Bridies store is their local version of Walmart, with a large warehouse that is properly painted yellow.
General stuff: They have a Prime Minister, not a president, and they have crocodiles in the river that goes through town. Olympian runner Marion Jones donated a lot for a track (her mom is from Belize) but Victor said it hasn't been completed yet. Besides mahogany, Belize exports cashews and lobsters. Almost all of the government and large buildings are painted yellow - don't' know why. They call cricket basketball and call baseball soccer. They have 2 local TV stations. And there is a swinging bridge that connects the north and south sides of the city. It can only be used from 5 am to 6 pm because it is manually operated by a 4-man hand crank. 

Next it was time for our Rum Factory tour at Travellers Liquors. 
Inside was nicer than rainy outside.
How nice, not just a tour but also a gift shop!
Out to the street again, past more houses that have not faired well through weather and age. 
Some roads were so flooded that they were unnavigable.
We were dropped off near the dock to wait for our tender back to the ship. It was a nice area, with shops and an open air restaurant. We settled in and ordered some beef nachos that were quite good.
Then back on the tender, with the rain settled down to a light drizzle. The guys who work on the tenders are very casual about the whole thing.
After all this we still had time to get to the Windjammer for a snack before! Then I played cards and Randy napped until it was time for dinner.

12/11 Chacchoben Mayan Ruins in Costa Maya

Today was our first day off the ship so we met in the Windjammer for an early breakfast, then went to the Orpheus theater to await our turn to leave. We were headed out to see some Mayan ruins and we had to sign a waiver; I didn't really read it but fortunately that didn't matter - the jist of it was don't be a destructive jerk, and I don't need a document to know that.

Coming ashore we looked across the water to see a picturesque town. So picturesque that I know it was built to please the tourists. They did a great job - it does look charming!
And then, just like that, the touristic section was over. Welcome to the real town. 
Although they do have a very clean and tidy gift shop.
Our guide was Vladimir and our driver was Sergio. Sergio didn't have much to say but Vladimir made up for that. He started out by saying the Yucatan peninsula has no mountains. It has a flat limestone layer and underground rivers which creates sinkholes (aka Cenotes, which is a Yucatec Mayan word that has survived to our time). He said the peninsula is where the meteor that killed the dinosaurs landed. 

The path to the ruins was smooth and walkable, even with the young trees growing randomly in the middle.
Just off the path was an absolute jungle.  I like it that way, and nobody was tempted to go off path. 
That encompassing jungle works wonderfully to hide the ruins from sight until the last minute for maximum impact!
I think he said this one was an observatory. 
A local joke is that the pyramids are only still here because they were too heavy to steal. Probably true. And when someone asks where the Mayans disappeared too, the answer is that they are still here, too - they are these local people. Also, the Mayan calendar included Leap Year!

About this time I got very distracted by the amazing trees. Vladimir said that much of this land had been cleared to access the pyramids and the forest near it was replanted as late as 1995! But not all the pyramids have been excavated and surely some of the trees nearby are older - they are so interesting!

As we walked to another pyramid, Vladimir mentioned that many ruins have not been excavated yet. All along our walk the trees and rubble hid or camouflaged pyramids or walls.
To our surprise (and joy) there were several pyramids. We'd walk on a path cleared through a bit of jungle, and there would be another beautiful pyramid. I like my ruins to look their age and not be too spruced up, so I thought these were perfect.
We'd climb the steps and peer into openings, wondering what they were really used for. Probably nothing good. 
Vladimir had more information for us, such as the fact that the Mayan calendar included leap year. And he passed around some local spice leaves that smells like cloves, although if you bite it, it will numb you a bit, like a mild pepper.  

And one of these pyramids was where women and children were sometimes sacrificed for rain. 

And local trees produced the stuff used in the original Chiclets. The trees release a latex-like substance when their bark is damaged and locals would use it to clean their teeth. Somehow businessmen decided to use it for Chiclets. So the trees would be hacked with a machete to make the sap flow into containers at the base of the tree.  Vladimir also mentioned that the machete guys would pee on the sap to speed the sap flow - that fact didn't make it into the brochures.
Nearby was a special stone that Vladimir said was used to offer alcohol, fruit to the dead. It points east and west to help dead out of this world and into underworld.
He kept sharing information with our group but I didn't hear because I was dawdling behind to admire the trees. 
Vladimir had hired Luis, a local guy, to help keep us together, like a sheepdog hearding up the strays. That was me. I was always behind everyone else because I was loving those trees! He never hurried me; eventually he understood I was strangely interested in unusual trees and starting pointing out the interesting ones!
I missed the entire conversation about this interesting stone with writing on it. Too bad, I would have enjoyed that.
More ancient pyramids! This one might be the temple of the sun.
I lost track of what their names are. Just admiring them.
Luis was so nice. After making sure I didn't get lost all along the way, he took some photos for us.
Selfie!
At the last pyramid people were looking up so we did too. And there were several small monkeys playing around in the branches. They were too fast to photograph clearly so we just enjoyed watching them. 
Then it was time to get back on the bus and head to the ship. Vladimir talked the whole ride but I didn't hear anything except that Yucatan either means I understand you or I cannot understand you (not really helpful). We drove through the town again. 
We were dropped off at that touristic shopping area near the dock. 
One thing I would have done if I felt we had the time was the "fish pedicure". You put your feet into big fishbowls full of tiny fish who will nibble on your toes. 
We stopped for a photo op, then headed back to the ship. 

The first thing to do was take a nap! Then the group went to play Trivia but I kept napping. I got up in time for dinner, though and I'm glad I did - my spaghetti was excellent and our wine tonight tasted like Christmas in a glass!

The group went to see the late show while I headed right back to bed. Maybe I'll catch up on my sleep on this trip.