Key Largo, Montego, Baby Why Don’t We Go (Or, a Week on The World’s Largest Cruise Ship): Part Thirteenfeatured
There’s these things you never want to say when your friends/family/coworkers ask you about you get home. There’s the bad luck stuff. “The ship left without me” or “The airline lost my luggage.” There’s “I broke my arm getting off a tour bus” or “My companion had to be medevac’ed.” The serious stuff. And then, there’s there’s us. And our “I woke up at 6:00 am before the sun was even up.” On vacation. I really shouldn’t be complaining – I was the one who insisted we go to Tulum. The adventure sounded amazing when I was in my normal routine at home. But once you get on vacation and you realize you signed yourself up for an excursion with a 7:30 am meeting time, that adventure doesn’t seem so appealing.
6:00 am ship time was 5:00 am at home. I don’t even wake up for work until 7:30 am, so this 6:00 am wakeup call was killer.
We packed our backpacks and set out our clothes the night before so we could squeeze every extra bit of sleep into our morning. It didn’t help much because when the alarm went off, none of us wanted to get up.
But we did. We still weren’t docked in Mexico and the sun wasn’t out yet, but we got up, got dressed, and headed up to the Windjammer for an early breakfast.
Breakfast was okay. Standard fare. The fare served in the Windjammer tasted the same as everything I’ve ever eaten for breakfast on the Carnival Lido restaurants. Powdered eggs taste like powdered eggs. Bacon and sausage taste like bacon and sausage. Soggy French toast tastes like soggy French toast.
Offerings were plentiful in variety and choice, but I had my mind on one thing and one thing only: coffee. And then I realized I had an eight hour tour ahead of me and headed for some protein.
The Windjammer was relatively active for 6:30 in the morning. Once we had our fill of breakfast fare, we headed outside for some fresh air and to catch the sunrise.
Our excursion called for us to meet in the Amber Palace at 7:30 in the morning for an 8:00 am departure. At least a dozen other excursions were meeting there at the same time, and getting everyone sorted and off the ship took awhile, so I took a nap while we waited for our excursion to be called.
Once our excursion and sticker color were called, we were escorted down to deck zero and off the ship. The first part of our trip called for a tender ride to the mainland, and the tender met us right at the pier.
The tender ride is just over a half hour and despite the calm looking seas, this boat moves very fast and the ride is very, very rocky. Many people got sea sick. I literally had to keep my head down to avoid seeing all the sick people around me. Mom and Stephanie fared okay with their sea sickness patches, but even me, who prays for rocky seas because I don’t get sea sick and the motion makes me sleepy, had points where I had to stare at a fixed point to quell any nausea from bubbling up. If you are prone to sea sickness of any kind, an excursion to the mainland might not be for you. It will be a miserable half hour both ways.
We docked in Playa del Carmen and met up with our tour guide, Andres, who led us to our bus. On the way to the bus, they made everyone stop for pictures with their party, which held up the line a bit. The bus was large and clean, and Andres was certainly passionate about his culture and Mayan history because he told us about it for the entire bus ride.
We stopped for a 20 minute rest stop at a market just outside of Tulum. I stayed on the bus (we’d be doing plenty of walking soon enough and I’m not a shopper who likes to negotiate on everything she buys). Once everyone was back onboard, we were handed a small frequency radio and headphones for use at Tulum.
Our first impressions of Tulum was that it was incredibly commercialized. When we’d visited Xunantunich and even Chaccoben, it was ruins, nature and a very small gift shop. There was a Dairy Queen at the entrance of Tulum. And a Subway, I think. And many shops. Xunantunich and Chaccoben were like small county fairs. Tulum was like Six Flags Great America.
We were instructed to put our earbuds in, turn on our radios and follow Andres to the grounds. It’s a short hike from the entrance to the grounds. There’s a tram for a couple bucks, but Andres decided we would all walk together. This was very much a guided tour. Andres led us from one ruin to the next, telling us the history of the land and the culture. It was incredibly hot and humid and we found ourselves listening in on the radio from the nearest shade we could find. We had about two hours of touring at Tulum and around an hour to explore on our own.
Once we were set loose to explore on our own, I searched for something to climb. A lot of my fun in exploring the Mayan ruins is climbing the biggest one I can find. There is nothing to climb at Tulum. They’re all roped off and none of them are that tall, anyways. So I did the next best thing: I went to the beach lookout where 98 Degrees filmed Give Me Just One Night (Una Noche).
While I didn’t care for the incredibly commercialized set up at Tulum (or the fact there was nothing for me to climb), I will say this – it is absolutely stunning out there. We were free to go to the beach if we wanted to, but it was at least a hundred steps down to the beach from where we were, which only meant 100 steps back up. Getting wet and dealing with sticky clothes in the already intense humidity wasn’t appealing in any way, shape or form, so we just kind of admired it from afar.
We headed back to the bus a little early because it was going to be a long walk and we wanted to ensure we’d make it back on time.
We were handed boxed lunches and cold bottled water as we re-boarded the bus. All of the boxes were filled with food by American brands, but on the downside of that, the main part of that was a Bumblebee tuna kit. Being stuck in a confined area with three dozen people eating tuna fish right before a long bus ride that will culminate in a tender ride where at least a third of my excursion mates will get sea sick is the kind of stuff my (admittedly neurotic) nightmares are made of.
Two of our bus mates didn’t make it back to the bus on time and Andres held off as long as he could before directing the driver to leave. And after we left, he spent most of our bus ride trying to locate the two missing people (hoping that they had, perhaps, boarded another bus), but Andres never located them. We were running very late because he had waited so long for them and our bus driver was booking it back to Playa del Carmen. The tender is a public tender (it’s the same one locals take to travel in between Cozumel and Playa del Carmen), and so we were on its schedule. It wouldn’t wait for us.
We bid adieu to Andres, who wouldn’t be making the journey back with us, as we boarded the tender. The tender ride was even more choppy than it was on the way there, and this time, we were hassled by vendors trying to unload silver chains and the pictures we were stopped to take that morning. When the attendants started freely handing out plastic baggies to everyone around us who reached their hands out, I plugged my headphones into my iPhone and tuned out. My OCD tendencies can’t deal with a boatload of sea sick people around me.
Our excursion didn’t provide for return transportation from the tender launch back to the ship, but we found plenty of cabs lined up at the terminal, and we were quoted a $7 flat rate for the 10 minute drive back to the pier.
We wanted to do some shopping on our way back to the ship for some souvenirs and there was plenty of shopping at the pier. All the good shopping is at the pier. The shops inside the terminal have higher prices. And much to my delight, there was a Los Cinco Soles at this pier, too, for us to stock up on our vanilla extract.
We headed back to the ship after we paid for our souvenirs and vanilla. Mom and Stephanie made a beeline for the Coke machines while I went straight to the room to shower. And despite an application of SPF 30 in the morning followed by subsequent applications of SPF 50 throughout the afternoon, I burned again! I can’t win! No sunscreen? Burn. Lots of sunscreen? Burn. Next time? Tee shirts or bust.
All of us were exhausted so we took short naps in the room before we had to get ready for dinner. One of the throw ins from our TA was dinner for two at a specialty restaurant, and we chose to redeem with dinner at Chops.
Dinner began with bread and butter, and some sort of cream cheese spread that I didn’t care to try but that Mom and Stephanie enjoyed.
Unlike Carnival, which has a very structured dining experience in their steak houses (you generally order one appetizer, one salad, one entrée, one side and one dessert), Chops allows you to order however much of whatever you want of appetizers, salads, sides and desserts. We stuck to one each and then ordered multiple sides to the table. I felt like the quality of meat was the same across Chops and the Carnival steakhouses, but Carnival has richer soups and sauces. The French onion soup at Chops didn’t come close to the rich, delicate broth Carnival serves at their steakhouse, but my filet mignon was tender and perfectly cooked and seasoned, and Mom and Stephanie echoed similar sentiments with their meals. All in all, it was a solid and enjoyable meal.
Dungeness Crab and Shrimp Cake
Warm Goat Cheese and Basil Souffle
Cheese N’ Onion Soup
Not So Traditional Caesar Salad
Beefsteak Tomato and Purple Onions
Chops Signature Salad
Filet Mignon
New York Strip Steak
Steamed Asparagus
Crimini Mushrooms and Leek
Fried Onion Rings
Roasted Potatoes with Prosciutto and Parmesan
Double Whipped Mashed Potatoes
Green Beans with Dijon Mustard Sabayon and Feta Cheese Crumbles
Crème Brulee
Chocolate Mud Pie
Red Velvet Cake
When we got back to our room to change after dinner, Wendy had a new friend waiting to greet us.
We felt like the piece missing from our dinner at Chops was the lack of sea views from the restaurant, so we took some time after dinner to sit out on the balcony.
We had reserved Blue Planet as our show for the evening and headed out to the Amber Palace about a half hour before show time and the theater was already packed. The show is a self-starting show (the cruise director recorded an announcement that played before the show), but Ken Rush came out to chat with the crowd before the show anyways. And Blue Planet? Best show we’ve seen at sea. Bar none. Even better than (and it pains me to say it) my beloved Rock Down Broadway. The show combined the performers from Chicago and the acrobats from Oceanaria and was really well choreographed, had fantastic sets and excellent effects.
After the show, none of us were really up to doing…anything…so we headed back to the room. Mom and Stephanie fell asleep as soon as their makeup was off. I grabbed Mom’s Coke cup to grab some fruit punch and noticed that Sorrento’s was offering a Mexican pizza on special that I just couldn’t say no to. Tomatoes, onions, chorizo, jalepenos and a dollop of guacamole. It was legitimately the best slice of pizza I’ve ever had on a cruise ship.
I sat in the Promenade sipping on my fruit punch for a bit. It gets really nice and peaceful after midnight out there and it was the perfect way to wind down after an active day.
