Cozumel, Mexico

The last port was Cozumel, Mexico. The day started out wonderfully sunny and warm. We had booked a tour for riding dune buggies, and went to Margaritaville (not so impressive) to meet our group. We got there early and there was a big grocery store across the street, so we went in and Mike reminisced about all the Mexican products (he served his church mission in Tijuana, Mexico 9 years ago). Then we hopped on a taxi with our group and drove out about 20 minutes to the start of the tour. The guys running it were really awesome and friendly, and Mike enjoyed speaking Spanish to them. We put our stuff in a locker, bought bandannas to protect our faces from all the dust, and hoped on our dune buggy. They gave us goggles and helmets, too.

In our getups, we kind of looked like aliens. See:

You can't tell, but we're smiling. :)

Towards the beginning of the trail, there was a mud hole. Most of the other buggies went through nice and slow so as to not get muddy. Do you think Mike followed suit? Heck, no. We put the petal to the metal and blasted through:

This picture was taken by the tour guide and cost us 10 bucks to buy, but it was totally worth it. It was like driving through a waterfall of mud. We were COVERED from head to toe:

This picture honestly doesn't even do justice to how muddy we were. I'm still trying to get it out from under my toenails (even though we were wearing watershoes). Everyone was laughing at how dirty we were, even the tour guides. Good times. :)


We stopped at a place called Jade Caverns. It was really pretty and cool. They gave us all life jackets and we got to jump in. Not exactly warm, but we got to clean of a little bit (key word: little). Mike and I were there first, and the tour guide was like, "In Mexico, we stick to 'ladies first'. So I was the first to jump in.

We swam around to the left of where you see in the picture and there were bats all over the top of the cave. Then we swam through this little low crack in the cave into an underground part that was totally dark and had to hold on to a rope. We could hear bats all over. It was neat. Apparently the water stunk like rotten eggs because of some kind of mineral deposits in it (or bat poop perhaps?) but luckily my non-functional sense of smell served me well.


When we got done, we had planned to spend some time at the beach, because the water was gorgeous, but we were cold, muddy, and our towels were ruined from having them with us (Royal Caribbean towels though, thank goodness), so we just went back to the ship. It was still a great time though!!