Wondergood! Goodjoy!

I know I've been awfully quiet on the blog. It's not because I've been sitting around being lazy and doing nothing. On the contrary, my schedule has been pretty crazy since I got back from our Christmas Cruise.

Yes, the week before Christmas, Martin and I, along with our 2 sons, Paolo and Marco, drove to Galveston, TX to go on our first ever 7-day cruise on Royal Caribbean.

We received lots of tips, some were the same, some contradictory, some we followed, others we didn't. Our trip took us to our first stop: Cozumel, Mexico. The water was beautifully blue and the weather was warm. We rented scooters and drove around the island. We stopped along the way to swim in the gorgeous waters. Next up was Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands. Another beautiful place but seemed to be geared towards shoppers. We rented snorkeling equipment and saw quite a few interesting fish but I was the lone person fortunate enough to swim upon a young sea turtle. Our final stop was Montego Bay, Jamaica. Up to this point, we had been doing rather low-key activities and we felt that this was the last opportunity to do something adventurous. We decided to go white water rafting. It was the best decision we made on the trip.

The ride was rather tame in the beginning, allowing us to watch some beautiful birds fly around and take some pictures. Shortly thereafter, the ride started to get a little rough as we made our way down some rocks. We came upon a beautiful pool of emerald green water and our guide encouraged us to take a swim. Fully wet, the ride gets even rougher. We encounter a rather steep fall and all of us except for the guide and Marco end up falling out of the boat. It was absolutely fun and exciting and we all wanted to see if we could do it again! I scraped my elbow and back on the rocks and I think that freaked out our guide a little bit. For the rest of the ride, our guide made us sit inside the boat whenever we were going down a steep set of rocks. We hope to be back to Jamaica again one day to try the Zipline! Our guide taught us "Goodjoy" because we should not want joy to end.

Back on the boat, we tried the activities and distractions they had for guests: swimming, running, stretching classes, cardio classes, ice skating, swing dance lessons, salsa dance lessons, belly flop contest, rock climbing, trivia game, scavenger hunt. Unfortunately, the activities were so short that we were still left with lots of idle time on our hands. I learned and practiced Body Pump 76 Choreography whenever Martin was napping. The food was good and always available but that combination turned eating into an activity that helped to pass time. Not good!!

So how did the Energetic Gutierrez Family like cruising? We loved visiting different islands in one vacation but if we were to go on another cruise, we'd have to try one of the mega ships to give a final verdict on cruising. Is our next vacation going to be a cruise? Probably not. Photos below.