My views do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer.
The next cruise we went to the ABC islands — Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao. Somehow I was only off in Bonaire, and after 6 hours of Detourist training, I only had an hour and a half to get off the ship before all aboard. I was getting a little stir-cranky because that meant in 8 days I was only allowed off the ship for an hour and a half. As soon as the training finished Sujung (my fellow cruise staff) and I ran back to our rooms, changed into our swim suits and made our way off the ship as quickly as safety would allow.
We found a beach that wasn’t quite far enough from the ship
basked in the sun, walked to the town and had some gelato. We were changed, restored and renewed. And then we went back to work.
The next cruise began our 7 day itineraries. Seven days in the Western Caribbean: Sea Day, Grand Cayman (tender port), Roatan, Honduras (late arrival so we had a half sea day in the morning), Belize (early tenders), Cozumel, Mexico, one Sea Day then turnaround in Fort Lauderdale starting off 7 days in the Eastern Caribbean: Princess Cays (tender port), Sea Day, St. Thomas (late arrival with a half sea day), St. Maarten, then two Sea Days taking us back to Fort Lauderdale. Repeat. So every other week we were in the same places, but we would have different days off.
This week the weather was very rainy. I didn’t notice that much because I didn’t get off the ship until Cozumel. Stef (my roommate) and I were determined to have an adventure. It was raining. We got a call from the Entertainment Director saying he needed smiles. He needed Stef and I to go around the ship and hand out playing cards to all the people that were staying on board and he needed us to smile so they wouldn’t be cranky about the weather. So we did. We handed out playing cards and then ventured out into the rain. Some people were surprised about our enthusiasm. I said, what do people like to do here? Go to the beach and swim where you get all wet! We’re just getting wet on the way there!
We followed colors, flipped a coin to decide whether to go left or right, and when right started looking sketchy, we came back the other way. We turned down offers from the shop keepers who wanted us to buy knickknacks, and eventually we found a mall with fountains on the floor where we had to be careful not to fall in them.
After much galavanting, we found an authentic looking place with wifi, 2 for 1 margaritas and the best nachos.
These nachos were so good we tried to come here every time we were able to get off the ship in Cozumel. When I would have nachos somewhere else, Stef would ask if they were as good as these nachos. They never were. The perfect amount of stuff to chip ratio, the cheese was perfectly distributed from top to bottom and it came with special white spicy sauce that rocked Stef’s world.
On the way back we found these guys.
