My views do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer.
Every other week we went to Belize. On this run time changed an hour back two nights in a row which was really nice. But then we had to pay it back and go forward. Belize always fell on morning after an hour forward with tenders starting at 6:30am. If we weren’t doing tenders, we were helping Shore Excursions organize people to go on tours at 6:30am. The thing that made these early morning activities fun was making people who weren’t quite awake yet either laugh or growl at our Belize puns– Have an unBELIZEable day! Do you BELIZE in life after love? I BELIZE I can fly. You better BELIZE it!
There was usually a drill that morning that went until a little after 11, and most of the tours left before that. The last tender back to the ship was early at like 3 or 4. Plus the tender ride itself was relatively long. So all this is to say that I rarely got off the ship in Belize. Stef and I took the tender out once, walked around outside the gates, and then came back in to find Wifi, local beer and non ship food.
But this week there was a crew tour to go swim with sharks and stingrays. I made sure I wouldn’t have any training that day (I did the two hour training while we were in Grand Cayman instead) and signed up. We had a special boat that picked our group up right from the ship .
We bounced over the waves with the wind in our face for about 45 minutes. Jase showed me how his go pro worked.
We stopped at an island to pick up our snorkel gear. This guy was selling banana bread. 
Then we went out and swam with the sharks and the stingrays. The guides had snacks in their pockets so they would lure them in, and then hold them so we could pet them. Jase got a great video of me petting the shark, but it’s too big to upload here.
I liked that we were out in the ocean in their natural habitat. They hung around in that area because fishermen would discard the fish they couldn’t sell so they were looking for food. It was very fun to say that I swam with sharks. Getting to pet them was as fun as swimming with Sting rays which was also very fun. When the sharks are held upside down they get very sleepy and go limp. The guides threw some food in the water and the sharks swarmed around them. Jase got up in there with his camera, but the sharks just ignored him as they went for the food.
Then we came back to the island for lunch looking out at this view:
And then our private boat took us back to the ship!