When I left you last, we were wrapping up a lovely St. Patty's day. The next morning we landed at our last destination: Cozumel. Pilar and I got up bright and early so that we could make the most of our day on land, while the boys chose to sleep in and stay on the boat since they had already been to Cozumel on their previous cruise. It did make me a little nervous to go into Mexico without the boys...by a little, I mean a lot. My mother watches endless episodes of Forensic Files and Cold Case and is always reading the Debbie Downer stories out of the newspaper about girls who got kidnapped/raped so she has passed that paranoia on to me BIG TIME. I wasn't going to let the boys know that I was nervous about them not going with us -they needed their rest- but you better believe that I was doing a mental review of all of my self defense moves the whole walk down the pier. Pilar assured me that we had nothing to worry about, that all of those sketchy things happen in sketchy places, not in the highly populated tourist areas. The devil's advocate in me kept saying that this was probably the perfect place for creepers to linger, just waiting to prey on a naive, young, American girl with her guard down.
Pilar and I made our way into the market area that was right off the pier and started walking toward where we figured some cabs would be waiting. Our only sketchy run-in was with a white guy who had rented a car and told us he could give us a ride to a beach. He had no credentials and was too insistent to not set off about 500 red flags in my mind. I got us the HELL away from him and latched on to a family that was heading toward the big cab drop off/pick up. This is where I was very thankful for Pilar's fluent Spanish. She was able to speak clearly with the cab drivers which put me at ease as, of course, I was assuming that everyone wanted to kidnap us and sell us into the international sex trade. Another big nerve easer was that we shared a cab with a family. The cab driver turned out to be super nice and convinced us to go to another beach that was a lot nicer than the one we had planned on going to. He also cut our rate down a little.
The beach we went to in Cozumel was very nice. It had nice lounge chairs, a restaraunt, and waiters who walked up and down the beach delivering food and drinks. Pilar and I just lounged, swam when we got hot, and soaked up our last day on a beautiful beach.
We stayed out there for three or four hours and then made our way back to the pier. Once back at the little marketplace, we did a little shopping, Pilar did a little bartering, and we set out for the ship for the last time. We spent the rest of the afternoon laying out with the boys and then went through our usual routine of showering/napping/getting ready for the night. On this night, Pilar and Travis performed "Hips Don't Lie" by Shakira at karaoke and did a wonderful job, despite what they may tell you. We went out to the Lido deck of the ship after karaoke and made our own little dance party...we're really good at that :)
After our dance party we went back to the room and looked at the stars for a little while and all ended up falling asleep. Eventually, the boys went back to their room and we all went to bed.
The next day was Friday, our last "Fun day at sea". We laid out all day, cooking ourselves to a nice crisp. Friday night we went to the "Carnival Legends" show in the Ivanhoe Theater and watched all of the cruise guests who had been chosen to impersonate different celebrities like Elvis, Madonna, Johnny Cash, etc. One of the guys we met was impersonating Ricky Martin. The show was pretty impressive. After the show, we spent some time out on the deck again and enjoyed the beautiful night. This was the night that the moon was the brightest it had been in like 200 years (or whatever it was). The light was incredible! It was a little sad to think that this was our last night, but we didn't let that stop us from soaking it all in.
The next day was a series of packing, debarking from the ship, making our way back to the car, and leaving Miami. Although we were dreading the 17 hour car ride back to Houston, we were also thankful that we still had some time together and wouldn't just be thrown right back into reality. Again, I give mad props to our manly men for beasting the last leg of our journey. Somewhere between Miami and Houston, I decided that I would try to make the drive back to Austin at 2am in order to be able to teach my kiddos on Monday morning. I crushed a red bull and made it to La Grange, but I started hallucinating outside of La Grange and decided that I couldn't go another hour and a half on the remaining fumes from my red bull. I stopped and slept in La Grange and made it back to Cedar Park in time for lunch.
I had such an incredible time on this cruise. I was able to get in some incredible lady time with my little Pilar before she goes off to med school and I sell my soul to my class of 5th grade boys. I also got two great friends in Travis and Chris who I look forward to hanging out with more since we will all be in Houston next year!
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