Thermalgal’s Temperate Mumblings

2nd day of the cruise

September 18, 2008 on 2:56 pm | In Henry | 1 Comment

Christine, of course I have more stories to tell of the cruise!

So, Friday night the ship left Miami and headed to Coco Cay. We slept in a bit that morning (I think we slept until 8AM). When we went up to breakfast we saw we were anchored a little away from a pretty little island.

We changed into our bathing suits and stood in line to get tendered over. Once there we walked around the little shops (very pretty) and then headed to the beach to get our snorkel gear. The orientation class was okay. I was scuba certificated in a past life (grad school) and have been snorkeling before. But this was Traci’s first time and mom’s second time (her first time was a disaster). So, I liked the idea of the orientation for them. Then we headed out to the huge roped off snorkel area.

Mom had a hard time getting used to the snorkel but eventually she got the hang of it. While she didn’t venture out very far, she did float face down and saw lots of fish and even a stingray. Traci was a bit more adventurous and we even went and checked out the mock ship wreck. In the picture above you can barely see the orange balloon above the wreck (just a hair to the left of center in the photo). We swam out there (mom stayed behind in the shallower parts) and rested on the floating platform (to the left of the wreck) before checked out the sunken boat. There we saw a lion fish! I think we freaked out the life guard (to the right of the wreck) when I inflated Traci’s BC for her (they called them life vests, same thing). He stood up and watched up for a bit. We were getting tired and I wanted her to rest before we headed back.

After we got back we went and had some lunch. Then mom decided to stay ashore while we went back out. There is also a sunken plane that we wanted to check out. But about half way there we were tired and decided to turn around. At some point during that trip, we saw a conch shell (minus the conch) and a star fish. And of course we saw lots and lots of fishies.

Since we had another hour or so before we had to be on the boat, we decided to check find the path around so we could get a good picture of the ship with some of the island. Traci got a single braid (I’ll post that picture tomorrow). Once we got back on the ship we showered and hit the casino before dinner (we did that each night with the quarters mom and I had saved up). Mom and Traci did great at the penny slots. I think mom won $15 the last night.

I had forgotten my sunscreen so I bought some on the ship. I was debating between SPF35 and SPF50. I decided to go with the SPF35 because I didn’t want to go back as white as I started. Well, either that was a bad choice or it washed off fairly quickly during snorkeling because I’m still sporting a wicked sunburn on my back.