We Tendered at 7, I was up early. Woke up around 6, mmm coffee. Brought a thermos from home so it would last, the cups are too small and it gets cold too quick. Got some great picks of the sunrise. skipped breakfast and headed for shore. We got lucky we headed right onto a boat, didn't have to wait in line or anyting. We did the Pirate Ship excusion. When we went to Puerto Vallarta last year we saw it, it looked fun. They put on a big production, everyone had a blast. So we thought we would try it here. This was nothing like that at all. Totally different but still fun. If you have kids on the trip with you this may be one that you like. They do a great job involving the kids. We get on the ship, start cruising around the port, shooting cannons at all the ships in port. Hey we are pirates we have to rule the port right! We stop after a bit of cruising, than all the kids get called down. Yep, time to swab the deck. They get sworn in as pirates, things like I will have candy for breakfast, lunch and dinner. ai will always akip homework. You know the crazy pirate stuff. Than it's 1 unlucky parents turn. Time to tie her up and torment her. her kid went nuts, it was so funny. promises of toys when we got to port, but the pirates dumped cold water on her anyway, a lot of it too by the way. After this we were attached to a booie, it was time to swim in the ocean. Walking he plank was real low but they had a place to jump off of a little higher up. Rum punch was flowin (part of the excursion and it was weak) everyone jumped into the water. They did make us wear a life jacket. This was enforced by Carnival, covering their ass is all. Really wasn't bad, was more like a life T-Shirt than a vest. Kids were doing flips off the lower plank. Plenty of people were jumping off the higher area, a couple of us dove heade first. I think they would have been cool with flips off the top too. None of us quite had enough rum to try though. We swam around for close to a half hour than headed back to land. We caught a bus to 7 mile beach. $4.00 per person wasn't bad at all. That was the price for 1 way. Seemed reasonable. It was kinda crazy, on the way we passed, Pizza Hut, Papa Johns, dairy Queen, Wendy's, Burger King and KFC That was a trip. We got there after about 10 minutes and was pretty cool. Big 2 story bar and grill. We got some drinks than stepped on the white sand. You could get a lounge chair for the low price of $7.00 per chair. Also wave runners could be rented for $65.00 single seater and $89.00 for a 2 seater per hour. We walked up the beach a little bit. Right next to the bar was chaos. 3 carnoval cruise ships were in port (ours, the legend and destiny) people havin a great time. We found a tree, some shade just a little ways up, so we planted ourselves there. Water was blue, turquois, just beautiful. We chilled for a couple hours than headed back to port. At port you have Hard Rock Cafe, some shops and Margaritaville. You gotta do Margaritaville. We each had 1 Margarita, Nachos and a Quesidilla. It was a good time and $55.00 for those 4 things is a bit stupid so watch the prices. Time to tender back to the ship. Yea this sucked. Was a line that went about 3 or 4 blocks. Took about 15-20 minutes to get through the line. I know vacations are where we relax, get some sun, enjoy ourselves, I would reccomend hitting the tannning bed before you start your vacation or be extermely liberal with the sunscreen. We tanned before so we would have a tolerance to the sun, we brought water bottles that we just filled up with ice. Stay hydrated, it's hot, the sun will get you. We saw a couple people while we were in line that couldn't wait in the sun. It was just too much, one lady was buckled over throwing up. Looked like she had heat stoke. Back on the ship we were pretty wiped out, so we took a nap. Slept from about 4 until, ahh the call from the spa. Since we registered for the prize, we won. Yep a package that was normally $109 we could get for $69. Umm that's not winning, that's a freaking coupon. Not a bad deal but nothin like getting a telemarketting call on vacation. Still something you all may be interested in. Time for the repeat cruisers get together. YES!!! FREE DRINKS! So we were all over that. they raffled off some stuff (not a free cruise) gave us a discount on raffle tickets, than we were gone. We skipped the early diiner to watch the sunset. Adult night for the comedian, he was great. Time fo bed Anna (our cabin steward) hooked us up with another with another towel animal Giraffe I think, witjout DNA results I can't be sure.

We docked in Roatan, it was pretty sweet. Our balcony faced the bock perfectlt so we could see everything coming in. A group of people were waiting for the ship dressed in headdresses, full jungle attire, playing drums, moracas and dancing. Was really cool. Once we got the all clear to head down, we weren't the only ones. Again i too awhile. We were backed up to level 2 on the stairs. It took a bit to get down, One of the drawbacks of bring on such a large ship. We headed right to our group for our excursion, Tabayana Beach Break. We waited wih our group for about 15 minutes, than we were hearded off to our bus.probably took about 20 minutes to get to Tabayana. Interesting drive, ahh you get a look into the people of Roatan. Houses with no windows may be their version of air conditioning, lots of homes that way. Lots of jungle, you hit the top of this hill and it is just a majestic view. Over the jungle of trees is the ocean. It is awesome. We got there, go through the formality of a guide telling us drink specials, where the gift shop is, prices for snorkling gear, snuba, etc. We hit the beach. Holy Crap it is georgous, the best postcard I have ever seen and we are standing in it. Chairs here are free but it comes with a catch. If you don't ge a locker (we didn't) a guy named George will bring you a chair and watch your stuff, for a tip. Truthfully seemed fair. 2 of us I tipped him $10, we wre set. We rented snorkling equiptment. $15.00 for 2 hours per person. Snuba was $40.00 per person for 2 hours. I didn't see the advantage of snuba, I mean the water is so clear, coral everywhere and you can only go ou so far, so we saved the money. Huge tuna we ran into a couple times, some amazing sea life. It was bitchen. We kicked it n our chairs, waiters came around often, Corona was $4.00, yea $4.00 for Corona, i was all over that. We just took in the day. Buses started heading back to the boat at 3:45, left every half hour. We left a bit early, we didn't wan to but we really didn't want to get caught in another long line to get back on the boat. Left at 4:15, got to the port, go some souveneirs. I would strongly reccomend a excursion here. There isn't much to do at the main port. Grand Caymen had a bunch of stuff to do in walking distance, margartiaville,, hard Rock, a ton of novelty places. Roatan, had maybe 4. Once you start wandering away from those 4 shops, you will get offered just about any drug in the world. Weed, coke (not the one with cool bubbles) and kids are trying to sell whatever they can. We got back on the ship, after declining all drugs 9even though one told me a special sale for me, haha what a crazy area). relaxed in our room for a bit. Tonight they had a future canival cruise banquet for past cruisers. It was cool, you met up with everyone else that has sailed before. We talked about our favorite ports, least favorite. Than a presentation came. carnival's infomercial. They unveiled 2 things to us. carnival is porting out of Seattle in 2010 for Alaska cruises, looks pretty sweet. Than they unveiled their new ship, Carnival Dream. Wow it looks pretty sweet. 130 ton ship (Valor is 113 ton) keeps the capacity the same a the Valor though so you don't feel the crowd as much. Adult areas only are increased with some sweet extras, I'll shut up about it, but take a look. We watched game 1 of the world series on the huge TV at the pool. After a bit I was all about face up BlackJack, My wife went back to work on her book.

This was the low point of the Cruise. It was nobody's fault, except maybe mine for not reading up enough or paying attention. We Tendered here at 8am, we didn't start unloading until 8:30. I screwed up here, I must have missed something when reading up. TO TENDER TO BELIZE FROM THE VALOR ITS A 25 MINUTE RIDE 1 WAY. Here is where that really sucks, if you have a excursion that starts at 11, you have very little to no timeto get to the city early. We did the Discover scuba, we did it in Cabo, absolutely loved it. Belize with the 2nd biggest barrier reef in the world, we had to do it again. WE were going to jump on a tender, hit the city for 5 minutes, just so we could see it than come back but again the line to get on the boats took forever. We realized we didn't have enough time. With SCUBA there is always a tutorial, that had to be in the city. Not so much, anyway we relaxe on our b alcony, got some food. I was amazed at how many people were still on board. We met our group at 11, than jumped a tender headed the total opposite way than the city. We got there about 15 minutes later, groups got seperated into snorkel and scuba. WE went through about a hour of c;assroom stuff. Another 20 minutes getting evryone's gear set up. 1 couple after the classroom, decided not to do the excursion, the girl was pretty scared someone said. Another 10 minutes on the boat to get to shallow waters to demonstrate we could do 4 basic skills. This part was challenging. Skills were not hard for me, my wife was having problems with her ears. Pain in ass part, it was so windy out. Everyone had a hard time staying close to their instructors. Michelle (my wife) had to ggo back to the boat because of her ears. We all finished our skills tests, headed back to the boat. Everyone was in, Michelle tried again, this time she was all good. We went out into deep water. Groups of 4 per instructor. Michelle and I had our own instructor. She again got in the water, her ears didn't cooperate so she didn't chance it, Relaxed in the boat. Since it was so windy, no a lot of life was out. 30-40 minutes diving than back to the dive shop. There was some cool stuff to see, not a ton of fish but a lot of vegetation. We got back to the Valor at 4:30, realized we weren't going to see Belize, got a little bummed. We decided to see a show, we needed to do something. Theater was packed, than it daned on us. Must be the 80's show, show title is actually Far From Over. YOu know what, everyone is right this is a great show!!! After that we watched the end of the Yankees/Phillies game 2. Just a awesome way to watch a game. Not a good day but we scuba'd in Belize. Pretty freakin awesome!

I can't tell you exactly why, my guess is because of the time change, we fall back from sat to sunday, gain a hour. We got extended in Cozymel 2 hours, so we are there from 8:00 - 7:00. Pulling into port things looked great. We could see Fat Tuesdays, Three Amigos, and a bunch of shops. Cool lookin port/ After yesterday we weren't thrilled with how we left Belize, we didn't have a excursion planned so I booked one the night before through the menu for excursions on the cabin TV. We decided to do fly high zip line. When we went on the mexican riviera last year we did the extreme canopy in Puerto Vallarta. It was freaking awesome, absolutely amazing. This in comparison was like the NBA D league 9Fly High Zip Line) playing against the olympic basketball team (Puerto Vallarta). That being said it was still cool. Started at 9:30, we were done by noon. We got some cool pic, we were dropped off back at the port, changed than headed out to Mr. Sancho's. One of the guides at the excursion told us it was a good place to get some food and hang for the day. Cab ride was $15.00 to get there. We ordered some food, drank a little, than layed in the chairs all day jumping in and out of the water all day long. It was great.He was right you could do whatever you wanted here parasailing, jet skis, glass bottom boats, kayaks, and snorkling. Very cool setup. We headed back to port picked up some souveneirs than dinner time. We made our 6pm dinner, only the 3rd one we made. We got lucky had some great tablemates, we all got caught up, ate the Applebees style food, the wait staff did a little dance o Slumdog Millionaire, cool stuff. Deck Party was a good time, carnival's version of "drink specials" wasn't so special though. Overall a great port, we had a blast.