Western Caribbean Cruise with the Vernons

This past week, Andrea and I went on a cruise with the Vernon extended family. We sailed on the Carnival Legend out of Tampa and went on a 7 night Western Caribbean cruise to Grand Cayman, Cozumel Mexico, Belize and Isla Roatan Honduras. We enjoyed spending time with everyone and the cruise gave us a great opportunity to reconnect, relax and recharge for the year.

Hanging out on the boat.


Us at dinner.


Alex and his girlfriend Laura.


Alice and Rick.

Abby and Chris.

At Grand Cayman everyone else went to see the stingrays, which we'd done before, so we just went to Tiki beach and relaxed. We ate chicken quesadillas and drank a few Miami Vices.


At Cozumel, Shawn's parents went with us to try SNUBA.

We sat through a fairly detailed and intimidating orientation class and then got in the shallow water to try on all the gear. It was a little overwhelming. SNUBA is essentially like SCUBA, however instead of wearing the air tanks they are floating on the surface in little boats. The air tubes are super long and you just pull the little boat along as you go.


Here we are about 10 to 15 feet down. It was surprising how fast the water pressure went up as you went down. Every 2 feet or so, you'd have to hold your nose and blow hard to equalize the pressure in your ears. Andrea actually didn't have much trouble at all with the ear pressure, but Shawn struggled as we got down past 15 feet. Our guide told us that we went down 21 feet at the deepest. Andrea was likely a bit nervous about losing the respirator and was chomping down on it hard. Her jaw hurt for days.

Our guide Ivan was very helpful and pointed out all kinds of cool things underwater.
After our adventure we enjoyed some guacamole, nacho chips and Miami Vices!

At Belize, we didn't get off the boat. We'd been there recently and weren't interested in cave tubing again, which is what everyone else did. We stayed on the boat, worked out, and relaxed.

At Isla Roatan we rode the "Magic Beach Chair" from the pier to a nearby beach and had a great time playing in the ocean a few hours. We wish this stop had been a longer one.