Shore Excursions

As wonderful as the cruise was, it was also nice to get off the ship once in a while, especially when we got to stop in sunny Mexico in the middle of January.  Our first stop was in Puerto Vallarta. We didn't book any day trips through the ship so we were free to wander and enjoy ourselves.

So we headed to the beach.

I wasn't sure what Ollie would think, but it was love at first site.  We had to keep a close eye on him or he would have been happy to wash away with the waves.

We had a little time to explore the markets after that to discover some treasures.

And see some of the beautiful sites

And before we new it, it was time to get back on the boat, but not before Larry made a stop at Walmart to stock up on any Mexican candy that we didn't know a thing about.  I think that's his favorite part of traveling abroad and the rest of us have no complaints.

Our second stop was Cabo San Lucas.  We were supposed to have a third stop in Mazatlan, but it was cancelled and we spent two days in Cabo instead.  The first day, we started off on a glass bottom boat tour with most of the extended family

There actually were a lot of fish to watch.  Ollie was squealing with joy.

We also had fun watching the sea lions everywhere

Then we had a brief stop to check out Lovers Beach and Divorce Beach

We were tempted to spend all day there, but one of us had big plans for the rest of the day, and they involved some fast swimming friends

Creed was SO excited to get suited up

We signed up Creed for the Children's dolphin program knowing that we wouldn't all be able to participate with Ollie.  We knew the dolphin would come up to a shallow area where each of the kids could touch it and have a chance to dance with it and kiss it, and that's all we were expecting, but they actually had each child hold onto the dolphins fins and lay on it's stomach while the dolphin laid on it's back and then it took them around the whole pool.  Larry and I both looked at each other and knew there was no way creed would agree to do that.  We watched as each child went, and then talked to Creed and he sat back down.  But, after everyone went, he got up and volunteered to go. We were shocked!  He looked terrified the entire lap around the pool, but he did it all on his own!  My scanner isn't working so I can't scan in the pictures we purchased, but he's an I-phone sneak peek.

The first thing Creed had to say afterward was that when he was going around the pool, he got one drop of water on his face, and he was not happy about it.  I had to laugh that that's what he will probably remember forever about the whole experience.

Ollie happy watched on the sidelines

And we made one other friend before we left the aquarium.

The next day was really only a half day before we had to be back on the ship and we voted to take a water taxi back to Lover's Beach for the morning.  Seeing Land's End was pretty cool.

There were plenty of caves to explore too.

When you take water taxis to this beach, you pay them for a round trip and tell them what time to pick you up.  You know where this story is going, don't you?  We had no problems the first day, in fact, we never met anyone else who had a problem, but the second day, our ride did not come back.  By the time we knew it clearly was not going to be there all the boats heading back that we could flag down were full and there was no one from our ship left on the beach.  Yikes! After a few scary moments, we did find a boat that wasn't full and agreed to take us on, and as a bonus, they let Ollie drive (nothing dangerous about that).