Cruise 2006

Since this is a new blog site I'm going to also include some pictures from past vacations since most of you have never seen any of them. In the future it will all be new adventures. In February of 2006 we went on a "exotic caribbean" cruise with James's brother and sister-in-law, Ryan & Katheen and friends Torrie & Jack. This trip was a little different since it wasn't your typical sun, sand and beaches vacation it was very educational though. For instance we now know more about bananas than anyone person should ever know. We did have a great time though and I wouldn't have wanted to give up any of our experiences but a little snorkle/margaritaville fun would have been nice too. Our first night on board was super bowl sunday thus the beer t-shirts from the super bowl party on board.

Our first stop was in Panama. This is the only stop we've ever been to where they warned us not to set out on our own and guess what it was one of the few places we've been where we have actually set out on our own. If you want to see how much your friends trust you this is a great way to do it. James and I arranged for a cab to take us to the visitors center for the Gutan locks in the pananma canal. The really nerve racking part is leaving the safe tourist area. You have to walk past all of the guards with automatic weapons who are looking at you like your crazy then search for your prearranged cab driver "Alajandro in the white t-shirt" in a crowd of a hundred yelling men in white t-shirts. When we found our cab driver he rushed us through the crowd to a beat up van before another cab driver snatched us. In the end it turned out great. Our cab driver was a super cool guy that was our age and actually educated in the U.S. His aunt lives in D.C. and he still visits her every summer. He also actually got us to the gutan locks before all of the tour groups arrived so we got front row seats and everyone else who paid alot more money for the actual "tour" had to sit behind us. He also hooked us up with all of the brochures and then gave us a tour of the city on our way back to port. The best part is we only paid $15 per person as opposed to $100+ with the tour group. One last note about Panama--I have to tell you that this was also the only time in my life that I can say that I have ever had a monkey thrown at me. (sort of weird)

Our next stop was Limon, Costa Rica. This time we did join a tour group and we took a boat tour down some canals where we saw sloths, monkeys, birds, lizzards, and crocodiles. On the way back to port we toured a banana plantation. Thus all of the banana trivia.

We also bought some of the worst Cuban cigars ever made while in Costa Rica but all of the funs in the smuggling them in anyway and they did make for a fun photo.

Our third and final stop was in Belize where we went on a tour of some of the local Mayan ruins. These were fun because in Belize your allowed to climb all over the ruins though since we've already seen some of them in Mexico we found that once you've seen some ruins you've pretty much seen them all. Torrie and I did take pictures of us laying on a sacraficing table on top of the largest temple.

They also told us that they don't have mesquitos this time of year but amazingly we all came back with bites. Let me tell you those jungle bugs are huge.

Overall it was another great vacation and alot of wonderful memories that we get to share with our friends.