Carnival Legend, December 2011 Thursday...Belize


OK, since it's been about a month since we went on this trip, it's getting fuzzy and I don't remember all the fine details.  Oh, sure, I could make them up, but do you really want to know which brand of underwear I wore on which day?  Bottom line, (HA) is they are white (mostly) and I didn't wear any when we got off the ship on Thursday morning.  


I wore my swimming suit.  Why do people call them bathing suits?  Why do people say that they're giving their car a bath????It is clearly a shower.


Right.  We started the day by eating breakfast, of course.  Yep, same stuff, same dining room, same menu, same old boring things.  Belize does not have a pier for the ship to dock, so everyone going ashore has to ride a tender boat.  Lots of excursions pick up at the ship, so we can skip going to the mainland, which is good since if you go to Belize, then you can't give blood for a year.  Here's the procedure.  Go to the theater with all of your crap and esp tickets, they will tell you where to sit, and will probably give you a sticker to put on your shirt.  It's amazing how long some of these people wear their damn sticker.  We got there a little later than they told us to get there, and we still waited a long time past when we expected to leave.  Must be quite a challenge scheduling all those tender and excursion boats.  Since ours was a Carnival sponsored event, we got to go sooner rather than later, actually, as they really make some of the private tours wait.


They call our number, we shuffle out and follow someone down some stairs to the door in the side of the ship.  There is a largish catamaran tied up, so we get on.  We head up toward the front, Val's favorite thing to do is ride right in the very front with the wind in her face, her tongue hanging out, panting.  Wait, that was the dog.  No, Val really does like to ride in the front like that.  She did it in Antigua a couple years ago and she did it in Hawaii last year.  Sadly, this boat was too big for that, didn't have that area.  So we ride out to the reef, they yack at us for a while, they pass out snorkel vests, say we have to wear them.  Ok, whatever.  Make sure you get that wedgie strap tight, or else it will ride up and knock your mask off, choke you, etc.  What's a wedgie among friends?  I've got my flippers smeared with sunscreen, got some salve under my nose so the mask will seal, my camera in my pocket, I head for the back of the boat when it's time.  Into the water, check the camera.  Leaking.  Damn...no backup water camera.  Put it back onto the boat, round up my snorkel buddy and we head for the reef.  The fish and reef and coral are all very very nice.  The water is kinda rough and cool and salty, the waves strong, the sun hiding, the clouds thick, we have a nice time.  I had to keep tightening my wedgie strap to keep pulling that damn thing back down, it really was choking me.  I didn't need it at all for flotation, remember, I'm shaped like a whale.  I think they make everyone wear them for a couple reasons.  Liability, and a handle.  If they have to help you out of the water...they have a handy helpful handle.  Wouldn't be too comfortable!  Finally my buddy says it's time to get back on, so we head back.  She gets up close to the boat and takes off her flippers, immediately starts to drift away.  I can see her start to panic, so I go to rescue her.  I had gone to the ladder and was clinging there, waiting my turn.  So I rescue my snorkel buddy, she climbs up the ladder and is gone.  I pull off my flippers and haul my self out, ask if anyone found a green camera.  What do you know about that!  Zuzu's petals! No, really.  They had it on a hook and gave it back.  We haul our crap back to the front, I get my glasses, my hat and some rum punch.  


Rum punch is awesome.


Now that snorkel time is over, the rum punch is flowing freely.  I don't know what it is about being in salt water, but it makes me have to pee....a lot.  so I drank a lot of rum punch to make up for it.  Our boat went to an island, really, it's a sand bar in the middle of the ocean.


I'm a little pissed off about this first pic.  It's not focused, the entire tree is not in the pic, etc, so on, so forth.  Come on...it's really not that hard!

See?  clouds.  and wind.  See the shells? Best shell picking I've ever seen.  

My camera did indeed die, but someone posted pics, so I copied them.  Pretty good, too.  So, anyway, back on the Belize Glory and more rum punch.  I don't know how many I drank...6?  8?  Many.  I was thirsty!  I hadn't had lunch!  So when we got back to the ship and after I nearly carried the drunk lady up the stairs and thru security...we went directly up to Lido for lunch.  The rum punch kept sneaking up on me, holy hell, it was good stuff.  A guy walked by that I knew from the cruise critic meet and greet, I asked him about the SD card getting wet, he was nice enough to put it into his camera to see if it'd work.  And it did, so that made me happy.  Not as happy as the rum punch was making me, however.  Maybe I drank them too fast.  Good thing I didn't have one more.  We had lunch, went to our room, took a nap, shower, shave, get dressed for dinner.  

Oysters Rockefeller, pretty good.  Apparently dinner was uneventful.  For desert, Val had the peach soup, which is excellent, and bitter N blanc, which is also excellent.

We really enjoyed a couple of the comic guys...one guy started by asking the audience if anyone had ever lost their license...that was pretty funnny, and then went on to tell about how he does a public service by knocking those that deserve it into the ditch.  So if you ever hear or see me say or write something about being in the ditch, or knocking someone into the ditch, that they should be....this is what the reference is.  Trust me, you would have laughed off your ass if you'd been there.