Mexican Riviera

Well, we've been home a week and I figured it's time to enter a blog about our most recent trip. Tami and I are celebrating our 10-year wedding anniversary on May 15th and decided a fun way to celebrate would be to take a 7-day cruise down to the Mexican Riviera. We arranged for the kids to stay with Tami's parents and drove to Long Beach. We sailed on the Carnival Pride, an interestingly decorated ship to say the least. For those who have sailed on the Pride before, you know what I'm talking about. Rather than post a ton of pictures in the blog, you can go to our photo album of the trip via the link at the bottom of this blog entry. Here's a link to the cruise route.

We sailed for 2 1/2 days and arrived in Puerto Vallarta where we did an awesome zip line canopy tour through the jungle. It consisted of 15 separate zip lines, the highest being 550 feet and over 400 meters long. To hard to describe with words. If you're ever in Puerto Vallarta, be sure to check out the Los Veranos Canopy Tour. Here's a quick video clip of one of the shorter lines that Tami went on.



The tour guides were very funny and they videoed the whole thing but wanted $40 for it, so we opted not to partake in the highway robbery. Here's a clip of one of the ladies on our tour with the camera man filming.



After Puerto Vallarta we sailed to our second port, Mazatlan. Mazatlan was definitely more of a beach town with a very cool boardwalk and beautiful beaches. Reminded me a lot of San Diego. We decided to try our luck at Parasailing. Neither of us have ever done it. It was a blast. The weather was perfect and we got some incredible pictures and video clips. Check these out below.





And here's me as I went up.



We found this little Acuario de Mazatlan on the Internet and decided to check it out. Nice little aquarium. Everything was in Spanish of course. Speaking of Spanish, it was a lot of fun conversing with the taxi drivers in Spanish. We go the inside tour on a lot of places. It's amazing how much I can still remember and understand. I wish I could use my Spanish more often. It'll have been 12 years this July since I got off my mission to Venezuela. We did some of our own site seeing in Mazatlan on our way back to the cruise terminal and we had to ask several people along the way for directions, so it was a good thing I could communicate with them.

Our 3rd and final port was Cabo San Lucas. It was another beautiful day and we took a double decker boat about an hour from the marina and did some snorkeling in Chileno Bay. We even saw some gray whales making their migration north. Cabo really is a desert resort. You don't have the lush foliage like Puerto Vallarta or Mazatlan, but the coastline is something else. Check out the pictures below.

The cruise ship itself was actually a lot of fun. We participated in a lot of the games they had on board, enjoyed visiting with our dinner table friends, relaxed on the upper deck, had our fair share of ice cream cones (how can you beat free ice cream 24/7), played miniature golf, saw some incredible sunsets and more than anything enjoyed spending time together. Hard to believe that it's been almost 10 years. Time sure does fly. The kids had a wonderful time with Tami's parents and sisters while we were gone. They almost didn't want to come back home. The final clip here is of a Mariachi band that came on board at one of the ports and played some festive music while we ate dinner one evening.



There are quite a few pictures in the album. Be sure to read the captions. Check them out here:

Mexico Cruise