Daily Archives: January 1, 2016

Cities of the past and present: Tulum and Belize City.

Belize, Mexico, , , , , , ,

Written Tuesday, December 22 – Cozumel, Mexico

It’s midnight, and we’ve had a tiring day. For the last two hours, we’ve been sitting around putting together the puzzle I brought along – even though it’s only the third day of our cruise and vacation, we’re about 60-70% of the way done! At the same time, there’s been this karaoke going on downstairs almost immediately below our room in the Pearly Kings Pub, which ran through all the popular songs but is over now, thank goodness. No more drunken crowds singing out loud to Uncle Kracker.

This morning, we got up bright and early, and had a long travel to the Tulum Mayan ruins on mainland Mexico. We docked in Cozumel around 7 am, which is an island, and immediately to a medium-sized ferry to transfer to the mainland. I brought some Dramamine to ward off potential seasickness, and took it going and from the island, but mainly just resulted in me feeling very, very tired the whole day. We had a 45-minute ferry ride and then an hour-long bus ride before we arrived at Tulum. Our lively tour guide Liliana took us around Tulum, a really interesting Mayan complex housing the elite, that was tucked away high on the coastline. It was gorgeous there – all the original palaces and temples were made out of limestone and some even retain their original carvings and formations. Tulum itself was positioned right on the coast next to the water but also at one of the points in the Yucatan Peninsula that the sun dawns on first. We walked with the tour guide for a while, and then we walked on by ourselves. My mom visited several years ago when she and my dad vacationed in Mexico, so we walked by ourselves around the complex. It was pretty crowded – full of people from all over. I heard a French girl of about four year old having an epic meltdown between her parents, screaming and crying, “ATTENDS!” in a gut-wrenching voice. It was pretty funny. The crowds were not quite as bad as I’ve seen in Taiwan and China, but bad enough here. We were trying to get to and from more quickly, and kind of ran into some crowds. Iguanas lounged everywhere, and had the run of the palaces and temples which people weren’t allowed into. Smaller iguanas were the females, and larger iguanas, sometimes twice the size of their female counterparts, were the males. They had also many more spikes all over their body. My mom must have taken a hundred pictures just of the iguanas! Continue reading Cities of the past and present: Tulum and Belize City. →

Setting sail from New Orleans.

Caribbean, USA, , ,

Written Sunday, December 20 – Travel Day + New Orleans, LA

The beginning of our trip was a bit rocky. My plane out of GSP was delayed twice, to the point that I was worrying about missing my connection. Fortunately, I was able to switch over to another plane to CLT and catch my connection to New Orleans (MSY). It was a tumultuous morning! I met my mom at her gate, since I arrived slightly before her, and we caught a taxi to the Port of New Orleans, which is downtown.

Our first time in New Orleans, and I have a headful of preconceptions built around Katrina, the Superdome, stories from friends who have been, and the French Quarter. We drive downtown past some epic graveyards and into downtown New Orleans, which is very orderly and straight, streets radiating north from the Mississippi River. I saw a line already forming outside Mother’s Restaurant, which I understand is one of New Orleans’s mainstays, and also glimpse some of the lovely historic buildings along the way. I’m looking forward to exploring it when we come back!

It took us a lot of queuing and scraping around to get to the cruise, but finally, we manage it! We’re sailing on the Norwegian Dawn for seven days. When we took our first cruise four or five years ago, we also took Norwegian, and I have the vague impression it’s a little bit better than Carnival, which we did last year. It’s a seven-day cruise to Mexico and the Central Americas. My mom has been to Cozumel before, but neither of us have really done Costa Maya, Belize City, and Roatan, Honduras, which are the other destinations. Generally, we’re probably just going to do a lot of snorkeling! Continue reading Setting sail from New Orleans. →