Cruising!

Last week we had the amazing opportunity to go on a cruise down the Mexican riviera. Andy and I have never done anything like that before. We had the most wonderful awesome time. A big thanks to Andy's work for taking us. Another big thanks to Mom and Andy's parents for watching Maren. She had a ball.

We started out in L.A. and hopped on the Norwegian Star. As we were passing another ship on the way to ours, Candace noticed that everyone in line for the other ship was male....everyone. They were all really good looking men, shaved and greased. Come to find out they were boarding the Carnival "Pride" ship. I didn't know that such ships existed.

Our boat was great. Norwegian is known for it's restaurants and dining choices. 7 restaurants whenever you want to eat. There was tons of fun food that I wouldn't usually get to eat. Creme Brulle', Sweet and Spicy mushroom soup, rack of lamb, molten chocolate cake, etc. Ice cream is always available. Mmmm. Luckily I only gained 2 pounds- we took the stairs a lot.

Our first stop was Cabo San Lucas. So super hot. We didn't have a long time there, but we had a little time to hit the market and get a taste of the Mexican souvenirs. There are about 10 different items that you can choose from, then you see them over and over again throughout the country. We hopped on a catamaran and went around the rocks for some pics, then headed over to a cove for snorkeling. It was a lot of fun. Some crazy guy was diving to the bottom and grabbed a sea anemone and broke it open. All these little fishies came swarming and ate it out of his hand. At one point he had also caught a blow fish. Pretty cool. The ride back offered free drinks. Everyone got plastered. We enjoyed out Sprites.

Next stop was Mazatlan. We took a city tour where we saw some cliff divers. Pretty impressive. They jumped from 40 feet and only had 7 feet of water to land in among the rocks. We saw a little dancing show, grabbed some souvenirs, and went swimming at the beach and ate dinner at a resort. I love real Mexican food. They had some corn tamales to die for.

Finally we made it to Puerto Vallarta. We chose an excursion to go swimming with the dolphins. It was the highlight of the trip. We were in a group of 10 in a pool with 4 dolphins and 2 trainers. We got to hold them and rub them all over (the dolphins, not the trainers). They felt so cool. They were really sweet animals and I got the impression that they really enjoyed people, kind of like horses. They were all trained to do little tricks. They would smile, clap, sing, jump; everything that the trainers asked them to do. They even gave us a kiss on our cheeks. Then we got to have a belly ride. They rolled over and I grabbed onto their fins belly to belly and they swam me around the pool. So very fun.

Another favorite moment was the chocolate buffet. It was pretty much heaven on earth. Hundreds of chocolate cakes, cookies and treats. They were all too beautiful to eat, well, almost too beautiful.

The whole clan.

If you look closely, you can see Andy's head poking out of the water on the right.

I just had a ball and can't wait to go again....someday. I loved sitting in the sun. Just baking and enjoying the heat. I was pretty serious about sunscreen so I didn't get burned, just a bit more brown and a bit more blonde. I really need to do this every year.