Life After Costa Maya

[Ram_Puppy]

well, I am somewhat glad to be home. (been here a cople weeks) but it is difficult to get my mind off things like snorkeling in saphire waters... I now truly understand the term 'crystal clear' water.

Here is a short account of my cruise:

1st stop Cozumel.. didn't get in the water just chilled on the beach where they film the corona commercial.
2nd stop Costa Maya... spent 6 hours snorkeling right off the cruise ship pier.. wow.. so amazing
3rd stop Belize City, Belize... windy, overcast, dove on the barrier reef (got 22 ft deep) I actually have some footage of this, this dive was amazing, but lacking. The guide was concerned with acerage and constantly moving so I never got to settle anywhere and enjoy the life I was going over, and when I got back up, found out my wife had spent the entire time on the surface because her mask leaked and the guy didn't take the time to fix it, he just popped off her weight belt and threw it back on the boat. This of course got me hellaciously angry, and one of the other guides on the boat (named Elvis) took us snorkeling around the private island that they took us back to, that, while absent in 'reef' was frickin amazing.
4th Stop Jamaica. Again, dissapointing. we went to dolphin cove where we sat on our butts for 4 1/2 hours because THEY screwed up their schedule and dropped half our party off at Dunns River Falls while we waited for them to finsh and meet with us, again, the 350 lbs man started getting upset and things progressed nicely from there. the dolphin encounter was so so, but dunn's river falls was friggin AMAZING!

5th Stop - Grand Cayman
Grand Cayman was cool, but our stingray excursion was cancelled due to poor weather - it was gorgeous outside but the waves were so high that they would pick you up and slam you into the sand.. not a good thing to do around stingrays... so we stayed in georgetown with our new friends and went to hell, the turtlefarm, and drank a lot of rum! We kept staying we were going to go dive on a spot called EDEN, but we never made it... :(

In all, we had a blast, Royal Caribbean refunded a lot off each excursion after my complaints so we paid about half price on belize, and got all our money back for jamaica and grand cayman. We made some incredible friends from all over north america that we plan on going somewhere with later this year (right now were looking at Majahaul (sp) Costa Maya. And I plan on suprising the wife with another cruise in july. (Vacations2go has great fire sale rates on cruises with less than 90 days to departure.) (that would be for our anniversary)

So, without further procrastination.. here are some of the critters I chased around the waters of Coasta Maya and Belize. These are NOT my pictures as my only underwater footage is still a 40 GB AVI. (only about 12 minutes are underwater and decent.) These are pics of species that I saw that I pulled off the web. there are others that I have not found yet.



Costa Maya:

BAR JACK


FRENCH ANGELFISH


STOPLIGHT PARROTFISH



SPOTFIN BUTTERFLYFISH


There is a small scorpeonoid predator that I saw here that I haven't identified yet.

Both Costa Maya and Belize

Atlantic BLUE TANG


I also saw some that look like powder blue/brown but can't tell the species as it was really washed out (everything was blue at that depth.)

SERGEANT MAJOR


There was a fish here our guide identified as a juvenile Tarpon, but I think he must have been mistaken as pictures of tarpon I have found show them having an elongated body, and the fish I THINK that Jennifer and I saw had a much deeper and narrow body, but I could be wrong.


I hate more and more every day the camera ran out of juice!!! Stupid Stephen!

In Costa Maya these guys were all over the place:

diadema urchin



yellow tube sponge


basket spoinge


[b]magnificent feather duster & turtle grass[b]


tree oysters



baby lobster


arrow crab (actually held one of these in belize!


cushion star


purple sea fan


fire coral

[Ram_Puppy]

fighting the urge to start setting up a caribbean 'aggressive' tank... (mostly becuase I gotta get my friggin pacific reef tank up first! gaahhh!

[Bill S]

Boy, you just convinced me to stay away from the cruise ships. Our normal vacation is to charter a sailboat. We did that last summer in Belize, but boy was it HOT! We're trying to go back to the BVI this summer. It would be our 8th trip... Love the fact that you can spend nearly all day in the water.

[Ram_Puppy]

I wouldn't say never go on a cruise, we had a blast and made some great friends we will cherish for life! besides, it is not royal caribbean's fault that the people that contract excursions out to them did a poor job. We made lemonade out of every lemon, and had an absolute wonderful time. were all talking about getting together late this year and spending a week in Costa Maya, renting a house, and diving/snorkeling Banco Chinchorro

[Flobex]

i went on a cruise to cozumel, and belize, and key west, andn belize and cozumel have some AMAZING snorkeling. i love the water. in belize we got to grab onto some big ol' stingray, and ride with them. i loved it there. i have been to grand caymen to, and i thought the turtle farm was pretty cool, hell was really nothinng,. just some rocks... but i got a shirt :P i also liked riding in the front seat on the opposite side as americans do :P

[Ram_Puppy]

the crazy drivers are in Jamaica!!!!

I am really looking forward to going back to Coasta Maya, the entire area around majahual is a marine bio-sphere preserve, development is limited and the world wild life fund committs funds towars keeping it pristine and beautiful. it isn't a dive mecha because not a lot of people know about it, and the place is just pristine. felt like I was swimming in a gemstone.

[Salty]

We have always had great luck with Carnival going to Cozumel and Belize. We schedule our own excursions though.

http://gocozumel.com