Sea Day and Costa Maya

Our first full day on the ship was a day at sea sailing from New Orleans to Costa Maya, Mexico. The ride was smooth but it was very windy on the decks. We spent a lot of time at the pool and enjoyed both breakfast and lunch at the buffet. It offered the best options for Ally but there were so many people that it was tough for her to focus on eating and not get distracted. Two people immediately were drawn to Ally- the head service guy from Jamaica that would go around talking to people and yelling "wakie, wakie" at everyone during breakfast and the other was one of the servers stationed at the entrance to spray everyone's hands with sanitizer and say "washie, washie". Ally really liked her, she was from Peru and payed special attention to Ally every time we saw her. One of the female bartenders at the bar above the kids play areas also loved to talk to Ally and was sure to say hi each morning when we came out for breakfast. We played, walked around the ship, swam, ate lunch, napped in the afternoon, watched Elmo DVDs or Finding Nemo then got ready for dinner. The first night we tried to have dinner in the fancier dining room (not that you have to be fancy dressed, its just the formal dining room where you order off a nicer menu and sit at smaller tables) but Ally was really not interested in sitting still or eating. The day was a challenge with eating and she was also very clingy to me. She did not want Karl to do anything at all but we sort of attributed that to being in a new place with so many people. We were able to get her to relax in the room by watching her movie and reading books and she fell asleep easily. Since our rooms were connected, we were able to leave her asleep in the room with grandparents next door while Karl and I visited the bar at night to relax a little.

We got off the ship in Costa Maya after breakfast and headed out to explore. We had no idea what to expect and were just hoping to find a beach area. The port was really only set up for the cruise ship and consisted of a small village type area with shops, bars and a giant pool in the middle. The pool was surrounded by sand and beach chairs, a little spray park area, swim up bars and was the perfect place for us to play. Ally loved the water and all of the little fountains in the shallow part. It was treated salt water just like the water on the boat so it was warm and salty but not as salty as straight sea water. She was not too excited about the sand at first and made me carry her everywhere but after a little swimming she figured it out and had some fun with her bucket and shovel. She loved running through the little spray park area. It was the perfect size for her and she thought it was super fun to stick her hair into the water and get sprayed in the face. She was really fun to play with and did great outside all morning. Again, she didn't eat much for lunch but crashed for a long nap and woke up happy. One of her favorite things was to sit outside on the balcony with grandpa and every day after nap and the weather was always hot and sunny so it was perfect.

On the boat they had a progressive trivia contest where teams of 4 would compete each night to answer 20 questions to earn points. Karl, Sharon, Hank and John Eagin decided to compete so Ally, Gail and I either played in the kids area or came along to watch and help out if we could. It was a lot of trivial pursuit type questions but they also had music trivia and a movie trivia that were right up our alley.