Friday we woke up to the bluest and most beautiful water in the port in Cozumel, Mexico. This was by far the most developed stop on our trip and had a lot of shopping and restaurants within walking distance. We took Ally off the boat for a walk around the area near the port before we handed her off to grandma and grandpa. We picked up a few souvenirs at Senior Frogs and enjoyed some chips and salsa at Carlos and Charleys then it was time for Karl and I to head to our dolphin adventure. I have always wanted to swim with dolphins so Karl and I decided that this would be a great way to celebrate our 5th wedding anniversary. We traveled to a dolphin sanctuary about 5 minutes from the ship called Dolphinaris that is home to 19 trained dolphins. Half of them were captured (when that was still legal) and the other half were born and raised in the habitat that includes several big pools where people interact with them in a controlled environment. We got in the water and were able to learn about them up close, touch them as they swam by, give them a hug, get a kiss and dance with them. The real highlight was getting a ride from the dolphin which meant that you swam out to the center of the pool, reached our your left arm to the side while the dolphin swam around you then when the dolphin turned over you grab onto the fins and let them pull you back to the shallow part of the pool. It was so amazing! Our dolphins were Ashin (a-sheen) and Nike (nee-kay) and were two different species but looked very similar. The facility has it organized to the letter and each group of 8-10 people spends about 40 minutes in the water and they do 6 or 7 groups at a time. After our time in the pool we were able to see the videos and photos they take of each group and get some authentic mexican for lunch- along with the diet coke (coke light) that I had been missing all week.
We came back to the ship to find that Ally had a great time with the grandparents and was napping peacefully. She went swimming and had a picnic lunch in the room, very cute. I got to spend some time up by the adult pool and we got everyone cleaned up to get Ally fed and get to the show in the theater. The show was called 'Elements' and included dancers, singers, acrobats, magician and a special presentation of the crew. Ally was very entertained and at one point she thought the dancers costumes made them look like monkeys (they were actually birds) so she then kept saying "bye monkeys" for the rest of the show. We had dinner reservations at the Teppanyaki restaurant on the ship so we put Ally to bed and headed to the asian grill for the special cook-in-front-of-you show. It was fun and the food was really good, and at the end they even brought us a small anniversary cake and sang to us. Even though we were full, that night was the chocolate buffet so after dinner we got in the longest line ever to go through the buffet and fill our plates with different treats. It had been a long day so we ate them poolside then crashed.
Saturday was a sea day sailing back to New Orleans so we took the day to just relax by the pool and organize our bags to leave. We had to be off the ship at 10am on Sunday to pick up our luggage and get through customs. Team Purdue also came away with the progressive trivia championship Saturday night so that was exciting!
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