Dolphin Swim Excursion (Cabo San Lucas)

This was such a fun excursion!!! It was worth EVERY penny we spent on it. To read more about it, click here.

Photography wasn't allowed, but there was someone taking our pictures and we bought all the pictures with me and Jeff in it. They even threw in a few extras that were probably taken different days, like this one ...


... and this one

... and this one

Now for our pictures. The dolphin you will see in the pictures below is named Risho and he is 28 years old and 800 lbs. :-)

I was a little nervous of it at first

We were in a little group of 5 and this is all of us, plus the trainer. Just FYI for me so I never forget, everyone's names, left to right, are Adolfo (trainer), Holly, Brad, Ryan (and me and Jeff, of course). Here, we were all touching Risho.

Here we are with Risho kissing us


... and of us kissing Risho


The story behind the picture of Jeff above... the trainer had a way of telling if the dolphin wanted to be French kissed. When it was Jeff's turn, the trainer said the dolphin wanted to be French kissed. So that's why Jeff's tongue was sticking out in the picture above.

The trainer wanted us to raise our arms in the air, and Risho went around the pool like this with a basketball on his nose.

Here we are on top of Risho... not actually sitting on him, but squatting down to make it look like we were.

Swimming with Risho ....

Me on his back

Jeff on his stomach

Here we are dancing with Risho ...


Here is Risho dancing in the middle of us (I'm guessing we were clapping?)

Then Risho sang for us and we were moving our fingers while he sang for us

Feeling his belly

Feeling the inside of his mouth

Feeding fish from our mouth to his mouth


One more swim with Risho, this time with Jeff on his back and me on his belly


And two more pictures at the end of the excursion of Risho doing some tricks for us

Panoramic Picture of Cabo San Lucas

Hahaha, you're so funny, Rebecca! But thanks so much for doing this for me! Here is the panoramic picture of the pictures I posted below (also, if you haven't had a chance to see it yet, the Cabo San Lucas post is below).

3rd Port - Cabo San Lucas (Jan. 23, 2009)

Now for our last port... Cabo San Lucas. It was our favorite port, probably because of the things we did and it's also a very pretty place... and it was a very nice day (check out the blue sky in the pictures below!).

Here are a few of the pictures I took of Cabo from the ship ....

Since the ship didn't have a place to dock, we rode little boats to the pier. In this picture below, I think we went to somewhere in the left side of the picture

And in this one, somewhere on the right side

And right about in the center of this picture is the little beach we went to for about an hour after our dolphin swim excursion

Hmm... I wonder if I could figure out how to make a panoramic picture from the 3 pictures above. Not sure if I have a program to do that, but it would be kinda fun. :-)

I thought this picture below turned out cool. I was standing on the platform (deck) that was sticking out from the rest of the ship (see Puerto Vallarta post, 4th picture below the map to see what I mean). And you can see down below, where we got onto the boats to go to the pier. This ship is HUGE!!

A boat behind the boat we were on

While we were waiting to go to our dolphin swim excursion, we took a picture of each other on the pier. You can see the ship behind us in the distance, too. I tried to make a classy pose. :-) I really need to do something about my figure before our next cruise, haha.


The next thing we did was the dolphin swim. I will make that my next post. There was a photographer taking pictures of us, and we bought all the ones that had us in it. I'll probably just post the best ones, but if you want to see more, go to my Facebook profile. I'll get them posted there eventually. :-)

Jeff and I were pretty much on our own in Cabo. Out of his family, we were the only ones to do the dolphin swim. They went and rented jet skiis and did some parasailing, too. So after the dolphin swim, we took a 'taxi boat' to the beach in the picture above. We were the only ones on the little motor boat and the 'driver' of the boat took us on a little tour of around the beach, so here are some pretty pictures of the Cabo scenery and creatures ....

Lots of birds

The beach we were dropped off at... but here, we went past it a little bit ...

... to see this scenery

... and these seals

When we were dropped off at the beach, we went to the other side where there were bigger waves. Jeff had fun in the waves while I took pictures. He's underneath the water in this picture.

I didn't get into the water all the way, but I let Jeff take some pictures of me and a wave almost knocked me down here. :-)

Here are a couple more really pretty pictures of the beach, one looking one way and one looking the other way.


And one more from our balcony as the boat was leaving... the beach we went to is the first of the two sections of sand you see.


I will post pictures of our dolphin swim excursion tomorrow. :-)

2nd Port - Mazatlan (Jan. 22, 2009)

Oooh, the post below this one was my 100th post! Yay for me!!! :-) Anyway, our 2nd stop was Mazatlan. We didn't have any excursions planned there. Jeff's dad and brother had a 4-wheeling excursion they went on. The rest of us just mostly walked the streets there and bought souvenirs (and jewelry for Jeff's mom and sisters... I'm not too big into jewelry). Jeff and I just tagged along and did some window shopping. Jeff bought one little souvenir, though.

Here we are coming in to dock (I think it's behind me and a little ways up where the ship docked at)


After we got off the ship, we rode on one of these ...


... to come here (it's a little blurry, but it says "Port of Mazatlan-Cruise Terminal" and below that it says "ENTRANCE")

Some worker or somebody stopped us and told us if we went to hear a presentation on timeshares for about an hour (at this really nice hotel), we would get our taxi rides for free that day, and married couples (Jeff and I) and single people over 30 (Jeff's sister, Lori) would get a $500 gift card for our next Carnival cruise if we went within 18 months. Yes, it's weird that Jeff's mom or younger sister didn't get one (don't ask me why!). We decided to take him up on the offer and we took a van to the hotel. On the way, I took a picture of Applebee's. Yes, they have Applebee's in Mexico!

We were outside of the hotel and this is a harbor I took a picture of

We did our window shopping after the presentation (which we didn't get any timeshares). While we were shopping, this little 'parade' of animals went by. They went one way, then a little bit later, came back going the other way. We saw ...

Giraffes

Tigers

Zebras

and Camels

Jeff and I went back to the ship a little sooner than the others. On our way back, we rode in this little taxi ...

... and then took the little vehicle trains (in the pictures near the top of this post) back to the ship. Mexican drivers are scary, especially in the little taxis. I heard that stop signs were optional in Mexico. In the taxi we rode, there was a 4 lane road (2 lanes going each way) and sometimes they would drive down the middle of the 2 lanes (when there are no other cars around, of course). And once they stopped about an inch behind a bus (it seemed like). It was a little scary for me and glad we got safely back to the ship.

Here's a picture from our balcony of the line getting back on the ship


And here's a pretty sunset picture of Mazatlan. You can also see the Cruise Terminal building in the distance.


The next post will be our favorite port... Cabo San Lucas!