YA MAN

Traveling through the Caribbean you have to say/hear "ya man" a lot. Ya man! After a grueling tax season Cory and I were able to take a holiday together. I have been wanting to visit some friends in Florida for the past eight years, and finally that opportunity came. We spent a day in Florida and then boarded a cruise ship in Miami. We ported in Cozumel, Belize, Roatan and Grand Cayman. All of these ports were beautiful and the cruise was fantastic. They even went out of their way to accommodate my new diet. The whole trip was phenomenal and we can't wait to go again....maybe the next time we may have to bring the kids. Ya man!

P.S. I really don't know what we would do without our moms. (How do people manage living far from family...I just don't know). Can't thank my mom and Sue enough for the gift of travelling without kids for 10 days.

Juno beach in West Palm Florida. As you can see it was really windy that day. This beach is right across the street from a turtle preservation facility and the beach itself protects sea turtles. In July all the turtles come up on the beach in the middle of the night to lay their eggs in the sand. It's supposed to be really neat to watch. 

This turtle was healing from an animal bite or something. The volunteers plan to release her back into the ocean in a few weeks. All of the turtles we saw were so friendly and fun to watch. 

This turtle was having a check up. It gave us quite the show too....cleaning up turtle feces is not pretty. On a much happier note, you can follow the progress of all the turtles at the facility on the blog. You can visit your favourites and donate to their cause and then follow updates and come to the official release back into the ocean. What a very cool program for kids to get involved in. 

Here we are in Tulum. We got to experience the "rain" forest and see the Mayan ruins all at the same time. Our LDS guide was fantastic and did his best. By the end of it we all had water seeping out of our shoes. 

Tulum was actually the first Mayan ruin to be discovered because it was built on top of the cliffs. As you can see it was pretty windy once again. We quickly brought out the camera to snap a few pics. 

In Belize we decided to go cave tubing and zip lining. Cory liked the cave tubing and I preferred the zip lining. Both were really fun though. 

Ya Man!!!!

Here we are in Roatan. It is a beach on Honduras owned by the cruise line. Cory and I try to preserve our white skin as best as possible, but we couldn't resist a getting a little sun on the gorgeous beach.

Of all the places we went, we would love to go back to the Grand Cayman. The water is so warm and clear. It was just beautiful. We weren't originally planning on swimming with sting rays, but we made a last minute decision to go, and we are so glad we did. 

This by far was the highlight of my trip. This stingray was so friendly and affectionate. She let people hold her for the whole time we were there. Our guide said she was expecting. I never thought I would ever kiss a stingray, let alone swim with one, but I did. She was just so darn affectionate.