Cruise Vacation day 5 - Jamacia

today had a very frustrating beginning.  We got up super early, got ready for our tour, then headed down to the excursion desk to find out what happened if Jon wasn't cleared to get off in time.  then we went below to the medical center to try to talk the DR in to letting Jon off.  We waited for 1/2 an hour and then another 15 min to see the DR and it was a no-go.  He refused to let him off 2 hours early from his quarantine .  So we sent Damon and Andrea off on the tour for a fun day of tubing, ATVing and ziplining without us.  We went back to the excursion desk to get a refund and find something else to do.  There were literally 2 options that started after 10:30 (Jon's release time) so we chose to go to a beach side resort for the day, which sounded better than hanging around the ship.  We grabbed some breakfast pizza, played ping pong and wandered the decks for a while killing time before we headed off the ship to make our bus.

















   The resort was nice enough.  Big pool with bar, restaurant with a buffet at lunch time and a grill with burgers and hot dogs all the time.  They had a white sand beach covered with lounge chairs and a roped off swimming area.  They had kayaks , little sailboats and snorkel gear we could use.  We stopped by the bar for some virgin pina colodas then we signed up for a sailing trip.













  our guide was weird, but he did a good job with the boat and he plucked a little sea urchin right off the rocks for us to hold.  It was cool to see its spines move.
















 After sailing  I paid to have my hair braided and we enjoyed the buffet.







then we we took out a kayak,






  Then we checked out some snorkels and fins to go check out the rocks outside of the swimming area.  It was so coll to see the stingrays, sea urchins, fish, anemones, sea weed and other sea life.  I stayed out for about 45 min but Jon stayed out another 30 min.







 I had more pina colada's and watched him swim.  When he came back, he brought me a present.  a beautiful cream and green sea urchin skeleton.  it is so pretty and fragile.



 After that we had time for a quick dip in the pool and one more smoothie before we dried off and headed to the bus.  The us ride was full of some VERY drunk people.  One of whom kept singing "The wheels on the bus go round and ROUND" at the top of her lungs in a thick accent.  it was pretty funny!


 Once back on the ship we changed into regular clothes and walked around the ship decks to see if we could find Damon and Andrea.  We couldn't so we left them a note to meet us at dinner and took a rest in our room after a day in the sun.







We watched the end of a movie, then we went up to dinner where we finally met back up with our friends.  We shared our days with each other while we waited in line and had dinner.  We didn't get our favorite waiter today, he was off so we got a new guy but he wasn't as good.  After dinner we played a game of dominion and one of castle panic before we decided to go to bed.  We have an early day in Cayman islands tomorrow!

Cruise Vacation day 4- Fun day at sea, 2!

Today started out poorly.  Jon ate something last night that disagreed with him (probably the soft serve ice cream) and he was up all night in the bathroom.  Since he wasn't feeling well, he stayed in bed while the rest of us went to brunch around 9am.  After we ate, we decided to try to get Jon some pepto to settle his stomach.  We went to the infirmary and they gave him his meds, but they also decided to quarantine him for 24 hours!  We had no idea what a problem this little side trip would cause.  This may make it impossible for Jon and I to go on our excursion tomorrow.  This was extremely aggravating and put a damper on our whole day.



  We are still trying to find a way around it.  After that disaster, we did some trivia (we didn't win) had some lunch and went to a "synchronized swimming competition and an ice carving demo.











Then Andrea wanted to catch some more sun so the rest of us changed into swimsuits to go back on the slides but unfortunately the slides were closed so we then looked for a hot tub but they were all full so we gave up and went back tot he room to grab a game to play.  we decided to try out "Castle Panic" a game I got for Wesley for Christmas and it ended up being a lot of fun.  we played 2 rounds before Andrea showed up all toasty from the sun.  We finished our game and then cleaned up for dinner.




Jon wasn't hungry so he stayed behind while we ate.  Damon met him at 7 to try to convince the Dr. to let him go tomorrow but he wasn't in so no dice.  Then they came back to dinner where Jon had some soup while we had dessert.








 After dinner we played bingo with the cards I won in Harry Potter Trivia (we didn't win) and finished our night with the Juggling show which was fantastic.  He was a great juggler, but also very funny.  We really enjoyed it.  We have once last hope to get Jon off the boat tomorrow, if it doesn't work, we will send Damon and Andrea off to the excursion without us and Jon and I will figure out something on the fly.  Montego bay isn't the safest place to hang around, so it may be difficult to do but we will figure something out.