Part one of my Disney cruise photos can be found here.

I left off after our first port day, Grand Cayman. That night, was pirate night, arrrgghh!

After dinner we went up on deck for the pirate party and fireworks at sea. Pretty cool stuff.

Followed by the pirate buffet. I was so full from dinner I couldn’t eat much, but that didn’t stop Bobby.

The next morning, we docked in Costa Maya. For those who aren’t familiar, Costa Maya is very….errr…primitive compared to places like Grand Cayman or Cozumel. Most of the area doesn’t have electricity, and it’s a very, very poor place. We decided to do a jeep excursion, and it ended up being quite the crazy day.

Rain clouds threatened, but at the time we had no clue how much it would impact our day

There were six jeeps total following the two guides in their jeep, and ours was right behind the guides, we we had the fun task of trying to keep up with them…with a broken speedometer. Yes, it read zero the entire time.

We drove out of he tourist area down some roads and to another little town.

It was quite sad. They told us the school doesn’t have a teacher and the kids watch a TV to learn then walk home. We walked around the village for a few minutes and then got back in the Jeeps to head through the jungle, off road to a beach where we could swim and would have lunch prepared for us.

We drove on the main road for a few minutes then took an abrupt left into the jungle. Seriously.

After about fifteen minutes of laughing hysterically, trying to keep up, going through huge holes and having trees whacking us, it started to POUR. Everyone stopped and we put the tops up, except there were NO SIDES to the jeep in the back so my parents still got soaked.

We actually passed one vehicle on this “road”, it was a very nice new looking camouflaged truck, and inside it were about 25 soldiers…with giant guns. Not going to lie it was kind of creepy. Where did they come from? We were literally in the middle of nowhere a good 20-25 minutes off the road. It surely reminded me we were not in America and we needed to be mindful and observant.

We finally made it to the beach, still pouring rain.

It looked like it would be beautiful on a nice sunny day. This place was really cool, and about as authentic as it gets.

They had a “buffet” for us (which I was slightly hesitant to eat)

The rain turned to a drizzle and we were able to go walk outside, and some of the kids even got in the water.

Soon we were told it was time to start heading back. I snapped a few photos before heading to the jeep.

Luckily we had brought some beach towels and were able to dry off and use them to help us from getting soaked. It was still raining a bit, but we had to get back to the boat! Little did we know….

We took a different way back than the way we came, all dirt, well, now, all RIVER. The road was washed out and what remained were gigantic “pot holes” stretching the entire length of the road. We were the lead car and HAD to keep up with the guides who were flying through them, and since it was a manual jeep, Bobby couldn’t slow down too much or we would stall, so we had to fly through these bad boys and it was insane. Photos don’t do it justice. My mom and I got SOAKED in the back seat, covered with mud. Mud went flying up over the top of the jeep, as we bounced along. Oh, and the windshield wiper only worked if you held it down, so my dad had to keep leaning over and hitting it for Bobby. We were cracking up laughing the whole time, my stomach was aching. This went on for about 30-40 minutes, all the way back into town. Hilarious. I have a short video of part of the wild ride, please ignore me laughing hysterically in the background, but it is worth watching. Check out my mom’s face at the very end!

We finally made it back to the main road and into town.

We were taken to a souvenir store and given free tequila. We stood in a little group as he talked to us about the “Mexican medicine” and then he called me out of the crowd to take a shot in front of everyone. Great. Those pictures are on my mom’s camera and I will probably never see them. The most hilarious part as when he tried to give a shot to a seven year old girl. Her mom freaked out, it was quite funny.

Dad’s turn. We shopped a bit then drove the rest of the way back to drop off the jeeps. Whew! When we set out on this adventure I had no idea what to expect, and it was a little out of my comfort zone but I am so glad we did it, and I don’t think it would have been near as much fun without the rain.

After we got cleaned up, I went back on deck to take some photos with my stalker zoom lens. We were in port until 11:00 pm, so I went back again to see how little of this huge area had electricity.

The hurricane back in 2006 knocked a LOT of this area out. I remember going on a cruise in 2007 that was rerouted from here because there was so much damage.

We had a great day in Costa Maya. Everyone was so friendly with the jeep rentals and at the beach/restaurant we went to, and I would highly recommend this to anyone looking for something fun and family friendly to do here.

dinner.

bed.

Next up, Cozumel!

QOTD: Have you ever done a ship excursion? Any favorites?