Chad and Tina cruise the Western Carribean Part 2 (from 2007)

Day 5:

This is the second of a two-part series. To read part 1 click here

We arrive at Limon, Costa Rica, and disembark for our shore excursion at 7:30am. Tina with a croissant and I with my bacon bar. My heart is starting to hurt. We’re taking a two hour bus ride through the mountains to a rain forest where we’ll be zip-lining through the trees with all the monkeys.

Tina gets prepared for what is sure to make her piss her pants…

…and she’s off!

After nine different zip lines, some as far apart as a football field, she arrived at the bottom with dry shorts. Damn. After that, we hop on an aerial tram for a ride through the rain forest at about 70 feet off the ground. We saw a few spiders as big as your fist, weird flowers, and some stupid birds. No monkeys. Friggin bullshit. Now I understand why developers are destroying the rain forests; cuz they’re boring as hell. This place would be a lot cooler with some condos , a pool, maybe a movie theatre, and a monkey zoo so they can’t hide in the trees when I come to see them.

On our two hour ride back to the ship, we passed the Dole Plantation, The Del Monte Plantation, and the Chiquita Plantation. Nothing but banana plants as far as the eye could see. How many you ask? A bunch! HAHAHAHA! Get it?! A bunch! Oh man, I need a nap.

Blah, blah, dinner. Blah, blah, towel animal. For some reason, this one is seductively posed. Our room steward is beginning to creep me out.

Tonight we’re partying, cuz we have a day at sea tomorrow. WOOHOO!!

Day 6:

I skipped the bacon this morning and went with the sausage instead. Ya know, the more heart healthy option. They have oatmeal, but this is vacation, and oatmeal can kiss my ass. Today was a pretty lazy day. I got Tina to come work out with me, we went to an art auction (for the free champagne), Tina went to bingo (again…and it turns out third time is NOT a charm – stupid bingo), and we slept out in the sun by the pool.

Tonight was another fancy night, so we got ourselves all pimped out and headed to the pre-dinner martini party. I’m double-fisting the martinis and it’s only 7pm.

Tina is buzzed on vodka by the time we get to dinner and is so amazed by our waiter’s sleight-of-hand trick with two wine corks that she decides to try it for herself.

This is about 5-6 minutes in…

And finally…

Back in our room, we’re attacked by a killer towel monkey.

As an added bonus, tonight is the Grand Gala Buffet at 12:30am, ya know in case five meals a day just don’t stave off your hunger. They had some great displays…

…but what does yours truly think of the food?

I’m going to bed

Day 7:

At this point I’ve eaten enough bacon to have had two heart seizures, but I don’t care cuz bacon tastes good. We arrive in Belize City, Belize this morning and board a catamaran at 11:30am for a twenty-five minute trip out to the reef (only Australia’s great barrier is larger), to try out Snuba.

While Tina and I are both certified Scuba divers, she’s had trouble in the past with her ears at depth, and I don’t care for snorkeling, so Snuba is a happy medium. It’s basically scuba diving at twenty feet without an air tank; you are just attached to a twenty foot air hose. It’s 50% snorkeling, 50% scuba, and 100% lame. The good news is that now she wants to go back to Belize and try to scuba dive again. After our child’s play, we hop back on the catamaran for a trip to a private island.

And out comes the free rum punch.

Free rum punch on the catamaran, free rum punch on the island and after an hour and a half, everyone is rum punch drunk.

And I neglected to wear sunscreen on this particular day, so I’m redder than the Kool-Aid Man. On the boat trip back to our cruise ship, we’re all dancing and conga-lining and high-fiving and having a blast. I wish we could’ve had this day at the beginning of our trip. Everyone boards the cruise ship and the majority head up to the pool bar where we all continue to drink and dance and hoot and holler. This dude is wearing the same suit as me...so obviously, he's badass.

…until we all head back to our rooms to pass out. Tina and I wake up at 8pm, grab a coupla pepperoni pizzas and a ton of ice water, and stay in our rooms the rest of the night watching tv and rubbing on aloe.

Day 8:

This is it, the last day. Mmmm, bacon. Yeah, I’m about over my bacon kick now. I’m starting to sweat bacon grease and some fat guy tried to put me on his cheeseburger. Tina headed to morning bingo and lost again. It would probably be cooler to burn $20 bills, but at least bingo takes longer. It still sucks donkey balls and I still loathe it.

I had time today to ponder three things: The first is that this ship has a Purser’s desk, which is essentially the information desk. I kinda find that sexist. I mean, why can’t it be called the Walleter’s desk? This ship had a bunch of pursers, no walleters, and judging by the nightly 11pm meetings of the Friends of Dorothy, there were a handful of fannypackers. Giggle-giggle.

The second thing is these two pictures, which were side by side on the ship:

I guess Carnival has an opposition to masturbation. What a bunch of fascists.

The third thing had to do with Domino’s Pizza. If you recall back in the late 80’s and early 90’s Domino’s drilled it into your head to Avoid The Noid. Now I don’t know whatever happened to The Noid, but if he’s being abusing drugs and alcohol over the last ten or so years, then this may be him. Either way, I stayed out of his way the entire cruise.

And what’s up with the dude on the right? This picture just creeps me out.

Well enough of my ramblings, it’s the last evening on ship, so I grabbed a photo of the sunset…

…had dinner, and checked out tonight’s towel animal which was some sort of baby. Tina, in her recent throes of baby fever, demonstrates for me what a great mother she would be. Tina had a baby…

…and it’s head popped off!

Finally, we end the trip with Tina heading to bingo. Why? Because she’s getting her ass handed to her in the casino and she’ll lose less money if she plays stupid, old lady bingo. What’s that you say? How’d she do? Do you really have to ask?

Yep, she won $1000.

It’s like I’ve been saying, if you find yourself on a cruise ship, head over to the bingo room, because it’s the greatest game in the history of everything of all time, ever.

Chad and Tina cruise the Western Carribean Part 1 (from 2007)

Day 1:

Okay, gonna have to bear with me cuz we just booked this cruise on Jan. 14 and departed on Jan. 19 (living in Florida + having no children = last second travel steals). We're taking an 8 day cruise from Ft. Lauderdale to Colon, Panama, - Limon, Costa Rico, - Belize City, Belize, and back to Ft. Lauderdale. 8 days. And the first three days we're trapped on the ship. Scary as this sounds to some people, I embrace the days at sea because there's no rush to do anything. Unless of course you're Tina, in which case you try to schedule out the hours of the days.

Anywho, day 1 was basically us boarding the ship and walking around to familiarize ourselves with the vessel. While walking, I noted that most of our fellow passengers were old enough to share a yearbook with Moses. With all the living fossils on this cruise, I felt like I was living in a paleontologist’s wet dream. As the ship sailed out of the port, the upper decks were full of passengers waving goodbye to all of the people that were seeing us off, which consisted of a handful of scruffy looking dock workers.

Tina and I spent the departure time on our room’s balcony.

We were escorted out to sea by the US Coast Guard.


Later, we hung out at the back of the ship near the waterslide.


Enjoying wine with dinner the first night. Very nice.

When we got back to our room that evening, we saw that our room steward made us a towel animal. I think it’s a bear cub. Either way, it’s nice to know we have a backup plan in case we run out of toilet paper.

Day 2:

We woke up in the morning with Cuba outside of our window. Those aren’t clouds over the island, it’s cigar smoke.

We spent the whole second day at sea.

One of the highlights of cruising for me is the unlimited supply of bacon available. I love bacon the way a mother loves her son…well, I mean, ya know, except you shouldn’t eat your kids, that’d be just sick. Anyways, I’m sure you get the point. I had twelve slices this morning and my hearts never felt stronger.

The rest of the day, we enjoyed the sun and pool, gambled at the casino, and Tina played bingo. Yep, that’s right, bingo. This game brings out the worst in every sweet grandma in the world. The best part is when one little old lady yells out “BINGO!” and 99 other little old ladies say “AWWWWW!” followed by an under the breath “fuck”. The worst part of the game? The stupid douche that calls out the numbers. “It’s not malignant, it’s B-9” and “It’s what Tarzan said when he was old enough to vote; I-18”. I started to think that maybe all the ladies that were playing were actually in their 20’s and 30’s but aged prematurally after constantly being exposed to these old, stale jokes. Oh yeah, and the second worst part of the game? You can never win it. It’s stupid and I hate it. What a waste of twenty dollars.

We got all fancied up for dinner that evening.

Waiting for us in our room that night was another towel animal. And for some reason, Tina was mildly turned on by it.

Day 3:

Well, we’re still at sea. This morning’s breakfast is a plate of bacon with a side of bacon. Then we participate in a few of the ship activities until we begin to wear down. Guess we can go eat, or sleep by the pool, or go to the casino. Or eat and drink until we pass out by the pool. Instead, I went to go work out (wha-wha-what?!) and Tina went down to go play bingo…again. I burned off 200 calories and Tina burned off another 20 dollars. Bingo is stupid, and so is exercising. We head to bar, grab a load of foo-foo drinks and head back to our room.

We arrive in Panama tomorrow and have to get off the boat at 7am to begin our tour so we’re going to bed early. Unfortunately, we’re in our room before the turn-down service, so no towel animals. Dammit. I was crossing my fingers for a rhinoceros tonight.

Day 4:

PANAMA! Dun-dun dun-da-da-da PANAMA_HUH!

We disembark our ship in Colon, Panama, and Tina and I board a bus to begin our shore excursion. I had breakfast on the run, which essentially consisted of a glass of OJ and a fistful of bacon. I call this the bacon bar. Our first stop is a waterfront hotel where we board some boats…

…and head to an island to visit with an Indian tribe.

They were a nice bunch but the irony is that we’re in Colon, but not one person uses it. Oh well, it’s no worse than a Tina fart. They danced for us, and through a translator, gave us the history of their tribe.

This girl walks around with a small monkey on her head:

We leave this island before they start building casinos, and hop back on the boats back to the hotel. While waiting for the rest of our people to return from the island, I walk around the hotel to check out the local art. It’s not cubist art, or even abstractionist art, but a form which I can only describe as fellationist?

Next stop…

We were there when a ginormous Princess Cruise Lines ship came through, the Coral Princess. It cost this cruise line $233k to pass through the canal, and the Panama Canal only accepts cash. Note to self: build a canal.

This ship is lowered some 80 feet before it can continue through the canal to the lower sea level. I haven’t seen a dropoff this steep since George Bush’s approval ratings came out.

We leave the canal, head back to our ship and have dinner and drinks. Guess what’s in our room after dinner? Another towel critter. And strangely posed I might add.

Coming soon, days 5-8...