Just got back from 10 days in Florida and the Caribbean. We flew down to Tampa on Friday the 19th and boarded the cruise ship on Saturday. It took until Monday morning to arrive at Grand Cayman, where we played with the turtles, the stingrays and toured the island. I will try to get some pictures on here by tomorrow. Some of the turtles were huge - like 400-500 lbs and and very old, but the ones we got to pick up were a lot smaller - maybe 12-14 inches across and 5 lbs. The stingrays were spooky - we had pieces of squid to feed them and they would just mob you - we were probably 2-3 miles offshore and the water was 3-4 feet deep. There were 8 or 10 boats out there at any given time with 50 or so people in each boat!!
Then it took us overnight to get to Cozumel which is an island but our activities were on the mainland so we took a ferry boat over on Tuesday morning in VERY rough water - lots of people were sick. Then we had to walk about 2 blocks to the buses - they were too big to get close to the harbor and about an hour ride to the ruins at Tulum. The Mayan ruins there were fantastic. I had some fish tacos there with a pico de gallo salsa made with habanero peppers - talk about some serious heat!! I just sat there and kept eating and sweating!! Then back to the harbor and another fun boat ride back to the island and our cruise ship.
We cruised back to Tampa arriving there early in the morning on Christmas morning, and stayed there until Monday afternoon when we flew home. I ate a ton of fish and we saw some great sights. We got to go to the Tampa Bay Bucanneers football game with Oakland - my first NFL game. Loved walking around looking at Christmas lights in 70 degree weather!! We got to eat at some amazing places in Tampa - Debbie works for the company that owns Outback Steak Houses, Flemings, Roys and some others so we got the royal treatment and some awesome food!! We also went to Tarpon Springs, which is a Greek enclave with sponges, great places to eat and a lot of shops with sponges, goat's milk soap, etc. We also went to a fish market where we got a 5 pound filet of black grouper for grilling.
I said before we went I wanted to eat fish 3 times a day and I didn't quite do it, but I did eat fish at least twice a day every day and sometimes I got fish 3 times in 1 day. Mike and Becky were there from Las Vegas and Bruce and Debbie live in Clearwater so there were 6 of us on the cruise - it was a blast.
I think it was about 20 degrees when we got to Park 'n Jet and start shoveling the snow off the Jeep - it was hard to be thrilled about being home at that moment, but when we got home the sidewalks and driveway was cleared - haven't found out yet but think our tenants downstairs did that!!
I will try and do some pictures tomorrow and a few final thoughts before we move on to a New Year - Love to all - J.B.
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