But really, cruises are just plain good for the soul

Not sure where the past 6 months have gone, but they have seriously flown by and, needless to say, blogging has taken a major back seat. Back in May, Chris and I took a much needed week long cruise out of New Orleans to Roatan, Belize and Cozumel. If you've ever been on a cruise then can I get an amen when I say that cruises are just plain good for your soul? It just is.

All we did was sleep, eat, scuba, read in the sun, play mini golf, eat some more, and relax. My diet may have consisted of Guy Fereri cheeseburgers, brick oven pizza and ice cream for an entire week. I said it may have.

tourists 2013. Chris had been wanting this awful Tommy Bahama shirt for our cruise and every time we saw someone else with a Hawaiian shirt he would just say "that guy understand me"

First stop was Roatan, Honduras and let me just say that I'm obsessed. If you can, go there. Now. It could quite possibly be the most laid back beach I've ever been on. And as a self-proclaimed beach connoisseur, that's impressive. There are no resorts, only scuba hotels with hammocks outside of the front doors. Heaven I tell you. We went diving all day and saw 5 different sea turtles and the first little fella swam along side us for at least 5 minutes before deciding that he was sick of me trying to get as close as humanly/legally possible and he swam away. If it weren't incredibly illegal I would snatch myself a sea turtle so fast.....We also saw barracudas, turtles, parrot fish, groupers, red snappers, a dead sea snake (thankfully, because there is something unnatural about a snake that swims underwater), and a seahorse. I'm always fascinated when we scuba, mostly because I never in a million years would have pegged myself for a scuba lover. It just always seemed so counter-intuitive to intentionally fall backwards off the side of a boat and sink straight to the bottom. Regardless, we loved it and the diving was incredible.

I'm in love with you, Roatan.

 Our second stop was Belize where we went ziplining, which was only mediocre followed by a jungle and cave tube tour and that, my friends, was incredible. I'm also a complete nerd who watches Animal Planet and National Geographic on a very daily basis so walking through the jungle and learning the medicinal purposes of different plants and watching our guide eat tiny termites that taste like mint (I'm lame and got too nervous to actually eat one, which I highly regret) and learning facts about the different animals we saw and heard. Then we put our tubes in the river and drifted into some caves filled with stalactites and stalagmites and bats. When we drifted far enough in and it became completely dark, we all turned on the headlamps on our helmets and the entire cave glittered from the different minerals. We loved it, although we didn't think to buy a lifeproof case for our phones so we couldn't bear the thought of our precious phones getting wet, hence the ZERO pictures from that excursion. Fail on our part, but just take my word for it. It. was. awesome.

sadly, our only Belize picture

Finally: The classic Cozumel stop. duh. And we went diving. Obviously. This was a very different scuba trip for me though, in that since most people in our group were fairly experienced, we dove down 95 feet and went through coral "tunnels". At first I wasn't too keen on going through coral tunnels where there is only about 1 foot of space below you and the ocean floor and about 2 feet between your body at the top of the tunnel. It seemed a little claustrophobic-y but I didn't have a whole lot of options so I went and it was kind of cool. We ran into some eels and a ton of fish. Then the tunnels spit us out into the wide open ocean. As in, dark blue abyss, and yes it kind of freaked me out but then luckily a sea turtle caught my attention and I was transfixed on the little guy as we swam along the wall. It was the closest I got to a turtle and he didn't even mind, probably because he was too busy burying his face in some coral looking food. We saw the single biggest fish I've ever seen in my life. He was probably the size of me if I curled up in a ball. Naturally we saw schools of fish, HUGE lobsters, lionfish, and..... wait for it...... 2 nurse sharks. Next purchase: an underwater camera.

Cozumel has some of the clearest water

Post-scuba smoothies. The best part of being in Mexico

The best part of being in Mexico are the ridiculously huge, fresh smoothies. We live for those things and at like $1 each, we pounded the banana and strawberry smoothies like it was our job.

Maybe the best picture of the trip

Next blog post: JAPAN