Alyssa

Age: 23
Occupation: Full-Time Student
Number of Cruises: 2
Cruise Line: Carnival
Ship: Paradise
Sailing Date: January 11th, 2004
Itinerary: Western Caribbean

My boyfriend Aaron and I just got back yesterday from our cruise through the Caribbean. This was my second cruise and it was Aaron’s first. My first cruise was two years ago to Alaska on Holland America…Which I still recommend by the way.

Anyway, we flew from San Francisco to Miami a day early on a Saturday, which gave us plenty of time to check out South Beach’s nightlife and make it to the ship on time the next day, (slightly hung-over). Getting on the ship was fairly easy, and didn’t take long to get on board and into our room. We were both somewhat impressed by the casino-like décor of the ship, and spent the afternoon exploring the many levels of the boat.

We had the late seating for dinner in the elation restaurant and were assigned to table 169, which was a large round table that sat 10 people. I was sort of disappointed that we were not near a window, but instead, in the middle of the restaurant. However, the people at our table were very nice, all young couples in their early thirties.

Food:

The food was I would say…all right. I can’t help but to compare what I had on Carnival to Holland America, because Holland’s food was out of this world. You do get what you pay for I guess. I found that some dishes on the Paradise weren’t all that great. The quality just wasn’t there. Especially in the Paris restaurant. The food in the buffet looked un-appetizing to me and the 24-hour pizza looked like it had been sitting under the hot lamps for about 24 hours. So for lunch Aaron and I hit up the out-door grill by the pool and had hamburgers and French fries. Free drinks consisted of lemonade, apple juice, or iced tea. Or you can pay a couple bucks and buy a soda. Alcohol was about $5 and up.

Staff:

All the staff were nice except for a cocktail waitress who couldn’t tell us if it was ‘Happy Hour’ or not and when we asked if she could find out, she just disappeared for about 20 minutes and then came back and ignored us. Some other staff didn’t understand English very well, a lot of hunching shoulders and looking around nervously for a translator…maybe that was the waitress’s excuse. Who knows!

Our cabin Steward was very nice; he did a pretty good job, and also turned down the beds at night. Although we did have trouble with getting him to replace dirty beach towels for new ones. They would simply just disappear, and we would have to call him to get new ones.

Entertainment:

The dance shows on board were pretty bad, we walked out and went to the casino. The R-rated comedy shows were very funny and the talent show was good. One man put on a magic show and asked his girlfriend to come up on stage to be his assistant, but his magic act consisted of him making an engagement ring appear. Which was touching, and she accepted.

Excursions:

Aaron and I, being that we are two college students on a budget went in thinking that we should find our own excursions on land at the ports. But the first day on board, we were presented a booklet of possible excursions given by the ship and found it hard to pass up. So we booked two excursions through the ship for Belize and Roatan.

Ports:

Belize was our first stop and when we looked out our window in the morning, it was heavily overcast. We had booked the cave tubing tour through the ship (for about $75 I think) and got into our bathing suits and grabbed the sun block, incase of any sun popping through. The tender picked us up and it was pouring cats and dogs outside. We were dropped off at the port and instantly attacked by taxi drivers, hair-braiders, Rx sellers, cashew sellers, tour operators holding hand-made maps, jewelry sellers…it was chaos. We were put on a bus that was air-conditioned, which was nice because the bus would have totally fogged up with all the warm, wet bodies inside. The ride took maybe an hour and our guide was very funny, he wanted all of us to call him ‘Star’ and we liked poking fun of his friend Francis who was the driver. He mentioned that we could leave all of our things on the bus, because it would be locked up, and if you tried to get back on…you would have to deal with Francis.

When we got out of the bus, it was still raining, I stepped off the bus and my sandal sunk right into the rich red colored mud. We were in the middle of a jungle. It was so lush and green, just like what I’ve always seen in the movies. I being the dumb one that morning did not bring an extra change of clothes or a towel …I decided that I wanted something dry to wear when we got back in the bus, so I was the only girl walking the path in a string bikini. Everyone else wore board shorts and/or a t-shirt. I wish I had something to wear too, because there are some locals that hang out there and you do feel like you are being watched. The path was VERY slick…take that into note if you are going tubing in the rain. I almost fell on my ass like 10 times! They say that the path has gravel on it, but the path has been walked on for a while and the gravel is often on the sides and you find yourself walking with your hands out for balance. AGAIN…this was only because it had been raining, if the path was dry, it would be a very EASY walk/hike.

Once we got to the opening of the cave, everyone was just in aw. It was beautiful, and a great Kodak moment. The water was cool, I’m sure on a hot and humid day, it would be fantastic. This day it was barely 70 F degrees. The cave was really fun, completely dark without a light with a few places where the sun comes through. One note…I have low body fat, and if you are the kind of person that gets cold easily…like me, I found myself sitting in a tube chattering my teeth and shivering. So remember that too.

Once we got out of the cave, we went right out into the rain again and sailed for a little distance longer. I never saw any wild animals during this trip, although some people were talking about large spiders. I would definitely bring a waterproof camera along, because there are some good shots to take in the jungle…and your friends will think they are cool too.

After we all got back on the bus, they took us to a restaurant called Cheers, where we were served cooked chicken with coleslaw and rice with beans with lemonade. Aaron and I were starving and went back for seconds. Be sure to eat a large breakfast before you go out on your excursions, because you get hungry after hiking through remote jungles. We picked at ours that morning and ended up paying for it later with low blood sugar.

We were then dropped off at port and did a little shopping. The people along the road don’t like to negotiate prices. Aaron, likes to collect shot glasses, and he was trying to get 2 for $5, a dollar less than what they were asking. They basically told him have a nice day. Another guy wanted to save money on some jewelry and was telling the person that he could get a better price in New York…the vendor told him to go back to New York and pay that amount. Needless to say, I only walked out with two post cards. And Aaron finally found a place that sold 2 shot glasses for $5.

Roatan:

The next day we woke up in Roatan (pronounced Row-A-Tan) not ‘Row-Ton’ like I had been pronouncing. We were docked at the pier. The weather was partly cloudy…wet outside, but the sun was shining. Aaron and I had signed up to the ‘Parrot Tree Beach Party’ which we paid $29 each for. We were bused through town, which looked very third world, definitely not a place I would want to go walking alone in, even during the day. As we got out of town, the island became more and more beautiful…not ‘Americanized’ at all. As we kept driving, the clouds built up more and more. And before we knew it, it was raining again. A beach party in the rain…sigh…I was so disappointed. They brought us to a resort where there was finely groomed sand, palm trees and palapas. We were given a welcome drink of tropical fruit punch that was actually VERY good. All the palapas were around a man-made lagoon that had two areas that allowed fresh sea-water to come through. It would have been a lot more fun if the rain wasn’t keeping people under the shelter of their palapas. There were a few daring people who said ‘screw it, I’m kayaking in this lagoon whether it rains or shines’ It was more entertaining to the rest of us to watch them kayak in the rain.

After an hour of sitting around, Aaron and I started to feel like we were wasting our short time in Roatan at some blown out beach party. So we noticed some people packing up…we grabbed our stuff, leaving our half-eaten hamburger and ran for a bus. We could only leave the place if they had ten people to fill a bus…so this was our chance. Aaron and I made it just in time and were numbers 9 and 10 to get out of there.

After getting back into town, we made our way through the vendors along the street and found some more shot-glasses…I found two more postcards. A lot of neat stuff to look at…but it would become clutter at home, so I did not buy that much. And then we went to a restaurant and I had a Coke and Aaron ordered a beer. I can’t remember the name of the beer but it was made in Honduras, and wasn’t all that bad.

Grand Cayman:

The next stop was Grand Cayman. It was also the first real sunny day of the trip. Aaron and I woke up late that morning (since we didn’t have any scheduled tour that day. ) We made it into port at about 11:45am. We thought that we would have been out of luck with being able to go to Sting Ray City (which everyone had been talking about) But there was a lady holding a sign up for a tour that would leave the port at noon and we would be back in time by 3pm. So we paid $35 each and went out to Sting Ray City. It is a large sand bar way out in the ocean, the water was around 79 F degrees and about waste deep, there were a lot of sting rays…and maybe twice as many tourists….The prime example of a tourist trap. I was torn if I really liked it…because it was neat actually getting to touch the sting rays…but the screaming women and children got a old very fast. There were so many boats, that they were almost knocking into each other. After about 30-45 minutes with the sting rays, we got back in the boat and headed off to snorkel around a reef….but we were dropped off on an area where there was a few rocks…but no real coral. The fish were few and far between. I dove down a found an empty conch shell and then headed back to the boat.

We got back to port at about 3:45pm, way past the time that we were supposed to be back. We had to be on the ship by 4:15. So we only made it into one gift shop. I bought a bag and some short the say ‘Cayman Islands’ on the butt. Aaron got his shot glasses. And then we got back to the ship.

Cozumel:

Our last stop was Cozumel Mexico. We had no planned excursion, but hooked up with two of our dinner table buddies who were newlyweds. The four of us ate lunch at Poncho’s Backyard, it’s right by the pier and the food is very good. After that we took a taxi to Chankanaab Park where we rented snorkel gear and swam around some dead looking reef. Beautiful area but watch out for the little jelly fish, they sting and don’t feel all that great.

That night we ate dinner at Carlos and Charley’s. Very wild place and where for 125 pesos, you can get one of those yard-stick margaritas. We had to be back on the ship by 11:30pm.

So before you knew it, we were heading back towards the ship.

All in all, I would give this cruise a 7 out of 10