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Mitsugirly had a JOYful cruise

Day 6 April 12, Wednesday: Costa Maya, Mexico

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Rise and shine...it's 6am and we are going to Costa Maya!!

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I went outside to see what the weather was like...and...it was DARK! Um, could my time be right? I know they said put the time back one hour but would that make it dark out now?

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I ran into two couples that had been up all night partying and hadn't made it to bed yet. I've seen this same lady many times and heard her talking about going to bed at 4am after a night of drinking and getting back up at 6am to go into port. Well tonight...she had set a record and not went to bed at all. She was plastered but having a good time and told the other couple she had met that she was going to go find another bar for another drink. Say What??? She did mention she had kids so would be forced to go to shore but would probably just sleep on a beach somewhere. I don't know how people do it. I couldn't have done that even in my younger years. More power to her I guess. But yikes!

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I went back in to wake the family up, but only after hiding a few ducks on the way back of course. At this point, taking a picture of everywhere I hid them had become a nuisance and I know how much you all are missing them right?

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It was now 7am and time to head for breakfast. I bet you can't guess what I had right?

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Ah ha! I gotcha!! Yes, I had the eggs and bacon but did you notice that extra item? That sultry piece of hashbrown potato?  Yep, I snuck that in before the hubby sat down. No stink eye coming my way this early in the morning. 

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We got done eating and headed back to the room to get ready for the day and grab our bags.  I was really hoping not to have another day like yesterday and forgetting everything so I double and triple checked every item.

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I went back out to take some pictures after we pulled in.

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The welcoming committee..

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We noticed people getting off the ship at 7:45am...which was early. Again, where was that announcement?

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We headed out and dinged out. 

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It was BRIGHT AND SUNNY OUT....ah ha, get it?

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We did stop this time to sign out some beach towels at the station outside the ship. I had completely forgot to go to H20 and grab some.

 

Heading down the pier and there was music in the air.

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So for everyone wondering about the trolley running on the pier, this day it was parked there and not running. We had to walk.

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A pelican perched on the wall as we went by.

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So now came the long winding around the port walk to try to get out of here. This is one of those aggravating ports that they make you take the long route, by each vendor, before they allow you to escape.

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Sakari wanted to stop by and see the dolphins swimming around.

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We kept going and going and finally came to an area that was new since the last time we were there. It looked like they were working on a new area and was expanding.

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We made it out and we were free and got into a taxi and told him we needed to go to Blue Reef. The charge was $4/pp, which had been reported on the boards, as the price had went up. The trolley was not running anymore. I believe it's been said that there has been some conflict between the taxi drivers and the trolley. This would be our taxi today. I took a picture...just in case I would need it. We were once in Cozumel (I think) and the hubby forgot one of the bags in the taxi and we had to locate him. Thank goodness I had taken a picture of it and got the cab number.

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So today, we are going diving!! We have never went diving here in Costa Maya before and due to the lack of snorkeling (from the beach) I never really thought it would be a good place to try out. I have seen other people on the boards say that there's excellent diving here, but we are limited to 40' since we are not certified, which means those people that say there's awesome diving there are probably going further out and deeper. So, I was going in with low standards and hoping to be surprised.

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I contacted several dive companies but one stood out to me because the communication was awesome and all of my many questions were answered. This was Pepe Dive. I was reassured that we would be able to see plenty of coral reefs and fish and that it was not all a sandy bottom (as I had been looking at online pictures and video's which showed a lot of sandy bottom). 

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They told me that we would be diving at Acuario (which I was told meant Aquarium). Good enough for me. We were going to give it a shot and if it didn't work out, we wouldn't dive in Costa Maya again. But at least we can say that we tried it.

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When we arrived, we were greeted by the owner that I had been talking to by email. She was super nice. They had a few pets and that excited the hubs and Sakari right away. Two large Great Danes. One was old and liked to lay around and the other was young and spunky but an albino and deaf. They kept that one inside most of the time and had to lather it up with sunscreen to keep it from burning. They were super friendly. 

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Our dive instructor was going to be Ivan and he was going to do our class.  We would have one other person with us and he was from Cancun. staying along the Malecon. Then we were ready to go to the beach and practice our skills out in the water in front of the dive shop.

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We all headed out and they carried my tank for me.

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We went into the water and they told us to go out as far as we could. The Malecon is a lot different than what it used to be the last time we were here. They now have a fence along the water, I assume to try to keep the sargassum seaweed to a minimum since it has been really bad for awhile. So, the deepest area they had here was right beside the fence and let me tell you it was nothing but sand and very very hard to see because it was all stirred up. 

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We did all of our skills even though it was very hard to even see our instructor in front of us. We all passed with flying colors and headed back to the dive shop. There they would load up our equipment and told us that we were walking down a short ways to the boat dock. We had put all of our things away and she told us we might want to take our shoes. However, none of us wanted to and figured we'd be ok walking. If the surface got too hot, we'd walk in the sand along the side. 

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I walked along with the guy from Cancun and got to know him a little (boat dock was a little further away than I had originally thought) and he was there vacationing with his family. His wife was pregnant and back at the hotel. They were staying at the Malecon 21. He had 2 other kids and the youngest was 7 years old. He said he had never been diving and wanted to try it out before his son was older to know if he'd be taking him on a dive. 

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Our feet were fine on the ground however, we didn't realize that once we went off the Malecon path it would turn into gravel. OUCH! We did the best we could, although the hubby was falling behind quickly. He has sensitive feet. 

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We finally made it to the boat and our feet thanked us.

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It was a very short boat ride out to where the dive site was. Now everyone knows I get anxiety at times when I go from a boat. I've had good dives and bad dives because of it. The main issue I have is once I'm in the water I have to prepare myself mentally to take that step to start to go down. I do NOT like to be rushed in this process. 

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They immediately told me to go in. "Wait, I would rather have them go first" as I pointed at the family. They looked at me strange and kept telling me to go. Nope, let them go first. I honestly wanted the hubby to go in before me so he could be there with me to reassure me once I got in. But instead they had Sakari go first. They had her go over to the opposite side of the back of the boat and there was a rope from the boat to the water in the way. She kept looking at them like "How am I supposed to do this?" They ended up lifting up the rope and having her go under it to jump off. She said it kinda scared her like she was going to hit the rope or somehow get tied up in it.

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Then once again they told me to go. Argh! I didn't know how I was supposed to do this. They had me put the tank on and any weight on my foot still makes it hard on me to walk or stand up or anything...especially on a moving boat. I got up and made my way over to the end of the boat. Then told me to take a step off the edge. We had a girl instructor with us and she was going to be with us as well. The guys on the boat kept telling me to go. I finally went but man they were aggravating me about it and rushing me. 

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As soon as I hit the water the waves started taking me toward the boat and the propeller, which was moving and I hit it with my leg. The motor wasn't on, but the water was making it spin and it freaked me out. I tried hard to get away from it and over to the line. I was kicking like crazy and grabbed the line. I was having flashbacks of my terrible experience in Cozumel. I started to panic. I wasn't sure how this dive was going to go at this point. I told the girl instructor how dissatisfied I was with the way they were rushing me and making me go before the hubby. I told her "There's one thing I don't like and that's to be rushed. Don't rush me!" She got the point and once the hubby got in she let me go down the line at my own pace.

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We made it down and everything was good and we were off on our dive. 

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I had the Gopro, the hubby had a camera and Sakari had a camera. We were all prepared to get the best shots.

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So far, there was a lot of sandy area with some reef in patches, just like I had seen in pictures and videos. 

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We seen a Spotted Trunkfish

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As we went along, we started to see more and more coral and I was pleasantly surprised at this point. It wasn't Roatan for sure, but it was definitely going to be good enough.

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The hubby was doing a good job of taking pictures. He usually stays either far up above the reef or too far away on the side to get decent pictures. However, he manage to pull off some good ones this time around.

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I have to admit, I was pleasantly surprised at what it looked like down there. The coral was abundant and it really was pretty. However, there really wasn't a lot of fish or schools of fish or what I consider the "odd" fish (anything other than the damsels, squirrels, wrasse, grunts or yellowtail snappers). I like to see the  groupers, schools of surgeons, triggers, puffers, eels, flounders, big angels and butterflies ....anything you don't normally see just snorkeling. But, it was pretty. I did manage to catch a trunkfish when we first started but the hubby didn't get a picture of it and I did see a four-eyed butterfly fish as well. There was a really pretty yellow and black wrasse and I did see what I think was a smaller spotted grouper at one point scurry into a hole. (All in the video). But most of the fish were juvenile fish and not very big.  There were a lot of smaller parrot fish too.

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We did find some pulsating Xenia's. They are so neat to watch. They open and close over and over and I used to have some in my tank. So mesmerizing.

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Sakari and I were way over here exploring. Yes, you can see that there's a lot of sandy area in between some of the coral reefs, but it was ok, with us.  There was still plenty to see alongside it. Most of the fish we would see would be the black and white Chromis. Man there were a lot of them everywhere.

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At some point the hubby and I switched equipment and I took over the camera and he was in control of the Gopro. He usually does a pretty good job with the Gopro and I wanted to make sure that I got some good pictures close up.  Then at the end, we switched again.

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A conch 

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Squirrelfish

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As you can see, it was pretty colorful down there and that made me happy.

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I did manage to see (I think) a spotted grouper that dashed into a hole as I got closer. I wasn't able to get a photo of it because I had the GoPro and I don't think anyone else seen it because they were ahead of me. Here is a picture that I pulled off the video I took of it going into the hole. 

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Sakari, the real photographer, was very busy getting her close ups of everything and was really putting in some work for me. She does such a good good of capturing everything.

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Does anyone else think this looks like this coral is giving you the bird? LOL

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Schoolmaster Snapper

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Royal Gramma Fish

French Grunt, Schoolmaster Snapper and Mahogany Snapper

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Mutton Snapper

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Finally a Rock Beauty Angelfish was spotted! Something different and exciting.

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Then she spotted a Spotfin Butterflyfish!

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Parrot Fish

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Can you see all the baby fish? (below)

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Christmas tree worms

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Squirrelfish

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Stripped Blenny

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Bluestriped Grunt

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We were coming to the end of our dive and all of a sudden we look up in the distance and see a swarm of fish together. There were A LOT! They were swimming together in circles.  Now I have seen pictures and videos that have been captured of fish doing this and it always amazed me. This time would be our time. We have never seen this before and I was in awe!

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They were getting closer and closer to us! They swam around and around and over top of Sakari

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Sakari and I went to the bottom and planted ourselves so that we could get pictures. It was like sitting down at the movies and something we didn't want to miss! We were watching this fabulous show! Pictures can't describe what it felt like.

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But what were we watching unfold before our eyes? Our eyes were on daddy because he was right in the middle of it all as they circled around him and went back in the direction they came from.

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This was a large group of Horse eye Jacks!

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So of course we had to get in the action as well and they went right beside us as well. It was so amazing to see them coming right at you! 

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Sakari managed to get some awesome pictures of them passing by us and being right in the middle of it all.

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Daddy captured some great photo's too!

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And of course I got them on the GoPro (you'll see at the end of my video)

 

Then before long, they moved on and the experience was over and what an experience it was!

 

So why do fish swim in schools like this and circle you might ask? Well there can be several reasons. 

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One is for safety: When they are in groups like this it's meant to confuse predators and they appear bigger. It's hard for a predator to single out an individual fish.  Another reason is for feeding: It can make it easier for some fish to find food when there's more eyes on the lookout.  Another reason could be for breeding: When so many sexes are together, it increases the odds of a successful reproduction. Although it could work the opposite way and may be females gathering together to ward off the males harassing them. 

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There's no "leader" of the pack and the fish just all come together following each other. When one turns a certain way, the rest will turn and before long, the entire group has turned.  They not only "see" their neighbors turning, but they can also "feel" them turn. 

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Well both of the instructors motioned us to go up. The male instructor was swimming up with the guy from Mexico City and we had the girl. She stopped us all of a sudden and gave a signal for us to just stay in place. She looked at her watch. She looked up. She had me and the hubby hold hands. Um, ok. 

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Meanwhile, the other instructor and diver continued swimming up. I'm looking around above and down and not understanding what is happening. Is she making us wait on the boat to retrieve us?  If so, why are the other two already up on the surface? She can't be making us wait for a passing boat to go by. The other two are already at the surface. Why are we sitting here trying to practice our buoyancy?  My leg was getting tired. I just wanted to go up already. I'm so confused. She just kept in front of us and looking at her watch and telling us to stay. Anxiety honestly started to set in with me and I wasn't liking how I was feeling. I was getting kinda scared not knowing what was going on and why we were being held under while the others continued to the top and were just floating.

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It seriously felt like forever and finally she motioned for us to go up.

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We made it to the top and she ask how the dive was. My first reply was "WHY WERE WE JUST FLOATING THERE FOR SO LONG????" She said when divers go diving, on the way up, they have to take a "time out" for 3-5 minutes to do a safety stop. I guess this is done at 15 feet/5 meters. Why has this NEVER happened to us during a dive before? It didn't happen to the other diver that was with the male instructor. Why were we made to do this? My leg was super sore at that time for not trying to rest or float along like when we are actually doing the dive. She told us we did great at keeping our buoyancy for not being certified divers, but still...was this necessary? We know the rules of not going up to quick and what it can do to your body and lungs. We weren't sprinting toward the top. It was a slow ascend. Until the abrupt stop when she grabbed us and had us hold hands. I was just glad to be at the top to inflate our bcd and just float and rest.

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We floated on the top for quite some time. She tried to whistle for the boat to come get us. Were they sleeping on the boat or something? They weren't coming. We all just floated for quite some time before they realized we were up at the surface and needing picked up.

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The other guy from Mexico City was so excited about the dive. He obsolutely loved it. I'm sure he'll be trying it again.

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Once on the boat we talked about the school of circling fish. It was the main topic since we've never seen anything like that. The instructor said when we got back to the dive shop, she'd pull out a book to show us the different fish we had seen. I told her we knew what they all were and are pretty knowledgeable about their names (so she didn't show us when we got back. I mean we really didn't see alot of different fish. I could have counted them all on my fingers pretty much). 

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They had wrote our names on all of our equipment before we had checked in at the dive shop. I just had to get a picture of one of them.

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Here's a short video of our dive. I tried to cut it down as much as possible. We were filming the entire time we were down there so it was almost an hour long. 

We walked back to the dive shop, gravel owchie owey time and back onto the hot surface of the Malecon. 

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We talked to the owner for awhile after we returned and eventually decided to head down the Malecon to see if any of the places interests us to stop and stay for the rest of the day.

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We kept walking and walking. I told the hubby "Let's just go back to Blue Kay since we always enjoy it so much every time and that would allow me to do a little bit of snorkeling as well."

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Well, I didn't realize just how far down Blue Kay was obviously or we probably would have stopped somewhere closer. I honestly thought it was close by. We walked and walked and said "No gracious" to the vendors so many times along the way.

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The Malecon 21 was a place that was close to the dive shop and where they had recommended we go to after the dive. However, when I looked on their website, it said you had to buy day passes and for the amount of time we planned on staying there, it really wasn't worth the money. We wanted to find a pay as you go type of beach. But it was REALLY pretty and might be a place we would check out in the future.

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After walking for quite some time and my family glaring at me for having to do so, we came upon an area that somewhat looked familiar but I wasn't sure.

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After we passed this area a bit, I noticed the sign...it said Blue Kay. Wait, this is Blue Kay now? It didn't look the same at all. 

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I'm looking around and I'm not seeing anything that looked too familiar. Seriously! 

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I decided to walk down to the end of the area/beach. I knew that all the chairs were located at the beginning and the end was mostly beach and sand. But to my surprise, it was just as different. All the beautiful  landscaping they had in the area was now lined with hundreds of beach chairs and pads. They have really expanded. I guess this is what happens when you grow and get bigger. It pretty much ruins the prestige area you loved back years ago. 

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Wait, what is this? Could this be something familiar? Maybe the cuban boat from years ago that they made into part of the scenery? 

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Well, since Blue Kay is at the end of the Malecon, we really didn't have much of a choice but stay here or return to the ship. The family wasn't up for more walking to go back to one of the other places we seen. I guess that means we're staying here. 

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We picked a spot along the beach at the end. There weren't many people down here still. Just a few families here and there. 

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There was a hairless dog walking with a family. I guess he has a good life of not getting over heated, but sunburned...that may be a different story.

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Did you know:  The Xoloitzcuintli, pronounced show-low-eats-QUEENT-lee, is a hairless dog breed from Mexico. There are less than 1,000 Mexican hairless dogs in the US, which could contribute to this higher-than--average price. The price of one puppy can be around $2500-$4000 from a breeder.

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The waiter came over and we ordered some drinks and he gave us menu's. Pop never tasted so good at this point. 

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Here are the menu's and pricing:

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I told the hubby what I wanted to order and I headed off to the water for a bit of snorkeling. 

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Of course even the water looked different as well. The fence in the water, the shoreline, everything was different. 

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What I would also discover is that the snorkeling was different too. Some Blue Tangs

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At this point I was super disappointed in what I was seeing...or actually what I was not seeing. Where did all the coral go? Where's all the fish and stingrays? I couldn't find much of anything. Nothing other than sea grass.

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I headed up close to the shore. I remember there were a few rocks up there and I might find something interesting to look at there. However, I would find it was changed up too. The beach was lined in areas with big stones. They also had a little bridge up and over into the water, even though there were plenty of areas to go in with sand.

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I was being attacked by this energetic damsel that was trying to keep me away. He decided to photo bomb my picture.

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By the time I returned, disappointed and all, our food was already there. 

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Sakari had some ceviche, which she has been missing since our trip to Isla Mujeres and we tried it for the first time, and now she was going to have it again. She told me "One way or another I'm going to have ceviche this trip!" She got her wish.

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The hubby got the garlic butter shrimp platter.

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I decided on Nacho's with guacamole. Nope, I'm not allowed to have nachos. Yep, I was having them. Stink eye coming my way of course. 

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As you can tell, there was plenty of Sargassum seaweed along the beaches, even with the fences.

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The hubby and Sakari didn't want to get in the water and just hung out on the beach chairs. Then Sakari decided she wanted to do some pictures at the beach. Imagine that. She (of course) always likes to process them on her phone with filters. :(

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We motioned over the waiter to tell him we'd like to pay our bill. When he returned, he said " $68 US." Hmmm, that didn't sound right to me. I ask for a receipt. He went off and came back with a receipt. It said $930.00 peso's. I pulled out my phone and did a conversion and that was about $20 over what it should be. When I questioned him, he said "Oh, tip is included."  I really do not like or appreciate when any restaurant does this. It's not fair and we should be able to pay what we felt like the service is worth. I think it's shady. Especially if they withhold this information when they give you the price then you tip on top of that.  He managed to give himself about a 42% tip!!!  So I'm here to warn you if you go here to watch out. I will probably not go back to the place again. It's time has played out with us. It's not the beautiful area that we loved so much when we went the first or second time. 

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A very short video of the beach I took while we were having our lunch (sorry about the water spot) and a few short clips of the snorkeling. I was so disappointed that I didn't take much that I didn't take many videos but you will get the picture...

With no snorkeling in the area and our belly's full, we decided there really wasn't much else we wanted to do here and decided to head back to the ship. I'm looking in our bag and GASP! I completely forgot to have the dive shop fill out Sakari's dive book. Oh no! The fam looked at me and said "Absolutely not! We are not walking all the way back there again! No way!" Well, we decided maybe we'd just find a cab and have them take us there and then back to the ship.

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We ask the waiter about calling a cab. He told us "follow me" and took us out to the Malecon and pointed in the direction of the lighthouse. He told us to walk down there and find a cab. Well, that walk looked a lot further than walking in the opposite way to the area we had passed with all the taxi's and drivers. So, we walked in the opposite direction and down to the taxi's. 

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There we would ask about the price to take us down the road to the dive shop and then back to the ship. He told us $25. Now I knew it was only $4/pp back to the port (I ask first), so that's only $12. He was more than doubling the amount and for such a short distance to the dive shop, at least when you're in something that has an engine behind it. I offered $20 and he took it. 

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Off we went. He pulled up at Blue Reef and I jumped out. He said he couldn't block the road and would pull down the street for me to hurry.

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I jumped out and headed between the buildings to the dive shop as quickly as I could. 

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I went into the dive shop and our girl instructor was getting ready to start another dive or something. She said she was busy at the moment and then she would come help me. I told her that I had a cab waiting outside that is charging me. The guy instructor said he would help me out and took the book and filled it out for me. 

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I don't know how deep we actually went (Discover Scuba only allows you to go 40' deep) but our camera's are rated to go 49' and a little over. There were several times that the camera's started warning us that we were getting too deep. It's weird, you get a warning and the screen starts to turn a reddish-pink color. 

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I hurried back out to the street and seen the taxi. I ran to get in it and the taxi driver informed me "We were about to leave without you" and laughed. 

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The taxi driver was super nice and we talked all the way back to the port. He told us about the taxi service, why Uber wasn't there (the cartel won't allow it, which we already knew about), cost of vehicles, how the business was and Costa Maya itself. If we were staying in Costa Maya, I would want him driving me around for sure. He was great.

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We passed by Blue Kay from the road.

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We pulled up to the port area and the street was lined with taxi's. I'm really not sure why they were all here since it was later in the day. People wouldn't be leaving the port, they would be returning right?

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The taxi driver let us out here. I'm not sure why so far from the entrance, but it was ok. We needed to work off our lunch and especially my forbidden nacho's. 

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This must be a Mexico thing since we seen something like this in Isla Mujeres as well for recycling.

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After arriving at the port, Sakari had mentioned (on the way out of the port) that she'd like to see the bird aviary. Well, since we had returned early, we went to go check it out. 

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We spotted the flamingo's and they were so pretty. 

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They had a few different Macaw's out in the open that you could see too. 

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I went up into the hut and inquired about the price. It was $14/pp. Sakari really wanted to go, so go we would. She absolutely loves birds.

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Of course she was discovering the great capabilities her new phone had at taking pictures in bokeh and she was loving it. 

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They had so many different huts to go in and winding around area's and over bridge's. It was really a neat area and very pretty and loaded with birds of all kinds.

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They even had a hut going over the dolphin area and I managed to get a great shot of our ship in port.

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A video of our Bird Aviary experience:

We spent quite a bit of time in each area and enjoyed every bit of it. It's probably safe to say we spent longer than most would. We did have people passing us up, which was fine with us because we didn't want them in our pictures anyhow. ;)

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It was time to head back to the ship, so I took pictures of the area along the way. There really wasn't a lot of people around. They must all be back on the ship at the buffet since it was going to close soon. 

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Here's the pool area. It had changed a little as well since we were there last time.

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They now had a waterfall in the area they used to have this climbing ladder over the water that Sakari desperately tried to stay on without falling off. It was gone.

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This Celebrity ship was docked with us and it was a beauty. It had an infinity pool on it and also a dining area on the outside of the ship that moves from floor to floor. How cool is that? I might have to check them out one day.

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Back to the ship and time for a shower and then we headed up to the buffet for our 5pm /lunch. Yes, we were having a second lunch today, which was really dinner time for the ship. Did I forget to mention that we brought our own keto bread along with us? Well, we took it up to the buffet and I couldn't wait to sink my teeth into a nice juicy hamburger. 

 

We discretely switched out the bun and it was amazing and something I  had been craving this cruise. I'm pretty sure when the hubby wasn't looking I would sneak a few fries from Sakari.

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I also got lucky tonight because they had my vanilla sugar free ice cream as well. 

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We tried not to eat too much and didn't finish our hamburgers because we had reservations tonight for our other free specialty restaurant and needed to save room. 

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We headed out to the deck to see the sunset and discovered the back of the ship and the clear floor windows that I didn't even realize they had. There was 4 of them and one was covered with some plywood. Sakari looked under it to see if it was broken, but the edges around it holding the glass in were deteriorated and rusting. The one we stood on was the same way, but not as bad. 

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It was time to head back to the room so that we could get dressed for a show and dinner. We wanted to dress up.  Then we headed out to the 678 area where Sakari wanted me to take some pictures of her. She ended up putting filters on them herself and then sent them to me. 

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Then it was time for our show of the night and that was to see the illusionist Lord Nil in the theater.  We love magic shows so knew we didn't want to miss this.

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After the show, it was time for our specialty dinning and we had picked La Cucina for tonight. 

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menu
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We looked over the menu and Sakari wanted a pizza. I knew that she couldn't eat that entire thing by herself and we should probably just get the pizza and share it. Hubby was saying he wanted something else. Well....I've been wanting "other" things (wink, wink) during this cruise and have been given the stink eye all week about it. Now it's my turn to give the stink eye to him and he agreed on the pizza. Of course the dough would not be something we could have and I'm pretty sure the sauce wasn't sugar free...but I didn't care at this point.

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They brought out the bread...oh the bread. I'm sorry, I'm having bread like it or not. And bread I had and enjoyed every bit of it.  I'm pretty sure his mouth was watering as I took each lip smacking bite. Mmmmmm

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The pizza came out and it was good like always. However, the service was extremely slow and disappointing. 

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Also, the plates were not good at all and dirty. 

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They showed us the desert menu but there wasn't anything on there we could have so we passed. I'm sure we were carbed and sugared up enough for the day.

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We headed back to the room where Sakari would stay for the night and talk to her potential and we went off to the casino and we "said" we would be about an hour...but it didn't last that long.

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We didn't stay for long because all of a sudden I had major cramps, like severe. The hubby didn't hesitate to let me know it was from eating the bad carbs I ate all day and now I was pretty sure I was dying at this point. 

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However, I did find a new duck on the way back to the room. Yea, that made things all better I suppose. I now had a collection of 4 ducks.  Go me!

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I attempted to drift off to sleep even though I started to wonder if the clinic was open during the middle of the night. Yea, they were that bad that I didn't even pack for our next day in port nor did I get much sleep. 

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