Rest for the weary: a Mexic-Ode

Ahhhh. I'm back from an extraordinarily restful spring break. I've never had a week-long vacation feel this much like two weeks and I almost always get lucky with weather, this vacation included. We had a lot of sun, good company, probably too much ice cream, and even a marriage proposal! It was great. We left Ann Arbor last Saturday to fly down to Tampa and stay two nights with our friend Sara's family. We hit the beach, got babied by her parents, and hung around by her pool. Most of us agreed that that alone would have been enough vacation for us for the week so we were thrilled to board our cruise on a sunny Tampa Monday afternoon. It was a blast to share our vacation with so many of our friends on board and both Cozumel and Costa Maya were beautiful and interesting. The only complaints about my vacation are two-fold:

1.) I unfortunately learned first-hand how much devastation last fall's Hurricane Wilma did to Cozumel. The entire port is more or less destroyed and apparently only just reopened to cruise ships a month ago, an enormous blow to Cozumel's chief industry of tourism. I heard that the eye of the storm sat over the city for 3 continuous days and it shows--Josh and I were in Cozumel exactly 2 years ago and I barely recognized a lot of areas. Most unfortunate is the irreversible damage to the second largest coral reef structure in the world which made Cozumel a diving and snorkeling hot spot. We even saw huge concrete and wire structures in the water while we were snorkeling and tour guides were saying that over 3/5 of the reef was damaged.

2.) One of those nasty Norwalk (Norfolk?) GI viruses making the news recently for infecting passengers on cruise ships hit the Grandeur of the Seas while we were aboard, making about 100 people quite sick. Unfortunately, about 6 people from our group of 30 got the bug and were down for the count for a few days (a few still aren't fully recovered). The cruise line tried to control the spread of the virus (ew!) by making passengers use hand sanitizer before entering every eating area and nixing the serve-yourself buffet after the second day. I was sufficiently grossed and weirded out and became paranoid about acquiring the virus from anyone and anything. I can see how I could easily become one of those germophobe people. At any rate, it was gross and creepy and I could have done without it.

All in all, I had a wonderfully restful and fun break. I posted some pictures below and tried to edit them down to 10 or so keepers but had too much fun looking through them. There are two more that I want to add that I will later seeing as how my posting software decided to peter out on me at the end. Enjoy the pics and Viva Mexico!

xoxox