This morning, we arrived at Costa Maya just after lunch. It made for a nice schedule because we turned our clocks back to match Mexico’s time, so we gained an hour! After a great breakfast complete with eggs, waffle, pancake, French toast and fruit, I got ready to head down to the meetup for my dolphin swim group. They took us off the ship and over to the port terminal where we literally walked by shops and simply went right to the dolphin pool. There we got some training of signals to make the dolphins kiss us, pet them, hug them, ride on them, and touch our hands tall out of water. We then made our way down to a pool next to the ocean where you could do these activities with the dolphins. I was excited to touch a dolphin finally, and actually have one pull me along in the water!
There were 11 of us in the group and the trainer managed to get everyone doing various turns with the dolphins while sending another dolphin to all of us waiting for one-on-one time to keep us entertained by letting us pet them. It was pretty well organized, and while a bit pricey, was really fun to feel them and see them so up close. When it was my turn to swim down to the end of the pool, the dolphin quickly swam to me, picked me up and let me hold on to its fins as he swam upside down in the water and pulled me back to the other side. The strength with which he pulled me was pretty incredible, and I just wanted to swim longer distances and be pulled through the water like this!
After the dolphin swim, I changed and went around the shops looking at items. Today was Halloween and they oddly planned the costume kids party around 4:30 and we had til 5:30 on shore. Since there wasn’t much to do at port, after some shopping and bargaining, I got another mask for $25 (down from $65—ridiculous) and headed back to the ship. It’s been fun to see everyone get dressed up, but we have our formal dinner tonight so we have to dress nicely for dinner, then we can don our costumes for the adult costume party later tonight.
It was incredible. I’ve never eaten s much food in my life. And the amazing part of it is for just $20, you have an incredible menu, and you can order as much of it as you like. By the end of the meal, I counted our dishes that we’d ordered, AND finished, and we had 14! Some were small portions/plates, but still, 14 amazing dishes between the two of us was quite an accomplishment!
I got dressed up as the matador, and we headed down to the restaurant to see our friends since we had an amazing dinner at Palo. There we sat with Luis, Claudia and the kids, and it was cute to see everyone dressed up in the restaurant. We hung out for a bit and did pictures, then headed down to the adult costume party. Apparently as costumes walked in, they were handed some cards for specific groups such as ‘Scariest’ ‘Most Disney’ or ‘Funniest’… I didn’t receive a card, so I figured I wasn’t invited to the competition. However at the end, they announced that if anyone didn’t get a card and were dressed up, that we should go up and have the audience vote. That of course was embarrassing since so many of us went up. Luckliy, I’ve built some good social links on the ship so that when it was my turn to introduce myself as the matador Ben HA min, and whipped my red cape, the crowd roared. I was then put in the finalist selection with 3 other groups. As it got down to the final call, I was knocked out by the MC, to which the crowd cheered and demanded me to be called a winner as well. So it ended up being a 3 way tie with me, and the 2 other groups. I got a nice little Disney souvenir to bring home as a trophy. We then called it a night since we had tomorrow in Cozumel going ashore quite early.
