Cruisin!

Cruise update!

Dave and I went on a cruise with his family last week. We had a fabulous time in the warm sunshine! We were spoiled with great food and maid service every day. I could never figure out why anyone would order hamburgers, hot dogs or pizza when you had gourmet food to choose from. I was a little disappointed when they brought saltine crackers with the cheese platter, but , whatever. The soufflés made up for it. They were awesome!This is a picture Dana took of Dave and I at the zoo in Puerto Vallarta

Here are two tigers lounging in the shade. It was about 85 degrees.

For $10, you could get in the cage with these tiger cubs and play with them. There were about 5 of them playing here.

The boy in the green shirt is Nathaniel. It looks like he has the carrot in his mouth, but he is holding it with his hand. As we were walking past this camel, it opened it's mouth and about bit Nathaniel on the head...twice. Yikes!

This is Nathaniel's adorable sister, London. She is 2 and singing us the alphabet song while sitting on daddy's shoulders.

This zoo was pretty cool. At the gate, you could buy bags of food to feed the animals and they would come take the food right out of your hands. There were several more flamingos, but they were sleeping on the other side of the pond. We were practically the only ones in the zoo.

I saw this thing swimming around in the mote and thought, what the heck is that thing! This is an RUS (rodent of unusual size).

This is another shot at the RUS, on the left, not the right. LOL

Here is Dave (on the left) getting off the boat at Puerto V. The boats hanging on the ship are called tenders. We would have to ride in these when the ships couldn't pull up to shore.

Here is Dave relaxing on the beach. We took a boat out to this small island. It was a little croweded because it was the weekend. Clair taught us a new card game and we played until the last boat left to take us back. We were told the last boat left at 5, but we noticed everyone leaving at 4. I finally asked someone when the last boat left at 4:15 and they said in 5 min. We scrambled to get back to the dock and got there just in time.

This is a sample of the cute towel animals our steward left on our bed. I had to take a picture of it on the floor because the bed was white and the picture didn't turn out as well as with a colored background. The rooms weren't very big, but we didn't spend a whole lot of time in them, so it was fine. I took a egg-crate, foam pad to put on the bed and that made it very comfortable.

On Sunday, we got off the boat and found the LDS church to attend. One of the missionaries came over and asked if any of our group could lead music. Everyone pointed to me so I got to lead the music in Sacrament meeting. It was a very interesting experience. I would have really enjoyed if the missionary who was playing the piano hadn't ditched the meeting and left me hanging for the intermediate hymn. I walked over to the piano and played the first three notes of the song (probably the wrong notes) and we sang without the piano. Luckily, there was only one verse.

We had a fabulous time. I ended up going with the boys on their fishing trip and got to see lots of whales and dolphins. That was awesome! I couldn't get a good picture of them. Here is a video. If you watch close, you can see them turning over in the water and blowing air out of their spout. For some reason I could not see the whales on my camera screen while I was taking the picture. It's a better video if you can watch it on a bigger screen.

Here are two short videos. The first is of the two whales. I couldn't zoom in with my camera, so this was the best, shortest clip I have. The other is of the Pelicans who would fly behind the fishing boats and look for leftover chum. Notice they only follow the fishing boats and they know just where to look for fish. You can see our cruise ship in the background.