New Orleans

Yae ! dug out of the snow drifts and made it to Shells !

Diva snuggling in for the duration .

Cracker being the King for a week... on Tess's new bed.

5:30 is just too darn early to look excited...

Tim is excited !

The Duroe taxi took us to the KC airport from there to New Orleans where we wandered and took in the sites. It was cold !

WE took the street car down thru the Garden District with beautiful old houses. Later we returned to go to a cheese cake Italian restaurant for supper. MMM Good!! They told us the street car came by every 15 min. so no worries..........
but we stood out there for 30 min then walked to the next trolley stop. waited there. It was Cold !. walked to the next stop. waited till we were hopping up n down........... finally picked up the pace and walked the mile back to our hotel ! It was all lit up very pretty.

The next morning we had time to stroll out n about for our Breakfast.

We were curious about what the inside of some of these neat old city buildings.

Love the long skinny windows with shutters.

here is a neat house very close to a warehouse building. I'm thinking it has a historic classification so that they cant tear it down. ?

The street cars have several routes thru out the city.

Tangled in the lovely wrout iron and trees are left over beads from a prior celebration.

We admired very cool plants along our walk. I wonder if it will grow in MO??
~~~~~~~~~ and off to the boat and passport checks

Yae !! aboard the boat.. we can see the New Orleans sky line and the notorious Dome in the back.

stretching out and looking down from the promenade you can see the check in building and all the fork lifts loading up cargo and supplies.

soon they will fire up the engines and you can feel the rumbles getting ready for take off ~~ !

~ Bonvoyage !!

Standing with Tim's brother Don and Pam on the top deck railing with all the radars and equipment. The wind was very cold ! I left our hats & mittens at home ! The ship horn sounding and the motors chugging to turn the boat on its journey down river to the sea.

... going under a big bridge over the river in New Orleans.

~and we are off ~

My Titanic moment with the wind in my hair !

Home Land Security doing their thing. (notice the machine gun.... hmm)

The inside room has a picture instead of a window. Two single beds are squished together to make a double bed.. a bunk can fold down and a chair fold out for two more people in the room. Yikes !

New Orleans shore line as we chug down the river.

a fancy old church that I'm sure has a name and history.....?

Our travel mates : Pam and Don. Tim's brother.

Pam's cousin and wife, Dan & Jackie

Pam's brother & wife, Larry & Janet

Pam's sister and hubby, Vanessa & Pogo

The Bow of the ship pointed down river........

~~ and away we go ~~~

Calling Shell on a cute antique phone in the hall way. Later found out it was a working phone connected to control center for the staff... oops

Later that night we spotted another ship out there all lit up.. click enlarge it.

We sailed all night... next stop Our first port,Cozumel.

Cozumel

After leaving New Orleans and sailing all night our first port was Cozumel.

Here you see ~ Margaritaville!~ and bit of shore line from the ship.

The central mall had many fancy jewelry stores sponsored by the cruise line people. Scattered among those a few locals were mixed in. The salesmen are very hard core hard sell, darn near drag you from the path way to make a sale !

We both admired this sculpture of a coyote in the museum. If you enlarge it and look at the detailed painting it has possible quilt designs.


Our adventure while in Cozumel was to go to a Tequila Seminar. We were taken there by a small taxi. The business was located a couple miles form the central mall with some rural sites tossed in. We were given a lecture on the Mayan culture and talks of the ruins and how our calender was developed. All while walking a lovely trail of flowers . ( We had dug the truck out of a 3 ft snow drift two days before)

The Tequila Seminar was in a small air conditioned room with 3 pretty shot glasses of the different grades of booze. Its qualities developing like a whiskey ~ aged~. Our vision of Tequila with the lil wormy was not what was featured here ! I don't know what all that was said about it - a very accented speaker. We tasted several some were even fruity to ice cream syrup flavored. They also did a talk about six varieties of hot peppers and their salsa form.......... ONE was edible.

This small local vendor was located across the street from our dock.

A view of the mall. Our ramp leads directly to this.

Pausing to look at the shore line on our long walk back to the ship.

Cozumel blue waters, looking down off the side of the ramp.

A very old 'oriental' looking boat sailing past us. ( I'm sure there is a name for it)

Waiting to set sail again. You can see the very long dock/ramp behind me.

Belize

Land ho ! after cruisin all nite from Cozumel we see the coast line of Belize.

Today, we are off to an island 45 min away for a beach day. This is how we got there ! a 45 min ride in a tin boat !. they open the hatch and you hop from your nice Big cruisin ship onto a small bobbin on the waves boat.

~~ and a way we go ~~~

maybe 20 people sit along the sides of this boat.

and the view as we pull away from our nice Big Safe Ship.... with the waves lapping at the sides of our tin boat !

. and then this other boat come zoooming up to us.... guess it was the coast guard for this country. telling us to put life jackets on.... I was wondereing where they were !!!

Thats our nice Big Safe Ship way back there >>>

... and then we see land, a bunch of grass shacks in a row.. among the debris...

Bannister Island is our beach for the day.

3 of the shacks were usable, several others were roped off damaged yet from a prior storm.

This pretty bird was sitting on the fence near the outhouses.

The beach here in Belize was mostly broken sea shells, like shale. You definitely needed shoes both in and out of the water!

We had a fun morning of wading in the water and finding sea shells.

The water was still a bit cool.

On the other side of the island they had a place to try kayaks.

Tim had done this many years ago and tryd it again. Way out in the bay he capsized ! He Tells me it was on purpose to see if he could manage to right the boat and hop in again.. I watched and he had some help out there, but obviously he did come back ..

...... savoring a cold one in the hammock

....... Our view !