Panama Canal Trip Report: Day 3 Cozumel

Day 3:  Cozumel

 If you would like to start this trip report from the beginning, click here.

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Note: I do not feel right posting pictures of fellow cruisers who have not given me permission to use them on the blog, so I will blur out the faces of people in the background of my photos. I’m sorry if it looks funny, but I want to respect their privacy.

Also, anytime you see red text, it is a link to either product information or another one of my blog posts that gives more detailed information about that topic.

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You can see this day’s Daily Navigator by clicking here:  Daily Navigator Day 3

Remember the clock fiasco from the night before?  My goal was to wake up between 7:00 and 8:00, so I set my alarm for 7:00 just in case my phone had automatically updated in addition to me turning it back 1 hour in which case it would have really been 8:00.  I got up when my alarm went off and turned on the TV to watch the morning show and check the ship’s official time which said 8:00.  Okay, so my phone did automatically update in airplane mode so I corrected it to 8:00.  No big deal, we would just end up getting off the ship a bit later than I preferred but it didn’t really matter because we were going on our own to Nachi Cocom and not bound by any time schedule.

Everyone got up and got ready for our beach day.  We decided to go to Triton’s for breakfast this morning instead of Cabanas.  I like the calmer atmosphere of Triton’s breakfast, but the main downside is that there is nowhere near the selection that you will find in Cabanas.

The only thing I remembered to photograph was the mango mountain hike:

It is a chilled mango soup with granola mixed in.  I had read great reviews about it, but I just thought it was okay.  I think I would have enjoyed it more if it had been colder.  The rest of the food we ordered was typical breakfast stuff – eggs, bacon, pancakes, etc.

 After breakfast, we went back to the rooms to get our bags for our beach day.  About this time I realized that I had never heard an announcement that guests could leave the ship.  All ashore was supposed to be 9:00, and it was way past that now.  I checked my phone which said 9:45 and then I started to wonder if that was the correct time after all.  In the room, I turned on the TV to check the time and it was only 8:45!  Ugh!  The time on the TV had not been updated when I checked it earlier, but was then updated sometime within the last hour and 45 minutes.  A little bit frustrating, but at least we now had more time ashore than we thought we would.  I wonder how many other people were thrown off by that.

We grabbed our bags and about that time the all ashore announcement came on so we headed down to deck 1 right at 9:00 am to disembark.  We were excited:

Before I go any further let me tell you a bit about how I decided what we were going to do this day.  We have been to Cozumel twice before.  The first time, we did a DCL port adventure to swim with the dolphins.  The second time, I had just had a major surgery so we were taking it easy and stayed on the ship.  Since we were only going to have one other short beach day on this cruise, I decided to research a beach for us to spend the day at.  I was comfortable navigating Cozumel on our own since we have been there before, so I didn’t even consider booking anything through DCL since it would be cheaper to do something on our own.  I checked on TripAdvisor and discovered Nachi Cocum.  It had great reviews and I liked the fact that they require reservations and limit the number of people each day because I do not like crowds.  I reserved our spots online about 4 months prior.  I paid a small deposit through Paypal ($38) and the balance was due when we arrived.  So, if something happened and we had been unable to make it, we would have only been out $38.

 Okay, back to our day.  Getting off the ship went quickly.  I will note that because we were in 2 staterooms, the girls had to have their cards swiped after the adult that was on the same reservation.  So, 2 of the girls were on my husband’s reservation and had to get in line right after him, and the other girl had to have her card swiped right after mine.  This is to prevent minors from leaving the ship without their parents knowing.  If the adult on their reservation has not yet swiped their card, they will not be allowed to leave the ship.  You can get around this by filling out a form, but we always left the ship together so we didn’t bother.

We were docked right next to the Norwegian Jade:

Here we are starting the long walk down the pier to the shopping area & taxis:

We sort of knew where to find the taxis since we had been here before on a DCL port adventure that used taxis, but if we hadn’t, we would have felt lost.  The signage was not very good at all.  I kept looking for signs pointing us to the taxi area (which is way in the back and not obvious at all) but never saw one.  I just went off of memory and luckily I remembered correctly.  I think they could do a much better job with signage here.  For those of you visiting Cozumel in the future, to get to the taxi stand you have to go up the escalator, follow the main path through the shopping area until you see some stairs at the very end.  Go down the stairs and the taxis are right there.

There was not a line for a taxi so we hopped right in one.  This one was very clean and had seat belts.

We use this inflatable booster seat when we travel.  I have also heard great things about this one although we haven’t tried it.

There was lots of traffic:

The drive was not all that far, but because of the traffic it took about 20 minutes.  We pulled up to Nachi Cocom and I paid the driver with cash.  He charged $26 for the 5 of us, and I tipped him $5.

Right when we exited the taxi we were greeted by a nice woman with a camera and sombreros.  She had us pose for this picture.  I love cheesy pictures like this and I knew immediately that I would end up buying it.

Next we were led to a podium under a covered pavilion area (that was also a bar & restaurant and right next to the pool) to check in.  We hardly saw any other guests at this point.  The woman at the podium asked to see my email confirmation and asked for the balance to be paid ($149).  I brought cash for this also (I avoid using credit cards in Mexico whenever possible) and handed her $150.  I was halfway expecting her to tell me that she didn’t have any change (this happened to me the last time we were in Cozumel when I paid for our dolphin photos), but she handed me back $1 US.  I already love this place!  She gave us wristbands and a waiter (Manuel) led us towards the beach.

There was hardly anyone there yet so there were lots of empty spots. Manuel led us to one and asked if it was ok.  We were happy with it so we started getting our things settled.  He introduced himself and told us that whenever we needed a drink or were ready for lunch to just let him know.  All drinks (including alcohol) are included in the admission price, as well as lunch.  He was also nice enough to type the wifi password into my phone.  We immediately ordered 5 bottled waters.

This was our set up for the day:

There were only 4 chairs, but we were never all there at the same time so it was okay.  There were plenty of empty chairs nearby that we could have grabbed if we needed to.  This was our view from our spot:

The girls immediately headed towards the beach and played for a while and the adults relaxed.  My husband commented about how beautiful and peaceful this place is and I completely agree.  It was paradise.  After a while, I got up to take some pictures of the girls swimming.

FYI, these are the rash guards and swim shorts that the girls are wearing.  I bought them right before the trip and was very pleased with them.  They wore them a lot and they held up very well.

The bathrooms were right behind us which was very convenient.  It is that little building behind the hammocks:

This was our view of the closest bar to our seats, although we never went over there because Manuel brought us all of our drinks (we did tip him a few bucks each time):

After a while the girls wanted to switch to the pool so we walked over there.  I brought our KYSS bag with us and locked it every time we left our spot because I had cash and our phones in the bag.  I doubt anyone would have messed with it, but it made me feel better.

It was a nice pool and we were practically the only ones in it all day.

I loved this shelf on the side of the pool.  I sat here for quite a while.  There is also a swim-up bar at the other end, under the thatched roof.

After swimming for a while, we went back to our chairs to order lunch.  Manuel had brought us a menu to choose from.  I’m not sure why there are prices (in pesos) on it since it is included in the admission cost:

While we waited for our food, the photo lady was walking around the beach offering to sell people their photos.  She was very nice and not pushy at all.  There were several options, but I bought the 8×10 print (shown earlier in this post) for $12.

The girls were playing on the beach again and made friends with another little girl who was on a Royal Caribbean cruise with her grandparents.  She was very sweet and my girls really enjoyed playing with her.  We chatted with the grandma for a bit and learned that they were from Texas, not far from where we used to live.

There was a yacht parked a little ways out, and at one point they set up this water slide.  It looked fun!

I got some more pictures of the girls:

And I tried a few selfies.  I swear I am wearing a bathing suit here!  It is just strapless and this is a weird angle.

The food took forever to arrive.  It turns out they were having a problem with their french fries which caused our order to be delayed (the girls got hot dogs & fries which I didn’t photograph).  They were very apologetic when they finally brought the food.  It was good, but not great:

My favorite part was the plate of fruit with a scoop of lemon sorbet.  That was yummy!

After lunch we had time for one last dip in the pool before we had to head back to the ship.  When we arrived, the taxi driver told us to give ourselves at least 1 hour to get back to the ship because of traffic, but we wanted to give ourselves 2 for good measure.

We left Nachi Cocum about 2:30 and the traffic going back was not too bad.  Our taxi driver let us out right at the shopping/pier area.  He charged us $25 and I gave him a $5 tip.  We were dropped off at the street level and in order to get back to the ship, we needed to get up to the shopping level.  We looked around and of course could not find any signage about which way to go to get back to the ship.  We ended up walking all the way to the back (the opposite direction of the ship) to use the stairs by the taxi stand that we had used earlier.  There may have been a quicker way, but we couldn’t find it.  This is what the shopping area looks like:

A view of the ships:

We passed these guys on the way:

I wanted to get a picture of the girls but it was REALLY windy here so this is the best I got.  It was hard to get a shot where their hair wasn’t in their faces.

I love the setup they have for guests returning to the ship.  Dirty towel bins, ice water, cold wash cloths, hand sanitizer, etc.

It was about 3:15 when we got back to our rooms.  We all just wanted to shower and rest until dinner at 5:45.  I showered and then right before all aboard time (5:15), I walked down to deck 4 to see how many people were cutting it close and just now returning.  I didn’t see anyone for awhile, but I heard another guest say that they were still waiting for 200 people on a DCL port adventure who were running late.  I don’t know which port adventure it was, but a few minutes later a ferry from the mainland pulled up and loads of people got off and started walking towards the Wonder.  I took these while I was out there:

The late port adventure didn’t seem to delay us more than 20 minutes or so because when I went back inside at 5:35 the last few people were boarding.

I went back to the rooms to gather my family and we made our way to dinner.  Along the way we saw a few characters in their Mexico outfits:

Dinner tonight was our first night in Animator’s Palate.  We had the rotational menu.  I apologize for the blurry photos.

Those are dinner rolls stuck together:

For the appetizer, we both got the black truffle pasta purseittes.  I love these things!

For the next course, I asked for another serving of the purseittes and my husband got the baked potato and cheddar cheese soup.

For the entree, my daughter got the pennete bolognese.  I tasted it and it was very good.

My husband and I both got the herb crusted pork chop.  The pork was just okay, but the tomato risotto and wine sauce under it were really good.

For dessert, we got several things to share.  This is the deconstructed carrot cake which was good:

This is the crunchy walnut cake which was also good:

This is the warm sticky date pudding which I didn’t taste but my daughter LOVED:

This is the cookies & cream sundae:

Right about dessert time the “show” started:

Sorcerer Mickey made his appearance as usual:

After dinner we went to the shops for a while.  Our youngest picked out a shirt which used up the remainder of her souvenir allowance.

Next we went to the evening show which was “Hector is Magic!”.  It was freezing in the theater.  I usually find the theater cold, but this was on another level.  We shivered through the show which was awesome.  Hector is very entertaining and did some incredible stuff!

After the show, we went back to the room because the 2 non-karaoke singers wanted to go to bed.  My husband and I walked up to the deck 9 drink station to get some coffee, and I noticed for the first time that day that the ice cream flavors were chocolate, vanilla, strawberry & banana.

We all watched TV in the room until my husband and I took our 10 year old to family karaoke at 10:30.  This was the first cruise where we left the girls in the room without one of us.  My 12 year old could contact us on her iPod if needed, and we didn’t have a balcony so even my worry-wart self couldn’t really think of a reason why it was not ok.  It turned out to be a great thing during the cruise and allowed us so much more flexibility, especially in the evenings.

On our way to karaoke we saw some more characters in their Mexico gear:

We also saw Captain Hook and Smee from the back:

There were a lot more people at karaoke this night which always makes it more fun.  However, there were a group of teenagers that were being loud & obnoxious.  I think the CM in charge was about to ask them to leave when they loudly got up and left on their own.

After karaoke it was time for bed.  These were our towel animals for the night:

Up next:  Day 4  – At Sea

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