Grand Caymens

Our final stop on the cruise was in the Caymen Islands, which means one thing: another dive excursion!

We enjoyed this dive, but we had some problems. Scott was struggling a bit with his mask. It kept leaking and wouldn't seal properly. This coupled with the water pressure on his mask resulted in an uncomfortable dive and some popped blood vessels in his eyes.

We don't have an underwater camera,  and on this cruise, a fellow diver offered to take pictures of us underwater and send them to us.

Aside from the problems in the dive, we enjoyed it. There were a bunch of coral tubes that we were able to swim through, which was exciting and different. It felt like we were swimming through these coral canyons and trenches.

Diving the Grand Caymens was pretty good, but felt like the diving in Cozumel was better and more enjoyable. The sites in the Caymens had a lot of hard coral structures, but didn't have as much soft colorful coral and fish as Cozumel did.

We really enjoyed our cruise. We had so much fun and definitely would enjoy taking another one. It was an easy and relaxed vacation and we loved every minute of it!

Cozumel

Our first stop: Cozumel, Mexico. Hello scuba diving!

Cruise excursion companies lined up

Scott and I are both certified scuba divers and we love being under the water. So the only cruise excursions we planned and booked were dives in Cozumel and the Grand Caymans.

When we arrived in Cozumel, we walked around the little port town before finding our diving company.

Cozumel was beautiful. The water was crystal clear and bright blue. The visibility was perfect. You could look down from the boat and see coral and shapes that were 60 or more feet under the water. The diving was enjoyable and relaxed. We jumped off the boat and made our way to the bottom. These two dives were drift dives because of the current. We were carried slowly along the coral and were able to see amazing soft and hard corals with a variety of fish.

We loved the Cozumel dives.

On the first, we saw a giant sea turtle swim by us and then soar up to the surface to take in some air. It was beautiful and was flying in the water.

We saw a couple rays - one white and brown, and the other was larger and gray. The gray ray that we saw had a fish swimming with it, gliding with its back. Where ever the ray turned, the fish would recalculate its course to be with the ray. Yellow trumpetfish hid in the coral as we found eels poking their heads our of their coral caves.

Carnival Liberty docked at Cozumel

We loved Cozumel so much that we are trying to figure out a time when we can go again, and maybe work on our advanced scuba certification there. This was one of our favorite memories from the cruise. We will definitely come back and spend some more time in Cozumel.