When we first booked this cruise, it was because I had wanted to take the family to Cozumel to visit Playa Mia waterpark. That meant a Western Caribbean itinerary. The full offering from NCL was Roatan, Honduras; Harvest Caye, Belize; Costa Maya, Mexico; and Cozumel, Mexico. I knew nothing about the first three ports and took to the Cruise Critic message forums to learn more.
Harvest Caye is a private island owned by NCL that was slated for completion November 2015 that has now been bumped out to November 2016. The replacement port was named as Belize City, Belize about 6 months before we’d left.
There is a woman on Cruise Critic with the user name Mitsugirly who has taken dozens of cruises, with the majority being on NCL. She writes very detailed trip reports (FAR more detailed than this one) with thousands of photos and a great deal of good-to-know information. She had visited all of our anticipated ports and did a number of excursions in each one. I read all of her reports and took note.
One of the first jewels I noted was Little French Key, a private island off the Island of Honduras. I was absolutely intrigued but wrote it off early because of a swimming jaguar and high admission price.
Months went by and I chose an excursion, only to have us decide in February or so that Little French Key was by far the best option. We were able to negotiate a lower price, as well, with our group of 10. And they no longer had the swimming jaguar.
I woke up early again and headed to Savor taking photos of the ship along the way.
O’Sheehan’s is a complimentary 24 hour eatery with a sports bar feel to it. It spans the ship from starboard to port with an open area in the center where you can see into the Atrium. We never dined here as a family.
Looking down into the Atrium. They played movies in the Atrium, although we never got a handle on when and what… it could be exceedingly loud in the Atrium mid-day through evening. I have no idea how anyone could even hear a movie down there.
Empty at 6AM however.
Mid-ship chandelier that spanned decks 6, 7, and 8.
Called…
Art Gallery – the displays changed frequently. Sometimes being changed out mid-day and again in the evening.
Atrium from deck 6 looking up to O’Sheehan’s
Outside Illusionarium, where we ate Sunday night.
Other areas I found but we never visited.
We did need to use the internet café one evening to file Stewart’s work availability. We’d forgotten to do that while in Florida. Cost $21 for 17 minutes. Grrrr.
The name of the Getaway theater. I never even saw inside the theater once.
I collected my family and we headed to Savor for breakfast. We were tickled to see Cher there. We learned that was where she worked out of in the mornings. We ate there another two mornings. It was nice to have her watching Stewart’s back. As we waited for our table we visited a neat replica of the ship.
Into our second week of vacation, Hanny was getting very good at placing orders. LOL.
The good news was we were the only ship scheduled for Roatan for the day, which meant we would get a position at the pier and avoid tendering. The bad news was we weren’t docking until 10 A.M.
It was hard waiting. It was cool to watch us head into port.
The problem with docking later is more people are up and ready to disembark when permission is granted to disembark. It was painfully congested.
Looking back at the ship. While at first I didn’t think it was very pretty (not a fan of hull art) she was starting to grow on me.
After we disembarked we were inundated with offers to take us places/sell us excursions. We were following some vague instructions I’d had sent to me from Little French Key, but did go ahead and answer people who asked if they could help us. When we got the same answer twice I was comfortable we were on the right track. We found our liaison who vaguely directed us down a street. We eventually found a group that was going to LFK and hung out in an alley waiting for our cabs. Our family got our own 12 pax van. Same kind we drive at home.
It took half-an-hour to get to a small pier where a smaller watercraft would take us over to that private island in the background.
We only waited about five minutes for our boat to come.
When we arrived to the island we were met by a young man who gave us a tour of the island. It was breathtaking.
They have a number of rescued animals. We did not spend much time looking at them.
Our admission fee covered a lunch and two drinks each.
We just jumped in and had fun. Well….. some of the kids weren’t as excited as others of us about being there. For real. How the amazingness of this location was lost on them is lost on me.
I don’t really know how many beaches there were. I mean, it is an island, it’s mostly all beach. But each section offered its own features. We planted here at this one and didn’t really explore a ton. We had great seats, not too far from restaurant and restroom. “Our” beach got a little more crowded midday, but not by much.
John and the oldest three enjoyed jumping from this platform, and later swinging from the rope.
The bulk of our day included swimming and paddleboards and kayaks, in no particular order. Tabitha met a friend from the kids’ club who was there with her family. We did have a hiccup with lunch when they told us we could have pizza for the kids instead of the plate of Honduran food. The waiter took it as an order for six whole pizzas. We wondered why it was taking forever to get our food. When the delivered out the first two whole pizzas we all clued in and canceled half of them. But not before we’d spent an entire hour in the dining area.
Why, yes, that is Coke in my baby’s sippy cut. No judging. It was VACATION!
Who doesn’t love a restaurant where you can play on the “floor”.
Except for the rock lobster, it was good.
Swing area.
Some of the grounds. The owners live on the island. They also rent out tree houses for people to stay.
We headed over to meet Rico.
Okay. So my husband and mom are great folks. But they don’t get island time. They are a little worried about the ship leaving without us. I suppose it is good that there are those kind of people. Truth is, everywhere else in the world, I am those people. But days like these? Nuh, huh. I wasn’t going to leave until I had to. Had. To. And – we were not the last people to leave the island. But I wasn’t leaving until we had to.
As we got back to the pier, we saw what they were going to take us back to the port in. A school bus. Too funny. Hanny and Katriel fell asleep.
We got back on the ship and had plenty of time to clean up. We didn’t have to be to dinner until 7:30 P.M. It was our latest night.
Tab & Marie remembered that something they were interested in going on in their club that night. It took a bit of back and forth, and in the end Tab decided she wanted to go and Marie chose to eat with us.
Dinner was at the Tropicana and I am sorry to say we don’t have much in the way of photos. It was one of the Main Dining Rooms, therefore complimentary. It was every bit as excellent as the specialty restaurants. The menu was more diverse, to be honest. The only thing that took away from the awesomeness of this meal was that it was at the very end (aft) of the ship. And the ship? She was a rockin. I was really feeling it. John was really feeling it. Nigel and Nan were really feeling it. In the end, Nigel and John ended up leaving before dessert. John took the little girls (whose desserts had come early) and headed back to the room to take a meclizine. The timing was too bad, really. This restaurant was one of our favorites.
Me? I held in there. And ordered two desserts.
The best tiramisu I’ve had in a long time. Carrot cake was just ok.
We all were in bed around 10, I think. Island time…. ;)
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