the allen's: Cruise

Destination – Progresso, Mexico.

Not much to do here, folks. I think this is a relatively new port of call for the cruise industry. This place has really not been well developed for tourists. The Tool Man and I took a beach break excursion in Progresso, but we were none too impressed. After visiting beaches in places like Grand Cayman and St. Thomas, the sand and sea just didn’t measure up.

After docking in Progresso, a sister ship, the Ecstasy, pulled up beside us. It is incredible to see how well the ship captains can maneuver these vessels. They can turn these huge ships on a dime, pulling them up to a dock as easily as one would park a car.

On our honeymoon ten years ago, the Tool Man and I sailed on the Carnival Inspiration. We didn’t know it at the time, but the Inspiration is one of Carnival’s smaller ships, like the Ecstasy here on the left. Since then we’ve sailed on the Conquest, the Valor (twice), and now the Triumph. These ships are beasts! Almost like floating cities. So far we’ve only sailed with Carnival, but we’ve been talking about trying other lines in the future.

Here’s a picture of our balcony. It’s the top one there under the row of dark windows. Awesome!!!

Here’s where our excursion took us. This is actually walking up to the beach from the bus. Once we got here we packed the camera away in our bag, and, unfortunately, we didn’t take any pictures of the actual beach.

Elvis was everywhere on this cruise. There was actually a group of Elvis impersonators on our ship. They had performances throughout the whole week. We could sit out on our balcony at night and hear the Elvis’ singing and the ladies swooning. I swear, some of those ladies acted like 12-year-old girls at a Justin Bieber concert.

That’s my Tool Man. He’s allergic to the law!

Bye-bye Ecstasy! See you in Cozumel.

Because the sea is so shallow here, the docks at Progresso are built waaaay out from the mainland. I was quite nervous on the bus ride to the beach. The road built to the land was a little too narrow for my comfort. One strong gust of wind and, whoosh, I’m shark bait. If you look really closely, you can just make out the land in the background of this picture, right where the water meets the sky.