My Travels

 February, 2008

Carnival Cruise: Long Beach to Cabo San Lucas, Puerto Vallarta, and Mazatlan

Before we set sail, we had a little time free in Los Angeles, so we hit Disneyland and Universal Studios.

On board the Carnival Pride... 7 days at sea... 900' cruise ship with 2100 passengers... all you can eat... 24 hour pizza, ice cream, coffee and room service... volleyball, miniature golf and a 70' waterslide on deck, bingo, shows, trivia, horseracing, karaoke, dancing, auctions and Internet Cafe indoors... I found time for a full body massage, won three Carnival trophies for my knowledge of trivia (it paid off!), hit the game winning volleyball serve, (my wrist still hurts!), and beat my kids at mini golf.  We took some nice posed photos on formal night... the ship had two formal nights during the week.

       

Puerto Vallarta... the kids and I went to Sea Life Park, and had a chance to get up-close and personal with Heidi and Pepe... both sea lions gave us a kiss, and we got to pet and feed them, and interact a little before heading out of the pool.  Sea Life Park is a low-budget Mexican version of Sea World... it's more like your basic waterslide park, with dolphins and sea lions.  My guess is the cruise ship people brought in the dolphins and built them the enclosure, making a profit in the long run on dolphin encounters.  We were the only ones at the Sea Lion Encounter, which was really nice.

Mazatlan... we toured the city by minivan, then hit the Gold District for a couple of hours.  The beach was really nice, except that we were continually accosted by vendors about every 20 seconds.  They just don't give up... sorry, I left my wallet in my other bikini! 

We also spent a day wandering around Cabo San Lucas, where I spotted two pirate ships in the harbor.  Cabo is easily the most Americanized city of the three, with malls, movie theatres and a Hard Rock Cafe.  Still plenty of harassing merchants, though!