1/7/05 - Key West, Florida

Its nice to be surprised once in a while. I find that golden rule of being surprised in a positive way is to lower my expectations. That I did.



Key West, otherwise known as Republic of Concha, is of course, the southern most piece of US land. Despite being pretty small the town has a distinct charm, atmosphere and character.



The main street of Key West is called Duval street. It starts in Malory Square and runs all the way through to the shore. The street is nothing but a strip of shops, cafe, restaurants and pretty houses.



One thing that we found rather strange is the things people do to their dogs in Key West, take a look:



and slightly more disturbing:



We went back to report dog abuse and on the way stopped for some lunch and later fudge tasting. It was so good that we totally forgot about dogs and went straight through to Malory Square. This is where we saw the sponge man, and decided that dogs are just fine in this town.



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1/5/05 Cozumel, Mexico

Cozumel is probably one of the most fun islands on the Caribbean. At least on the Western Caribbean. There is a lot going on and a lot of different activities - snorkeling, diving, jeeping, Maya pyramiding and of course shopping.



Since we have been to this island before and just visited boring pyramids in Guatemala, we decided in favor of caves and snorkeling. Unfortunately caves were too far, and we settled for Chanakaab National Park. Ahem, the name is rather overpromising. This turned out to be a snorkeling beach with small tropical garden, delphinarium and Maya ruins brought in from many different places and clumped together.



Well, maybe by Mexican standards this was a national park, I do not know. What I do know is that food, ice-cream and rainbows were pretty good there.



Despite the exciting atmosphere I managed to get philosophical and slightly depressed. This is when I took the picture below, entitled: 32 year old brain.



We had back into town for dinner. The part of Cozumel were people can actually hang out is tiny. Its unfortunate, since there is a lot to do on the island. Of course, if you are here just for 1 day, like most folks, its fine. There is a shopping street a central square and a restaurant street. And of course I did not bring my camera in the evening, so no pictures of downtown Cozumel this time :(

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1/4/05 St. Tomas, Guatemala

Guatemala seems to be rather sparsely populated. At least from our van window. The van took us to Maya ruins and to the local rain forest.

For over an hour we drove on the main road through palmed hills. Guatemala is beautiful, really green. This green is being continuously consumed by local cows, who seem to be the most lavish cows on this planet.

Unfortunately for us the ruins were not worth the ride. We did manage to take just a few pictures. This beautiful tree was standing in the middle of the ruin site.



From the ruins we drove for about 1/2 h to the Rio Dulce National Park. We paused on the bridge to take pictures of the Lake Izabal.



We then headed to Hacienda Tijax, a lodge by the lake with a restaurant and trails into the rain forrest. We walked the 1-mile long trail (some of us were not exactly happy) to the mountain top. I thought that trip was rather worth our while. Take a look:



One the way back we walked through 600 feet long hanging bridge. This bridge was hooked together by a few basic cables and wood. Without a doubt this walk added much needed thrill to the entire trip.

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1/3/05 Roatan, Honduras

We thought that the word Honduras was funny in English, and even funnier in Russian. We sort of abused this word after we had a few beers. This does not mean that we had anything against locals. Its just that it is a funny word.

Roatan (not a funny word) is a 30 mile long island off the coast of Honduras. The island is only 4 miles wide and is pierced through by a main road that runs along the coast. From the port we took a local tour that first went to the east area that is inhabited by locals. It was actually better than we expected in terms of general level of the population.



The bus tour ended in the West End, the most happening area of the island. This, rather overrated, area hosts a beach, snorkeling and a mile long strip of shops and restaurants.
Eventhogh the area looks busy there is not that much to do, since the shops all sell the same stuff.



We camped at Half Moon Bay beach hopeful to do snorkeling. It was fun, but there was no fish.



A 10-minute bus ride from West End is beautiful tropical garden. The garden consists of the small cultivated part that hosts lots of tropical plants and a a few trails that go up to the mountain. The mountain trails lead to the plateau with spectacular views of the harbor.



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1/1/05 Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands

Speaking of trivia, apparently when Columbus discovered Cayman Islands he called them La Tortugas, because of the apparent abundance of turtles. Later, people took a re-count and renamed the islands into Cayman or Crocodile. Must be more Crocodiles on the island. Of course we have not seen any. We did see a few parrots, but our focus was the beach and the famous rum cakes.

We stopped at Grand Cayman - the largest of the Cayman islands, which is 22 miles long. The port is located in a busy touristy center of the city. This area, called Georgetown, is covered with restaurants, galleries, shops and duty free stores.

We took a cab to the 7-mile beach. Apparently the beach is less than 5 miles long, but locals call it 7-mile beach just for the heck of it. The way to the beach is via main road that runs through the island. The scenery made me think of the term: Vocation-spot wanna be. Things did not look too smooth. There were attempts to make an impression of civilized place, but really they were just attempts.

The actual 7-mile beach was clean and pretty. It was divided into areas, each of which was ripping off tourists with its own bar, restaurant and jets rentals.



Needless to say that such peaceful scenary evoked irrepressible urge to have local rum cakes and even the rum itself. We headed back to Georgetown and went to the duty free store. We took full advantage of the generous treat of free rum cakes and free rum shots. For about 1 hour after we boarded we did not even smell Zuiderdam. What else can one ask from a Tortuga rum cake?

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12/31/04 - Half Moon Cay, Bahamas

Half Moon Cay is a small, 1/2 moon-shaped privately owned island on the Bahamas. There are no attractions except the sandy beach and clear waters.



The back of the island looked kind of abandoned, but also kind of cool.



Since there was not much to do, I found time to take a picture of our ship - Holland America's Zuiderdam.



This picture proves once again that things that are beautiful on the outside need not to be beautiful inside. This 2 year old ship smelled pretty bad and had the worst service that we have ever seen on 7 seas. The food was no good either, but hey, it is a Caribbean cruise and there were 11 of us. We had a ball.

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