Clinton and I may be experienced travelers, but to be honest – we have never been on a cruise as a client! We have always either worked onboard or in some capacity of support. Opening our business, Talley Your Adventure -Dream Vacations, we realized that the best way for us to help other clients with their cruise experiences was to experience it ourselves!
We decided to book with Royal Caribbean, one of the largest and well-known cruise liners, for their 7 Day Western Caribbean cruise out of the Port of Tampa. This specific itinerary included a visit to Honduras, Belize, and two ports in Mexico. As adventure travelers who enjoy visiting historical and cultural sites more than the party scene, we enjoyed this cruise because of the excursions we were able to book for port days. Each of these was a Mayan ruin, where we learned about the astronomical calendars that they are famous for as well as the impact of the Spanish as they began their conquest across these new lands.
The Mayans were a highly successful civilization that grew to almost 200,000 across what is today Mexico, Belize, and Honduras. While they share a similar language dialect as well as family lineage, the entire “Mayan” civilization we know today was not a united group but rather hundreds of smaller tribes that had a leader whose rule passed directly to their eldest son. Many today can trace their lineage back to the Mayans and there are schools that teach the language and history. When we went to Cozumel, the Mayan structure at San Gervasio was truly a ruin – the family that occupied the structure blew it up before they left to make sure they found all the Spanish gold! When we went to Belize, Altun Ha was preserved and maintained – it felt similar to the leaning tower of Pisa, which was located in a neighborhood after navigating through local streets. Chacchoben in Costa Maya was huge – with a market area, a designated living area, and worship area. Each usually had an alter or some form of reverence towards astronomy in some form and there was usually an acknowledgement of fertility and fertility cycles related to life and death.
We were able to see all of these place easily and in a small group that usually only included our own family and friends because we booked with Shore Excursions. This is offered as part of our franchise with Dream Vacation. Shore Excursions offers the same guarantee as the cruise ship excursions. They WILL get you back to the ship before it leaves port and if for whatever reason they do miss the ship, they will not only get you back to the next port in time for the cruise but will compensate you heavily monetarily. It is not in their plan to have you miss the ship! We had an excellent time with each Shore Excursion trip because they make sure to book local guides who truly know what and where they are talking about as well as being very small groups. Booking with Talley Your Adventure gets you these types of benefits!
Follow along on our podcast, Make America Travel Again, to learn more about our trip as well as how Talley Your Adventure can take you to these same locations!
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