Cozumel
Port Shopping
The first thing we noticed is the tourist shopping area at the port in Cozumel has been updated since we were there 3 years ago. Very clean and modern, mostly indoor shops. Very pushy sales people, all offering the same items basically: expensive jewelry, Mexican clothing and leather items, liquor shops and the knick knack type souvenirs.
I didn’t get any photos, so here’s a stock photo of the shopping area off the ship. We really didn’t get a chance to buy much here, except we got suckered into some tanzanite earrings and a bottle of Tequila. Which leads to the story of our great glass bottom boat excursion, below…
Glass Bottom Boat Excursion
I had seen some large glass bottom boats from the ship when we were in Key West and thought that might be a nice excursion to take – see the reef and the fish, without getting wet – and more importantly not having to do a lot of walking. We had already taken the taxi tour of Cozumel on our last cruise, so when we saw a clean-cut professional looking guy selling the glass bottom boat tours in Cozumel, we paid up and shopped for the hour until the boat was to leave.
As I shopped for something for the grandbabies, I noticed Charles was missing, so I looked and found him in a tequila shop. The guy was having him taste the best tequilas and trying to sell him a little bottle for $350! Do we look like millionaires? 
Anyway, so the guy said to me, oh, would you like to try our caramel/chocolate tequila? Are you kidding? I’m not a drinker – and certainly not tequila, but how could I say no to caramel/chocolate? Omigoodness – it was delicious. Which followed with skittles flavored, reese’s peanut butter cup flavor, coconut flavor, Horchata flavor. Half a dozen shots later, I managed to pull us away from the slick salesman, declaring we had to catch a boat but we would come back later. NOT. For $55/bottle, even caramel/chocolate was out of the question.
I didn’t get a photo of our lovely excursion boat – but this photo I found is exactly like it. As you can see, it will hold about 6 people in addition to the two Mexicans driving it. There were two other couples with us, including a couple in their 70s who would be snorkeling off the boat. I was a little queasy as I got onto the boat, and within 10 minutes of the waves and rocking, I was getting very, very seasick. Of course, since we hadn’t planned this little excursion, my seasick pills were back on the ship. Let’s just say, that was the longest 2 hours of my life.
We fed the fish tortillas while the couple snorkeled. I ran into the snorkel lady later, in Belize. She apologized for keeping me out there sick for their snorkeling. I said, no, you guys are my heroes. I thought they were amazing – at their age. They described what they saw – the first time near where we left shore they saw statues and ruins under the water. The second dive, we had went up the coast aways and they saw the beautiful reef and fish. This reef is the second largest in the world, so the little bit we got to see was kinda cool.