We decided to eat a late brunch and spend the afternoon in Harvest Caye since I read that the food and drinks aren’t included there. I thought about taking a ferry to Placencia, but then we decided to just go to the beach and pool. The beach was interesting, I think I read a lot of it is man made. The sand was more like crushed shells. It wasn’t crowded and we had a nice spot under an umbrella. It was a decent beach. We later went to the pool, which was pretty awesome compared to the tiny cramped pools and decks on the ship. It is a huge pool with two sides and a bridge going across. Very nice. The only drawback was that no food or drinks are included so that was a bummer. I paid $7 for a bottle of water. I should have brought one off of the ship. I would rather go to a private island where everything is included.

Our stop in Costa Maya was fun, we just walked around the port, stopped in some shops and watched the local entertainment. They had some various people doing crazy things for tips. We also saw some dolphins on the way out which was neat.

Grand Stirrup Caye was probably my favorite stop out of the four. We went later in the morning and didn’t have any issues getting a tender over the the island. I don’t really like having to take a tender and it would be nice to just have a pier, but it wasn’t too much hassle. It was nice that food and drinks were included. We enjoyed the buffet, I was happy to see several salads and vegan options. I wanted to go to the taco stand, but discovered it was on the other end of where we were sitting. The beach was nice and we found a shady spot. We brought our snorkel gear and had fun snorkeling around. They have a “snorkel garden” with a few things sunk under the water to see. We saw some neat fish etc.

Key West was quite the debacle, they started out with doing immigration inspections early in the morning. Some friends of ours who had excursions said they were in line for over an hour before it even moved. We waited and went later and the lines were still crazy long. The set up was terrible, the lines were outside in the sun too. We decided to wait even later to avoid the lines. When we finally got in line, we waited a while still. After getting through that mess, we then had to wait in line to get off of the boat. Since we were docked at a Navy pier, we had to take trolleys into Key West. We had to wait in line and then get a trolley. Half the day was gone by the time we actually made it to Key West. We enjoyed walking around and seeing some of the historic sites. We discovered a great gelato place.