We docked this morning in Progreso, Yucatan, Mexico, and after a slow start packing up everything we needed to hit the beach, the Gallmans and Allison joined us and we headed off the ship. Dennis was so excited about seeing everything, and he loved the bus ride! He looked out the window and asked question after question ("are we in Mexico?"; "is our cruise ship going to leave us here?"; "will we get back on the cruise ship?"; "are we going to the beach?"). He and Chloe had the best time playing at the public beach, raking sand into buckets and spraying us and everyone around us with sand because the wind was so strong. The waves were pretty huge, too, since Progreso is a Gulf beach and is not in the Caribbean. We might not have thought our beach day through too well, but it is over now and we don't know if we have it in us to do a beach in Cozumel as well. We do have a undersea tour scheduled in a submarine-type thing.
After watching the kids play in sand and taking them on a couple of excursions in the water, we took advantage of their needed potty break to pack up and head back to the ship for lunch and to change clothes. The dock is far from anywhere and is a significant bus ride from town! Dennis enjoyed the bus ride back even more than the first one, and he stuck his head out the window and sang Old MacDonald for most of the way back. Onboard, we got into dry clothes and ate lunch, and then we dropped him off at Camp Carnival per his request. Allison, David, and I got back off the ship to do a little duty-free shopping, but there wasn't too much to see. Dennis did score a new guitar (he picked it out on our way back from the beach) and a little Mexican nativity set that we got for him on our second trip out. We weren't gone long before we had seen all we wanted to see, and we returned to the ship to pick him up from Camp to take his nap. When we got back to the room, he delightedly strummed his guitar and sang the alphabet song, then unpacked and played with his nativity figures. After about 10 minutes, he asked "can I take my nap now?". He sure didn't take long going to sleep.
After his nap, he spent some time with the Gallmans while the rest of us were at a Past Guest Party, and we all met up again at dinner where we celebrated Chloe's birthday. She actually licked her cake when they brought it! The waiter cut our her licked part and served it to her, and she went face-first into the cake, enjoying every molecule of chocolate in so many different sensory ways... They went back to Camp right after that, and the thirtysomething crowd spent a couple of hours hanging out (I see you cringing, Ellen, but you'll be thirty soon enough to be included!). We wandered the top deck of the ship until it was time to fetch the kids (paid babysitting starts at 10 pm at $6 per hour, and we haven't taken advantage of it yet). We let Dennis hang out on deck for a while, and we met up with Gigi. We all sat in lounge chairs and listened to the music by the pool, and Dennis and David explored the uppermost deck. Dennis yelled at us and we turned around to see him up above, saying "LOOK! I'm up by the whale tail! Do you see the smoke coming out?". He came down and told us all about it.
I cannot believe how much Dennis is enjoying his vacation. He is so agreeable to most everything we've wanted to do, and he is just walking around with a smile on his face. He loves talking to the ship personnel, and they've all been very patient with him and he gets high fives all around. Tonight we let him go to the all night pizza place because he said "I think my tummy is trying to tell me something--I think it is telling me that it's time to eat pizza!". He ate a slice of pepperoni pizza and had some ice cream as well (24 hour pizza and ice cream--do they know late night cravings or what?). He saw the sous chef standing nearby and said "sir, are you the chef?" and he told him that he wasn't, and Dennis said "do you know the chef?", so he explained what he did. Everything about this ship and Mexico just fascinates Dennis, and he's so engaged and involved and so eager to talk about everything he's seeing.
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