Mexican Medley Cruise on Thomson Dream, 10-17 February 2015

A series of articles covering a week's Caribbean cruise called Mexican Medley which we took on the Thomson Dream cruise ship in February 2015.

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A Day in Costa Maya, Mexico

Friday 13 February 2015. Not the most auspicious date for a day on holiday, but we push any superstitious notions to the back of our minds and wake up to this rather lovely view.

We are at Costa Maya in Mexico for the day. Excursion trips are heading off to Kohinlich and Dzibanche Mayan ruins , which sound really interesting, but it is again an 8 hour trip and we are here to relax and chill. We start the day with a wander all the way round the ship on the Promenade Deck on Deck 9.

The view from the other side is more natural but no less beautiful. Look at the colour of that sea and the white tropical beach!

We decide we'll jump ship and have a wander before spending a nice undemanding afternoon reading and soaking up rays and long cool drinks...

Costa Maya has a small collection of bars and shops, the proprietors of which will call you in with a cheery wave and an invite, but without any insistence. A group dressed in Mayan Indian traditional dress were posing for photos.

It's a rather startling shade of pink, but not unpleasing! Sun loungers are placed around the pool with the fountains and there are plenty of bars within a few steps.

Our ship is hidden to the right behind the trees. The other ship in port was the Norwegian Dawn of NCL Cruises.

There was a series of small interconnected pools and this one offered dolphin encounters where tourists were lined against the wall and a dolphin approached each person in turn before turning and swimming on its side, waving a flipper to say "That's your lot!" We felt a bit sorry for the dolphins - the pools were only small and I suspect they may not get the chance to leave every night deciding whether or not to come back...

We came back with the inevitable fridge magnets and spent the afternoon as previously anticipated. Tomas and Maris did a half hour spot and then joined us for a bit at our table. Cor, this is the life... Shame it is only for a week!

Mexican Medley Cruise Index

Lusted Over in Cozumel, Mexico

Ah yes, it's not often that I can write a headline like that, so I'm making the most of it! Those details later however... We have to start this article at the start of the day, which is Thursday 12 February 2015 and it is only around 7:30am.

Since Tuesday night we have sailed across the Caribbean and wake up that morning in Cozumel, Mexico. It is not that long after dawn and the sun is still hiding behind the bank of cloud just above the horizon.

The first thing I had seen when drawing back the curtains from the cabin window had been the side of a large cruise ship and a lone man standing on a balcony waving at our ship. I resisted the urge to wave back and we had gone for breakfast and then grabbed the camera and came off the ship for a walk.

By the time we were getting towards the end of the pier it had become apparent that the other ship was several times the size of Thomson Dream. It was the Regal Princess and there was something distinctive about the passengers... Around 90% of them were men. And the few women were obviously er... together... The ship was evidently running a gay cruise!

As we neared the shore I noticed a mast and yards sticking up over a wall and we went to have a look at a sailing ship and instead found - a mast and yards... sitting on the dockside outside the Customs House!

The sea had a broken layer of brown seaweed floating on it that was being washed up in great quantities on the beach. A few cormorants were repeatedly diving into it, it probably had a great multitude of creatures living off it both below the surface...

...and above it. Smaller birds were walking over it, getting rich pickings of small crustaceans presumably.

As we walked alongside the beach, gangs of workers in blue with CADET emblazoned on their t-shirts were being marshalled along the Promenade, split into small groups and sent onto the beach to start bagging the seaweed, which we thought might be used for fertilizer, animal feed or even stuffing for furniture or car seats once dried. One such band filed past us and I found myself the object of unswerving eyes and a pursed mouth of appreciation. So obvious was she that I almost found myself bursting out laughing, but just nodded at her as we passed after which Fran did burst out laughing. It was only when the gangs were all deployed on the beach leaving a guard on each set of steps whose equipment included handcuffs and a side arm that we realised they were prison gangs or at least some sort of community service. Lusted over by a Mexican female prisoner... hey.. it's a start...

Blackpool has its Golden Mile of amusement arcades. Cozumel has diamond brokers. Cartier, DeBeers, etc. These shops had armed guards standing outside and a police patrol car was constantly on the strip, cruising up the length of the Promenade to turn and come back down before repeating the sequence over.

We came to a large attractive sculpture of a pair of reef divers swimming through an archway. We took each other's photos and an American voice asked "Would you take our photos if we took you together?" Two young men smiled at us and I took their camera and snapped a couple of shots at them, counting down from three to warn them when not to blink. They were from Maryland.

"It's nice here, but we are a bit wary of being mugged..." one said. For the second time I almost burst out laughing.

"I think you'll be alright along here," I pointed out. "Apart from all the armed guards outside all these shops, there's loads of prison guards up and down and there's also extra security people on this side!" One such of these latter, a huge chap in a white security uniform with a gun at his waist and a peaked cap on his head standing right behind Fran nodded eagerly at my words and smiled at the pair. "Anyone would need to have a death wish to try mugging someone along here I think!" I said and we left them, two young men from the country with the most appalling death rates from gun crime in the world, feeling nervous at being somewhere else...

The Promenade was not exactly full of features, but was attractive and had been designed deliberately to inject some fun into the setting for tourists. A series of bird caricatures punctuated planters with flowers and palm trees and we had a pleasant walk for a couple of hours. It was quite busy as we turned to go back as we were walking against a tide of our own passengers and groups of men holding hands or with linked arms and, I swear, with intertwined beards... Some looked like hillbillies, reminding me of that Sky series about the eccentric millionaire family Duck Dynasty... It was a source of amusement for the rest of the week how many times this ship cropped up in conversation and for the husband of the couple we were talking to say to his wife "There you are! I wasn't making it up!"...

We toyed with the idea of having a drink in a bar, but it was so hot and also lunch time so we made our way back onto the ship and to the open deck on Deck 11 where we spent much of the afternoon. We got showered and changed and then before heading down for a meal, caught Tomas and Maris's late afternoon set on Deck 10.

Cozumel had a different look than that of first thing this morning before the sun had come out properly! In the restaurant that night we had joined a random table but then recognised waiting staff from a previous cruise on the Celebration and we stayed with them for the rest of the week after that, sometimes at a shared table and sometimes at a table for two.

We again spent our evening in the Tides Bar, striking up conversations with people who came to sit with us and leave us as different shows elsewhere on the ship started and ended. Tomorrow, we'll be at Costa Maya, also in Mexico. Although there are some trips to the old pyramids of Mexico, these tend to be eleven hours long and Miss Franny is still recovering from being ill so we have left the guided tours for our final day when we'll have a look at some of the old plantation houses on Jamaica. This is to be a relaxing holiday and today has been a good start!

Mexican Medley Cruise Index

Joining our Dream Ship at Montego Bay

Tuesday 10 February 2015 was a long day. Twenty nine hours to be precise... We left home to travel to Manchester Airport in a taxi with one of those drivers who seem to steer in sudden panic swerves and were relieved to get there and join the queue to check in baggage. The online checking-in procedure made this very easy the first time we did it. Now that everyone does it, it somehow takes just as long as it used to anyway...

But the good news was that our bags would be picked up automatically and taken to the ship and our cabins so no mooching around the baggage conveyors when we got there.

We were flying on one of the Thomson Dreamliner Boeing 787s. They are carbon fibre not metal so much reduced weight means they fly a lot faster. I've read some stupid reviews of these aircraft that make me think some people would still manage to be unhappy if they were flown to the opposite side of the world in ten minutes on an alcohol drip, with semi-naked demigods/goddesses pandering to their every whim. The reality is there are two aisles, seats with a 3-3-3 configuration and the seats have more leg room than you would normally find. Not so much though that some prat playing yo-yos in front, reclining and straightening their seat every ten minutes isn't very annoying. Want to improve passenger experience? Easy - take that annoying button away from temptation, or make it operate the seat in front so they have to ask if you are eating or have the table in a position where it might jab you rudely in the solar plexus before they can lean back...

The seats have individual 9" VDU screens too for films/TV and games with plug and play facilities to listen to your own music or charge your bits. One of the best features of this is a repeating stream of information on the aircraft's speed, height and position along the flight path. When I say "repeating" though, it does have to repeat an awful lot of times on a 10-hour flight across the Atlantic! But watching the plane fly over various seamounts, fracture zones and abyssal plains that you've never heard of on the ocean floor is mildly diverting and watching the wind speed rise and fall as you enter and leave the jet stream is quite entertaining too.

There are two best things about this aeroplane. First is that the windows are massive compared to older airliners. Instead of a shutter they have a button which darkens the window progressively, using some sort of gel. Clever stuff. All we could see on the way over though was clouds. For ten hours...! The second is that the pressurisation is such that you get more oxygen into the blood and that, we were told and so indeed we found, drastically reduces the effects of jet-lag. I remember crossing the Atlantic in 1993 and being whacked out for a day and a half after both journeys. No such effect even when coping with the 5-hour difference in time.

And so we reached Jamaica and Montego Bay - "Whoa-oh-oh-oh....." On the transfer bus you are taught the correct pronunciation of the island's most popular saying "No problem, man..." with a refreshing lack of the stifling politically correct nonsense that means the rest of the world can call us "Brits" but if we dare to utter something similar someone (meaning "some Brit") will deem us being racist and slap us down.

We were proficient by the time we were dropped off at the cruise terminal and we trooped in with our little signed papers saying we were all healthy and hadn't coughed or sneezed for - ooh... weeks!

Once we had been checked by immigration and customs and checked in by the Thomson staff, we were able to join our home for the week - Thomson Dream. This photo was taken later in the week at Roatan, Honduras.

We were shown to our cabin, 6003, on Deck 6 and up near the pointy end. We found a complimentary bottle of sparkling wine waiting for us in a cooler, thanking us for being long-standing repeat cruisers. Honestly, it's a pleasure! And so was the wine!

We were excited about meeting up with our friends from the Philippines, Tomas and Maris, who sing as duo 2 Intense and were on the ship. We hadn't told them we were coming and were hoping to surprise them. Then during the compulsory safety drill that evening we spent most of it trying to be inconspicuous and turning away from the next lifeboat station where Tomas was helping out! I was sure he'd seen us but as he said later "You only see what you expect to see..." and we got away with it.

So we parked ourselves in front of the stage in the Tides Bar and waited. Maris walked past in the distance and we waved. She glanced round, walked on, stopped, came back, did a double take and rushed over. Result! So begins the week. Tomorrow will be a day at sea and I'll skip over that so the next entry will see us having crossed the Caribbean to Mexico where we will wake to watch us dock at Cozumel.

Mexican Medley Cruise Index

Mexican Medley Cruise

There have been a few days without an article I'm afraid. We were erm... researching(!) for a new series of articles set around the Caribbean Sea!

I'd like to finish off the London holiday articles before launching properly into this one but just as a taster, this shows where you can expect to go for a few days.

We joined the Thomson Dream for a week at Montego Bay, Jamaica.

After a day at sea we spent a day in Cozumel, Mexico where I was lusted
over by a female prisoner and a Gay Cruise docked alongside...

Then a further day in Mexico at Costa Maya.

The following day saw us on Roatan, an island of Honduras where we visited a glorious tropical beach at Mahogany Beach...

...and got buzzed by some large raptors as we rode a chair lift!

After another day at sea we visited two of the slave plantation mansion houses on Jamaica.

One of which contained this bed on which the White Witch of Rose Hall was murdered!

We enjoyed exotic drinks and calypso singers in cellars.

And I made a new friend in a craft market!

We met up with some old friends from several past cruises...

...and I joined them to play some music!

Come back to see the full details of what we got up to on our Mexican Medley cruise around the Caribbean and to hear the full story of the White Witch. We had a fabulous week and had a really great relaxing time catching up with Tom and Maris and several other staff that we remembered (and remembered us - how do they do that???) from Thomson Celebration and a previous trip on Thomson Dream.

Ok, for now I must put my scanner back on and finish my London pics from 1995!