1st Island Stop - CocoCay Bahamas

CocoCay is a private island owned by Royal Carribean. It is very small & no one lives there. Royal Carribean has built shacks for bars & to make lunch. They have a flee market area too. The ship is anchored offshore & they bring you in by small boats called tenders. This process means lines & the "cattle car" feeling you get once in a while on a cruise. I much prefer the islands where you are docked & can come & go easier.

Here's our 16 year old posing on the beach with the ship in the background. Beach chairs are free but they rent you the floating mat & snorkel gear. We all shared one mat & I got one snorkel set for free (Mom would be proud) and we all shared it too.

We were all swimming when Megan decided to go lay in the sun. I look up there after 10 mins or so & she's got a tropical drink in her hand. Hmmm...thought I restricted the kids from charging to their ship card. Guess those rules don't apply on shore & Megan told me many times how much she enjoyed it. She's a real pushover for a guy with a tray of frosty-fruity drinks. Luckily he didn't add the rum to this one!

Best part of our day was renting waverunners. They took us out in a group of 10 and we got to go really fast. It was follow the leader & she was doing lots of turns & S curves. It was fun. Megan rode behind Bruce & Ryan was behind me.

This is Ryan & me from a distance with the ship behind us. They had a ship photographer on the island who took pictures of us on the waverunners too but they were super expensive. Hence the annoying nickel & diming. We'd just smile & think "I'm not buying this picture!"

The guide stopped the group once in a while & told us a story about an island, etc. Here she's giving us the info on a star fish. I made the kids pose with it to show how big it was. They fill up with air when you pull them out of the water & float. Kinda cool. You can also see how far we are away from the ship in this picture. It's that tiny white spec between the kids.
Then it was time to clean up & go to dinner. The food was good & the portions were small so you could easily have an appetizer (or two if you're Bruce), and an entree (or two if you're Bruce), and a dessert (guess how many Bruce had).

I like this picture of the kids so I made it our new banner photo. You can see Megan got some tan lines from CocoCay.

We tried to catch the sunset every night. Most nights were cloudy like this & one night it was raining. Ryan would actually leave the table early to see if the sunset was good. We finally caught a good one on our last night. I'll post it later. Gotta love a good sunset :)

Most nights Bruce & I went to the show. Sometimes the kids came with us. They weren't too thrilled with the teen program & didn't spend hardly any time there. Some people say you'll never see the kids. The kids spent a lot of time with us but that's fine by me (and Brucie too)! We didn't want them to miss out on any teen fun but didn't push them into it.




I almost forgot to mention that Bruce saw a baby shark while snorkeling at CocoCay. We got one set of snorkel gear so Ryan was floating on the mat waiting for his turn. Bruce saw that shark - turned on his heel (can you do this in the water) - got Ryan - and headed into the shore. He said it was a baby great white not a reef shark like we saw in Hawaii. I'm guessing he was right cause a lifeguard on a waverunner started patroling this area soon after. No one yelled shark or made people get out of the water. Pretty wild!