Howard Family Dance Cruise 2002

We sailed aboard the Regal Empress from Tampa to Mexico in April 2002 with a group from City Lights Dance Studio. It's an older ship that started sailing in 1953. There were 678 passengers on this cruise.

The dining and service on the ship were excellent. We danced to live bands every day and went to lessons taught by Ray Gardner. We met some of the entertainers on the ship and had lessons in mambo, salsa and meringue from them.

We ate dinners with our group and enjoyed an amazing display of culinary art and ice sculptures at the midnight buffet.

On the ship we enjoyed sitting by the pool and relaxing with our group.

We took a tour of the bridge and learned about the navigation and instruments there.

We took several excursions on the cruise. The first one took us two hours by bus from the port of Progresso to the Mayan ruins at Chichen Itza. It is probably the largest and most important archeological site in North America. It is located on the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico. At its peak this city was home to 50,000 people. Scientists estimate that is was active from 200 BC to 1500 AD. The ruins were discovered in 1842.

We climbed the largest pyramid for a breathtaking view of the entire site. Our guide told us that this is the last year they will allow tourists to climb to the top of the pyramid. It was a steep hike but worth the effort. Check out this picture of the view from the top as you're going down the steps!

Our guide Gabriel showed us the ball court where games much like soccer were played. It's the largest ball court in any Mayan ruin today. There are carvings on the walls showing the losing (or winning) team being sacrificed after the game.

Next we walked to the natural water hole/well where many artifacts and skeletons were found.

The observatory contains the only round building in the ruins. The Mayans were very advanced in their knowledge of math and science. Their buildings were located to perfectly cast shadows at certain times of year for astronomical events.

After our tour of the ruins we ate dinner at the hotel. It was a delightful open-air Mexican buffet with live music and dancing.

Our second excursion was snorkeling in Cozumel, Mexico. Here we went by water taxi to a beach where we followed our guides into the ocean and viewed the fish and coral while snorkeling in about 20 feet of crystal-clear water. Several times we swam through schools of thousands of fish....quite an experience!

Here are a few random pictures around the ship. This tugboat was pushing us into the dock.

It was a fun cruise!