By Tom Neal
Bigfoot Trails Basecamp | Independent Adventure Media

Tommy in the cenote - no filter, just cool natural lighting

August 2017 was our first cruise.

We flew from Seattle to New Orleans, spent a night there, boarded a Carnival ship the next day, and headed for Mexico. The plan was pretty simple: see if cruising was something we liked.

As it turned out, the answer was a little more complicated than yes or no.

We had never been to New Orleans before. My wife had been there once for a few hours and wasn't impressed, but I'd never been, so I wasn't sure what to expect. Movies and TV made it look wild. History books romanticized it. We also had a friend who went there every year and absolutely loved the place.

I figured I'd make up my own mind.

We flew in from Seattle in August, which probably should have been my first warning.

It was around 90 degrees when we landed, which wasn't all that unusual for Seattle in the summer, except New Orleans had one thing Seattle wasn't bringing to the party: humidity.

High humidity.

The kind where you walk outside and immediately feel like somebody threw a wet blanket over you.

We grabbed a Lyft from the airport to our hotel downtown near the convention center. The driver was a real estate agent who drove Lyft on the side and was a pretty fun guy. He gave us all kinds of recommendations about where to eat and where to party.

We weren't really interested in the party part.

As we drove into town, I was looking at the old buildings, cemeteries, palm trees and everything else I'd seen in pictures. It looked pretty much like New Orleans was supposed to look.

We checked into the Courtyard by Marriott, near the convention center, and headed out on foot to find some dinner and figure out where we needed to go the next morning to catch our cruise.

That's when things started feeling a little different.

I'm the guy who is always checking my surroundings. I'm usually aware of what's going on around me and assessing the situation. I've walked through Chicago, Seattle, Tacoma's Hilltop back when it was pretty damn rough, and plenty of other sketchy neighborhoods without getting too worked up.

But that night in New Orleans, my brain and senses were on overload.

Maybe it was the heat.

Maybe it was the humidity.

Maybe I was hungry.

Maybe I was just being paranoid.

I don't know.

But I was really wishing I had my sidearm with me.

We made our way toward the French Quarter and Bourbon Street looking for food. Passing Harrah's casino, there were police cars lit up and a fire truck. We kept going.

The closer we got to Bourbon Street, the worse the smell became.

Vomit.

Stale beer.

Garbage.

Body odor.

And some other who-knows-what smell that I don't even want to try to identify.

It was hot, humid, crowded and smelled like a giant trash can that had been sitting in the sun.

I finally had enough.

Fuck this. Time to head back.

We left Bourbon Street and stopped at a little German-style restaurant on the way back to the hotel. It looked pretty cool and somewhat fancy, and I like good German food, so I had high hopes.

The food wasn't anything special.

Then we got the bill.

I've always been the kind of guy who's perfectly happy paying a premium price if the food and service are worth it. But if the food or service sucks, it better not be expensive.

If I go to Denny's, I know I'm getting mediocre food and predictable service, but I'm not paying a premium for it.

If I'm going somewhere expensive, I expect expensive food and service.

This wasn't that.

On the walk back to the hotel, I made a comment that we should probably expect to hear gunshots and sirens throughout the night.

And we did.

Thankfully, the next morning we got the hell out of New Orleans and boarded the cruise ship.

That was the beginning of our first cruise.

Monday morning we grabbed some brunch at the Riverwalk mall and waited for our 11:00 boarding time.

Once we got to the terminal, we were basically herded through the place like cattle.

Lines.

Corridors.

ID checks.

More lines.

More security.

More ID checks.

It was a pain in the ass, but I understood why it was necessary. When you're putting several thousand people on a floating city, I suppose you want to make sure everybody is who they say they are.

We eventually made it onto the ship, only to discover that our rooms wouldn't be ready until after 1:30.

So we killed some time at the buffet.

We were still hungry.

Brunch had consisted mostly of pretzels and smoothies at the mall.

That brings me to the food on the ship.

There were restaurants, a buffet, pizza, burgers, a deli, Chinese food, ice cream and bars spread all over the place. There were plenty of choices.

The problem was that most of it wasn't very good.

The food was edible. We'd certainly had worse. But even the fancy restaurant seemed to serve food that tasted like it came from the buffet.

The pizza place was open 24 hours, which was pretty damn handy, but the burger and Chinese places were only open for limited hours.

Of all the disappointments on the cruise, the food was probably the biggest one.

Our room was an interior stateroom with no window. It was smaller than most motel rooms, but it was functional.

We had two twin beds pushed together to make a king.

Sort of.

I managed to find the crack between them more than once during the trip.

There were a couple of small closets and drawers for our stuff, along with a little bathroom with a stand-up shower, toilet and vanity.

Our kids were older, and we were traveling with my mom. My son and Mom shared another room with the twin beds on opposite sides, while my daughter and her husband had another room.

It worked.

But just barely.

As for things to do, there certainly wasn't a shortage of activities.

There was mini-golf, basketball, shuffleboard, an arcade, casino, music, bars, movies, a walking track, multiple pools and all kinds of daily events.

Our kids spent some time messing around with the slot machines and shuffleboard, and apparently navigating the ship itself became an activity because that damn thing was like a maze.

The pools were crowded with younger kids and people partying, so we didn't spend much time there.

The shopping areas felt more like walking down the Strip in Las Vegas. People were constantly trying to sell you something or handing out pamphlets.

That wasn't really my thing either.

One thing we hadn't expected was how long it would take to actually get out of the Mississippi River and into the Gulf of Mexico.

It felt like we were cruising down the river forever.

Fortunately, we found a little-used deck near our staterooms and started spending a lot of time there.

That turned out to be one of the best discoveries of the trip.

As we moved down the Mississippi, lightning storms were firing off along the coastline and in the distance around us.

It was an incredible light show.

Once we got out into the Gulf, the views were phenomenal. At night, the stars were unbelievable.

My daughter could usually be found somewhere in a quiet corner reading a book, and my wife was perfectly happy sitting in the shade because she's quick to burn.

The ship itself wasn't bad.

It just wasn't exactly what we had expected.

This was our first cruise, and neither my wife nor I was particularly interested in doing another one after the first day or two.

Later, though, we talked to people who had been on a lot more cruises and learned that this was a relatively small ship and that larger ships could be a completely different experience.

That got us thinking.

Maybe cruising wasn't the problem.

Maybe we'd just picked the wrong cruise.

Eventually, we pulled into Cozumel.

And that's where the trip changed.

We stepped off the ship with two completely different plans.

The cruise offered a "Save a Sea Turtle" excursion, and we'd also found a private tour for a glass-bottom boat and snorkeling over one of the reefs.

We figured we'd do both.

Only one of those plans really mattered in the end.

We met up with the bus for the sea turtle experience.

Holy crap.

This was a MUST DO if you're going to Cozumel.

There were around 20 to 25 people on the bus, and we were divided into smaller groups. Each group was assigned a nest.

Then we went to work.

We dug through the nests looking for the little stragglers that hadn't managed to dig their way out and make it to the ocean during the night.

Some get turned around.

Some get trapped.

Some simply don't have enough strength to finish the job.

When we found them, we'd put them in a basket and carry them down toward the water.

We also excavated the nests and counted the eggs that had hatched, the ones that hadn't, and even remains from previous years.

The information they collected was important because it helped the organization understand the success of the nests and how many turtles were actually making it out.

That day, the tour group rescued 40 baby sea turtles.

Our family rescued nine of them.

Nine.

What a feeling.

It's hard to explain.

You just have to do it.

You don't really "save" them. You remove the obstacle that kept them from getting out, then you let nature take over.

Watching those little guys waddle their little asses down through the sand toward the water, then get washed out to sea to swim and play for the next 150 or so years was just freaking awesome.

That alone made the entire cruise worth doing.

I remember thinking I could sell everything I owned, move to Playa del Carmen, catch the ferry over to Cozumel a couple times a week and volunteer with those people.

I was hooked.

The rest of the tour took us through what was billed as a Mayan village.

To me, it felt pretty pathetically staged and cheesy, like something built specifically to get the attention of tourists.

We survived it.

After the bus dropped us back at the dock and mall, we caught a cab to El Cid Beach Resort, where we were supposed to meet up with our glass-bottom snorkeling boat.

Except there had been some kind of miscommunication about where we were supposed to meet at the hotel.

So we never got on the boat.

Normally, that probably would have pissed me off.

Instead, we met a wonderful woman named Carla Blanco with Snorkel Adventure.

Carla had a boat out on a tour that was due back soon. She was kind enough to get us reserved and then sent us into the hotel to get something to eat.

Technically, we weren't really supposed to be there because we weren't guests of the resort, but Carla had given us permission.

Thanks, Carla!

By the time we finished eating, the boat still hadn't returned.

We walked back down to the dock and talked with Carla.

Eventually, we figured out the boat was going to get back way too late for us to take the snorkeling trip and still make it back to our cruise ship before departure.

So we called it.

No big deal.

Instead, we spent some time playing around at the resort, jumping off a pier that was probably 15 feet above the water and talking with Carla and her daughter.

The snorkeling trip never happened.

And honestly, it didn't matter.

The turtle experience had already given us something we never expected when we stepped off that ship that morning.

That was probably the first time on the trip that I really understood something about traveling.

Trips rarely go exactly as planned.

Sometimes the thing you planned falls apart, and something completely different ends up being the part you remember.

For me, Cozumel wasn't about the snorkeling trip.

It was about digging through the sand, finding nine tiny turtles that couldn't make it out on their own, and watching them make their way toward the ocean.

Everything else was just noise.

Our next stop was Progreso, Mexico.

Getting off the ship there was an adventure in itself.

The pier from the ship to shore is roughly four miles long, so it takes a while just to get into town.

We met up with our guide, Guadalupe, from Yucatán Cenote Eco-Adventuras. She was wonderful from the start, handing out water and Coke as we headed out on our private tour.

Our destination was the Mayan ruins at Mayapán.

Most tourists head to Chichén Itzá, which is larger and more famous.

We went to Mayapán instead.

And I'm glad we did.

There was one other couple there.

That's it.

Our Mayan guide gave us a ton of information about the history and culture of the place, and unlike some of the more heavily controlled tourist sites, we were actually allowed to climb the ruins.

He basically told us to go crazy if we dared.

The temple steps were steep and narrow. The footholds were only about five or six inches wide.

Going up wasn't too bad.

Going down was another story.

My son and son-in-law basically ran down them.

My wife, daughter and Mom sat down and went one step at a time.

I walked down like a normal human being who was trying not to die.

From the top, we could see the ruins and the surrounding countryside stretching out around us.

It was beautiful.

After the ruins, we made our way through a Mayan community to a cenote.

If you've never seen one, they're basically underground caverns filled with crystal-clear water.

This one required a walk roughly 80 feet down to the water, and the water itself was more than 130 feet deep.

Yet you could put your face underwater and see the bottom.

There were scuba divers already down there, disappearing into darker tunnels. Apparently the cenotes are connected, with some areas accessible only by scuba.

The way the sunlight came through the small opening in the earth and hit the water was incredible.

It almost didn't look real.

We jumped from a rock ledge roughly 30 feet above the water.

The water was surprisingly warm.

Not exactly warm, but warm enough that jumping in didn't make you question every decision that had led you there.

It was one of those places where you look around and realize you're a long way from home and doing something you never would have experienced if you'd stayed there.

After swimming, we were invited into a local family's home for lunch.

This wasn't a restaurant.

It was their home.

The dining room was also part bedroom and living space. Everything had multiple purposes.

They welcomed us in, cooked a traditional meal for us and then showed us how to make tortillas by hand.

We made our own.

Ours didn't look nearly as good.

We kept them anyway.

Later, we ate them back on the ship with dinner.

One of the things I love about traveling is getting to see firsthand how other people live.

Not through a television show.

Not through a travel brochure.

Actually seeing it.

You see how people make use of the space they have. You see how meals are prepared. You see how little they actually need compared with everything we tend to think we need back home.

It makes you stop and think about how much we take for granted in the United States.

By the time we finished our day in Mexico, I was starting to realize that the cruise itself wasn't really the adventure.

It was the damn platform that got us there.

The ship had its problems.

The food wasn't great.

The crowds weren't really our thing.

The rooms were small.

There were salespeople everywhere.

But none of that mattered nearly as much once we started getting off the ship and experiencing places we'd never been.

Eventually, we headed back toward New Orleans.

We'd be flying home from there, but we had another day before our flight, so we rented a car from Hertz and decided to get the hell out of the city again.

This time we crossed Lake Pontchartrain on the Causeway Bridge.

Twenty-four miles straight across the lake.

That's a hell of a bridge.

On the other side, we headed to Fontainebleau State Park, which covers around 2,800 acres along Lake Pontchartrain.

This was much more my speed.

There were trails, a pier, Spanish moss hanging from the trees and a huge body of water that was surprisingly warm.

The Spanish moss gave the place an eerie, almost creepy look that I thought was pretty damn cool.

We also saw some giant spiders and some incredibly intricate webs.

Definitely different from what we're used to seeing in Washington.

The heat, however, was still brutal.

At one point my son was so damn hot that he literally climbed into a cooler at a convenience store to cool off.

Yes, I had the air conditioning cranked up in the car.

It didn't matter.

The few seconds walking from the car into the store were enough to make you sweat your ass off.

Eventually we headed toward the airport.

And just like that, our first cruise adventure was over.

So what did I think?

New Orleans itself didn't do much for me.

Maybe I'd have a completely different opinion if I went back under different circumstances, but after that first night on Bourbon Street, I wasn't exactly making plans to return.

The area around Lake Pontchartrain, though, was worth seeing.

Mexico was the real surprise.

Mayapán.

The cenote.

The family who welcomed us into their home.

And especially those nine little sea turtles.

As for the cruise itself, I wasn't convinced.

At first.

We later learned there were much larger ships, different cruise lines and completely different styles of cruising. That made us willing to consider trying it again.

Because despite everything that wasn't perfect, we still had a good time.

And that's probably the real takeaway from that first cruise.

It wasn't the ship.

It wasn't the food.

It wasn't Bourbon Street.

It wasn't even the snorkeling trip that never happened.

It was the stuff we didn't expect.

Nine baby sea turtles making their way into the ocean.

Standing on top of a Mayan temple with almost nobody else around.

Jumping into a crystal-clear cenote.

Eating lunch in a family's home and making shitty-looking tortillas that somehow tasted better because we'd made them ourselves.

Those are the things I remember.

That's the funny thing about travel.

You can spend a shitload of time planning the trip, researching where you're going, figuring out what you're going to do and trying to make everything go exactly right.

Then something doesn't work.

And sometimes that's when the real adventure starts.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tom Neal is the founder of Bigfoot Trails Basecamp, an independent adventure media project built around real experiences. He's spent most of his life around vehicles, motorcycles, racing, travel, and projects that tend to take longer and cost more than originally planned.

After decades of doing all that stuff, he's learned that the best stories usually aren't the ones you planned. They're the people you meet, the places you stumble across, the things that go wrong, and the moments you never expected.

That's what he wants to capture with BTB.

He doesn't want to write about adventure from the outside. He wants to go experience it, then tell you what happened.

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