Early morning for us today. I think Amy set her alarm for 6am to be ready for our excursion. Had a quick breakfast at the buffet and then headed down to meet our group for the excursion. 
For our horseback riding excursion we started out by loading into a van to take us to the horses. As we were loading up I notice there was one of the worker’s little daughter (maybe 5 years old) dressed in her school uniform and wearing her backpack helping her mom. Then before they closed the door to the van they both got in van with us. We asked if they were heading to school and they said yes. Sure enough, on our drive through the town we pulled off and the mom and daughter got off at school and then we continued on our way to the excursion. 
From what we saw on our drive I would say Honduras looks like one of the poorer countries that we have visited on cruises. Usually we see certain areas of towns that are developed nicely for tourism but this didn’t really seem to have those high-quality buildings. One of the things I had looked into but unfortunately we didn’t end up doing was Honduras does have the need to bring supplies to kids in schools. I thought that it would be a really good experience to take donations and deliver them to the schools to see how they learn. But I think that it would be a better thing to do when we have our kids along with us.
Our van dropped us off at this private beach which had horseback riding, jet skis, and Segways. There’s a little small island they referred to as Horse Island which horses get to walk around and on. They also have these Pine trees that are very dense and they said it could rain for 10 minutes before water will actually drip on you. Of course they had a bar for drinks and food to buy along with souvenirs. Oh, they did have bathrooms with running water. However they just had a sink for washing hands with no type of soap for you use. This was a tough one for me to deal with. Luckily another couple there had brought hand sanitizer along and allowed me to have some which made me feel a little better. 
Then it was time to ride the horses. I classify myself as a non-experienced rider so they went over all the ways to control the horse. Overall these horses were pretty good. They really like the water because they get to cool down. Mine had a little issue stopping when I told it to and it kept reaching for grass and other things to eat along the way. We probably only got deep in the water up to our ankles and the belly of the horse. I saw other groups where the horse was all the way down as deep as its head which meant that the riders were in up to their stomachs. I did see one horse go all the way underwater and the rider fall off. But I’m not sure if it was a worker doing it or a visitor. 
Because we didn’t want to pay the high prices for the food they had to offer on the beach, we were planning on waiting to get back to the ship to eat our free lunch buffet. Unfortunately that meant we didn’t get back to ship until after 1 PM and we were really hungry from being out in the sun all day. As we were approaching the ship we saw next to all the souvenir shops they had fish therapy for your feet. We definitely didn’t have time or the desire to have it done to ourselves but it was really weird to see with the fish eating stuff off the people’s feet. 
We didn’t bother changing and went straight up to the buffet to grab some food (after washing our hands really well with soap). After we cleaned up from the day on the beach, Amy decided to take a nap so she can make it to one of the late shows tonight (Love & Mariage game show). While she was napping, I watch the pier to see if anybody was going to be sprinting back to the ship last minute before we sailed away (always interesting sight to see people scrambling back). 
Again we took advantage of the Suite Lounge and grabbed some free alcohol before dinner. Talking to all the other couples that are in there, we feel like imposters. Everybody else has expensive Suite rooms and we just bought the one ice cream cow room that is not any more expensive than similar basic staterooms. We haven’t mentioned to anybody in the lounge that we are not actually staying in a suite. Luckily nobody has asked. 
At tonight’s dinner I went ahead and tried 2 entrées. Not that I needed to eat that much but I wanted to test what they tasted like. You know, for research sake.
After dinner we watched a little bit of the movie “Sing” by the pool. Then we decided to go watch the last performance of the ice show which would make it our third time (out of the 4 times they have done the show). This time we decided to sit front row for a different perspective. 
After our nightly call to the kids to see how their day went, we went to get our nightly ice cream at Ben & Jerry’s. The second night in a row I got Cherry Garcia and then we took that to go watch Love and Marriage game show in the theater. If you’re not familiar with this, it is where they pick a newlywed couple, a couple that’s been married for a while, and then the oldest married couple that would be willing to be on the show. Then they asked questions (some not kid appropriate) that they would have to try to match their partner’s answers. The cruise director does a really good job of keeping this entertaining but the answers the couples gave helped out a lot too.
Again it’s a nice warm night to walk around the track by the pool and write this post. It’s about 82° and very humid as I write this about 12:30 in the morning. Luckily since we don’t have any excursions booked the rest of our cruise, there’s no need to set an alarm for tomorrow. We will be arriving in Belize which is a tender port meaning if you want to go to shore, you’ll have to take a little boat from our ship to the mainland. If we decide to go to Belize to shop, it won’t be until later in the day when all the chaos of everyone trying to leave the ship is over. We’ll take advantage of the ship being pretty empty by going on the waterslides and maybe surfing on the Flow Rider. 
