Because we weren't going to dock until early afternoon, we took advantage and slept in. Once we got up we had breakfast on the lido and got ready for our discover scuba excursion booked through Carnival. We had done this excursion previously in St Thomas and were really excited to dive again.
Our day in Cozumel quickly turned into a disappointing day, largely due to the lack of information we received from the Carnival staff. Overall we had a good time but next time I will have back up plans in case of any changes.
We apparently had to slow down at night due to rough seas, I didn't feel this at all but we were delayed pulling into Cozumel until 1:30 instead of 1. The lines were EXTREME to get off the boat which worried me because we had booked the Discover Scuba excursion which was scheduled for 2. (Turns out if you have an excursion booked, go to guest services and they will escort you to the front of the line!) The lines moved pretty fast and we were off by 1:45.
We got to the area where we were meeting for our excursion but come to find out it had been cancelled due to rough surf. I really was not impressed on how this was handled as this was a carnival excursion. We were late docking and I'm sure there was plenty of time to call to let all of us that had booked that it had been cancelled. I cried(it was a rough day, i had been SO excited). We found one of the Carnival excursion people who was less than sympathetic but gave us a book and told us we could get refunded or pick a new excursion but we had only a few minutes to do so. Nice. We are expected to find something new to do in 5 minutes with no research on it? We really didnt have the time needed to pick something, we wouldnt have had time to get back on board and fight the lines again to grab what we needed. I am a huge planner so this just couldnt work for me. I completely understand that things change but we were given zero notice. Although I will say that our refund was available once we re boarded which was great.
We decided to hang around the port since we didn't want to risk going off by ourselves and had no idea what to do anyways. This port area is beautiful and had a couple of different restaurants as well as lots of shops. The store owners here seemed to be more aggressive then we have seen as far as trying to get you into their store. They are also very intent on trying to rip you off and have no shame in doing so. Some stores try to charge $20+ more than other stores in the port so make sure you shop around before purchasing. We also came across a lot of fake merchandise like sunglasses which they said were real but they were definitely not.
They have the typical jewelry stores but also some people painting, playing instruments etc. There is a huge store where you first get off the boat where you can taste some local liquors and purchase cigarette, watches etc. Also the port area has a nice fountain area you can sit at to people watch. After we did our shopping for the regular souvenirs we stopped at Fat Tuesdays to have grab some drinks (love the souvenir cups!) and people watch. We got back on board for lunch & dinner which was nice.
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