In 2022, we took our first mega-ship cruise, aboard the Norwegian Encore to the Caribbean. We mostly were interested in the technology behind the ship, and had little interest in actually cruising aboard such a huge vessel. We were surprised how much we enjoyed the trip, particularly due to the Haven, Norwegian’s ship-within-a-ship concept. Haven guests have exclusive access to restaurants, bars, lounges and public spaces in the Haven area, and priority access to restaurants, shows and other attractions on the rest of the ship. It’s a way of making a mega-ship feel less busy and more intimate. The Haven concept allowed us to enjoy everything a big ship has to offer, and escape the crowds and noise at will.

The trip also gave us an opportunity to fill in some gaps due to our aborted Caribbean cruise in Dirona when Jennifer broke her collar bone in Barbados and needed surgery in Florida. More recently, we filled in a few more missing pieces of our Caribbean cruise with a trip to Mexico, Belize and Honduras aboard the Norwegian Joy. On this trip we also made our first foray back into scuba diving after a decade. We had a fabulous time, and looked forward to doing more diving in other parts of the world.

We started the trip with a night in Miami at the Elser Hotel, and a great meal overlooking the water at nearby La Canita. We loved our room at the Elser, with its sweeping views to the cruise port, from where we’d be departing the following day. The hotel also has the best-equipped gym we’ve ever used, with two floors packed full of equipment.

The Norwegian Joy is a Breakaway Plus-class cruise ship, and a sister ship to the Norwegian Encore. After boarding the Joy and getting settled, we had lunch at the Haven restaurant then easily found a great spot on the lightly-populated Haven deck 19 area to enjoy a drink and watch the ship depart Miami. We cruised south along the Miami coast at dusk and watched a beautiful sunset before dinner on the terrace at seafood restaurant Ocean Blue.

Our first stop was Cozumel in Mexico, where we’d booked a helicopter tour to the Mayan ruins at Tulum. Norwegian cancelled the tour, however, so we opted to just explore the town on our own. Cozumel has some good local craft breweries, unusual for the area, so we made that the theme of our visit there. The city has numerous street murals and much public art that we took in as we walked through town. Cozumel also is known as the “Isla del Deporte” (Island of Sport), in particular for its triathlon training suitability, and annually hosts the Ironman Cozumel.

We started off at La Internacional Cervecería, where we enjoyed a local craft beer in sight of our ship. After an unplanned stop on the rooftop terrace at Aqui + Ahora for its great port view, we continued to KUSUM Brewery and Tacos for a delicious lunch streetside. Returning back towards our ship, we visited the 75-year-old Iglesia de San Miguel before making a final stop at the brewpub Cerveceria Punta Sur.

The next day we stopped at Harvest Caye, Norwegian’s private island in Belize. There we’d booked a “flying squirrel” zipline package, where participants glide face-down across the lagoon from a 136-ft (41 m) mock lighthouse tower. After our “flight”, we checked out the island’s small wildlife sanctuary, whose residents included tropical birds such as macaws and toucans and various reptiles. We particularly enjoyed the various colorful species in the butterfly sanctuary, where several landed on us when we stood still long enough.

We returned to Mexico the following day with a stop at Costa Maya. Two months before our arrival, Royal Caribbean Group purchased the port and surrounding land for USD $292M, with plans to convert the area into a private resort for its customers. A five-minute walk from the port is the adventure park Maya Lost Mayan Kingdom, where we spent a fun afternoon trying out all eight of their water slides, tubing down their lazy river and then ziplining above the park, culminating in a water landing.

Our final and best stop of the trip was in Roatan in Honduras. There we’d made an independent booking with Roatan Divers to make two dives. We’d not done any recreational diving in nearly a decade, and it was our first time diving without our own gear—we only brought our dive computers. It was a bit of an experiment, but it went really well. We had a wonderful time exploring underwater Honduras, and it prompted us to get serious about diving again.

After the cruise, we spent two nights in Miami before flying to Las Vegas for the annual AWS re:Invent conference. Our room at the Hilton Bentley had a view to the cruise port sea channel, and we enjoyed watching the ships come and go from our balcony. The South Beach area where we were staying has several good restaurants and bars, and we enjoyed a casual meal streetside at the neighborhood Mexican restaurant Mēxihco Organico. We also had an excellent meal at estiatorio Milos with our friends Kathy Hearn and Dave Gillies, now Florida residents, who we’ve known since the late 1980s when we all worked together at the IBM Toronto Lab. We’d not seen them since meeting up in Paris in 2017, and had a wonderful time catching up and sharing travel stories.

Our routes through the Caribbean are shown on the interactive map below. Click here for a full-page map.