Coleman Challenge goes on the road!

During week 6 I was off to California for work and would have no time for the challenge. Fortunately my friend Chris has Coleman gear and lives reasonably near to where I would be so I was able to go to his house.
Since I'd been the first entry the week before I got to pick this week's challenge. I chose green beans thinking that they're a great side dish and everybody loves green beans. That turned out to be a poor choice as most people didn't think that green beans were a "fun" challenge. For me it was a whole different story, I tried out several recipes the week before in deciding what to make. Since I was on the road I decided to go simple and made Sautéed Ginger Green Beans:

They didn't come out quite the way I'd wanted. I think in retrospect mostly because I was nervous to really crank up the heat while using teflon coated pans. I think I need to give this one another try on my own stove with my own pans...

The challenge continues

We're now in week 6 of the 52 week Coleman Challenge, thats 10% complete.

Week 3 was potatoes. I didn't want to just fry up potatoes in a pan so I broke out the Coleman oven and did chocolate chip potato muffins:

Week 4's challenge was pasta and I rushed home one night after work to put together a pot of American Chop Suey:

Week 5 challenged us to cook chicken so I slowed cooked chicken, pork and sausage in my dutch oven:

This week's challenge is pancakes. One important point of the challenge is that whomever finishes the challenge first gets to choose the next challenge. This has brought out a competitive streak in me and I set up my stove in the freezing cold and fried up some apple pecan pancakes earning me the right to choose next week's challenge:

Next week is going to be my biggest challenge yet because I have to travel to California for work. Hopefully I'll be able to find somebody who can hook me up for a couple hours so I can bust this out.

Something new

A couple weeks ago a challenge was issued on the CCF, thats the Coleman Collectors Forum;

Use a camp stove once a week for 52 weeks. Every week a new theme is issued, follow the theme and post pictures.

The first challenge was hot dogs. Now I don't normally eat hot dogs but I'm always up for a challenge. I also figured that anything worth doing was worth overdoing so I decided to make a video:

Week two's challenge was eggs. Eggs are so easy to do poorly that I went with french toast.

These videos were really fun to make, I'm hoping I'm able to keep up with making a video every week. Theres nothing like a challenge to get you up off the couch and get things done.

Vacation - Wrap up

So the cruise was a success, after Cozumel we had another day at sea and into Tampa. The trip home was uneventful. I'd been a little nervous about making our flight but it was no problem at all. Being a paranoid traveler means you don't miss your plane.

Would I cruise again? You bet.

Would I cruise on Norwegian again? Maybe, but I want to try out another cruise line first. We definitely felt like this was the geriatric cruise line and we'd hoped to find a younger, more excited crowd. The dance club pretty much emptied out around midnight although it was open longer. We didn't close the place down each night but it was pretty dead by the time we left. The food situation was also, well, weird. A lot of people complained about the food but it seemed like their main complaint was that nobody was shoving food into their face twenty-four hours a day. I considered that a good thing. We didn't have any complaint about the food although we did steer away from the buffet pretty quick and the specialty restaurants were kind of expensive, or rather they were exactly what I'd expect to pay if I went out...

A couple lessons learned:

DON'T book shore excursions through the cruise line

DO wear sunscreen

A camelbak hydration pack can be used to smuggle booze on board

Tequila beach in Costa Maya is worth doing, bring your own towel and eat next door at Senior Frog's

Swim with the dolpins at Dolphinaris but don't pay full price for the pictures. In fact if you bring a non-swimmer they can take pictures for you.

Senior Frog's near the cruise dock in Cozumel is rowdy (at least it seemed from outside).

Vacation - Cozumel

Gah, 3 months to finish a travelog is a little long...

Anyway our last port of call was Cozumel, thats an island off the coast of Mexico, pretty much opposite Playa Del Carmen. This was another docked port of call and there were MANY other cruise ships. I think I counted 7 total. We were docked directly next to the Norwegian Spirit which is pretty much the same as our ship although a little smaller.

We'd decided to "swim with the dolphins" on the premium dolphin experience. This took us to Dolphinaris which was really great, unfortunately "swim with the dolphins" it is not. Its really, "stand near the dolphins" although you do interact with them. The facility is fantastic although recent rains meant that the water was a little cloudy. The pools have ledges where you stand to interact with the dolphins. We got to have a dolphin "hug" which involves putting your hands out and touching the dolphin's fins, kiss the dolphin's nose and feed the dolphin a fish. Actually I got to feed him 2 fish. All the time you mug for the cameras which are all around. The trainers give a really nice dolphin talk and show some anatomy and explain some dolphin on dolphin

interactions.

The exit is of course through the gift shop where they try to get you to buy your pictures. DO NOT take the first offer. The big package first offer was like $1500, we'd decided to buy one or two prints maybe but played it cool when the salesman came by. He quickly sold us the same big package for ~$300. I tried to get a better price but he wasn't moving, he'd given us his best price take it or no. This package got us all our pictures on CD, a DVD with video of our interaction and a couple prints. Unfortunately we didn't look close enough and in one of mine my eyes are closed... Oh well.

It takes some time to get the prints so we ate in the attached restaurant which wa

s much better than we expected. Then back to the ship to drop off the pictures and time for shopping.

Cozumel is clearly built for tourist trade, theres a big shopping plaza with shops leading off on the streets as far as the eye can see. The locals see you and expect all Americans to have money hanging out of their pockets. We were pretty well tapped at this point (day 6 of 7 after all) but my wife is an excellent target. I had wanted to go to a grocery store I'd spotted earlier in the day and at one point had to literally drag her away from the sellers even though we had basically no money left.

I love going to grocery stores when I travel, you learn a lot about people by what their grocery stores are like. I also like to buy snacks like chocolate bars, that we don't have at home. On our return there was a kid selling roses so I bought one for Angie. Of course you aren't allowed to bring anything alive back on the ship so we had fun, Angie would rip the petals off and since it was windy they'd blow away, I got a bunch of interesting pictures of the petals flying.

We saw later some young couples where the guys were being bigshots and had bought their women a couple dozen flowers, when we got back on board the ship had big trash cans full of them.

I'd like to have more time in Cozumel, perhaps with a scooter or small car. This is the Yucatan peninsula so its actually a fairly safe place to be compared to northern Mexico as you get near the US.

Vacation - Costa Maya

Costa Maya is a resort type area on the southern Mexican coast. I say resort type area because it was mostly wiped out by a hurricane in 2008. Its a strange looking kind of place now, the roads are still there but clearly most of the buildings are gone. They've started to rebuild but clearly it will be a long time.

We were thinking Costa Maya would be a good beach day but the shore excursion from the ship was $50 each for the day which we thought was pretty pricey. So we walked around the inevitable shopping area for awhile to get the feel of the place. Angie scored some silver jewelry for a good price and we found people offering a beach excursion for $25 apiece. We ended up on Tequila Beach. The $25 gets you a beach chair, access to the ocean, paddle boats, kayaks and all you can drink. Food is extra of course.

The bar was good, the music was good, the weather was fantastic. I talked to some New Yorkers that were on a Carnival ship that said they made sure to always go to this beach when they were in Costa Maya and I'm inclined to agree with them.

Of course we drank too much and didn't use enough sun screen, had to make sure everybody knew we were Americans after all ;).

Outside of the big shopping area by the cruise ship docks theres even more shopping and these crazy statues.

I don't remember if they were all feet but thats what it looks like from the pictures I took:

If you know more about them I'd like to hear it.

The look

Decided I didn't like the new type look. It felt like I couldn't control it well. Hope nobody minds too much.