We went on a 7 day Mexican Riviera cruise with Carnival. One big advantage of this cruise is that because it is from Long Beach, people like us who live in the west coast (specifically California) don’t have to pay money on airfare and hotel. Just drive down to the Long Beach Cruise ship terminal, park your car, and off you go.
The itinerary of the cruise trip was:
Day 1: Depart Long Beach
Day 2: Day at sea
Day 3: Day at sea
Day 4: Puerto Vallarta, Mexico
Day 5: Mazatlan, Mexico
Day 6: Cabo San Lucas, Mexico
Day 7: Arrive Long Beach
We sailed on Carnival Splendor for this cruise. This was our 3rd cruise on Carnival and we are obviously pretty satisfied with this company. No they are not known for luxury, upscale experiences in the cruise industry, but we feel Carnival has the highest bang for your buck.
An important thing to remember for this itinerary is that the first 2 ports of call (Puerto Vallarta and Mazatlan), you would need to arrange some kind of shore excursion activity because there is no beach where the ship docks. In fact in Mazatlan (2nd port of call), the ship anchors in what appeared to be a shipyard.
Day 1:
The ship departs right next to the Queen Mary in Long Beach. Check-in was routine and right after we got on-board we went up to Lido deck ( as described on all Carnival ships) for lunch. I tried some crawfish for the first time (yummy!!).
Next up was the obligatory emergency drill.  The ship departed around 5 pm, right after the drill. The cruise ship director /MC was this 70 year old gentleman who had a fantastic sense of humor (even during something as boring and routine as an emergency drill). I already knew that he would keep us sufficiently entertained throughout the trip.
We spent the first evening exploring the ship and then attending the introductory show that included some variety songs as well as 10 minute intros from the 2 comedians onboard the ship.
For the first time on a cruise, we got a private balcony table in the dining room. On our first Carnival cruise we were seated with 3 other couples and on our previous Caribbean cruise we were stuck with a boring, whiny couple. It really makes a difference in the experience. It was much more romantic this time around. After dinner, we walked a little along the ship and then called it a night.
Day 2 and 3:
One downside of this itinerary was that there was 2 “days at sea”. There were different activities at different times throughout the day and night and we went to a few of them. There are those routine gemstone seminars where they tout the same “hearts on fire” diamonds and tanzanite. Me and Karen still attended a couple of those for the freebies of course!!
Day 4:
We had decided that we wanted to take the “Las Caletas getaway tour” on our 1st port of call in Puerto Vallarta. This is a small island made famous as the home of John Huston who  directed the movie “Night of the Iguana” here.
As soon as we departed from the ship in the morning, we met others in the group who were also taking this same tour and made our way to a separate boat that would take us to the Las Caletas island. The boat was pretty much a party boat with free booze for this 1 hour trip to the island (Yum Pina Colada). The attendants were dancing and having fun with the passengers throughout. Make sure to take some water bottles with you because this is Mexico. You DO NOT want to drink water or even use ice on soda over here.
The boat ride is beautiful as you get away from the cruise port. There are 2 giant islands that look like turtles and the boats take you between them to see all the birds living on the cliffs. We saw quite a few scuba divers in the water next to the island (another excursion option). On our way we also saw 3 dolphins very close to the boat and the guy running the boat turned the engine off so we could watch the dolphins play and not scare them off. Sadly though I don’t have any pictures of those dolphins because by the time I got the camera out and tried to get a better view of them, they were already gone.
By the time we got to Las Caletas, it was already close to lunch time. The organizing tour group mentioned that the earlier group took part in a cooking class and they had made some Paella along with some other items. It was the best Mexican dish I have ever had in my life and I can still almost taste it. The rice had an assortment of seafood, from shrimp to clams, mussels, baby octopus…you name it, and they got it. It was delicious.After lunch we wanted to get into the water. Las Caletas doesn’t really have any big stretch of beach per se and most of it is rocky anyways. The ocean is also extremely choppy at the parts of the island where you can get in the water. We stayed in the water for about 2 hours and then just explored the island for a while. The island is very lush green and they have parrots and monkeys that the visitors can hold for photo ops.
Soon it was time to head back to the ship.
Day 5:
The ship anchored in what looked like a dock or shipyard. We had booked an excursion tour to Playa Mazatlan resort. The tour bus first took us through the city of Mazatlan and then made the obligatory stop at some of those diamond stores like Diamond International. Then we made our way to the resort.
The resort was beautiful and had a very long, wide beach to go along with it. There were beach chairs with huts stretched along the beach and we were lucky to secure one of them because it was hot and sunny. This section of the resort was cordoned off with some rope due to the many vendors along the beach. They constantly are trying to sell their wares, but apparently were not allowed to enter the section off area (so no worries as long as you were lounging or in the water).
We got in the water right away and although the water was not as warm as Florida or the Caribbean, it was warm enough to have a blast. The waves were very strong and there was a lot of ocean current going along with it. We stayed in the water for about 2 hours and it was time for lunch.
Part of the excursion is lunch provided at the resort. There was the usual assortment of Mexican dishes like tacos, fajitas, enchiladas, different types of salsa but there was also different grilled chicken, some seafood for people wanting to sample other types of dishes. You also got 1 drink, either alcohol or soda (yum Margarita!).After the lunch we went back in the water for a while and it was time to head back to the ship. All in all, a very fun day.
Day 6:
The ship doesn’t dock at a port in Cabo but rather there is a “tender system”. What this means is that the ship anchors in the ocean close to the shore and there are 3-4 small boats that carry passengers from the ship to the peir at short intervals.
When the tender boat dropped us off at the Cabo peir, we found out that instead of walking 2-3 miles through town to the beach you could take a small boat (negotiated $20 for the 2 of us) that would take you directly to the beach but would also give you a tour of the most famous landmark of cabo, the arch.
We got into one of the boats and after 2 other couples joined us the boatman took us on the trip to see the arch. This is the only time in my life while traveling I have ever been afraid. The ocean was extremely tumultuous as we got closer to the rocks where the arch is located, and the closer we got the more rough it got.
The pictures probably don’t convey how rough the waters were but take a look at the two pictures. The boat was rocking and even though we were provided with life jackets, I was hoping we got the hell out of there as soon as possible. We took a few pictures of the arch and saw some people running around on a very narrow strip of sand at the base of the rocks. Crazyyyy !! But I will admit how beautiful it all was.
The boatman wanted to go around the rocks to get a better view of the arch, but me and Karen along with the 2 other couples asked the boatman to just take us to the beach instead. The boat went right up to the beach and dropped us off in the waves on the beach (literally !!). You had to jump from the boat, while it was rocking, into the water (only at lower than knee deep water though) while carrying your flipflops and bags. It was quite the experience (especially for Karen who was not amused to say the least). : )
The beach at Cabo was pretty crowded already and it wasn’t even noon yet. Since it was getting hotter and we wanted to have access to a couple of beach chairs and some shade, we decided that we would just go to one of the bars. We snagged a couple of  beach chairs and order some Margaritas which allowed us to hold the chairs for a few hours. The prices are what you would expect at a tourist destination but nothing outrageous.
Just like the beach on the day before, over here also there were strong waves and ocean currents. Actually they were even stronger than the day before. You can see from the picture how high the waves were when breaking close to shore. On a couple of occasions when the water was receding you could almost feel the water dragging you out strongly. We stayed in the water for about 4 hours and then decided to head back to the ship around 2 pm.
There were guys on the beach with walkie-talkies, you told them which boat brought you and they call back to the pier to send someone to pick you up. Note that the boats in this picture are NOT the ones we used. Our boat was a bit taller (glass bottom style). Getting back on the boat was much trickier than getting off. When the boat arrived, again it pulled up as close as it could to the beach. The boat was going up and down with the waves and you had to get a grip on the edge and pull yourself up to get on the boat . (I still always tell this story at happy hour with the friends) Karen was just about to pull herself on the boat when a large wave came, rose the boat up, and the assistants on the beach grabbed her behind and threw her up onto the boat. Again not amused at the time, we had many laughs later. After getting back to the marina we did some souvenir shopping and then since we noticed there was a huge line forming for the tender boats back to the ship, we made our way to the boat terminal.
Day 7:
The ship docked at Long Beach early in the morning. However, we were in no hurry to disembark from the ship. Went for a heavy breakfast at the Lido deck and then after pretty much 90% of the ship passengers were offloaded, we got off. This is the one occasion where I feel lucky to hold a foreign passport because at the immigration, the foreign passenger lines are always much shorter than the U.S. citizen lines.