About 5 days before leaving, my sister and I booked a spontaneous cruise to celebrate her birthday. When I was packing, my husband had me take a picture of my passport on my phone. Little did I know that he had me do that in case I get stranded in a country without it, and little did I think it would almost happen. This is a short snippet of what it looks like to spontaneously travel with me and my sister – two girls who love adventure, are mostly unaware of the time, and all we want to do is explore new places and have fun.

Driving with her often looks like this…

Just how little one feels next to one these

Laura had been in Orlando the night before with a friend whose mom had passed away, so at around 5 am, she drove to Tampa to finish packing, and pick me up. I drove all morning towards Miami, sort of rushing to make it on time since we hadn’t checked in, had no clue exactly where we were going yet, and neither of us had ever been on a cruise.

At around 1pm, we found ourselves going through the everglades – if you’ve never driven through it, just image miles and miles of nothing but swamps on either side of the road. The closest exit was 9 miles away, the light to our gas tank had gone off about 10 minutes earlier and the gas reader/needle thing seemed like it was not only on it, but almost below the red line. My sister was passed out, my heart was racing from pure stress, and per the website on the cruise line we were supposed to already be there checking in. Our cruise was schedule to leave at 4pm.

We still had to get to my grandma’s friend’s to drop off our car and drive 40 minutes to the port, but we finally make it to the gas station and I breathed a sigh of relief. We get to my grandma’s friend’s, load up her car, and as I’m getting ready to leave, she announces she made us lunch. Leave it to amazing Colombian hospitality (and lack of urgency) to delay us even more, but per our culture it would be super duper rude to say no. She had already cooked it for goodness sake! And might I add, it was a delicious meal of olive chicken over white rice. Yumm.

We finally make it to the port, only after getting lost and ending up in the shipment container yard, and we are literally the last ones to be allowed to check in. And so was the start of our sister cruise, which had a lot of the same elements of stress in Cozumel (making a mistake on time difference, only to realize we had to be on the ship within 3 minutes when we were 25 minutes away from the port, low gas, and still had to return the scooter. Then sprinting to the ship as we see the turbines already on, finally making it on and just falling on the floor feeling a mixture of thankfulness for not being stuck in a country without our passports, and wanting to hurl).

My favorite part of being on the ship, the amazing sunsets and uninterrupted horizons.

But I’d be lying if I didn’t say that all those crazy stressful times didn’t make for an unforgettable time, an exchanging of stories with the friends we made on the ship, and a total appreciation for the fun times. Before this trip, I honestly never thought I’d enjoy a cruise as much as I did, the idea of floating in the open sea just didn’t seem appealing to me, but when it was the last option we had to travel with my sister for her birthday on a budget, I wasn’t going to say no.

With my little sis <3

Being on a cruise is like being in a parallel universe. You have a pool of who knows how many nationalities and backgrounds, all there with the purpose of having fun and unplugging. This means some interesting things happen, which can all range from deep conversations about government oppression straight from the mouth of people who had lived it (our favorite cuban couple who seemed were on their honeymoon but had already been married for 6 years!) to stories of women living in the middle east and what that meant, making fun of each other’s singy songy accents, delicious food, the best customer service, lots of dancing, and then your awkward encounters with guys who were hitting on girls who were already taken or otherwise not interested. The ship we were on (Empress of the Seas) was the smallest on Royal Caribbean’s fleet, so we constantly ran into the same people, so much so, that in the short week we were together, we exchanged numbers, added each other on Facebook, and became “La Familia.”

Our cruise family

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