On November 19, 2008 my family and I had a cruise that went to five different places, but the best place I went to was Half Cay Moon, Bahamas. This place was gorgeous. It took us one day to get there. We left out of Florida. When we were at the docking area in the Bahamas, my sister and I went to the lido deck, which is the non-formal eating area. There were wrap around windows so you could you could see the outside. When we arrived there my sister and I knew we were headed for a ton of fun.

Through out the ship there are loudspeakers to let us know about emergency, updates, or the activities for that night. Jesse who was the cruise director would let you know if you excursion; which is a planned activity or trip to do while on shore. He would make you aware of the time that you have until you need to get the ferry to go over to the islands. The ferries would pick you come to the edge of the ship and you would fit all the people that had to get over in enough time or that wanted to spend the day over there. Our time to go over was 8:45am. We had to be done to the bottom of the ship by 8:30 so we could make sure everyone was accounted for.

When we all were accounted for we started over for the islands. The day was beautiful , there were perfect puffy clouds in the sky. The water was absolutely amazing, it was crystal clear you could see straight to the bottom. There were coral reefs where we were going into. You could see the different color fish swimming through them. Imagine a rainbow swimming around under your feet!

We arrived on the island about 10 minutes later. When we unloaded the ferry that took us across my family and I went to the shore excursions booth and we had to give them the passes that we had saying that we were apart of the cruise line and that we paid for the excursion on the ship. We were on of the first ones there so we had a longer wait till all the other people had arrived to the booth. When everyone finally arrived there was a jeep at the excursions center to take us op the back of the island. We all loaded onto the jeep and it took about 5 minutes to get to the back of the island. When we arrived there the instructors told us that we needed to get flippers, snorkel, life jacket, and goggles.

When we were all dressed we went down to the fenced in area where the sting rays were we had to wait until the explained the sting rays to us and what we have to watch out for.

They told us that they are very friendly and they won’t hurt us, but if we make really bad sudden movements that they might come toward us with the barb up. If that happens we were to remain calm and that they won’t hurt us.

They then gave us little history about what they do with the sting rays when a storm is coming toward the island. The owners will come to the back of the fence, open it and then the stingrays know to swim out into the ocean. They do this so that they can get cover in the ocean. When the storm passes the stingrays know that they can come back. When one of the stingrays came back it didn’t have a bard, they say that it was in a fight with a shark and the shark bit the barb off. That stingray was probably the nicest one to swim off.

When they were done explaining everything to us we were allowed to go into the water. It was freezing! My sister and I waited until we saw other people in and having a fun time until we entered. When we saw everyone enjoying it my sister and I entered. It was pretty fun at first but when the stingrays started to come after me! Then I ran out of the water and didn’t go back out.

When I went out of the water, I went and got changed. Then I went to stand with my Mom and Grandma. I was just in time to see the feeding. The instructor told everyone that our time that we had which was an hour was almost out. It was feeding time.


The instructors told the people in the water with the stingrays how to hold the bait that they were feeding them. They said that if the stingrays were sucking our hand to stay calm and to call the instructors over. My sister and brother loved it! They didn’t want to get out of the water. Our time was up though so everyone had to get out of the water. They had to get the equipment off.

We either could walk back to the front of the island or we had to wait for 20 minutes until the next jeep cam back to pick us. My family and I decided to walk, since it was so nice out. It took us double the time to get back then it did to get there.

That excursion was the excursion of a life time! There was a lot more to do when we got back to the island but that we take too long to explain!