Our 5-day Carnival cruise on Carnival Freedom left out of the Port of New Orleans. The Big Easy is a lively city to depart from. There is always live music and teams of people. But my favorite part is sitting on our balcony, watching as the cruise boat winds out of port and begin its long journey down the Mississippi River.

The cruise down the Mississippi passes the site where the Battle of New Orleans took place, a derelict sugar factory, and a myriad of wooded islands formed from the sediment washed down the river. The sun has long set by the time we reach the Gulf of Mexico.

Our first port of call, Cozumel, is a tourist version of Mexico. But I love it anyway. We had previously gone to Chankanaab through a different cruise line, which we enjoyed. But for a day of relaxing, we decided to go to Paradise Beach on our own, hoping to avoid the cruise crowds.

We are not disappointed. We had the beach to ourselves.

A short taxi ride from the pier, Paradise Beach’s reasonably priced admission allowed us to use their fresh water swimming pool, beach chairs, inflatables, kayaks, paddle boards, and snorkeling gear. There is a required food purchase, but we didn’t mind as their steak fajitas are delicious.

We had never been on inflatables before. They are a ton of fun and the perfect excuse to laugh and be silly. The roped off area is a little too small to make kayaking interesting, but it is the perfect space for paddle boarding. The wake from the boats and jet skiers adds just the right amount of challenge to stay on the paddle board.

For snorkeling, around and under the pier are a good amount of fish, especially gray angelfish and their juveniles, and there are brain coral not to far from the pier.

This is one of those places we found ourselves saying, “We need to come back with the kids. They’d love this!”

The part of the cruise we were looking forward to most is a shore excursion we booked through Carnival, their Biking and Cave Snorkeling with Lunch. We love active excursions, and this one spoke to us. We agonized over which to choose from and had seen similar excursions on Viator. But this is a longer excursion, and we wanted no problems getting back to the ship, so we figure booking through Carnival would be safest. Until we come back to our cabin the night before our Progreso port to discover the excursion was canceled. Suddenly, we had nothing planned for the next day.

After a conversation with the people at the service desk, we end up booking Blue Hole, Cenotes, and Snorkel Adventure.

As part of this tour, we took a bus ride through Merida on our way to Cenote Santa Rosa. There, they have changing facilities, lockers, life vests and snorkels, and they greeted us with a traditional Mayan greeting. All we needed to bring is water socks.

Did we have fun? Yes. But to be honest, I was a little grossed out by the first cenote (underground freshwater cave) we come to. The ceiling of the cenote is caved in, which fills the cave with natural light and allows plants to grow. I love the startling green of light filtered through leaves in a dark cave.

However, this opening also lets in the many flitting birds that build their nests in the crevices of the cenote, littering the cool, clear water beneath them with droppings. The snorkel became unappealing to me in that water.

The next cave, Blue Cenote, is fully enclosed, and lit with blue floodlights. This water is clean, clear, cool, and deep. In this cave, the guides scraped sand from the bottom of the cenote for us to use as an exfoliator.

After swimming, we ate lunch, which consisted of delicious Mayan food, amazing salsa, hibiscus tea, and horchata, which was explained to us as rice milk but tastes sooooo much better than that explanation sounds. It’s like saying cheesecake is made of cream cheese. While we ate, we watched a young couple performed local dances.

All in all, the cruise was a relaxing getaway with the occasional minor frustrations. We did, however, learn that Carnival out of New Orleans can be a little raucous, a problem we did not encounter taking a Norwegian cruise out of New Orleans. There were reports of passengers being thrown in the brig for fighting in the pool.

And a drunk passenger knocked on our door pretending to be security, looking for the person he was having a profanity-laced shouting match with from his balcony while the rest of us were watching for pier runners. So if you plan to take the kids on a cruise out of New Orleans, take a different line.