Horvath Travels: 2026 Miami to Miami cruise

Been a cold, nasty winter in Cleveland. Although we have travel plans for later, we began to wonder if there was a way to get away from the cold even sooner. Voila! A short Miami-to-Miami cruise with relatively cheap last-minute fares presented itself. This cruise was going to places that we would normally not go out of our way to visit: Cozumel, Belize, and Honduras. But the trip had the one thing that we very much sought: warmth.

Compared with some of our other travels, a one-week Miami cruise is relatively easy. We had non-stop flights. We stayed the initial night in Miami before embarking.

Hilton Blue Lagoon Miami Airport

Our ship is the Oceania Insignia. It's an 'R' Class ship with a maximum of 650 passengers. We like that. But it's an older ship that will be decommissioned within a couple of years. Our sail-away from Miami was fun, as always. Everything else on board is mostly fine as well. The best thing is, it's warm!

Miami sail-away

Driving by the Southern tip of Miami Beach

Not much happening in Cozumel. Our ship arrived early, and Lady Adventurer and her faithful companion walked around for a couple of miles. As we were heading back, we had to fight through a throng of thousands of people coming ashore from the Carnival Breeze. Somehow, we survived.

Cozumel

Belize it or not, we had a pretty fine time there. We visited the Lamanai Archaeological Reserve. It was stunning. Lamanai was once a major city of the Maya civilization. It's only partially excavated, but what we did actually see was quite impressive. Several structures were huge and as high as 100 feet.

Olmec faces on a Maya structure

We climbed to the top

Lady A. at the top of Lamanai, looking down at main plaza

Getting there was half the fun. From our ship in Belize City, we took an hour-long bus ride, then a 40-minute speedboat ride for 25 miles on the New River. Saw some wildlife at the site and along the way: iguanas, howler monkeys, crocodiles, all kinds of birds. It was all quite unbelizeable.

What a croc

A friendly male iguana, looking for love in all the wrong places

Roatan is an island that's part of Honduras. It's about 30 miles from the mainland. We visited a park called Gumbalimba. There is plenty of magnificent wildlife; there are scarlet macaws, white-faced capuchin monkeys, hummingbirds, wild guinea pigs, and all sorts of other animals. However, these guys were not quite as wild as advertised. For example, the monkeys and birds can come and go in and out of the park, but they're more than happy to stay, where they're well cared for. Scarlet Macaws are among our favorite animals. But not when they (like the monkeys) crawl all over you. In fact, it was all just a little too touristy. Not that there's anything wrong with that.