A luxury cruise helped me connect my daughter with her Latin American roots

Telegraph

11-03-2025

When I was little, family holidays always meant trips to Honduras – where my mother is from and most of my family remain.
It was a place so safe I could play Matchbox cars on the road with cousins and eat fallen mangoes from the driveway, or go to the beach with my grandparents and an icebox of orange Miranda sodas and not see another soul all day.
Now, Honduras is beleaguered by poverty, corruption and crime, and our far-flung family visits us in the UK instead.
I've not been to my late grandparents' home of San Pedro Sula for decades.
In 2025, apart from my daughter's close relationship with my mum and a love of Granny's hand-made corn tortillas, her closest brush with Honduras is the supermarket label on a box of mango.
Of course, this makes me sad. I want to share with her the thrill of travel in Central America – mariachi musicians who suddenly arrive to play guitar at your table, turtles that swim so close to shore you don't even need a snorkel, ancient Mayan temples that poke out of the jungle like lookout towers – but it's far too dangerous to travel the region independently, certainly with a child.
So, when I heard of a trip called 'A Journey to the Playground of the Maya', I hoped it might hold our solution. This one-week itinerary on new small-ship cruise line Explora Journeys follows the path of the Mayans, with two separate stops in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula and one in Belize; it also stops in eccentric Key West or the 'Conch Republic', an island that's geographically – and spiritually – closer to Havana than the mainland (just count the Cuban cigar stores for proof).
While my daughter is still only 12, I decided this trip could showcase the best of her Central American heritage in as safe a way as possible.
Explora Journeys turned out to be the right cruise line for the task: the only ultra luxury line with a dedicated kids' club, diverse ages on board (mostly multi-generational groups with grandparents and toddlers at every turn), and a firm focus on families.
Explora came into existence when the sea-faring Aponte family (and Napoli dynasty behind MSC, Mediterranean Shipping Company) wanted to curate voyages that mirrored their own yachting holidays. This means unusual ports, authentic destination excursions, and small ships conceived by a yacht designer rather than a ship builder (on board which, every spacious cabin has a balcony or terrace).
It also means no fakery. Much as my daughter loves them, our other voyages have included day-one stops at sanitised private islands owned by the cruise lines – invariably, these are ersatz sandy specks, selling branded merchandise in the gift shop, and zero hope of meeting a resident (there aren't any), or eating local food (ditto).
Instead, we zipped straight to Mexico on ship Explora I, first calling at Costa Maya port.
I couldn't tell if the Mayan-temple lookalike water park was a good start or bad. Then there were costumed Mayan dancers at the terminal, and the chance to pose with parrots and Mexican spider monkeys. ¡Dios mío! But once we got past the tourist fanfare, there was a bona fide Yucatan seaside town beyond – serene Mahahual – where iguanas stop traffic, and dive and snorkel fanatics congregate at thatched palapa beach bars to compare turtle sightings.
We ordered fish tacos for lunch, and I couldn't believe it when a real-life guitarist played Latin ballads at our beach beds for pesos. I asked him if he knew the song 'Amapola' (played by mariachi at my wedding) and he did. We Skyped Granny in England as he played to his trans-Atlantic audience.
Back on board, activities centred specifically around our destinations, rather than generic bingo or aqua fitness. We could take Spanish lessons (using Latin American phrases, not Castilian language); we could – and did – attend a brilliant talk about Mexican wildlife, architecture and food; or there were salsa dance sessions, as well craft classes recreating ancient Mayan glyphs.
On to Belize, which has the greatest concentration of Mayan temples, as well as the chance to climb them – if you wish to – while the government still allows the practice (prohibited in Mexico).
But we couldn't miss the world's second largest barrier reef, so joined an Explora-curated snorkel excursion to Caye Caulker, one of the prettiest of Belize's 200+ limestone islands.
Having hopped on an independent snorkel trip the day before in Mahahual, the contrast between them was marked. Explora had marine biologists on board, tour expert Javier, and an EMT; we even picked up Zee en route, a local ray whisperer who knew exactly where we could swim with the most stingrays and the fewest crowds.
I'd been turned off ship excursions in the past, when buses ferry you from sight to sight, dictated by the speed of the slowest passenger (someone always gets lost).
But at Caye Caulker, we were only 15 on board, with seven staff. There was time for a Belikin beer and conch fritters at pink-clapboard Sip 'n Dip bar, and lucky sightings of flying fish and dolphins on the restful sail back. What a difference a day makes.
Cozumel, Mexico, was our next stop, and we took the chance to visit Tulum (arranged by Explora and an otherwise complex journey by sea and road). It's the most spectacular of Mayan ruins, perched on the clifftop overlooking the Caribbean Sea, and well preserved as it's relatively new (13th century).
Guide Antonio had my daughter transfixed as he told us of male Mayan nobility, their skulls manipulated in a wooden vice at birth till age six, to create 'superior' flat noses, and girls the same but with the vice squeezing their ears to form narrow profiles and pointed noses.
Antonio also showed us the stone point upon which sacrificial humans had their backs broken, then revealed it was the winners of notorious Mayan ball games – not losers – who were killed for the gods, since it was a great honour. We were equally horrified and enthralled.
Via Key West and a day at sea, we sailed back into Miami a week later, where I always feel at home.
When we'd fly to Honduras in the 1980s and 90s, we always had to spend a night in Miami to make the connection, so it feels like an extension of Latin America to me, especially when you consider 69 per cent of the population speaks Spanish as a native language.
We devoured chilaquiles and empanadas at Argentinean-owned hotel Faena and practised our new phrases with server Gustavo, who came from… Honduras!
We hadn't been reunited with aunties and cousins on this Central American adventure, but I felt we knew our family better than before – and we were exactly where we were meant to be.