Wow, where to start?
I have so many things I want to talk about but not enough energy to type them all out, so here’s what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna attempt to answer the question: where in the world have I been (literally and figuratively)/what in the world have I been doing instead of blogging? I’ll attempt to write up another soon talking about the library and a typical day and typical sea day vs. typical port day as well as short rant. The days of the week no longer matter – just: Sea day or Port day
First! We left Vancouver on September 24th. As I believe I haphazardly reported in my last entry, we were supposed to be in Astoria, Oregon on the 25th but due to bad weather, we were forced to cancel our stop. Instead, we had three sea days in a row, which got very, very long. To give you an idea of how wild things have been here: In a typical Alaska weeklong cruise I checked out about 125-150 books. In the same week’s time on this cruise, I checked out over 450 books. Add to that game ‘rentals’, trying to keep the books in order with the inane shelving system, a million and six internet questions that technically aren’t my job to answer (but I do my best when I can to help out Gabriela), and such random requests as putting phone numbers into people’s cell phone’s speeddial or buying books for an elderly lady on her Kindle and, well, things end up a little insane. I even got snapped at for folding someone’s daily complimentary newspaper for them (more on this when I finally do the typical day).
I also had to train Katie, my roommate, in how to run the library during the day because she and her boss, Stephanie, work my off hours on sea days now because there are no kids on board for them to work with. That ate up the better part of an evening, especially when adding in the write-up I did.
We arrived in San Diego on the 28th and I was so ready to get off the boat, but of course, that was my day as IPM or In Port Manning, which means I’m stuck on ship. The good news here, obviously, was that both Jenny and Marina visited! They let them on the ship about 9:15am, which was later than they said but earlier than I expected, so we got almost 4 hours together. I gave them a tour of the entire ship, including my room and some of the crew areas, since passengers aren’t allowed there but visitors are. We sat up in the Crow’s Nest (right next to the library – see my pictures again for reference) and chatted and then went and got lunch, so if nothing else they got a free lunch out of it. I so appreciated both of them visiting! It was nice to get a bit of ‘off ship’ life in the midst of all of the insanity!
The night after San Diego, we went forward an hour and ended up in Cabo San Lucas that Friday the 30th. We tendered there, which means we anchored and had to use the lifeboats to get in and out from shore. By the time we were allowed to get off, we only had about 2 hours, but Katie, Jen (the Party Planner) and I decided it was worth it so we rode ashore and got lunch at the local Senor Frog’s. It was pretty hilarious – we had decent food but they had a whole entertainment thing so we played a movie music quiz and got balloon animal hats and danced with the waitstaff. There will be pictures once we get to Fort Lauderdale. I will say I already have a ton more pictures of me than I did in Alaska!
Puerto Vallarta was Oct. 1 and because of a training, we couldn’t do any of the excursions. Katie and I decided at the last minute to sign up for the crew tour of ziplining through the canopy with Gabriela. It turned out to be so worth it! I was a little worried the heights might freak me out but they didn’t in the slightest! It took me two ziplines to get the hang of it but after that it was really fun! We also had to rappel twice (my least favorite part – I could feel the burn of the rope through the gloves!) and climb two rickety ladders and go across a million bouncy bridges. Our 6 guides were amazing and had great senses of humor and made the experience all that more amazing. We ended up all buying the pictures and it was a great deal – almost 30 great pictures of each of us for $16, so about $0.50 a picture when usually one picture costs $15.
Sunday we were again at sea and I had my first book club! There will be a book club wrap up after all of it, but suffice to say I got 6 people (5 women and 1 man) and we had a great discussion. I didn’t really need to direct them at all and we had a rousing discussion. We’ve even got one woman from Scotland who is fascinating to listen to about this because she knows very little on the topic, unlike the Americans and Canadians that make up the rest of the crowd.
Monday was Hautulco. Gabriela, Jen, Katie and I wandered the small town and then decided to go to the beach with some other crew. Jen went to wait for her boyfriend while Gabriela went straight over. Katie and I returned to the ship because I needed to put on my suit and she wanted to change as well. Then we took a water taxi over to the beach. Once there, we realized it was really quiet there and you could rent snorkeling equipment (mask, snorkel, fins and life jacket) for $5 and that there was quite the impressive coral reef there. Katie and I spent about an hour out floating and watching the fish (fish pictures forthcoming too – Katie has a waterproof camera and got some good ones!). The whole group of us watertaxied back in time for me to hastily take a shower, eat and get to work on time.
Tuesday I was IPM again in Puerto Chiapas, so I took the morning easy (woo naps!) and then joined Charla, David and their dinner mates for lunch at Pinnacle Grill, which is the fancy restaurant on the ship. Charla, if I haven’t mentioned, is good friends with my mom and David is her boyfriend. Brad and Barbara, the dinner mates, were really nice people too from Seattle. Then I did such boring things as calling home, doing laundry, watching the first episode of this season of Castle (eeeee, must not buy the rest of the season, must resist!) and generally vegging out until work. It was really restful.
Wednesday/yesterday, we were in Puerto Quetzal, finally out of Mexico and into Guatemala. To be honest, the port was really pathetic. I went off with Katie and Mickey (the HALCats drummer) and we wandered around the port, which was a flea market. Then we heard about a water park so figured what the heck, we’ll go there for a couple hours. The best place to go was Antigua, the city, but it was an hour and a half ride and we only had 4 hours with our varying schedules. Turns out the water park was closed, but we did get to see the super long black sand beach and get pictures. Our taxi driver overcharged us but he WAS a good guide and talked to us the whole time, giving us an idea of the area we were in. We finally got back to the flea market, had a quick meal and then came back to the ship.
Today is a sea day and another busy one.
Moral of the story: I have been super busy and had almost a week with very limited downtime. I would also kill for a) a homemade meal and b) to sleep in. Unfortunately, I’ve got almost 2 months to either. Ah well.
Coming up:
Friday: Costa Rica
Saturday: Scenic Cruising in the Golfo Dulce (whatever that means)
Sunday: Transit of the Canal
Monday: Columbia
Tuesday & Wednesday: Sea days
Thursday: Half Moon Cay (HAL’s private Bahama island) where I am IPM
Friday: Fort Lauderdale!
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