March 18, 2015 Puerto Vallarta, Mexico

I forgot to mention a couple of things at our last port of San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua.  We were given health forms to complete and turn in as we got off the tender.  It asked questions about symptoms in the last 30 days like fever, cough, sore throat, vomiting, etc.  I wonder how many people were honest with that?  They collected it but it didn’t look like anyone was reading them.  Then before we left the port area everyone had their temperature taken.  Don’t know what they were looking for - Ebola, the flu?  And our table mates, good sources of all the news of the ship, talked with two different people who had had the military take their cameras and delete all their pictures because they had been taking pictures of military buildings, unknowingly, they said.

Today was our last port, Puerto Vallarta.  We’ve been here a few times before and I don’t remember it as being too interesting.  But today, we were struck by how pretty it is.  I think that’s because the hills are green, the sky is blue and there’s lots of grass and palm trees around in contrast to some of the dismal industrial ports we’ve been to on this trip.  We wandered through the craft market set up right on the pier (“better junk for less”) and then decided to go across the thoroughfare to Walmart just to get us back into the American shopping mode.  We bought a couple of bottles of liquor at very good prices and when we checked out the cashier asked us whether we wanted the price in pesos or dollars.  There’s a button on their register that instantly converts the total.  You could pay with US dollars, paper only, but were given change in pesos.  We used our credit card.  And we saw an ATM that advertised either pesos or dollars given.

This time we had no trouble getting our liquor on board since there was no one monitoring it.  I guess they figure why bother at this point.

So we have 2 sea days before Los Angeles.  It has been a very good trip - we’ve seen so many new things, met many interesting people and learned a lot.  Every time we travel outside the US, we are reminded again how fortunate we are to have been born here and to live where we live.  That’s something we never take for granted.

The 49 days really wasn’t too long, but that was helped by having internet access (slow though it was!) and text capability in all but one port.  We’re really looking forward to seeing our friends and families again, but I’m so  not looking forward to having to shop, cook and clean again.  And the stack of mail waiting for us is not a pleasant thought.  Hope the TiVo didn’t have a hiccup and that all of my shows are waiting for me.  Ah, the simple pleasures.

March 14, 2015 San Juan del Sur

Today was another all day tour, again because everything is so far away from the port.  We went to Granada, a lovely city with beautiful churches (of course) on Lake Nicaragua.  Both yesterday and today we drove on the Pan-American Highway.  That’s the highway that we saw the end of while in Ushuaia.  “Highway” is a bit of an overstatement.  It’s actually a 2 lane road with almost no shoulder.  Besides the cars, buses and trucks that use it, there are people walking or riding their bikes in the 2 extra feet at the edge.  And houses are built right up to the edge, with kids, dogs, chickens, goats and cattle roaming around.  Fortunately the cattle and goats are tethered, but we did have to stop for a herd of horses being moved from one side to the other.  And the driver stopped once by a tree full of howler monkeys.  I guess the children learn at a very early age to be street savvy because we never saw them close to the road.

After Granada we took a cruise in a small boat on Lake Nicaragua, which is huge.  It has something like 365 small islands (islets) and many of them are inhabited.  People build homes on them - some very elegant and some not much more than shacks.  We saw more monkeys (spider monkeys this time), turtles, and plenty of birds.  This lake also has sharks and alligators that have adapted to the fresh water which might explain why we didn’t see any of the children swimming in it.

And speaking of homes being not much more than shacks - tiny wooden structures with tin roofs held down by rocks - more than half of this type had satellite dishes on them.  We drove by woman hand pumping water from the well at her home and next door was a young woman making and selling tortillas at a stall outside her home while her sister sat nearby talking on her cell phone.  Interesting to see the juxtaposition of old and new technologies.

Again our guide put the best spin on life here.  According to him since the end of the Sandinistas, and the start of general elections, life has gotten much better and the economy is doing well.  There are mixed feelings about the construction of the Nicaraguan Canal which just broke ground and is scheduled to be completed in 2020.  They are excited about the jobs it will bring, but worried that the Chinese who are building it may not be so careful about environmental concerns as they should be.

Now we have three more sea days until Puerto Vallarta.  The captain said we’d be diverting closer to shore a little on our route to avoid a storm with 60 mph winds.

March 13, 2015 Puntarenas, Costa Rica

We had 3 more quiet sea days.  There’s a retired Los Angeles DA on board who has given lectures on DNA use in the court, the OJ Simpson case and the Menendez brothers case.  They’ve been pretty interesting.  Next up is Patty Hearst.

This morning when we arrived, an ambulance took a passenger off the Island Princess, which is on her way to the Panama Canal and shares our pier, and this evening just before we left, an ambulance took someone off our ship.  We’re dropping like flies.  And a woman (and her husband) was put off our ship here for harassing other passengers.  Our table mates, Barry and Adele, had lunch with someone who saw the 4 Russians being taken off in handcuffs by the police, so I guess that rumor was true.  Very exciting goings on.  This pier is so long and narrow that the tour buses have to back up the whole way to get off the pier while dodging pedestrians and other buses coming down.  Didn’t see a single one go into the drink, even after it got dark.

Today’s tour was to a coffee plantation first.  It was a very long drive, but the bus was air conditioned and comfortable, so that helped.  The plantation was privately owned and we saw all the steps up to packing the beans in the 96 pound bags for shipment.  They aren’t roasted at the plantation, with the exception of the coffee they sell at their gift shop and in local stores.  We also had a nice lunch there with a couple from the Island Princess on the same tour from their ship.

Fortunately the plantation was quite high up in the mountains where it was cooler and windy - a requirement for the beans - so the temperature was quite comfortable.  We heard from many others how hot it was in town or on some of the other tours.  We also stopped at a botanical garden for a quick visit where we saw a wild young toucan in the tree, besides the beautiful parrots in the cages.  Our guide was quite knowledgeable and was really singing the praises of Costa Rica, as you’d expect.  We stopped in the town of Palmares on the way to the plantation to see their square and church, which were both lovely.  We were favorably impressed with most things, but we did wonder about all of the bars on the windows and the razor wire which was on many of the walls around the houses.  Our guide told us that Costa Rica is very safe, which seemed not to jive with what we were seeing.  But the cities were very clean and we saw very little graffiti, which has been prevalent in the last few ports.

Since the tours were very long and some got back very late (it was a long way to anywhere from Puntarenas), we were the only two at our table for dinner last night, and the dining room was more empty than usual.  This has been a very unusual cruise as far as the dining room is concerned.  On all of our previous cruises, the fixed seating dining rooms have been full, but since the beginning of this cruise there have been many empty seats, and sometimes whole empty tables.  We understand that this is the case at the later seating and people have had no trouble getting into the Anytime dining whenever they’ve wanted.  We checked out the buffet once right after we ate and it wasn’t very busy either, so we have no idea where people are eating.  Strange.

Tomorrow is Nicaragua.

March 9, 2015 Callao / Lima

Last night we got another letter warning us of increased crime against tourists in Lima.  We’ve received general warnings in most larger cities in South America, but this letter, like the one for Buenos Aires, was pretty specific.  So again, no jewelry, camera in the pocket and sticking close with Michael.  Fortunately, we had another tour.  This one went through the  port city of Callao, which our guide described as being part of Lima, to the Cathedral of Lima which is gorgeous.  It’s in the middle of the central square which includes several government buildings and the president’s house.  Then we walked a few blocks to the San Francisco cathedral, monastery and catacombs complex all built around 1774.  It’s a working monastery, but part is available to visit.  The woodwork and tiles were beautiful.  Then we went below to the catacombs where thousands of bodies were buried for and excavated.  They’ve collected the bones and put them all together, leg bones in one place, arm bones in another and skulls in yet another.  At some point the bishop said to stop excavating so no one knows how many bodies there are.  This complex has survived all of the local earthquakes with no major damage, but I was still happy to get out of that underground dark, cramped place.  Next we went through the nice area of Lima called Miraflores and stopped at a large private home, Casa Garcia Alvarado, that is now available for groups to visit or have functions.  We got to look around and then had Pisco Sours (the national drink of Peru and Chile) and some empanadas served by the owner of the home.  Many of the homes, especially in Callao, look like they are being worked on or added to.  You’ll see rebar sticking out of roofs, half-built walls and stacks of bricks around, even though there are curtains in the windows and people obviously living there.  Our guide explained that if the house isn’t “finished” they don’t have to pay the municipal tax yet.  Nobody likes to pay taxes, I guess, but it looks odd.

There’s a rumor that 4 Russian passengers were put off yesterday in San Martin for stealing from the onboard boutiques.  Not very bright of them, if it’s true.  A week or so ago the Commodore announced that there was an unusual number of passengers with colds and flu and reminded us to wash our hands frequently.  Wish he’d have asked those sick passengers not to go on tours - sometimes the bus is a cacophony of coughing.  So far, we’ve managed to avoid it, but we’re very careful to wash hands a lot and not touch common areas like stair railings if possible.  We haven’t heard anything about any norovirus going around, which is fortunate.

The weather is getting warmer, though not nearly as hot as Rio and Buenos Aires.  Next stop is Puntarenas, Costa Rica after 3 sea days.

March 8, 2015 San Martin / Paracas

We had a couple of sea days before San Martin.  We didn’t do too much.  Had fish and chips with a Guinness at the Pub Lunch which they do several times on sea days in one of the bars.  We also went to a seminar on acupuncture which was enlightening.  Neither of us signed up for treatments, but may look into it further when we get home.  I watched “The Hundred Foot Journey” on one of our TVs in the cabin while Michael slept.  Happily, I don’t have to do our laundry now, and Michael even sent his shoes for polishing, also a perk of being Elite.  And we had little canapés delivered to the cabin before the formal night which we had with our coconut rum liqueur.

Today was San Martin.  It’s a large port seemingly in the middle of nowhere.  The town of Paracas was a 30 minute shuttle ride around the bottom of the horseshoe shaped bay.  This is real desert country - they only get 1-½ ml of rain a year.  There wasn’t a single weed growing in the countryside.  Our tour took us into Paracas where we caught a boat out to Islas Ballestas which is billed as the Peruvian Galapagos.  On the way we saw the Candelabra which is a 500 foot high geoglyph carved into the rocks.  The first reported sighting was in 1870 but no one knows what it means. Then onto the islands which are home to thousands of sea birds as well as Humboldt penguins and sea lions.  It was amazing to see (and smell).  Every 7 years 100+ men spend 3 months on the islands collecting the guano which they sell for fertilizer.  There were hundreds of sea lions including many babies.  We really enjoyed this tour.

 Next up is Lima.

March 5, 2015 Coquimbo / La Serena, Chile

Well, another city that didn’t overwhelm us.  Our guide was very enthusiastic, but he just couldn’t make up for the overall rundown feeling to the area, even in the center where they’ve fixed things up.  There are 5 or 6 universities in the area, which is good.  We walked through the fish market which was an exercise in how long I could hold my breath.  And again there are stray dogs everywhere.  It seems to be endemic to Chile since we‘ve seen it in every Chilean city.  Apparently people feed them, but don’t take them in.  One of our guides said that there is no encouragement to neuter, in fact she said it was against the law to catch and neuter strays, although I wonder if that could possibly be true - maybe there was a language miscommunication.  Coquimbo has a lovely cross on a hill given by the Catholic Church in 2000 to commemorate the new millennium.  We didn’t get close to it because the roads are too narrow for buses.  It was built in a poor area with the hopes that it would improve the area, but it hasn’t worked.  We were told twice not to walk to it, but to take a taxi if we wanted to go.

I forgot to mention that were were about 3 hours late docking yesterday in Valparaiso because when we arrived, there were 5 of those huge container cranes parked at our berth.  Our ship is so tall that they would have hit the upper decks so we had to wait for them to be moved.  The first one wasn’t working so they had to push it along the tracks with the second crane.  They ended up moving all 5 down to where the smaller Holland America ship was berthed.  Now, wouldn’t you think that someone would have figured out this problem before we arrived?  Some of the people who were getting off the ship had flights out of Santiago that they missed.  The Captain, actually he’s a Commodore, was able to delay our departure by a few hours to make up for the delay, but that didn’t help the departing passengers who had arrangements.  Ah well.

March 4, 2015 Valparaiso, Chile

Today was a changeover day again, so some passengers got off and some got on.  We are very sad that 2 of our table mates, Peter and Carol Ashley from England, got off today.  They have been so much fun to have dinner with every night.  On our first night way back on January 31 we all said that we shouldn’t wait for each other for dinner as we might decide to eat at the buffet or get a hamburger or something else since it was such a long cruise.  Turns out all of us were there every night.  Between the fun we had and our great service from our waitress, Catalina (Romania) and assistant waiter, Richard (Philippines), we looked forward to dinner every night.  As I mentioned, Barry and Adele Thomas joined us in Rio de Janeiro, and they are great also.  We have been told that another couple will be joining us tomorrow and the head of the dining room, Nicola, (Italy) says they will fit right in at our table.  Hope so.

Today was exciting because we are now “Elite” - the highest loyalty category with Princess.  Now we get our laundry done by the ship for free and we get an initial bar setup in our cabin, which I think we’ll trade in for 2 coffee cards.  As I mentioned, our 2 bottles of rum were confiscated in St. Lucia.  Since today was the “end” of our first cruise, they returned them to us last night - a lucky mistake.  Yahoo!  Now we can have our pre-dinner rum cocktail like we planned.

We booked this last segment as a separate cruise so that we could take advantage of being Elite, and just before we left at the end of January we were offered an up-sell to a mini-suite for this segment, which we jumped on.  We moved today into our spacious new digs.  Hoo boy - I think we might be hooked.  We have much more room with a couch, 2 televisions and a tub/shower.  We were originally assigned a cabin on the port side, but a few weeks ago we decided we’d rather be on the starboard side so we’d have shade on our balcony in the afternoon.  We couldn’t get hold of our travel agent, and it took a few requests through the Purser’s Office on board, but we did finally get reassigned last week.

Valparaiso was a pleasant surprise.  It’s a huge port, and the navy base for the country, but it is also charming.  It reminded us a lot of San Francisco with it’s many hills and stucco houses.  It even has a fair number of Victorian houses.  The central area has been cleaned up and the buildings fixed and restored.  Our tour also took us to Vina del Mar, the newer town just north of “Vapo” as the locals call it.  Back in the 60’s many of the wealthier town folk moved to Vina del Mar after a devastating earthquake and so it has many lovely highrise apartment buildings and upscale shops.  We stopped at the Fonck Museum which has one of the statues from Easter Island (a gift from the people of Easter Island, not stolen).  One interesting note - McDonald’s opened in Vapo, but didn’t last long because the people prefer small, local shops and restaurants, not big chains.  However, we did see a McDonald’s in Vina del Mar.

Sorry this was so long.  Tomorrow is Coquimbo, Chile only a couple of hundred miles north, so I guess we’ll be sailing leisurely during the night.