We have been on this ship for 60 days now. Time flies when you’re having fun doesn’t it. Thursday around 6pm the captain came on and made an announcement about the weather being rough on Friday. This was just after my internet signal on land ended. I couldn’t check the weather.
While I was sleeping I had a dream about the typhoons in Hong Kong and remembered that I used to follow them on the net. I awoke around 5 and looked up the weather around Mexico. What I found was not nice.
13 foot waves! EEK! As I lie in bed at 6 am, I could feel the boat rocking more than usual. I’m prepared. I have crackers, ginger candy, and ginger tea all ready to go. I went back to sleep for a few hours and woke up right as rain. 2 pills at 6 helped a lot. So did a few crackers.
We went to the presentation on the 2024 world cruise at 11 and stayed until it was over. As expected, we didn’t win the lucky draw. The girl speaking told us that 60 rooms were already purchased. That means half of the people on this ATW are signing up again. That’s impressive since the booking form only came out 3 days ago. It’s not the trip we wanted, a lot of the ports are repeats for us. George only has around 15 stops that he hasn’t been to. My count was in the 40’s, but mostly small island stops. Of course Iceland and Greenland are the main draw as neither of us has been there. It should be another fun trip. I post the itinerary here as you can find it on many Facebook and other webpages. I don't think it is a well kept secret anymore.
We had a conversation about cancelling this one, but George said he likes the ship, it’s small enough and even at double the people we have on now it’s still fewer than the Holland America ATW that we had signed up for in 2020. I agree with him. I hate crowds and a big ship is not ideal. We did a Virgin cruise in October of last year and hated it. The place was packed everywhere we went. That is a ship we will never sail on again.
They also showed us 4 Grand Adventures that are planned for 2024. We are interested in the Grand Pacific Expedition as it hits places we were to go on this trip but sadly we will be in the Galapagos during that time.
In the afternoon we played cards as usual with our friends. They cleaned our clocks! We just couldn’t seem to get good cards. Ah well. Next time. The good news? The seas calmed down a lot. There were a bunch of gulls circling the ship. I was later told that they also made big messes on the deck.
Dinner was in the grand dining room as usual. Tonight we sat with a table full of educators and bankers. How funny that every couple at the table had the same occupations. We finished the night with a movie in the room. Our usual day.
On Sunday we were told there would be weather similar to what we had the day before. I wasn’t looking forward to another rocking ride. Today it wasn’t the same, it was forward hitting waves so it wasn’t as bad.
At 11 we went to listen to a talk by the magician on board. It was very good. We had met him the night before at dinner and George handed him a puzzle. I was watching from our table as his wife took it away and gave it a go. He later took it back and played with it under the table. I’m sure she hates us now. He called us around 3 hours later to let us know that he had finished the puzzle. That has to be a record. Anyway, he told us after the talk that it took him longer than it should have because his wife kept stealing the puzzle from him.
We went to lunch where George had yet another hamburger and I had some salad. There is a rotation of food on the ship: Mexican, British, Italian, Indian, Asian…But always the same items are on the menu. To be honest, after 60+ days, it is getting old. Its a joy to get off the ship and eat the local food for lunch.
We were supposed to play a game with Rod and Merry, but at the same time we had to be in Martinis to talk about the diving we are going to do with another group of passengers coming up soon. We sadly had to cancel the game, but will get to it on one of our sea days.
Dinner this evening was an event for the ATW passengers. We were told there are 224 of us and they put on 6 different dinners to keep up social distancing. We were also told on 6 March it’s masks off time for the passengers. The crew still needs to wear theirs. This is both a relief and a worry. The entire ship is now COVID free. We will be getting new passengers in Barbados and I heard over 100 in Miami. While vaccinations are still required, I have to wonder how careful these new comers have been. I am also afraid that if we are allowed to unmask on the ship that some may do the same when we disembark. It is my greatest hope that we make it to New York virus free.
On to dinner. We all met in the library at 6 pm and had a glass of champaign and a bit of chit chat. Around 6:30 the chef came in with the bells and called everyone to dinner. We shared a table with two couples we hadn’t met before. How did that happen? I guess we just aren’t as social as others. We were offered red or white wine and given the menus for the evening. Chef Mario came out and told us what was on offer and assured us that he had already accounted for all of our special diets. This was music to my ears as I was a bit worried about it. Sorry about the shadow, I wasn't in the best spot and was trying not to be obvious. The dessert was very nice. The truffle on the side was very good.
The conversation at the table was very good. We had wonderful food and handed out two more puzzles. After dinner we retired to the room for a bit of a movie before bed. One of these years I’ll make it through an entire movie.
Monday morning we woke up around 6 and watched the boat dock. I stood on the balcony for a while and heard quite a lot of cursing going on. It wasn’t until 8 that the announcement came allowing us to get off the ship. By this time, George was having his second sleep so I looked at what we could do in Puntarenas. Today we opted to not take a tour. The island we landed on is only 6.7 kilometers around the outer edge. Google told me it would take 1.15 hours to walk. Imagine how fast it went on the scooters.
We had a mission. I wanted to see the lighthouse, and we want to pick up some coffee liqueur. Upon exiting the dock, we were asked by the guards to show proof of ownership of the scooters. They took photos of them, our drivers licenses, and our faces. This was odd to say the least. It’s the first time it’s happened. We complied. Across the road was a man who lives here, he was helping people as they got off the ship to find different places in town. He told us there are no scooters here so the guards didn’t know what to do. Fair enough.
We headed off along the coast line as far as we could go. There is a lovely boardwalk for people to walk on and we used it to our advantage.
Sure enough, we found the lighthouse.
From here we were trying to find the liqueur store the gent at the pier told us about. We did but they did not have what we wanted. No problem, we scooted on hoping we would find another place that might have it. I was surprised to see cans of Tunafish locked up. It makes one wonder.
After a detour back to where we started we ended up on a back road and found a grocery store. I went inside and looked, and sure enough, they had coffee liqueur! I tried to ask for it in Spanish but that didn't work. One of the customers understood me and asked the man behind the counter for it for me. The shop proprietor told me to come behind the counter to point to what I wanted. Fine. I did and when I was back there heard his wife tell him to be careful in Cantonese! WOW! What a surprise. Well, this made it much easier. I told him in our mutual language that I wanted two bottles of the coffee liqueur. He grabbed a ladder and got them down for me. Judging by the dust on them, they had been up there a long time.
The look of surprise on both their faces was priceless. As I went to pay, his wife and I had a conversation about being on the ship and living in Hong Kong. The irony of the situation did not pass me by. An American in Costa Rica ordering alcohol in Cantonese. Never in a million years as they say.
Mission accomplished. We returned to the ship and went to the room to return our scooters and relax for a bit before lunch. The room was being cleaned so we just left the scooters and headed up to the Terrace Café. They weren’t open yet, but we didn’t mind. A nice waiter came over and brought us a much appreciated drink. Did I mention it is 92 degrees here today?
We had lunch and while there I overheard one of the waiters tell another that the captain only drinks warm water. As luck would have it I had a puzzle in my bag and I gave it to George to hand over. He did and they had a nice conversation about puzzles for a short while. This is the first time I have seen the captain of the ship. We have discussed his lack of appearance with others and chalked it up to keeping safe from COVID. I assure you, he does exist. And he is TALL!
We went back to the room to place a phone call back to the states about a puzzle shipment we are having problems with and I tried to download some files to aid the process. The internet kept shutting down on me as I opened the file. It would not let me download. Well, George had an idea and we headed off to shore where there is a building with free wifi. It worked! I was able to save the files and send them to George who fixed them to send on to our broker. Hopefully this will solve all of the problems.
While here waiting for this to be sorted, we took advantage of the internet and downloaded a few Netflix movies to my phone and George spent some time watching the latest youtube video of the Texas Giga factory build. Did I mention that he is a huge Tesla fan?
I am sure we will head back to the ship so George can take a nap before dinner, but I wanted to get this posted while I still have good internet access.
As for Costa Rica-or at least this city-I saw a lot of bars on windows. They say there is very little crime here, perhaps it is because of the heavy police presence? At any rate, I felt safe as usual, but again, as usual I wouldn’t want to live here.
While the distance is pretty, the close up is not. There are a lot of corrugated metal buildings here. Meaning to say, they are fairly ramshackle. I didn’t see any "nice" homes by American standards while we were scooting around this little finger that the ship docked on. I realize there are other areas that we did not see and that there very well could be nicer towns and homes. I just didn’t see them here. As expected, we did not find any puzzles, but hey! We love the coffee liqueur!
EDIT: as we returned to the ship there were a few performers outside the ship. I have added a video of them to my youtube channel for your viewing pleasure.
Until next time, Happy Puzzling and Smooth Sailing.
Interesting as always x
ReplyDeleteI really like CR. Considered buying a place there at one stage.
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