Thursday, April 3, 2014

Heading to LA

I am writing this from the iPad this morning, as the internet is not working right. I finely got on so I am not letting go.

We had a productive day in Puerto Vallarta yesterday, didn't see much, except Walmart, it was right across the street, where we bought a nice small tote for our goodies, and had Ed's glasses fixed, and I bought some stockings. Would you believe that this ship ran out and have never restocked! And with 9 formal nights what were they thinking. 😱. We brought the bag back to the ship and went two ships down, there were three ships in port. A Carnival, and a Holland America. Did I say that three ships is a long ways? Well it is, and it was hot! When a guy driving a curtesy golf cart came by and gave us a ride, we were very happy.

So now we went to the market they had over by where the Carnival ship was moored, and started shopping. We didn't shop long as the prices were high, these vendors were all spoiled, with ship traffic. So,, what to do? Set down at the cafe, and have a Margareta, and nachos, what else?

After that we went back to our ship, and were getting ready for our last sail a way when the maintenance man came on our balcony and started putting varnish on the railing of the balcony! They had informed us there would be maintenance earlier, but we thought it would be over by now. So, that sort of blew the last sail a way! Well the group came anyway and we had fun anyway!

John and Carol came and they were both much better! The meds are working, the both had strep, ugh. But they said the Doc's were great.

So now today is the last formal night, and we have reserved a table for eight of us. It should be a fun evening.






Tuesday, April 1, 2014

At Sea, March 31, 2014

OK not sure this will ever go out from the ship,,, we have had internet problems for the last 3-4 days.  It is aggravating, oh well as I have said the fact that we have it at all is something.  So I will keep trying.  
Today is a sea day, the last two days have been in port so I will tell what happened at those days, some of it boating and some of it exciting



March 29, 2014  Puntarenas, Costa Rica

We arrived at this small town early on a Saturday Morning, there was a looooooong walk down the pear to get to where the port was.  It appeared that the pear was new.  The Balmier a Fred Olson, Cruise line,  was parked next to us, I was up early and took pictures of her coming in with us.  We did have a tour here, but had canceled as we decided to do some shopping instead, and just walk around and see the sights.  There wasn’t a long of sights, but there was some descant shopping.  Lots and lots of little tents were set up under the trees along the water, which was nice as it was going to be a hot day (90s).  I am glad we got out early.

So after our lovely breakfast, we went down, with lots of sunscreen and hats, well Ed had a hat, it was so windy mine wouldn’t stay on, and we took our iPad so that we might get some internet, as the ships internet has been totally down for two days now.
About 10, we bumped into Ken and Claudia and we all decided that we were finished shopping, and decided to have a beer and some meat on a stick, God knows what we were eating, but it tasted good.  We found a little place that had free Wi-Fi and ordered a coke, and french fries as they didn’t sell beer, but the guys could go across the street and get the beer and bring it back.  

All and all we had a good time and we had sail-a-way from our balcony and canceled our reservations for dinner and brought butter fried shrimp down to the room.  It was only the 4 of us, Carol and John went back to the Dr’s, they are still sick.

March 30, 2014  San Juan Del Sur, Nicaragua

This was a tender port, so coming in we didn’t see a whole lot as we were quit a distance from the shore.  We almost didn’t get off the ship, but with the Wi Fi still down, we went ahead and made the tract.  Again we canceled our tour here, it was to go to the Volcano, but to be honest we are toured out, as it all happened we are sure glad we did, because we heard later that one of the buses to the Volcano broke down, and the people on the bus were out on the road for and hour and a half before anyone found them.  In the heat!!!  They finely found a school bus, to take them back to the ship, they never did get there tour, and it took more time 5 hours.

This was not as nice a port as the one in Costa Rica in our opinion, there were dancers when we got off the tenders, but it was just not as clean.  This time we skipped shopping as we were not going to try to bring a pice of ceramics home, and that was pretty much what they had for sail.  So we found a restaurant, with free Wi Fi and ordered a couple of beers and French fries and proceeded to catch up with emails etc.  And looked at a pretty view, if you didn’t see the feral dogs running around humping on the beach.  Lots of families out as today was Sunday, and if you thought I was bad with beer, in the morning there were women right below the restaurant, drinking shots of Tequila, and they were my age!



The big excitement from this port came at sail-a-way, Ken and Claudia came over and we got a few snacks and were watching the town sail off, we were late, some one had to be med-evac out to the town, and that took two hours.  Trust me we all said we would not have wanted to be left in that town, for medical reasons! 
Any way because we were late, leaving it was getting dark, and I spotted a funny light in the mountain and WOW it was the volcano erupting, WOW and double WOW as Ed says.  I took some pictures, but they are blurry as we were so far away, and moving at 22 knots.  




So now I will try to post this and see if I can get it and the pictures out.  Wi fi is back, but VERY slow.  Next stop and last stop before LA is Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.