3 Days - 3 Ports

We've been busy over the past 3 days. I will just give a quick overview now of the 3 ports we visited because of limited wifi, but once we get to Miami, I'll try to fill in the blanks.

First port - Puerto Quetzal, Guatemala

 There is nothing near the port, so we had booked an all day excursion to Colonial Antigua, which is an old town about 90 minute drive. Less than 1/2 hour into the drive and the bus broke down. Had to wait about 20 minutes for a new bus to show up, but the rest of the way went without incident. Here is an old cathedral in Antigua.

 The streets were all cobblestone and filled with tourist. The street vendors just bug you to death to buy their wears. Just couldn't get away from them.

We had a good lunch of a typical meal - rice, beans, chicken or beef. This is a typical lunch for all the countries we visited. Even though it is basic, it's still quite good (or we were hungry which I can't believe).

Next Port - Corinto, Nicaragua

Also, there is not much by the port here so also had booked an excursion to Old and New Leon. Here is the ruins in Old Leon. This was another 2 hour drive from the ship. So we are seeing a lot of the countryside. Both Nicaragua and Guatemala are dry areas, not too tropical which I envisioned.

There are many volcanos in these three counties we are visiting with only about 2-3 active in each. Here is one in Nicaragua that is active, you can see the smoke on top.

This is the Leon Cathedral.

 We climbed up about 72 steps to the roof.

Port 3 - Puntarenas, Costa Rica

Costa Rica is much more tropical and a little better conditions than the last 2 countries, but still quite poor. As before, we took an 8 hour excursion called Discover Costa Rica. Of course we visited another cathedral which the blocks were made from volcanic ash.

Went to a coffee plantation, here are coffee beans drying in the sun.

 Here are the grounds of the coffee plantation.

 We also visited a botanical gardens, which wasn't much. When we got back to the ship there was a show from the locals.

Happy Valentines Day gift from our stewart. We are at sea today and arrive at the Panama Canal tomorrow early morning. I'm looking forward to traversing the canal.

Welcome to Acapulco!

Arrived in the Acapulco bay early morning to enjoy a nice sunrise.

It was a 1 sea day trip from Cabo, so was anxious to leave the ship again. This time they docked so did not need to take a tender to shore. Here is where we docked.

The views from the ship were great, we could see all of Acapulco and bay. It's a very pretty bay.

 They even had a welcoming band and dancers for us.

We took the Bay Cruise excursion and this was the boat that gave us a very good tour of the bay, offered unlimited drinks and lunch.

The cliff divers draw most of the attention here. Our bay cruise included seeing them jump. They jump from the cliff on the left into the cove. There are divers standing on the cliff, but can't see them in this picture. They dive 136 feet into this little cove.

Here's looking at the high rises which are mostly condos.

And they assured us that it was safe!!!! Then the first cruise we take and get robbed by a pirate.

We had a really nice time, didn't see much of the city itself, but what we saw was your typical Mexican town. Did walk a bit along the bay.

Been enjoying our trip so far, great food, plenty to drink and the weather is great. It's been smooth sailing all along except for today, the seas are angry, so doing a bit of bobbing around, you think we had too much to drink walking around. We have a sea day today then will be in port tomorrow. So the next post won't be until probably Sunday.

Cabo San Lucas

We have a "Bingo Star" - Jim won the first bingo game Monday afternoon a total of $105. It paid for the bingo ($49) plus a little profit. Then that evening after a great meal in one of the restaurants we took in the nightly show. Some good music.

 We sailed into Cabo around 9am yesterday and went right past the famous rock formation at the point to the harbor where people pay big bucks to see (oh we pay big bucks to see only from a bigger boat!) This pic was taken from our stateroom. We had a wonderful view going in to anchor.

 It's a nice little harbor/cove at Cabo. Then we took tenders into shore.

There are shops and restaurants all along the marina. We walked directly to Diamonds International to pick up a free bracelet and Jim proceeded to bargain a excellent price on a Tanzanite bracelet and earrings . They are just beautiful and am wearing them all the time now. I'll need to take a picture to post. 

It was such hard work bargaining that we needed to stop for a beer. We found this neat little hut for $1 draft beers. Such a deal.

 This is our cruise ship, picture taken from a point on shore.

 It's a typical touristy Mexican town. We had pleasant weather and enjoyed our walk around the marina area.

Our ship set sail again at 6pm and we are on our way south. We had a glass of wine on deck enjoying the beautiful weather before dinner. Went to the Chinese restaurant but didn't like it as much, the food just wasn't up to par. Visited the casino then another event before retiring for the evening.

When we plugged our phones/watches to charge for the night, we discovered that our 110 electrical outlets were not working. That morning when I plugged in my curling iron I heard a pop and it wouldn't work. I thought it was the curling iron that went out and threw it away. Now we discover it was the outlets that were not working. They only have 2 outlets in the whole room/none in the bathroom even. I called services to get it fixed this morning, but we had to go find a place to charge our phones/watches as they were totally down. Believe me, it's hard to find 110 outlets on this ship. We ended up at the art gallery desk where we found a computer plugged in that had a power strip with 2 empty spots. So had to sit for about 45minutes to get charged. They did get our outlets fixed so we are back in business.

One complaint I have (and a big complaint it is) that you have to pay for wifi (which is satellite and quite slow), which is $125 for 250 minutes. Well 250 minutes just doesn't last very long especially since it takes so long to accomplish anything. So if later on you don't see many posts, I'm running out of time. We haven't been checking out emails and Jim is going through withdrawals for not playing his games. Just have to keep him busy doing other things.

This is our last sea day today before we get to stops everyday. Sea days are hard to fill since we are not the type to sit out by the pool or can eat and/or drink all day. So we have excursions on the next  5 stops that will keep us busy and seeing the sites. Will try to keep our blog updated. Having a great time and the weather is finally warm.

Canal Adventure

You probably have guessed where we are headed (especially my FB friends since Cindy guessed correctly) - a cruise through the Panama Canal. We left out of LA (only an hour late boarding and 2 hours late departing because of a Coast Guard inspection). But we are on our way. The weather in LA was overcast and cool but we were still able to have our Bloody Mary upon embarking the ship at the Sky High Bar.

We are sailing on the Norwegian Jewell which offers free styling which means you eat and drink when you want and no formal anything. Which fits us the best. Here is a view of the upper deck pool area.

 Since it was dark when we left the harbor, we didn't get to see much. Our first day is a sea day and it is still cool, the sun did come out some to help, but hopefully when we get further south it will warm up. Here is a view from the stern.

Here's another shot of the pool area after the sun came out today. The ship holds approx. 2100 passengers and 1000 crew. The buffet is very good which we tried last night for dinner, breakfast and lunch. Need to branch out to some of the other restaurants they have, but you can get whatever you want at the buffet which makes it quite convenient.

Our stateroom is on the 11th deck (14 is the top deck) and climbing the stairs from the 6th floor to the 11th has become our workouts for the day. I took approx. 12000 steps and climbed 33 floors yesterday. Needless to say our legs are sore, but great way to work off all those calories. This morning we started out with a 45 minute walk around the deck, then tested the Casino and walked away with a little profit of $45.

Bingo is about to start in about a 1/2 hour, so need to run and get our cards and seats (also maybe a glass of wine).

Where Are We Going Now????

Yes we are flying out of TUS to LAX but that is not our final destination. We will be traveling for 2 weeks starting out of LA and our flight home in 2 weeks will take approx. 8 hours. The only flights we have are these two flights. Where are we going? Guess you will need to stay tune to find out.

Phoenix Day Two

After breakfast this morning we struck out on our walking trek to the State Capital. It was 2.2 miles from the hotel. Another beautiful day, started out in the low 60s and ended in the low 70s. We live in Arizona and everyone should know the history of the state that they live in, so that was the purpose of the Capital self tour. The old Capital building which was built in 1900 is now a museum and it is well done. Worth a trip to see if ever in the area.

Here is the mosaic seal of AZ on the floor of the lobby of the building. It is not the accurate seal as it was designed by a artist back in Ohio and did not see the real seal. The "Ditat Deus" means God Enriches.

 The capital mall which is about 2 blocks long is filled with many memorials for past wars, current service people, etc. It was interesting to walk around them all.

After walking back to the hotel, I was a little pooped, so we just watched football in our room for a few hours. Then we walked to Cibo, an italian/pizza restaurant about 10 blocks away. Sat outside in their wonderful patio area and had a great pizza dinner.

So how many miles did we put on our feet today?  Only 6.5 miles, becoming light weights here. We have had a nice, relaxing, informative time here in Phoenix the past 2 days, but will be heading back to Tucson tomorrow morning to enjoy the rest of the holidays at home.

Happy Holidays

We hope everyone is enjoying their holiday season. It's been awhile since I posted because of health issues. I had been having a difficult time with my heart since March and tried everything to prevent surgery, but it came down to a heart valve replacement and a bypass surgery on October 31st. After 6 days in the hospital, Jim brought me home to recoup and recover (I don't know how anyone can get well in a hospital). Needless to say open heart surgery knocked me on my butt for 3 weeks, but am getting much better, almost back to normal. In fact I walked a total of 9 miles through out the day yesterday (I'll let you know why later). Never plan to go through that experience again.

So since I was recouping, we stayed home for Thanksgiving which we normally take the RV over to Indio. Then we were planning to go over the week between Christmas and New Years, but the weather was not conducive to having a good time, so stayed home again.

But to reward all our home project completions this week (wash windows inside and out, trimming palm trees, etc.) we came up to Phoenix to hang out for a couple of days. Got into town yesterday morning and started out at the Phoenix Zoo. It was a perfect day in the mid 70s for a walk around the zoo to visit all the animals. It's a fairly large zoo, much bigger than Tucson, but smaller than San Diego. But a very pleasant experience.

 Hung out with the Giraffes for a bit.

Then onto the Cheetas.

And some days you just to let it all hang out! (Jaguar)

After spending 3 hours of walking at the zoo, we checked into our hotel (Sheraton Grand Downtown). We went for another walk around downtown. I had always wanted to go to an NBA game, so had purchased pretty good tickets for a reasonable price for the Suns vs Toronto game last night. The hotel is about 7 blocks from Talking Stick Arena, so walked there and back.

 We sat in section 103 (center) row 14 seat 1,2. So had a pretty good view. Didn't want to spend a fortune on tickets, so this was a real deal. Totally enjoyed the game and since the Suns won (which was a total surprise) it was doubly nice. I'm glad we went but don't need to go again, the terrible music was too loud and the people kept going up and down the isle so could not see the game. Watching from my recliner at home is still the best seat, but glad we went for the experience.

Started out with a big breakfast this morning at the hotel so that should keep us going all day today. Another day of walking. Stay tuned for the next report.