Location: on the way from Huatulco, Mexico to San Juan Del Sur, Nicaragua
Weather: sunny, 37C degrees
I write this from the sun deck loungers of our ship on an afternoon tanning break, complete with cheery Caribbean music playing in the background, which has become somewhat of a daily ritual as I make it my goal to get more sun and fresh air everyday. When this will get published is another story given the non-existence of free WiFi at these ports (17 days and counting since I last had internet! Good thing I'm good at living without it). It has been almost a month since I've joined the Island Princess in Los Angeles, and things couldn't be more different here, on what they call a "normal" ship in the regular market. When you come from 3 and 4 day cruises with no sea days, the 2-3 week cruises here feel like eons. My first 19 day cruise was quite the drag especially in the latter half with what felt like endless sea days due to canceled ports, crappy weather, and me waiting to take over my job. Now that it's over, I'm finally really enjoying this 15 day cruise, which may be as well because crazily I only have another cruise here left. I found out right before I joined that I was getting trans-shipped back to the Sapphire Princess on Nov. 11, so it's back to Asia, but this time Southeast Asia, I go! It would have been better if I had more time here to make the most out of these exotic (to me) Central American ports and unfortunately this means I no longer get to do South America on this contract, but I also look forward to going back to a familiar ship with familiar faces and hey I'm getting my dream of returning to SE Asia including many new places answered after my original backpacking trip in 2015 and 2016!
Back to the latter half of September, I was somewhat lucky to have an early morning flight to LA that gave me a good part of a day in the city beforehand, which I spent checking out Venice Beach and Santa Monica on a beach cruiser. Both were very good for people watching and I managed to catch a wicked sunset off the pier in Santa Monica.
The next day it's bam back to work as I tried to remember things from 2.5 months ago. It was a lot less overwhelming than the first time since I knew what to expect and there was way less training, but I still got lost going around as the configuration of this ship is completely different from all the others in the fleet. When the passengers arrived I knew things were going to be the opposite of what I was used to; they were much older, predominantly American, but more importantly 88% of the ship was filled with repeat guests which justified my sole job of managing the loyalty program. Throughout the cruise we did many events I had never seen before as Rachel who I am replacing showed me the full spectrum of the Captain's Circle Host. My boss from head office was also onboard for 6 days to train the Future Cruise Consultant (who was in my position here just months ago so I was in good hands if I ever don't know something), so I got to meet her and go out for dinner at Bayou Cafe within days of joining.
In other news I went to my first ever open deck party and then some others which are always a blast and am finally beginning to remember people's names and where things are. I haven't been sick (knock on wood) which probably has to do with my conscious effort to drink less and sleep more but clearly it's working and already beats my record on the last contract. The shows onboard are excellent (at last not the same stuff over and over again, the same can be said for the menus!) and I make it a habit to go see something everyday.
Here are some shots from Puerto Quetzel, Guatemala when I went to Antigua, a beautiful colonial town that reminded me of Trinidad in Cuba, and came back an hour later than I thought 😬, we will just leave it at that. Can you see the Mayan head below?
A highlight of last cruise was definitely passing through the Panama Canal, which I got up ridiculously early for and ran around all over the ship in the sweltering heat to try to catch the best views whenever I had a break during the day. Because we were doing a partial transit and coming back to LA, we anchored off at Gatun Lake at the Caribbean side and got 2 days to see the passage through the locks. At the beginning you can see the skyline of Panama City but in many parts there is only jungle on the shore which makes you appreciate how laborious the effort must have been to cut a waterway through here. There are 2 main set of locks where the ship has to be raised up to the equal water level before passing and the precision with which the ship has to maneuver into them is incredible. You can bet that I will be running around again this cruise when we do the full transit.
To celebrate Rachel's last port, we went for a quick beach day complete with beers and tacos at La Hacienda in Manzanillo. It took me like 17 days to get in the tropical water and I was a happy fish.
This cruise I finally got the opportunity to be an escort on some of our tours and so far it's been a lot of getting off the ship to get on another ship. In Puerto Vallarta I went on a pirate ship adventure which I thought was going to be tacky but turned out to be really fun complete with live shows, an open bar, snorkelling, banana boating., kayaking, and some r&r at a secluded beach at Las Caletas.
And in Huatulco, I was on a scenic catamaran ride out to 5 of the surrounding bays with two other coworkers. We had a delicious lunch complete with beers and margaritas afterwards by the pier and then I decided to go for another dip in the beach right by the ship.
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