Cruisin' Through December

Waaaaaay back in January, Boyd was surfing the net looking at cruising prices. He discovered a Mexican Riviera cruise on Carnival's newest ship, the Splendor, that was leaving on December 13th and returning on December 20th. In addition, the price was unbelievable. So we signed up, paid, and waited. And waited. And suddenly it was here.

And the weather was bad. Snowing and cold temperatures became the norm.

We were OK, though, because we knew what was coming up.

Sunday morning, we left this...

and 1 1/2 hours later came to this.

We took a shuttle from the airport to the Long Beach Carnival port and saw our ship for the first time.

Impressive!

Once we were on board and settled,we sat on the Lido deck sunning ourselves and listening to this:


After two days at sea we came to Puerto Vallarta. It was warm and green and everyone spoke Spanish. Fortunately, Boyd speaks a little Spanish so we all got along well.

We shopped, bought t-shirts, vanilla and jewelry and looked out over the beach. It was a unique cultural experience.

After a day of taxis and shopping with aggressive sales people we were ready to move on to Mazatlan.

Unfortunately for us, the ship wasn't ready. When the captain was backing this ginormous ship into the tiny port at Puerto Vallarta, he backed into the dock. This resulted in the dock being crushed and the ship having a 4 foot by 4 foot hole in the hull.

All four of us tried to see the hole in the ship and ended up being escorted off the grounds by a Mexican policeman. Then we were passed by Mexican military with machine guns. We decided that a picture of the hole in the ship wasn't that necessary after all.

The cruise director, whose name unbelievably is Goose, informed us that the hole would be repaired by midnight and we would be on our way to Mazatlan. No worries.

So we went to bed and slept, and dreamed of Mazatlan.

When we woke up the next day, Boyd looked out the window of our cabin and said, "Welcome to beautiful Puerto Vallarta."

I jumped out of bed and looked. Yes, we were still in Puerto Vallarta.

The cruise director tried to make us feel happy that we were still there. He told us that the repair on the ship was taking longer than they thought. He told us to go and discover more fun things to do in Puerto Vallarta.

We discovered that there was a WAL-MART across the street from the port. They are everywhere! So Dave, Adele and I walked across the street to Wal-Mart and shopped. Everything was priced in pesos so you had to do a rough guessimate of math in your head to figure the price. It was fun to browse to see what they carried in a Wal-Mart in Mexico.

Finally at about 3:30 that afternoon it was announced that the ship was repaired and ready to go. Hallelujah!

Everyone was so excited to leave that they all came out on the deck and watched as we pulled away. You can see the sorry looking dock in the background as we pulled out of port.

We sailed all the rest of that day and night and came to this:

Cabo San Lucas.

Gorgeous.

We hired a water taxi to give us a tour of the surrounding area. This is our guide, Jesus (pronounced Hay-soos). He found out that Boyd spoke Spanish and talked 100 miles an hour. In Spanish. I understood about one word in one hundred. Boyd said it was because he would throw in an English word occasionally.

He took us all around the rock formations and ended up on the Pacific side of Cabo. It was spectacularly beautiful. We saw fish by the hundreds just swimming around in the water. There were all colors, sizes and shapes.

After our water tour, he dropped us off at Lover's Beach where we laid out in the sun and Boyd, Dave and Adele went snorkeling. I declined gracefully because there were no life jackets and the waves were really higher than what I like to snorkel in. I did go out into the ocean and enjoyed the water a little.

After the third wave washed over me, I decided I had had enough and went back to sunning on the beach.

We did some serious shopping in the flea market there then boarded the tender which took us back to our ship. The ship pulled up anchor and started on the journey home.

This is what we saw as our ship turned and headed out to the Pacific Ocean.

That night we had a formal dinner. This is the four of us at dinner.

The food on the ship was so good and rich that my stomach had a hard time keeping up with all that I was stuffing inside.

We had two waiters for our table. Ismail is on the left and Soe is on the right.

Interestly enough, when we went on our cruise last June, Ismail was the headwaiter at the table next to us, and when we came on this cruise he was our headwaiter. Small world!!

There was one activity that we did a lot besides laying on the deck and sunning ourselves. Playing cards.

We tried all kinds of locations to play: the library, the Lido Deck inside and outside. This place was upstairs from the buffet on the Lido Deck at a place called the Rotisserie. We had the place to ourselves.

Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end. This is Boyd showing us how he really feels about going home to the cold, reality and work.

Now we are back home and looking forward to the rest of the holidays that are upon us.