Huatulco, Mexico

12 28

 

After a nice day at sea, yesterday, we arrived in Huatulco.  On board, we had one Spanish lesson yesterday, along with a lecture on Hispanic culture and line dancing.  As we looked around we noticed that had been here before.

Huatulco is less developed than VP, but still a tourist area

As you see in the first picture, the nearest beach to the ship was overrun by locals and their kids.  It was very crowded.  So we found this internet cafe and are talking to yous guys. 

Can you see the pelican?  The swimmer got too close to him, so he flew away.  There are lots of pelicans here, buzzing the beaches.

Puerto Vallarta

December 26th

We set sail on Dec. 23rd.  We got on board on time, but as is usual, the ship didn't leave on time.  It seems there was more luggage to load than they expected.  Glad to say, our luggage all came aboard and only one piece, a new one, was damaged.  Hopefully they will fix it.  Nothing seemed to have been lost.  (yeah)

We have spent 2 days at sea, getting re-used to sailing.  This ship, the Amsterdam, on the Holland America line, is exactly the same as the only other Holland American ship we sailed on before, the Veendam.  We are not having much trouble getting around.  I am sort of disappointed that this is not an entirely new ship.  I will get over it, OK...I have already gotten over it. :)
We have taken some computer classes and celebrated Christmas Eve and Christmas on the ship.  We have never sung so many Christmas carols. 

Most of the passengers on board now are only on for 14 days.  They are sailing from LA to Fort Lauderdale.  Only about 30 of us are going all the way around the world.  The rest of the Grand Tour passengers will board in Fort Lauderdale.  I imagine, the children on board now will not be on for the long-haul.  (there are quite a few kids)

We arrived in Puerto Vallarta this morning.  As you can see, PV has become quite a city.  We have been here 3 times before.  So, all we did was go to Wal-Mart....it is right across the road from the port.  It may be the most expensive Wal-Mart in the world.  And, we did not find what we were looking for. 
We have just left port, on our way south.  We will update then.  Wait......we have an update now....As we are leaving Bandaras Bay, Arleen noticed a splash in the water.  Our dolphin, spinner dolphins, escort had arrived.  We had at least 10 dolphins playing in the wake of the ship.  We could see 5 or six at a time just below the surface.  It is great to see them jumping and playing in the waves.  I was afraid the ship would list to one side with all of us looking over the same side ;)  We just love the critters.

Please remember that you may get multiple postings on the same day.  

December 23

We board the ship today.  We are both nervious and excited.  Even tho we have done this before, it is always different.  So we will see.  Our brother-in-law, Dan, is graciously taking us to the pier.  It is about an hour away.  What a great guy.  We are leaving our car at their house, too.  That is really great.

After we depart at 5PM, we will set sail for 2 days, heading for Puerto Vallarta.  We are excited to be going there, since we have been there 3 times already and we know that there is a Walmart right across the street from the dock, so if we forgot anything, we can pick it up there.  Actually, I wish were got there later in the trip.  We would be more likely to have discovered what we forgot, the longer we had been on the ship.

We will be celebrating Christmas and New Year's on our way to Fort Lauderdale, on Jan 6th.  We are going to meet our cousins Mark and Enid there and spend the day with them.

We are going to shut down now and be out of touch for a while, so Happy Holidays to all (and to all a goodnight:) ) 

December 19

We went to the Late Late Show taping last night right after arriving in LA.  The CBS studios are in Hollywood, as you would expect.  It is interesting to see how a show is taped (oh, that's right, Craig says the show is "live", Right;)  It is very different than it seems on the TV.  For example, on TV Craig is talking right to you, and moving in close to tell you a secret.  Well, in the studio, he is talking directly to a camera and not looking at the audience at all.  You can see what it looks like on TV by looking at the monitors, but that is not what I expected.  He seems so interactive.  He is, but not with the studio audience, just the at home audience.  That's good I guess, since most of his audience is at home.  They have a warmup guy, who is supposed to get you ready for the show.  It was kind of annoying to have him tell us when to laugh or applaud or stand up.  I think Craig is funny enough that he doesn't need the help.  During our taping, he did most of Friday's show then.  Not all of it, since Dame Judy Dench was on the show last night, but not at our taping.  Instead, Craig changed ties and his jacket and taped parts of next Tuesday's show.  He kept referring to stuff he said previously and then realized he was taping for Tuesday and told the audience to go to youtube and look at last Friday's show to see what he was referring to.  It was quite funny to us.  It will quite weird to the home audience.  (but that is part of the fun of the show)

Now it is Saturday and we slept in  because we stayed up to watch the show last night.  Here it is on until 1:35am. 

We will see Zanadu, the play, tonight and the Sherlock Holmes movie on Tues.  Having a nice visit with my sister and brother-in-law.

We board the ship on Wednesday.  More after that.

WE HAVE LEFT HOME

We left home on Wed Dec 9th and drove to Grand Junction, just 65 miles, and spent the night with our son and significant other-in-law.  Then Duane went to the VA hospital to have a test.  They were very nice to hurry the results and let us know he is fine.  We were just checking.

Then we drove to Mesquite and spent 2 nights and too much money (it's a casino)

Then Saturday we drove to Las Vegas for another 2 nights.  It's hard not to go to hotels that give you free rooms.  Then Monday we drove to Laughlin, still in Nevada.  Arleen won back enough to be even for gambling for this trip.  Then she got over $100 ahead.  That only lasted one day.  Now she is still ahead, $3.Woot, Woot.  (What does that mean?  Would someone please tell us dumb old folks!)

Friday we leave here for Los Angeles.  We are going to be in the audience for the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson.  We will let you know when it will air when we know.  Then we will go to Universal Studios. 

More later.

We can't believe we are doing it again....

So, here we go again.  This time we are traveling east.  We will be visiting South America and Antarctia and Africa.  Also, this time we go all the way north to Russia before heading back to the US. 

The trip starts and ends in Los Angeles.  We think that was important in our deciding to go on a long trip again.  We truly loved our first trip.  The people we met and the things we saw where wonderful.  We expect this new trip to be as good or better.  (of course, or why would we be going ;) )

We will keep you up on our trip and look forward to your comments.  Stay tuned.