We watched Charlie’s angels last night - I wasn’t expecting much, and I certainly wasn’t disappointed. What a crappy movie. I can’t believe they had the audacity to leave it open for a sequel at the end. I’m sure that if they do a sequel they’ll lose a lot of money on it.

This morning I woke up way too early, and we managed to get ready for the tour with a minimum of rush. The ship docked at Cozumel, and the tour was at the Mayan ruins at Tulum. This meant that we had to take a ferry to the mainland. The ferry ride over was super rough, and they had to pass out a bunch of barf bags, and a lot of people used them I think. Erin was a little queasy, but she managed to keep breakfast down. I didn’t have any troubles, but I didn’t enjoy the ride either. After a 45 minute ferry, we took the bus for an hour (plus 15 minutes for a bathroom/shopping break) When we got to the ruins, we had a little over an hour of guided tour, where Enrique (our guide) told us about the history of the Mayans in general, and Tulum specifically. Pretty interesting stuff, and the ruins were quite amazing as well. We had about an hour to wander around the ruins and take pictures. It was super hot there, even though it was mild at Cozumel. I spotted a couple of iguanas hanging out together, and got to see the great beaches there. We missed the ceremonial jumping off of a pole and spinning around it 13 times, which I guess would have been quite incredible to see.

We took ten minutes to shop at a couple of stalls, and I did get to do a little bargaining, and got a good deal on a souvenir. It’s fun to barter sometimes. Erin bought a little something too. We rushed back to the bus, because Enrique impressed upon us that the bus had to leave on time to get back to the ferry on time. Well, two tours, two women on each never returned to the bus… We waited 20 minutes after we were supposed to have left (30 minutes after we were supposed to be back at the bus) then left without two women. I can’t understand what would possess a person to try and push it like that - as it is they had to get a taxi back to Playa Del Carmen (which as previously mentioned was an hour long bus ride) and then likely had to pay their own way onto a ferry to get back to the ship…Granted, it would have been nice to have another 30 minutes or so at the site, but having already seen the bus leave people behind, I believed Enrique when he said the bus would leave without us if we weren’t back in time. He said that in the 15 years that he’s been doing tours at Tulum, that was only the second time he’s had to leave anyone behind. Personally, in the 10 days I’ve been taking tours (a grand total of two tours) that’s the second time we’ve had to leave people behind… Bizarre.

Anyway, the ferry ride back was much more smooth than the way out. When we got back to Cozumel, we were in an interesting position. We were in the front two seats on the side of the boat with the gangway, but we were stuck behind a set of stairs. End result was that we had a perfect vantage point for the most entertaining thing I’ve seen since, well, maybe ever. I should preface this story with a bit of the Mayan knowledge that our guide passed on. Mayan descendants tend to be quite short, this is partly why the Mayans were conquered by the Tolteks and the Spanish. The end result of this is that the doorways on the boat weren’t particularly big. Subtract from that about a foot or a foot and a half due to the gangplank being put through the doorway, and all but the very very short had to duck to avoid hitting their heads - on a packed ferry of over 200 people, only 2 or 3 didn’t have to duck. Having had experience with this, the crew had this bright red foam pad that they attached to the top of the doorway, so if people hit their heads, it doesn’t kill them. In addition, there was a crewman standing there, repeating “watch your head” over and over again. Inevitably, people did not pay any attention, didn’t duck, and walked straight into the door-frame. There were basically three types of people who walked out the door. 1) People who were used to ducking under things, who walked up the the door normally and ducked under it, 2) people who weren’t used to ducking under things, and very nervously crept up to the doorway bent over at the waist for ten feet or so, and 3) people who were oblivious to the low doorway until their forehead met with it accompanied by a bonking sound. Sitting there and watching everyone get off the boat, I got pretty good at predicting whether a person would bonk their head or not. Still funnier was when the crewman would say “Watch your head” three times while a person was on the gangway, then “bonk.” It was cruel, but Erin and I sat there laughing quite heartily. I suppose it didn’t help that they had shown “Mexico’s funniest home videos” on a big TV at the front of the ferry the whole way. It was truly comical to see people hitting their heads. I’m giggling just remembering it…The best was when two or three people in a row would hit their heads.

For those of you keeping score, the bonk people were 95-98% women. Just in case you were wondering. There were several women who walked under the door-frame only through the good fortune of having the boat move up as they walked under the frame (when the boat rose, it became more level with the dock, which caused the angle of the gangway to become less, which gave just enough clearance that they didn’t brain themselves)

It was pretty entertaining anyway, and well worth the price of admission (well, not if you consider the whole tour price, but I’m sure the ferry ride wasn’t that expensive.)

When we got back to the ship, we had enough time to go and do a little shopping for souvenirs, which we were to rushed at the ruins to shop for. I managed to get a really nice chess set for $19 US, and we picked up a couple of the by now ubiquitous tshirts.

Sea day tomorrow, then we fly back home. I’m looking forward to it.

We arrived on Grand Cayman at some ungodly hour (7:30 actually) Turns out that not many people wanted to go ashore first thing in the morning…So, 7:30 AM in a strange city with no local currency, we set off to find a payphone. We managed to find a bank of payphones nearby, but that still didn’t solve the lack of local coinage problem. For that, we turned to a local cheque cashing place, where we managed to trade a US dollar for 4 Cayman Islands quarters - a full CI$0.20 more than it was worth. Anyway, armed with a few quarters, we went back to the payphones (did I mention it was a bank of payphones? See that’s funny cause Grand Cayman has about a billion banks with offices on it.) We called my friend Jon up, and he came and picked us up to tour us around the island.

We went straight to Hell. Unfortunately, the guy who runs the gift shop was on holiday in the US, so we missed out on some local colour (Note the familiar u in colour - Gotta love former British colonies.) Anyway, after taking a few pictures of the “brimstone” and browsing the gift shop, we got back on the road (cause apparently there is only one road on the island…) From hell, we went to the Turtle Farms, which was really interesting, just not for very long. We did take about a billion (ok 50) pictures of turtles, and some of them were even good. From there, we were going to go to Rum Point, but on the way there, we decided to go to the Queen Elizabeth II Botanic Gardens instead.

We walked a path that was about a mile long, snapping photos along the way - we saw all kinds of cool looking plants, and even a couple of rare Blue Rock Iguanas. Pretty big lizards, very cool. One of the more interesting parts of the walk was all the trees that had signs on them telling you not to touch them. Apparently just touching these trees will cause you to break out in painful blisters. Extremely toxic and stuff. The botanic park was really neat, and well worth the couple of hours that it took to go there, tour it and come back. After that, we had lunch at the Hard Rock cafe, where we were “served” by a waiter from Regina. Lots of good food, though apparently when that particular waiter says “I’ll be right back” you can’t believe him - on three separate occasions he said that, and each time it seemed like he’d gone for coffee before we saw him again. After that, we bought some Tshirts, which took the rest of our american dollars, so we went to look for a bank to get more. Like I said before, there are about a billion banks on Grand Cayman, but most of them don’t have retail branches. Of the ones we saw, most of them were Canadian banks - Scotia, Royal, CIBC. We went to the Bank of Butterfield to get US dollars, the bank machine said that it gave US of CI dollars, but not how to get the US dollars. Anyway, we ended up taking out Cayman Island dollars by accident. Luckily Jon came to the rescue, and took out US dollars and bought our CI Dollars.

All in all, a great day. It was great to see Jon again, it had been too long.

After that, we got back on the ship, and had Formal Night part II. We got our picture taken in front of a cheesy backdrop (the staircase from Titanic.)

We slept in today, ate breakfast, then went ashore around 1:30 in Jamaica. Our detour took us to Montego bay. We didn’t really have time to do any sight seeing, though we were harassed by taxi drivers quite relentlessly. They all wanted to take us on a tour of the island. We did a little shopping in the touristy mall thing, picked up some Rum and souvenirs and stuff. The taxi drivers kept following us from store to store. Erin kept getting offers to have her hair braided, and the old standby Carmen Miranda’s kept wanting their pictures taken. Shop owners all escorted us around their shops. We did find a couple of shops where the people weren’t too pushy. Erin bought a wraparound dress & top thing. Other than that though, we didn’t have much time for anything.

I attempted to get the web page updated from the “internet” access available on the ship today. Well, I managed to get my files over to the laptop without too much trouble, using the microdrive’s PC card adapter. No FTP access, and shaw’s webmail didn’t work. For what it’s worth, the internet access was blazingly slow, so I think I must have been too far from the Access Point - though they don’t tell you where that is.

I did post a comment to the latest entry on the page though.

We’ve been watching movies like crazy lately, Moulin Rouge, Spy kids, Meet The Parents, etc. We’ve seen a bunch of movies that we likely wouldn’t have rented (we’re currently watching Legally Blonde - well, Erin is.)

The nasty storm that drove us from Costa Rica has caused us to be at sea all day. Tomorrow we’re making a stop at Montego Bay Jamaica, to make up for missing Costa Rica. I think it should be fun, the weather permitting of course. We weren’t sure what we’d do in Costa Rica, or even if we’d leave the ship, but I’m pretty sure we’ll be disembarking in Jamaica and do some walking or something.

We hit the casino today with plans to lose a whole $10. We played $2 on the nickel slots, and the rest on quarter slots. Erin had no luck at all, I think she only had one winning spin, and it was just a 2-1 bet. I hit a 100-1 on my third nickel, then spent a lot of time trying to lose all those nickels. I did finally manage to do it :) I was up a couple of bucks at the quarter slots too, though Erin was pretty unlucky there again. We did manage to lose all the money we’d planned though :)

Tonight we went to the Italian restaurant for supper, I had a pretty uninspired lasagna, and Erin had some tasty spinach stuffed baked pasta dish. It was nice to have dinner with just the two of us for a change of pace.

That’s it until tomorrow.

Yesterday we passed halfway through the Panama Canal, and back again. We passed through at some ungodly hour, so I stayed in bed. Erin did get up though, and she managed to snap a bunch of pictures of the South transit. After the ship cruised around Gatun Lake for a couple of hours, I got out of bed and we watched the North passage together. I snapped a bunch more pictures, mostly of three other ships that were passing through the locks Southbound. It rained on and off all day yesterday, so we had to be relatively careful with the camera - digital cameras and rain don’t play well together.

Anyway, Erin was exhausted, so we took a nap/watched a couple of movies on TV “Return to Me” which was David Duchovney’s romantic comedy, and then I watched “O Brother, Where Art Thou,” while Erin slept. After that, we went for supper, which was kind of disappointing. I ordered a spring chicken, and got KFC + fries. Not quite what I was expecting, and the chicken was kind of dry. Oh well, can’t have great meals every time I guess. The whole time, the ship was rolling quite violently. The sea conditions have varied from moderate to rough since we left the Canal (4 ft to 12 ft swells) and the wind speed is near Gale force (Force 7, whatever that means) As a result, the scheduled stop at Limon, Costa Rica has been canceled. Lots of people were looking quite green around the gills yesterday, and even Erin wasn’t feeling great. I did ok, my stomach was a little upset, but I think that’s because I didn’t eat much at dinner, so I was hungry. Apparently the ship is looking for another port to call on before we sail to Grand Cayman. It’s rainy and windy again today, with moderate seas (though they were “rough” when we first woke up.)

We went to a show starring some Broadway singer (two time Toni nominated, don’t you know) It wasn’t bad, and I don’t tend to like that type of show. She had a great voice (still does I imagine :) and played to the crowd fairly well. Erin enjoyed it at any rate. We had planned on going to two shows last night, but we did them in the wrong order - one only played at 8:15, and the one we saw played at 8:30 and 10:30 - we thought it was the other way around.

At any rate, we came back to the room and watched “Saving Grace” which is a pretty funny British movie. I’d never heard much about it, so it was interesting watching the story develop with no preconceived notions. If you haven’t seen it, I recommend it.

Anyway, we’re both pretty hungry, so we’re going to go for Breakfast now I think

Today we went to Cartagena bright and early. First we went for a quick breakfast of Pineapple at the buffet, then we tried to get off the elevators at deck 5. As it turns out, the deck was so packed, that we couldn’t get off of the elevator. We ended up going to deck 7 and taking stairs down to a different gangway. After a relatively short wait in line to get off the ship, we got on a tour bus driven by Luis. Our guide’s name was Herbert, and as a way of tracking passengers, we were each given a sticker with Herbert written on it, so we wouldn’t get on the wrong bus by mistake or something.

Anyway, after driving for a bit, we came to the San Felipe fortress, which was pretty interesting stuff. They had all kinds of places where they used to store gunpowder that could be ignited from within the walls, in case invaders ever managed to take the fortress. It was really an interestingly designed fortress, Cartagena was really well fortified in it’s day. We’ve got a few pictures of the fortress, but really we were too close to it to really do it justice, so some of the pictures of the fortress were taken from the Lapopa Monastery, which was our second stop. The monastery is situated on the top of a large hill, which overlooks the entire city. On the one side of the monastery, there was little spiked fences sticking out to keep the children of the area from climbing in to beg for money. All it did was make them use a little ingenuity, there were a couple of children with cut off pop bottles attached to sticks that they stuck through the grating to attempt to get money. Our guide said not to give them any, because they should learn to go to school and earn their money properly. It was quite sad actually. At one point, one of the sticks came a little too close, and the Tourist Police snapped the end off, and threw it in a pile of other similar sticks.

After the monastery, we drove through the old section of Cartagena - the part enclosed by the walls. We stopped in a church, which was quite magnificent, with an extremely high dome, with stained glass surrounding it. Sadly, the lighting was such that it wasn’t possible for me to get a good picture of it. I managed to get some good panoramas of the city from the monastery, as well as a couple of vertical panoramas of the altars at both the monastery and the church.

This being my first visit to a “tourist” city, I was fascinated by all the street vendors. We made some purchases at the monastery, as well as outside a shopping center. I don’t think I’ve said “No, Thank you.” as many times in my entire life prior to today though. The truly funny thing is that you’d tell some of the people no, and they’d follow you for a half a block still trying to sell you something. The prices kept dropping too.

We did stop at a shopping center in between the monastery and the old city, and looked at a bunch of emerald jewelry. We had no intention of buying any emeralds, but I’m sure if we had wanted to, we were in the right place to do it. Basically all the stores in this little shopping center were jewelry stores. There were a couple of knickknack stores and a casino, but by far the majority were Emerald stores. The funny thing is that I could swear we signed up for the non-shopping tour. No big deal though, it was kind of fun to circle the block and see the different ways the street vendors tried to snag your attention. As an interesting side note to our trip to the shopping center, Herbert told us to meet back at the bus in 45 minutes. Well, after 45 minutes, all but two of the passengers were on the bus. Two ladies were AWOL, and Herbert was quite beside himself. He searched the entire center, even enlisted the help of his tour agency’s head office (which was also in the center) but the ladies were not to be found. We ended up leaving without them anyway. I think they must have caught a cab, or hopped on another tour bus or something. It would have been nice of them to mention something to our tour guide, or driver or something. We’re pretty sure that the ladies made it back on the ship, because there were two people who were being paged just before we left (ie. Are you on the ship? We want to leave) and they were not both female.

We were quite overheated at this point, so we went for a quick swim, and cooled off. After taking a bit of a nap/watching some cheesy 1985 teen movie with Sara Jessica Parker and Helen Hunt (Shannen Doehrty too - can you name the movie?) and doing a load of laundry, we got ready for supper.

Tonight was French cuisine, so I got to try out some new things. For previous dinners, I’d tried such famous dishes as Lobster Thermidore, and Gazpacho soup. Tonight, I had Viscysoisse (which is a chilled potato soup) and frogs legs. What can I say, I had to at least try them, and they were quite good. Taste like chicken. After the first night, the dinners have been superb. Erin’s been a little less adventurous, but I think she’s enjoying things nonetheless. She had a chocolate souffle the other night, which was apparently good, but didn’t hold a candle to her uncle Jim’s chocolate souffle (which is among the seven wonders of the modern world in my estimation, along with velcro, and those pens that can write underwater and upside down) The desserts have been quite good. The only problem is deciding which one to order.

Which brings me to Dottie. We’ve had dinner with Frank and Dottie twice now, they’re a retired couple from Jupiter Florida (originally from New York) Frank is quite a nice guy, and he’s fun to talk with. Dottie is nice too, and she’s ordered two desserts both times, though the first time was my fault - I had a Pear tart that she thought looked quite good, so she ordered one for herself, after she was finished with her first dessert. Interesting conversation at any rate, and it was interesting to be seated with the same people again. I think the traditional cruise dinner method would be quite nice, where you’re seated with the same people every night. The only problem is that you could easily get stuck at a table with a couple of real duds (like me :) and you’d have a heck of a time getting out of it. It seems like we’ve had a pretty full day, and at 3:00 it seemed like it should be time for bed already. I’m looking forward to a relatively relaxing day tomorrow, when we go through the Canal (You know, a man a plan a canal, Panama?) I’m not super interested in the sight of going through the locks, so I don’t plan on getting out of bed at 6:00 in the morning to fight for deck space. I figure I can see the same thing when we go back through, only in reverse, plus I get to sleep in a bit.

I could get used to this “being on vacation” thing. The amazing thing is that I’ve only been gone from work for three days at this point, and I feel like its been a million years. Very fun and very relaxing. My only real complaint is that there is no laptop connectivity, so I can’t just use my computer to hook up to the net like I’d like. Apparently some cruise lines do offer that, so I think that’s something I’d look into before going on another cruise (though I suspect that by the time that happens they’ll all offer a laptop in every room or something silly like that)

Wow, someone must have used the verbose switch on me today. I guess that’s more than enough to digest on our latest day at sea. I’ll have to work up a page with pictures on it, cause we got some good ones, and there are quite a few of them.

Until tomorrow night then…

Not much happening here. We went to see Chocolat (which neither of us had seen) and quite enjoyed it. At dinner tonight, we sat with four other Canadians, two of which even spend time in Saskatchewan regularly. It was quite interesting sitting at a table with 6 Canadians, and 2 Americans, the Americans kind of seemed left out a bit. Not to worry though, they outnumber us in general. Interestingly enough, it was the first dinner where no complaints were heard. I’m not sure if that’s a function of the fact that the table was Canadian dominated or what, but the past two dinners we had at least one complainer at the table. It’s kind of funny actually, we have noticed a lot of the old ladies on the ship are prolific complainers.

Last night was the first Formal dinner, which was nice. The food was quite good too. Despite what you may hear, the food isn’t overwhelming copious. The three course meals for supper may sound daunting, but each course is relatively small, and it adds up to a nice dinner. Don’t get me wrong, if you want to eat a lot of food, the 24 hour buffet is there with as much food as you could ever want, but it doesn’t compare very favorably with the meals in the dining room.

After the formal dinner, Erin and I tried to go to a show - “C’est Magnifique” which was too full a half hour before curtain, so we ended up going back to the cabin and watching Bedazzled on the laptop. It was neat to be laying in bed watching a movie on our laps. After the movie, we went out for a stroll on deck, and ended up setting up a couple of deck chairs and staring at the stars. It’s too bad the ship is so overly lit, because it really reduces the amount of stars that are visible.

Oh, yeah, that sunset thing - apparently they don’t have sunsets here - at least not ones that can hold a candle to the ones back home - just another one of the things that I take for granted I guess. Basically the sunset was a big orange dipping below the horizon. That’s it. No fanfare, no cool colours. Oh well, can’t have everything I guess, it is quite warm here in January after all.

Speaking of warm, the humidity is killing me. It’s 95% all day every day. It’s definitely nice to come indoors to the airconditioned parts of the ship to cool off. Don’t get me wrong, we’re still spending lots of time on deck, or in the pools, it’s just nice to cool down every now and then.

Anyway, tomorrow is Cartagena, so we leave the ship at 8:00 and go on a tour of the old fort. I think it should be fun at any rate. We’ve got the camera all loaded up and ready to snap lots of pictures, so hopefully I’ll be able to post some of them here.