I am so tired, who knew a vacation could wear you out so thoroughly. It is our “extra day” – a day at sea and they have added a bunch of stuff to the schedule to keep us all entertained for an extra day. But, I’m done, I’m so tired, I really don’t want to play too hard. A little food, a little football, a little more food, I’m starting to get a little energy, so we are going out for the night.
Bingo is being played one more time in the Spectacular lounge, we didn’t win big last night, so we are back again. Kayla and Lindsey are here, and we have all decided to play. When K and I went to buy our Bingo cards, her Carnival card had been shut off, so I bought all the bingo cards and let them pick which one they wanted to play. The only stipulation I put on it was if either of them win, we split the pot. The pot was $1199. Imagine our surprise when Lindsey WON! What a nice way to end a great cruise, it wasn’t enough to cover our cruising costs, but it did cover the girls – yay for them!
Finally docked back in Long Beach, we learned a lot about cruising this week, so here is my list of advice.
- Get involved, get active, participate – remember you don’t know these people so you can’t be embarrassed
- If you have a shell, break out of it – it can be so much fun
- There is food available all the time, stick to some kind of schedule so you don’t spend all your time in line or worse, in a food coma
- If you like to drink alcohol, go ahead and buy the alcohol package – we didn’t think we could run up a $600 bar tab in a week’s time, we were wrong – it’s not too hard at $8 to $10 a drink
- Tour the ship regularly – things change, other things start happening that you might miss, check it all out
- Get outside
- Don’t get uptight – by the end of the cruise we had found a number of a**holes, mostly people who weren’t enjoying the company they were keeping – try not to be one of these
- If you can’t be in love with the one you are with on a cruise ship, you might as well pack it in – what a romantic vacation
- Cruises are a true vacation – no travel to worry about, no meals to worry about and for the most part, you don’t have to worry about money either
- Talk to the people around you, you might make some great friends
We are already planning another cruise vacation, thinking we might need to plan a “racers” cruise with spouses and classes, who knew it could be so much fun, I’m glad we finally discovered that.
So, it’s day three in Puerto Vallarta, we are allowed to get off the ship beginning at 8 this morning, but we have to be back on by 4 – new departure time out of PV is set for 5 p.m. We’ve been watching the repairs, they seem to be going slow. There are a lot of grumbly people on board, folks who think we should have repaired in Long Beach before we left, others who are insisting to get off the boat NOW. Carnival has offered $200 to anyone who needs to change their departure flights; the airlines aren’t charging any change fees and we get an extra day aboard with no charge, hell, they are even picking up the gratuities. But, no, some people think they have to be home for Monday, I’m really glad, I’m not one of those. In our world, it just really doesn’t matter. We watched hundreds of people get off the ship to fly home. Carnival made it right for all of them, not only did they cover the change fees, but they also covered the hotel rooms for them. Now, I’m thinking about the hotels for the departing passengers, what about all of those coming in for next weeks cruise, Are they covering the hotels for those people too? That could be another 3000 people, just because a repair didn’t happen fast enough. Wow, that’s a cruiseline who takes care of it’s guests.
So that whole tired thing has caught up to me, we are in port at Puerto Vallarta and I have no desire to go anywhere. I know there are about a billion things we could be doing in the city, but five days of play has created the need for a day off. Swimsuits on, we are headed to the aft lido deck for the day. In and out of the pool and the hot tub, it was a great relaxing afternoon.
Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, a city of 225,000 people on the Pacific Ocean. Beautiful ocean views off the port, a city surrounded by mountains, there is not a lot of room for more growth. As you talk to people who have been here before, they talk about this quaint little city, it is not so quaint anymore, PV is a big city.
Cabo San Lucas, the tip of Baja, a small spit of land at the end of Baja CaliforniaSur. We actually spend a lot of time in Baja, but we rarely get to Cabo, it’s just a little too far down the tip past La Paz, and everywhere else we go in Baja provides awesome views and entertainment, as well.
No rest for the wicked on our little cruise. Late night last night followed by an early morning. As soon as the sun was up, Rich was up too, I sent him to breakfast on his own before I got up to shower, our plan was to meet up before 11. I headed out to the Scrapbook session, it turned out to be just a meet and greet with a bunch of professional scrapbookers. These ladies totally knew what they wanted, I was just a wannabe. Too much pressure, I can’t compete with that, so I bailed and went back to the room, in time to meet Rich and go to an acupuncture seminar. It was interesting how much information we got from Victoria regarding Chinese medicine in general. I volunteered to be the acupuncture “victim” to prove that it didn’t hurt, that was a first for me.
Just two days ago we were north of the Phoenix area wheelin’ some virgin ground for a race course, today we spent the day in the California desert wheelin’ some space that is very well known. Johnson Valley lies east of LA, between 29 Palms and Apple Valley, there is a nice little mountain range with a dry lake bed on it. It is used primarily by people on motorized vehicles of some sort. We saw everything today from motorcycles and ATV’s to 650 hp buggies out there.
A Life Unscripted 
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