World Cruise - Day 11 - Jan 23 - At Sea

Last night’s entertainment was Al Katz, a very funny stand up comedian.  He did a great show and kept it clean, much appreciated.

After the show, we went up to the pool deck for Movies Under the Stars.  We watched “Blue Hawaii” (an Elvis Presley movie) while relaxing in lawn chairs by the pool.  Nice way to get ready for our two stops in Hawaii at the end of next week.

Today begins a series of 5 days at sea before we reach San Diego on Jan 28.  Quite a few people onboard will be getting off on San Diego and we will get some new segment cruisers joining us in San Diego, staying on to Sydney, Singapore or possibly all the way to Venice (the last stop on the world cruise).

I thought today would be a good day to get caught up on the comments.  Thanks to all those who have provided comments, it helps me to understand what needs further details and/or clarification, as well as input on how the blog itself is rendering.

Hi Dennis and Merlena, thanks for your positive feedback about the blog.  We look forward to meeting you in San Diego!

Sonia asked about the number of people in the ping pong tournament.  It is usually about 8 to 10 people.  So if there are only 8 you have a quarterfinal, semifinal and final, you essentially have to win three games.  If there are more than 8, they play a “wild card” game (or games) to get into the quarterfinals.  You are right about Puerto Quepos now being called just Quepos, although all of the signs in town still say Puerto Quepos.  And it probably sounds cooler to call it that from a cruise line perspective, so maybe they are just sticking with the old name.  But I have updated the name on my blog to just Quepos, thanks.

Mary and Alex, thanks for the feedback on the blog.  We look forward to meeting you when you join in San Diego!

Patti, there is nothing posted about the direction of the walking track.  Almost everyone (except the few renegades) go counterclockwise.  I’m not sure why everyone gravitates to that direction as being the “right” direction, I guess it’s just majority rules.

Patti, I found out that the split tailed bird we saw in Panama (and again in Costa Rica) is a swift.  Our guide in Costa Rica had a bird book that showed a pic of it.  Yes, we remember feeding the seagulls from the cruise ship balcony on the cruise we took together.  I still do that sometimes while waiting for the ferry in Seattle next door at Ivar’s, where the gulls swoop down to eat french fries that people toss into the air.  Still lots of fun.  I end up stealing the fries from everyone else (we usually order fish and chips from Ivar’s) so that I can feed the seagulls a second and third time.

Julie commented on how I always have the camera on hand.  That is the great advantage with my camera, which I bought just before this trip.  I had an older 5MP camera with a great lens (12x optical) that I had been using for the past 5 years, decided it was finally time to upgrade.  I was stuck between a pocket-sized camera and a DSLR, which would take better pics, but also would only be with me when touring.  And I didn’t like the idea that I would be the obvious tourist.  So I went with the Canon PowerShot SX230.  It has 14x optical zoom and is much smaller than my old camera, so I usually take it with me pretty much everywhere.  I like the camera, although there are three issues with it: 1) it doesn’t handle background light as well as my other camera (which may be because of point #2); 2) I haven’t figured out how to do a forced flash yet (where you force a flash even when there is background light, such as when the sun is behind the person and they are in a shadow; 3) the automatic lens cover is jamming, so it’s not fully closing on its own and when I manually close it all of the way, it doesn’t open all the way when I turn it on (resulting in several pics with a shadow top right or bottom left).  If I was at home, I would return it and get a new one.  Someone onboard said that I just need to use a power air sprayer to clean out the lens, but no one onboard seems to have one.  I will hopefully find out the forced flash answer when I get to San Diego in five days and have full Internet access on my phone, but if someone else is able to come up with that answer quickly and send me an e-mail to Brian at Krueger dot com (I spell it out to avoid spam programs from detecting), I would very much appreciate it.

Julie asked about Dan (the 21-year-old traveling with his grandparents) being stuck with all the old fogies.  I asked him about it today when I saw him up on the walking track.  He said there is good and not so good.  The good is that he normally doesn’t have time to relax, which he does have onboard.  Also, he likes how he’s good at all the sports compared to everyone else.  The not so good is that sometimes the pace is a little bit slow for him.  That said, he seems to be handling the age difference quite well.  He is a real gentleman, it’s nice to see how he watches out for his grandparents.  He is viewing this as a new life experience, an extension of his education.  He was homeschooled (like our kids) and is taking time off from college to do this trip.  He gets involved in a lot of the sports activities onboard, so it keeps him moving around during the day.  Then we see him at dinner sitting with his grandparents.  This isn’t a real party ship, but that doesn’t seem to be his style anyway.

Sonia, thanks for the photo feedback, I will include those in my Fantastic Fifty folder.

Sonia, Julie and Patti both commented on my going around the closed sign.  The reason that the trail was closed was they were doing maintenance on it.  That said, wandering off into the jungle by yourself definitely has its risks.  It did occur to me that if I fell or had any sort of problem, there was no way for anyone to know, since there was no cell service there (I didn’t even take my phone, since it didn’t have a connection).  I eventually turned around when I came upon some of the workers on the trail up ahead.  I startled them, they were taking an afternoon nap.  I didn’t want to stick around to see if they were armed, so I high tailed it back to the beach.

Julie and Patti both commented on the “doggie hanging by its tail” pic.  One of my pics, not sure why, ended up rotated on the blog.  I checked the outgoing e-mail and it was definitely rotated correctly in the e-mail, but for some reason ended up rotated 1/4 turn clockwise on the blog.  I went into the blog directly to try to correct it, but was not able to do so.  I talked to someone else onboard who also works with Blogger (the tool used for publishing the blog) and they said there is a glitch with Blogger on the orientation of some pics—apparently it autocorrects the orientation when it thinks you had it wrong.  There is apparently a workaround, but I may have to wait until I get home to get it corrected.  So when you see rotated pics in the future, that’s probably what happened.

Patti, you are right about the Jesus Christ Lizard, it doesn’t technically walk on water, it actually runs on water and only for short distances.  I didn’t see it actually doing that, just got the pic of it that I posted.

Patti, thanks for the info on the different butterflies.  I still remember your butterfly collections when we were growing up.  The photo contest is on any pics taken during the world cruise, not just flowers.  I liked the white-faced monkeys as well and I’m already including that one as one of my entries.  BTW, I do not expect to win anything in the photo contest, for me it is more about sharing my best pic.  The concept of the contest is that you bring your best 50 photos and ideally have them on a laptop playing on a slideshow.  Then everyone who comes brings a flash drive and gets a copy of your best photos.  So you come home from the cruise with all the best pics from the group.  But someone asked if we were giving out a prize, so that’s why I needed the gold and silver medal from ping pong.

I went to watch Alfredo Marzi, the Master Chef, today do a cooking demonstration.  He was doing both a main course and a dessert.

The dessert was a type of chocalate granache.

They walk around to the tables with the finished product so that everyone can see it.  The chef had a great quote about eating and enjoying life in general as you get older.  He said, “Eat when you are hungry, drink when you are thirsty, sleep when you need to and make love when you can.”

This was our dessert from a couple nights ago, a chocolate peanut butter cake.  It was very tasty and wonderfully presented.

We didn’t do very well at trivia this morning.  Usually we are one of the top two or three teams, but not today.  Tough questions.  There is one group that is consistently either the winner or one of the top two.  They have someone on their team who used to be a librarian and he’s quite good.  I think he may be getting off in San Diego, so maybe we’ll have an opportunity to win at trivia again, although we did beat them a couple of times so far, even though their team is typically gets a better score.  Trivia is twice a day, usually at 11:15a and 4:15a.  Here are a couple of the tough questions from trivia this morning.  What is the stage name of the British musician born in 1947 as David Jones?  What are the four types of radiation?  Answers to the first is David Bowie (we put Tom Jones) and the answer to the second is alpha, beta, gamma and X rays (we had only gamma and X).  Rather than tease you with the questions and no answers, I’ll put the answers into each blog posting, it’s probably more interesting that way.

A few of the past trivia questions and answers (tough ones that we missed): What does M&M stand for?  Mars and Mars.  What is the only nation to host the Summer Olympics and not win a gold medal?   Canada.  Pearl Harbor was attacked on Dec 7, 1941.  What archipelago of islands was invaded by the Japanese on Dec 8, 1941?  Philippines.  What is the capital of Sierra Leone?  Freetown.  What does a bicepholas have two of?  Heads (or brains).  How many balls, including the cue ball, are used in snooker? 22 (I think that was the right answer, not sure).

Trivia in the afternoon was a tough one as well.  Without boring you with the ones we missed, here are the most interesting ones we got right.  The Ellora Caves are located in which Asian Country?  India (this was my guess and it was only a guess, but it was right).  Which show had the song, “Love Changes Everything?”  Aspects of Love (credits to Arnold, our resident music category specialist).  Horology is the art of making what?  Clocks (credit to Bill on that one).  And the one that I don’t think anyone in the entire room got right: How many points for 3^rd place in Formula One Grand Prix Racing?  4.  Another one nobody got right: Decklin McMannis is the stage name of which famous pop singer?  Elvis Costello.

I know, too much trivia about trivia.  But hey, it’s a sea day.

Ken Isman (one of our fellow Cruise Critic members) has been strumming and singing by the pool in between the other acts and activities that have been taking place.  He does John Denver, Neil Diamond and other favorites.  He’s quite good and got a lot of applause from the people at the pool.

I didn’t play ping pong today, since I’m nursing my tennis elbow.  Victor (above) saw me going to dinner and asked me why I wasn’t there.  When I told him about my tennis elbow, he said that I should continue to nurse it, since today was the first day that he won at ping pong.  He was wearing his silver medal (from the day we played in the finals) and his gold medal, which he just earned today.  He was so excited to show his tablemates his medals.  Good for him.

The entertainment this evening was Bobby Brooks Wilson, son of Jackie Wilson.  I remember his father for “Shout” (which was made famous in Animal House) and a couple other songs.  He also sang songs from Sam Cooke, The Platters, Little Richard, Elvis Presley and other classics of the 50s and 60s.  He put on a great show and will be performing one more time before we get to San Diego.

Tomorrow is another sea day.  We get to San Diego on Saturday.