By Betsy and Rob

Puerto Quetzal… or Bust??

So we had intended to update our blog on Thursday after our ship docked in Puerto Quetzal, Guatemala. However, the shore excursion we were on the waiting list for never opened up, all of the other ones were full as well, and the port where we docked was just a tiny little thing with a few shops and nothing else around it.

Cute port? Yes! Anything to do in the port area? Not so much. We learned that the cruise lines uses this more as a “gateway” port to take passengers to nearby places like Antigua, Guatemala… which seems like we should have read up on ahead of time and maybe booked our excursion earlier. Oops. So, the upshot is that we stayed on the ship and have now essentially had four “sea days” in a row. Luckily, we actually love that! There is so much to see and do onboard, and if you have read our previous blogs, you know we are generally “joiners”, so we tend to take full advantage of all the things offered.

A bit more about Puerto Quetzal- this port is a super busy one for Guatemala, with tons of cargo ships loading and unloading at all hours during our visit, and “lined up” at sea waiting their turns to come into the port. I wish I had taken some better pictures of the port itself stacked with thousands of giant containers, but I did get some pictures of several of the ships waiting at sea for their turns to go into the port. They look distant in the photos, but they were actually pretty close and there were so many of them! It felt weird after all these days at sea to have that many ships so close to us.

Sea Daze

With four full days of not exiting the ship, what did we do? Welll, here is a little taster of some of the things we have been up to, or at least the ones we remembered to take pictures of!

Shows at Sea

Watching amazing sunsets and clouds

Here are a few of the really good (indoor) shows/acts we’ve seen onboard:

Sustenance at Sea

The inevitable amounts of cruise eating…

Shenanigans at Sea

We continue to take advantage of the wide variety of activities on board including house bands, signature shows, trivia, guest competitions and classes, casino, pools and sundeck, the gym (yes, we have actually seen the inside of this place a few times), or just reading with great ocean views. A few of our “joiner” highlights:

✅ Rob participated in and won(!) the quarterback challenge, where he had to throw the “American football” across the pool and into a basket. Yes, there were other competitors, and yes, Rob probably the youngest arm by several years, but we’ll still take the win (and the grand prize – a Celebrity pop socket). No pictures because Betsy was waiting for my name to be called and didn’t realize that I was “Bob” for this event. (Betsy’s side note: Just when you think you know your husband of 33 years, he goes and enters a football challenge under the name “Bob”. 🤷‍♀️)

✅ Betsy went to the postcard painting class. The instructors provided post cards and colored pens. However, there were not enough pens for everyone in all the colors, so they were asked to take two and return them when done. Well, Betsy found out that older ladies (and some men) become feral with their art supplies and were not about to share any of the booty they acquired at the start of the class. So, Betsy’s post card was a vibrant green and fluorescent yellow masterpiece that ended up in the trash. Also no pictures provided for this activity unless you are inclined to dig through the ship’s trash.

✅✅ And here is an assortment of general tomfoolery photos.

Specials at Sea

A privilege of moving on up in the loyalty club has been being able to attend “special events” for repeat cruisers. We’ve had some great food, entertainment, drinks, and opportunities to meet people at these functions.

Sleepiness at Sea

What else did we do at sea? Honest answer number one: we lived up to some of the promises we made ourselves during our years of child raising and our long working years when we were exhausted but dragging into work (especially in April and May at the end of the school year- are you feeling me, educators?!): we slept. I remember promising myself that “As soon as I retire, I’m going to sleep whenever I want!” Well, it maybe hasn’t been whenever, but it has been darn good, these Zzzzzzs. We are finally both learning to become nappers (Awesome! Who knew!? Oh wait… literally everyone else ever? We should have listened!) and we are also finally able to sleep most nights following our own circadian rhythms (which for us means bed at 1-2:30 a.m. range and wake up around 10 or 11 a.m.). One of the best feelings in the morning is waking up at 8:00 a.m., looking at the clock and just going back to sleep, for 30 minutes or 3 hours (or more?!), knowing there is nothing pressing that we need to get up for.

We’ve always been terrible night owls, which truly sucks when you follow a regular 8-5 type work day. If you think our schedule sounds nuts, I will share that my 80+ year old mama keeps an even later sleep schedule than us, so it’s in my genes (that’s my story and I’m sticking to it)!

Funny/sad sleep-related story: one of the great benefits of cruising is, of course, having our cabin steward come in twice daily to clean and refresh towels and do nightly turn down service. Like a hotel, the ship gives you a sign to put on your door indicating if you are sleeping or want your room cleaned up, and they never disturb you if the sign is on the door. Most days on the ship we have been getting up around 8-9:30 range to either get off the ship or go to a port talk or some other morning activities. These last few days with not exiting the ship we have been sleeping later. I don’t know exactly what hours the cabin stewards usually work, but I do know they start very early! Yesterday we had a realllly good sleep in and didn’t wake up until about 11:30 a.m.. I heard a noise outside our cabin door when I awoke, so I went to the door and looked out our little cabin peephole. There, slumped against the wall, was our cabin steward. He was just hunched down and staring off into space, like maybe he had been there for hours, right outside our cabin door. I don’t know how long this man had actually been waiting for me to wake up, but it was the saddest and most guilt-inducing sight I had seen on this ship. I speed dressed with the guilt of a thousand lazy people, and left the cabin to hear his cheery “Good morning, err, good afternoon ma’am!” Note to self: leave big tip for cabin steward.

Whew- this was a long post to establish how lazy we’ve been! But thanks, as always, for adventuring with us!!