After an excellent lunch of Italian specialties – pasta, antipasto, fish, cannelloni and the like, plus tiramisu for dessert – we headed back to the lounge for – you guessed it – more food! Ricardo, the maitre’d, and Raul Castillo, executive chef, put on a demonstration of Cerviche, decorating a truffle cake and Martini and Specialty coffee. (In all actuality, this cruise isn’t the food fest others typically are. There’s always room service, but meals are short time periods and there isn’t an alternative pizza bar or snack place. Cookies at 3 or 4 every day, and that’s about it. Which is really enough, particularly when you’re venturing out into the heat everyday on excursions. That’s not to say the food isn’t excellent and plentiful – it is – it’s just not such a focus as it is on other ships.)
Demonstrations were great – learned what to do with the popcorn and roasted corn kernels always on the buffet (besides just snacking on them which is what we’ve been doing!) – you put them in the cerviche! Awesome – not that we know – wish we would have learned that on Sunday! Not Thursday! Have recipes for all. The Truffle cake was awesome – Maggie #2 took the huge marzipan Rose we learned how to make – well – let me rephrase that – the rose that they chef showed us how to make – we all agreed, we’re not making that! No way! (PS – Maggie took it to eat, she likes Marzipan!)
At 3 pm there was an Imax movie about the Galapagos Archipelago. Then at 4, we all left again for the Dragon Hill walk. This was another rough zodiac ride. The seas were getting choppy, there is a spring tide going on, and you could feel it in the zodiac. The anticipation was for a dry landing here due to high tide. Jorge told us the snorkeling was not so good, so we elected to go over without our gear, but Ed and Cathy wore their swim suits in case they wanted to stay on the beach for a bit. As we approached the landing, we saw some one in the water right by the landing dock. One of the guests had lost their camera and Richard (our race-zodiac driver from the other day) had jumped in the water with snorkeling mask to try to find it. A very sweet and literally going “overboard” way to help the passengers. But what a sure fire way to ruin your trip. Losing your camera! Big Bummer!
After landing we started off on this short hike, around and up a hill, through land iguana territory. We spotted some large iguanas and fortunately, the girls didn’t get too camera happy, so I got to stay comfortably packed away – safe from these big ugly old creatures. Although they did manage to plop me in a tree for a close up – heck – at least I wasn’t on the ground as iguana app’s!
Walking towards the hill, we even managed to spot some baby iguanas, not more than 2 weeks old. Up and around the hill we came to a beautiful lookout point for photos of the coast. I got to pose next to what I hoped was an abandoned iguana burrow! ON the way back down, we watched a pair of flamingoes fly into the lagoon in front of us, then do their eating thing. Very majestic and tranquil.
Back at the beach, none of us wanted to swim, once again, too rough for us and just not worth the effort. Getting back on the zodiac was a little touchy – the rolling waves kept bopping the zodiac about. Once in, those of us on the left had to constantly stand as a wave crashed in over the side. Eventually we made it out and back to the ship for cookies and refreshments – a little wet – but safe and sound.
Evening activities are the norm, shower, lounge, briefing, dinner, then tonight, a movie night! Winged Migration is the name of the show. The highlight there is the billing of “popcorn” and “milkshakes”. We’re there! Had the popcorn – never saw the milkshakes! And didn’t make it through the movie either! Cathy and Maggi escaped outside with Ed following shortly after, then Richard. Sat out bon the back deck and chatted with Dick and Pedro and Eliana for bit, then Ed and Cathy headed off to sleep, marveling that it’s almost their last day!
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