4/9–Heading home from San Diego

Of course we are up early, and without breakfast at the hotel, we head out for a quick morning exercise walk and to find some coffee.  We find sustenance at Starbucks (sadly, but we do have this ancient old gift card, so at least it doesn’t cost us anything!), but on the way, oh my gosh! The eScooters!  They are everywhere – and not in a good way.  They are strewn all over the streets, laying down, standing up, on the curb, in the middle of the walk, by the garbage cans – such a huge nuisance! And this is on big wide sidewalks! 

We can not imagine what it would be like in Asheville where the scooters have already landed – albeit illegally.  We are keeping these pictures to share with city council if they ever even think of approving these public nuisances for our little teeny side-walked town.  Sheesh!

Walk and coffee completed. Showered and ready. We check out, say goodbye to Diane and Heinz who are also staying at the Horton Grand, grab an Uber and are at the airport waiting for our flight in no time.

All goes according to plan and we are home with relative ease, looking forward to starting Pottery classes again and spending the summer in Asheville.

4/8–San Diego

It’s another beautiful morning as we dock in San Diego harbor.  We aren’t in any rush as we have our breakfast and organize ourselves to disembark today.  We’re staying in town overnight so we don’t have to worry about rushing for an 11am flight.  Once we are ready, we get off fairly easily, then grab a cab over to the Horton Grand Hotel, right in the middle of the Gaslamp District.  We are too early to check in, so we dump our luggage and grab an Uber up to Balboa park where we intend to spend most of the day.

We start off at the Museum of Man, which is a relatively small museum, but packed with interesting exhibits.  The museum building itself is ornate with incredible statues and carvings on the front, a huge Moroccan type dome in the back and an auspicious bell tower.

Inside, on the first floor is dominated by the Mayan exhibit which has huge casts of original stelae found in Guatemala.  They were created in 1915, have been on display ever since, and are used for study since the original monuments have decayed with age and atmospheric conditions.  Dispersed around the stelae are displays of different Mayan artifacts and great explanations of Mayan architecture.

There is also a great “Beerology” exhibit which gives a great history of beer culture and all the different ancient craft brewing stories.  Obviously right up our alley!

There were tons more exhibits, Monsters, how to live with Animals, and then this awesome “PostSecret” exhibit that displayed thousands of postcards collected by Frank Warren, who started what he calls a community art project.  People were asked to write out a secret on a postcard – didn’t matter what it was, it just had to be true, and mail it back to him.  Over 10 years, millions of people have done just that and the postcards are displayed here.  You could spend an eternity reading them all – some are funny, some are poignant, some are down right sad – but all release their secrets into the world – and hopefully it helps them.  It was really a very powerful display.  And of course after that – what did we do? Go across the street to the secondary building where we spent time in the Cannibal exhibit learning about myths and reality and how cannibals aren’t necessarily who or what you think they are!  All in all it was an excellent way to spend our morning in San Diego.

Next up – lunch!  There are a few little cafes around, but we end up choosing the Prado at Balboa Park where we decide to sit outside on the lovely patio and choose from the Lounge menu which is much more up our alley than the restaurant menu.  It’s a beautiful day – of course – the weather outside is delightful as we share a small plate of Spicy Calamari and Mahi Mahi Tacos.

Next it is onto the San Diego Museum of Art to spend an hour or so browsing through their extensive collection of art from everywhere around the globe. Then it is time to head back to the hotel, which we decide to do on foot. Why not? It’s gorgeous, it’s only a little over 2 miles – and it’s all down hill.  We’re game! We head out through the park, passing the Visitor’s Center and the Japanese Garden….

…past the air and space museum and down into the city proper. After about a half an hour of walking, we stumble upon this great brewery, Little Miss Brewing (LMB), where everything has something bomb related. The logo is a bomb, the taps are all little missiles, and the beer is seriously great. So good in fact, we buy a little ball jar pint to take back with us to the room!

What a great day!  Back at the hotel, we get checked in, go upstairs in this awesome elevator with windows that look out onto the central patio, but also these great themed rooms that show how the hotel used to operate in the old days…

…then onto through the hallways to this huge lounge area at the top of the stairs (that lead down to the restaurant/bar) right outside our room with overstuffed sofas, and then finally into the room, which is really cool – updated (of course) but still with period furniture and an incredible balcony where we can sit out and enjoy the skyline. Nice!

After we settle in and get our bags set for traveling tomorrow, we decide to just go downstairs for dinner. We’ve seen a bunch of restaurants on our walk back here, but don’t really feel like going anywhere or messing with crowds, etc., so we settle in downstairs at Salt & Whiskey.  It has a great atmosphere, a lovely bar, excellent bartender and we are in time for happy hour at the bar which gets us discounted food. It’s a win-win!  We have a couple of drinks, dig into excellent crispy, fried brussel sprouts and Prime Rib Sliders – and are done for the day!

Back upstairs, we have our night cap on the balcony, watching the sunset….

….then sack out in the very comfy bed, ready to make our way home in the morning.

4/6–Cabo San Lucas and Todos Santos

Last port! Cabo San Lucas – we’ve been here multiple times, and have always found something interesting to do outside the confines of the Cabo towns.

Today is no different. We have a car rented and are going to head to Todos Santos, about an hour’s drive north of Cabo. First things first – the tender.  We get priority tendering because we are Elite Captain’s club, but even being early to the lounge, we are the 2nd tender called. Then we have to walk about 20 minutes to the Avis office (because the little car rental place we used to use on the pier is no longer in operation).  So, it’s our morning exercise, and it’s and easy walk – all flat around the harbor, past the place we had drinks last time where they tried to extort money from our friends because they said we didn’t pay (PS – we paid the bartender, who either conveniently didn’t remember or just flat our took the money), then on past the yachts in the harbor, the multitudes of restaurants and bars and finally onto the main road to the Avis office. 

Paperwork complete, we were on our way in no time, traversing out of the city and up into the undulating hills and valleys that make up the Baja peninsula.  It’s an amazing drive up through the Baja, with the Pacific on our left and the mountain range to our right.  Once out of the “suburbs,” the road opens up onto a 4 lane highway that whisks you northward to Todos Santos and La Paz beyond.

It only takes about an hour before we are in the little artists community that contains the Hotel California (yes of Eagles fame), and we are parking on the far side of town in front of Tacos y Mariscos – our chosen lunch spot.  From here, we can explore the town (it’s only about 10 square blocks) then come back for lunch and return to Cabo.  The town itself is very compact – a couple of blocks of retail (mostly artist studios selling amazing pottery and art – at amazing prices!  Totally not the normal Mexican pricing at all) and the Hotel California – which of course we take pictures of and wander in through their lobby, just to say we were there! We further explore some artist studios, then wander over to the Iglesia de Nuestra Senora del Pilar and the lovely plaza opposite, before retracing our steps to the restaurant, passing through the Casa del Cultural – a small museum with Nationalist murals – and the dropping off point for all the ship’s tours.

Argh! We are out of there in a heartbeat, making our way back down the street to Tacos & Mariscos, where we have the place to ourselves as we hung out on the umbrella’d patio, relaxing with our Modelo Negra beer snacking on a massive serving of chips with 3 types of salsa.  The food starts arriving, first the fried fish quesadilla which I mistakenly thought was a fried quesadilla – not just fried fish inside - so we thought, why not try something different?  Well, it was yummy, but it was huge, and filling and we still had our main meals to come.  Fortunately we had ordered 1/2 servings of cerviche - “jumble” for Ed (a mix of fish, shrimp, octopus and scallop) and mixed for me (just fish and shrimp).  If these were 1/2 orders, we’d hate to see the full order!  It was all fantastic, but too too much food.

We retrace our route out of the back end of the town, and onto the main highway for our return to Cabo.  We make a pit stop however at Art & Beer – of course! How could we not?  This is the coolest, quirkiest little roadside bar/restaurant combined with an art gallery.  It is a collection of palapas with huge desert art pieces strewn about, accessed by a board walk that meanders through the desert property.  It is run by Lourdes Campos and her partner Alfredo Ruiz – and that’s about all we know about them!  I read somewhere how they ended up here, and Alfredo began to create the “yard art,” but the details totally escape me now – and anyway – what does it matter?  I do know they have no electricity, no telephone and no wi-fi – but otherwise – it was just a totally cool place for a pit stop. 

Lourdes was behind the bar when we arrived, served us our really pricey beers (which also really cover your entry fee for the art garden) and we headed out to the palapa thatched dining area to sip our refreshing drinks while looking over the cool artwork everywhere in our sight range.  As we relaxed, Lourdes comes up with…horrors….a huge plate of cerviche!  It wouldn’t have been all that bad if we hadn’t just eaten that humongous meal, but we were stuffed and now had to try to consume this – delicious – but not necessary food!  It comes gratis with the beers (which actually makes the exorbitant price of the beers a little easier to justify), and we did our best to try to eat every morsel. Sigh.

Taking as much time as we could, we finally finished most of the plate, then tried to walk off our fullness in the art “garden” – or more appropriately “desert.”  Alfredo is definitely talented – and prolific. There were tons of amazing sculptures. mostly in iron, situated willy nilly about the property.  There were suns and moons and planets and abstract cube like things growing out of the cactus fields.  A huge adobe patio engraved with Art & Beer stood to the side of the garden, with the wooden boardwalk curving around it.  It was really totally amazing.

There was also a 2nd floor patio atop an inside art gallery where you could get the whole scope of the art placement, and see just exactly how far out into the desert they are really located.  The middle of nowhere!  With the town of Pescadero just a few miles down the road.  It must be spectacular out here at sunset and then at night, but I sure wouldn’t want to drive back into Cabo in the pitch dark on these roads.  Highway or not – that would be a little scary if you ask me.

Fortunately, we don’t have that issue as we have to get in gear and get back to the rental agency and the pier before 3:00pm.  So, we pay for our beers and take our leave off down the highway toward civilization.  About 40 minutes later, we hit the first clogs of traffic and wind our way around the main part of Cabo, avoiding as much traffic as we can, to get to the rental car place. 

We hike back along the marina, passing the bar that tried to rip us off the last time we were here, and then into the pier area proper, where we had our traditional final Mexican beer at the Rolling Stones bar, listening to loud rock and roll music and sunburned American tourists try to by a case of beer for the bus ride back to where ever they were staying.  Amusing!

Then its back to the long lines for tender, the 15 minute ride to the ship and our last 2 nights aboard. 

4/5–Puerta Vallarta to San Pancho and Sayulita

Today is our last “Bill” and “Christie” tour – and we are going to two villages near Puerto Vallarta:  San Pancho and Sayulita.  We meet up with our groups in the Passport bar, as usual, get organized, then head outside to meet our guide in the parking area.  We make it there with minimal fuss (ok, so there was fuss, too many chiefs – non-indigenous chiefs who’ve not been here before and don’t know where they are going) and begin to follow our guide to the van when suddenly we see Ron and Prim (from the fabulous Eclipse Amazing Race Sailing!  Oh my gosh!  On the 3rd to last day of the cruise we find out they are on the same ship?  Crazy!  After hugs, kisses, exclamation of surprise and cabin # exchange, we make plans to meet later aboard as head over to our tour van and group. Wow.

Excitement contained for now, we all pile into the van and head out of PV on our way up the coast to San Pancho (officially named San Francisco), with a stop at a local candy factory on the way.  The “factory” is one of many huge stalls on the side of the road with displays of candy, baked goods and fruit….fruit that looks surprisingly like jackfruit.  What? Our guide gets us samples, and it is jackfruit!  It’s called Jaca here, and OMG, I’m so excited. We buy a bag to take with us for the trip (everyone else is buying candy – but jackfruit to me is like candy – so no need for the real sugar stuff!) and off we go, happily munching away on our jaca bounty. 

After about an hour and a half total driving time, we arrive in San Pancho, where we head to the Entre Amigos project, a cooperative that provides local people with education, while teaching them environmentally friendly practices – and producing arts and crafts from recycling.  The project is housed in a series of low slung buildings with incredible artwork – trees created completely from recycled materials, murals from bottle caps - a library area and a beautiful painted mural in the recreation area.  It’s funded entirely through donations, and their work has been recognized by the World Economic Forum.  What an excellent example of community awareness! 

After a bit of time spent wandering through the premises, and shopping (and buying some cool recycled glass earrings), we head out for a stroll through town on our way to the “Golden Gate Bridge” of San Pancho.  On the way however, just across the street, is a local chocolate factory and store< Mexicolate, where we all decide we want to stop for samples.   Mexicolate is a small company working to promote native cocoa, then making their chocolate in the traditional ways to create excellent, indigenous chocolates.  We all crowd around the little display case, tasting samples and listening to their chocolate making process.  We end up buying a little box (which is pricey, especially for Mexico, but then again, it is local handmade chocolate) and we add a great t-shirt to the purchase, which is incredibly reasonably priced.  So the two purchases averaged out pretty well!

Chocolate craving handled (oh, and P.S., because they have such low sugar content, the chocolate won’t melt as we tote it around through the day), we strike out for the bridge and main town area.  We walk through the sleepy little town for a ways, only to find our driver waiting for us on a corner handing out ice cold bottles of water – makes us feel like we are running a marathon being handed drinks as we pass.  Too funny – and way too sweet!  We pass by lovely buildings with front porches and hammocks, onto the square by the San Francisco Asis church, past incredible recycled iron statues then finally to the little beach area (completely missing the Golden Gate Bridge – which was this little teeny bridge over a creek on the side of the main road) where a craft market was being held.  The vibe here is very relaxed, with a main street full of restaurants (some cooking over open wood flames) and bars and ending at the beach.  We grab a beer from one of the restaurants, hang out in the market for a bit, then head back to the van for Sayulita. 

A quick 15 minutes later and we are scrambling out of the van onto the main square of Sayulita, a beach town made popular in 2015 when it became a “magic town.”  To become a magic town, there needs to be some sort of cultural or artistic ambience to your town.  Sayulita has both with a mish-mash of local and international culture, plenty of artists and a hippie/surfer vibe all its own.  We are disgorged here with plenty of time to eat (on our own) and explore the town as we see fit.  We ask our guide her recommendations for cerviche – and she pointed us to two restaurants she used to visit frequently when she lived here. 

We ended up at El Costeno (the coast), with a prime table on the covered deck, right by the beach.  The menu looked awesome, and it was tough to make decisions, but we ended up Octopus for Ed (of course!) and tuna cerviche for me, which actually came out looking much more like tuna salad – but was actually just an excellent rendition of ground tuna marinated in lime juice and other spices surrounded by more cucumbers than I’d ever dream of eating, and topped with 4 healthy avocado slices.  Add 2 Modelo Negros to the list – and we spent a delightful hour plus eating and watching the comings and goings of the beach crowd…including beach vendors selling donut looking pastries, shrimps on skewers and oysters.  Totally great atmosphere!

With plenty of time left before our departure, we meandered through the town, looking at shops here and there, trying to find an ATM I trusted to grab some cash (because I totally forgot all the Pesos we had at home….sigh) and finally landing at this little bar called El Barrilito, right on the corner of the main square.  Walls decorated in wood strips, attached together in a patchwork sort of basket woven way, gave way to an open air patio with thatched roof and huge, live ferns and other plants clinging to the support beams, where we plunked down with 2 Pacificos to watch the world go by. 

We were the only customers in the really coolly decorated open air place, and it was the perfect perch to watch the comings and goings of locals and tourists alike – the ATVs and golf carts carousing down the streets, people parking where they shouldn’t, hotel van pick ups, people cavorting in the square.  Just a typical afternoon in an atmospheric Mexican hippy-ish town.  As we were leaving, I got into a conversation (in Spanish) with the owner of the bar – who told me that they had only been open a few weeks, and that he and his partner had renovated (my word, not his – I’d never understand “renovated” in Spanish!) the entire place.  It was really great – and definitely a town where we could hang out for a couple of weeks…if we wanted to do so in Mexico.

The bewitching hour was upon us, so we bid adios to our new friend and headed back to the meeting point for the van. Everyone showed up on time, and we all trooped off through a restaurant and into the back parking lot to board our ride back to PV. 

All in all, an excellent day, proving once again that off the beaten path – or at least outside of the main city – you can find somewhat hidden gems (somewhat being the operative term!).

4/4–Another day at sea…

..during which I’m sure we did a bunch of things, but I don’t recall what now!  Definitely lectures with Celia and Bill – but beyond that?  Clueless.  Just more of the same relaxing, reading, watching for sea life and generally enjoying ourselves.

4/3–Huatulco, Santa Maria and Pluma Hildago

Fortunately, today, we are back on the “Bill” tour with a bunch of folks we know spread between 2 vans.  It is another late start day, we don’t dock until 10, but all goes smoothly as we meet in the Passport Bar, then head out to the dock to meet our guide/driver.  There is a little bit of a SNAFU, as our driver isn’t quite there yet, but another guide takes us out to the square where we will be picked up and shortly thereafter Alex, our guide/driver appears to pack us all into the van.

Our first stop is the viewpoint above Huatulco where we can see the entire beachside town laid out below us, our ship figuring prominently docked in Santa Cruz Bay.  Alex gives us a nice overview of the area, the 4 bays that are designated commercial and 5 that are part of the National Park. He also explains Fonatur, how the government agency works and how the people of Huatalco (actually Santa Cruzita – the area where all the locals were “expropriated” when Fonatur took over Santa Cruz, the main bay)  protested and pushed back so that the development didn’t get out of control like Cancun and other government organized resort areas.

Back in the van, we begin our half an hour drive, out past the airport and up into the hills for our first village stop at Santa Maria.  On the way, Alex points out all sorts of different trees and the different curative values of the seeds and nuts of many plants and trees.  He points out the Sabor tree, special to the Mayans, because it has roots that go down to the water so it needs little care and can always be used to find a water source. This tree is also hollow, so it is used for canoes as well.  There is the Pistachio tree, where he stops to grab a seed/nut pod and then proceeds to give us a lesson on how the pistachio is grown and harvested.  The locals don’t harvest the nuts though, with is perplexing to us.  If you had plentiful pistachio trees, you would think you’d harvest them, if not for yourself (which we would!), but for the high price you can get by selling them.  Next is the mahogany tree, the seeds of which help the pancreas produce insulin.  And the Noni tree where “Fruit is good, seeds are bad,” (which cracks us up for the entire trip) and is used (mixed with another fruit because of the smell) is a cure for cancer when eaten.  It’s a whole botanical litany that keeps us occupied for our trip up into the hills.

Wednesday in Santa Maria is the weekly market day, and we arrive to find the main street completely pedestrianized and filled with tent after tent of goods to buy.    They set up for one day, then pack everything up at the end of the night and move onto another town tomorrow.  It is like the Chiang Mai night market, only for locals! There is everything you’d ever want here, clothes, toiletries, kitchen and home goods, shoes – literally everything and anything you would need on a daily basis. And it goes on forever.  Some of our tour partners can’t believe they actually set this up every day in a different town, much less close down the main road for it – but as unbelievable as it seems – it is definitely true – and we were there to see it in person.

Alex walks us through the market to the end of the town and the Church square, which features a wide plaza, covered rectangular promenade type area and the Chapel of Santa Cruz, where the a piece of the sacred cross which was how Santa Cruz got its name (Santa Cruz is Holy Cross in Spanish).  Unfortunately, we can’t go into the church due to earthquake damage, but Alex leads us over to the municipal building to use the restrooms, shows us a beautiful mural of Huatulco (the left side represents the old city, the right side the new, current, city) and tells us the story of the sacred “log.”  Legend has it that in the first century and man with a large white beard rowed up to the shores of what is now Santa Cruz with a huge log that was shaped roughly like a cross. The man hoisted the log up onto the shore all by himself, then proceeded to stay with the natives, teaching them different agricultural and cultural skills.  Then he rowed away in his boat, leaving the cross standing where he raised it.

The cross stood there for centuries until the 1500s when Cavendish came and ransacked the area.  He didn’t like that the native Mexicans were worshipping the cross, so he tried to destroy it but couldn’t.  It wouldn’t burn, he couldn’t cut it or pull it down.  It became a sign of a miracle and everyone kept coming and taking little splinters off it to keep at home as a blessing.  Finally the church decided to cut it into 4 pieces and send each piece to different churches.  One to the Vatican, one in Mexico City, one somewhere else I don’t recall and one here in Santa Maria. 

After our history lesson (where we also learn about 2 presidents, one killed for some reason that now escapes me, with their busts on the plaza), we have some free time to wander around while Alex runs back to the get the van.  Most everyone stays in the shade of the gazebo, but we wander through the market a bit, hoping we could make it back to the little food area for some of the fresh bread there, but it was way to far back down the market. We end up buying 2 pretty coffee cups, finally convincing the proprietor to take our US dollars, then head back to the plaza to wait for the van.

Alex navigates his way out of the market mess and we quickly turn uphill, driving through the beautiful mountain range with long views of the hills and valleys, heading to Pluma Hildago, the “coffee town.”  The Pluma variety of coffee is renowned as the best, and this little town is famous for it.  90 percent of the people in the town work in the coffee business, and when it is harvest time, the town swells to over 30,000 people.  We’re past harvest time, fortunately, but the little town square is still bustling with people – mostly tourists – and other “Bill” tours!  We meander about, taking pictures of the small church, while Alex coordinates our visit to the local coffee roaster.  One tour group out, next tour group in!  We sit around the cute little open air shop while we get a quick coffee production explanation.  Then we get to try Mexican dragon fruit (which is very good), a cup of excellent coffee and some even better chocolate!  We can’t buy the chocolate, but we can buy the coffee, so we use Alex as our money changer and buy a kilo of fresh roasted coffee (so fresh in fact the guy has to bag it for us!). 

From here, we take a little town tour, walking down to the huge basketball court perched on the top of the hillside with great views across the mountains.  Basketball is the favorite sport in Oaxaca, not soccer.  We’ve noticed there are basketball courts in some of the small towns we’ve passed, which now makes sense in context.  We circle down around some colorful buildings, looking out over the lush landscape – it is truly like a tropical rain forest up here.  We pass kids with baskets of fresh bread on their heads, taking their wares from door to door, selling the bread to residents (oh, I want to move here just for the bread – the smell is intoxicating!), arriving at the Orchid Lady’s house – a bizarre little structure with the most amazing orchids and other flowering plants creeping up the sides of the house.  She has planted flowers all over, in all sorts of vessels, and we squirm our way through tight spaces between the house walls and the fence, oohing and aahing over all the varieties.  It is really quite bizarrely interesting!  Maggi and Richard would have LOVED this – we may never have been able to pull them away had they been with us! 

Inside the house they have a little window cafe-type kiosk where they sell chocolate covered fruit – while we weren’t too interested in that, they did have chocolate covered coffee beans which we purchased with our last remaining pesos, and stood happily squeezing the quickly melting chocolate out of the plastic bag into our hands and mouths as we looked down the street over the Orchid Lady’s roof which was covered in flowering vines.  A really different and interesting visit.

Alex arrives with the van – and our coffee – and we pile in, heading down hill on narrow winding lanes, avoiding walkers and potholes, to arrive at Finca del Gabriel, our lunch spot. This venue is a hotel in the mountains with the best guest rooms – facing out over the valleys with a hammock strung on every porch.  It used to be a coffee plantation, but it isn’t producing any longer, although I think Alex said they had plans to maybe start again one day. In the meantime, we' are happy enough on the shaded patio, enjoying a great lunch of chorizo, chopped meat, guacamole, fresh tortillas and chips, along with piping hot quesadillas straight from the outdoor oven.  Excellent!


After lunch, we wandered through a museum area that gave some history of the property, watched all the Celebrity people arrive (who paid WAY too much for the same type tour, but didn’t get anywhere near the food we did – and probably not the same attention or guides, either!), then took a walk around the hotel grounds, past the little forest cabins sitting all alone in the solitary woods, up to the pool (which made even us want to get in and take a dip) around to the hot tub, which is filled with this hose contraption Alex demonstrated for us) and past the spa room for massages.  It is a great place – one that Alex said he and his family would visit at the end of the season just to relax and disconnect from the craziness of daily life. We can see it.  If the rooms only had A/C, we’d book ourselves a few nights here.  😀


Next we hiked back to the van, hopped in and made our way back to down the winding, steep mountainside roads to Huatalco.  It wasn’t a bad drive, really. Alex is an excellent driver as well as guide – and a great conversationalist, so we all spent the hour plus ride back into town chatting away about everything and anything.  He offered to let us off in Santa Cruzita to shop – someone must have mentioned it to him – but no one took him up on it.  We left him in the square by the marina and while others may have wandered through the shops and such, we made a beeline for the ship to cool off, visit our happy bars and get ready for dinner.

Once again, a spectacular day with great people and wonderful tour and guide.  Thank you Bill and Christy – one more tour to go – and we’re sure it will be equally enjoyable!

4/2–Another sea day

Another sea day, and another whale sighting, this time while we were at the gym.  another great lecture by Celia on coral and sea bed life, then bird watching from the balcony, lunch, a Gary lecture on teachers not soldiers, more bird and sea life watching, the gym, drinks, dinner and the rock music production show.  It’s all in a day at sea!

4/1–Costa Rica and the ship’s tour

Yes, a ship’s tour.  What can we say?  All of Bill and Christy’s tours were repeats of what we had already done, so we decided to take a coffee plantation tour through Celebrity, gritting our teeth all the way.  We are breakfasted and in the theater early, but they call our tour early, so we head out to the bus, get settled and wait for all the stragglers to join us.  They had originally had 2 times for this tour, but apparently got just enough people to entirely fill one bus, so the combined the tours and we have 52 people on this thing.  Yikes.  Exactly 52 seats.  Exactly 52 pax.The guide, Omar, is great, totally talkative and informative.  During our hour and a half ride up into the mountains, he tells us about Costa Rica – there is no army, 96.7%  of the population are literate, 65% speak English as well as Spanish, there are 130 volcanoes (only 8 are active), they get up to 21” of rain per year, the mountain range splits the country exactly in half, cacao was the first commercial crop, followed by coffee, bananas and pineapple.  It is a very ecological country with 52% of the land protected and the forestland produces 6% of all the oxygen the world uses.  There’s more, like the Social Democrat government, healthcare, education….hey it was an hour and a half of lecture (turns out Omar has a PHD in Ecology and he gives lectures all over the country, which explains his exuberance and knowledge).

Arriving at the the Espiritu Santo cooperative, we hit the restrooms then break into 2 groups for touring.  First stop is the “coffee house,” a replication of the coffee pickers houses where we get lessons on coffee brewing and tasting, with samples of fresh roasted coffee.  Then we wander down the main road to a little hut where we are shown how coffee is picked with baskets and bags, and given samples of chocolate covered coffee beans (which are delicious and I’m sure available in the gift shop).  Then onto the drying area where we see all the different stages of beans drying, and finally to the roasting room where freshly roasted beans are processed and packaged.  It’s a nice little tour with lots of information and a really entertaining guide.  It is also nice that this is a small facility run by local families, as opposed to the huge commercial operations we’ve visited in the past.  Our last stop, of course is the gift shop where there are the chocolate covered beans, which we eschew in favor of actual coffee beans to take home and make later.

Our next stop will be the town of Sarchi where we will see the culturally significant ox carts made and have lunch.  Reboarding the bus, though, we find that another couple has taken our seats. We politely tell them that they are in our seats, but they refuse to move.  They give the excuse that on the last tour they were separated and the wife just wants to sit with the husband.  Well, ok, but that’s not our problem, you are in our seats. They steadfastly refuse to move, and we aren’t going to just oust someone else out of their seats, because that is just plain rude and bad bus etiquette. So we go to the back of the bus and sit separately during the 20 minute ride to Sarchi.  When we arrive though, we realize we are totally screwed as Omar says we can leave what we don’t need on the bus – and of course the seat stealers have a huge bag of coffee.  Crap.  Well, we’re the last off anyway, so I just move their bag of coffee to their back of the bus seats and put our hat and water in our seats.  Problem solved (maybe).

We go through the tour of the cart factory, listening the guide give explanations on the construction and traditional painting of the carts, and how they power the equipment with a water wheel (which is actually totally interesting and probably the best part off the tour!).  We watch the actual artists paint, and then we are disbursed to our buffet lunch (where the seat stealers run to be in the front of the line). 

The lunch is nice, a choice of different  rice, beans and either chicken, fish or beef plus veggies and salad.  We grab a couple beers (and pay extra which sets off consternation in the line when people think they have to pay for juice and water…sigh), then take our take our trays to a table for lunch. As we sit and discuss the seat stealer situation, we realize we probably need to talk to Omar about the situation. So, I tell him the story and he says he will give a little talk to the bus about seating, which we appreciate. 

Of course the seat stealers have rushed through lunch, literally shoving food into their mouths to get done in like 5 minutes,  and have now rushed downstairs to shop – and we just KNOW what’s going to happen.  We leisurely finish our lunch, peruse the store, and then decide that we will simply tell the offending couple that we moved their coffee, but we will move it back so they can have the seats.  A bunch of people, including them, head out to the bus with 45 minutes to go before we leave, and we go out there too, to explain the situation and graciously give over our seats.  Suffice it to say, it doesn’t go well. The wife keeps screaming about wanting to sit with her husband, the husband gets aggressive and yells at me for touching their stuff.  I get on the bus, retrieve our hat and water and return their coffee, then try to get off the bus.  Their friend blocks my exit and then will not move out of the way for me to leave.  I tell him I just want to get off the bus, to which the seat stealer says, “well, we WANT you off this bus.”  Then he says, “you must be from California.”  What? Right?  I should have said, well you are DEFINITELY from Florida (which they are).  I finally manage to get off the bus, relate the story to Omar so he knows he doesn’t have to say anything and spend the next 1/2 hour wandering about the store with Ed drinking coffee.

Of course, back on the bus, we take our seats way in the back and wait to leave. In the meantime, the husband seat stealer comes back to his aisle blocking buddy and says loud enough for me to hear him, “We are missing things from our bag and I think they stole them, so we are going to shipboard security when we return.”  Yeah, right, try it buddy.  But, honestly, is that anyway for decent human beings to act?  Ok. Done. 

We actually spend a pleasant bus ride back. My seat partner is a lovely man from Wisconsin and we chat a bit and then I read the entire way back to the ship, half listening to Omar explain the Costa Rican government and the services and the economy.  At the ship, we are one of the last tours back, so we quickly board the ship and head up to the cabin dump our stuff and watch the sailaway from the balcony.

Of course, nothing ever comes of the seat stealers’ scare tactic. All is well aboard the Ecplise for the evening.  Drinks, dinner and the show – which we leave early because it just didn’t ring our bell – then a late night snack of lavosh broken into chip size pieces for snacking. Then it’s bed time and another sea day to look forward to.