Today I embark on the penultimate leg of this journey. (The final leg is the trip home).

Sadly that means minimal and dodgy internet for another 12 days, so don’t panic if updates are infrequent.

I fell asleep at 9pm last night, woke up at 2.30 due to traffic noise, woke up again at 5.30am due to what sounded like an explosion. Been awake since.

The daftest thing is that I didn’t need to return the car until 11am and I’m not due to board the ship until 1pm, and because I picked a well located hotel it’s going to take me five minutes to reach the hire car place and another ten from there to the ship. Oh well. My plans for the morning are thus to enjoy a final couple of hours of internet access then have another stroll around the secret wood. Sadly it shuts overnight or I’d have gone raccoon hunting.

It occurred to me that I hadn’t downloaded the boarding pass for the cruise so I went to the cruise line website, entered the booking number. “The booking you are trying to find has already sailed.”

Looked like I had an interesting morning ahead of me. The itinerary from the travel agent states departure on the 23rd and icruise.com also states 23rd.

Then again icruise.com states at 6.40am on the 23rd “This cruise has already sailed” while also telling me it departed at 5pm on the 23rd. Cruise websites are horrible, would’ve been badly designed and written at any point in web history.

I, erm, finesse the cruise line website, find a way to cheat its shitty date comparison code, access a page that lets me view the boarding pass. It tells me nothing I didn’t already know, but at least I now have something to wave at port security.

Guess which of the cabin types I’m in.

I didn’t want a whirlpool bath anyway.

More wildlife photography, a male fiddler crab then joyfully a wasp attacking  a dragonfly. I’m not actually sure whether that one is in focus so crossed fingers.

Dropping the car off was simple. Getting a taxi back to the cruise port straightforward. Checking in my bag was simple. Getting inside and looking for my boarding pass was embarrassing.

A very nice man let me use his phone to call the taxi company. They fobbed me off to their lost and found, and a ten minute hold. The lady that answered said she’d put me through and I was left with a ringing phone, eventually answered by a machine telling me they were closed. I left a message.

Walking back outside another taxi was dropping off an old lady. I asked the driver if he wanted a pickup, got him to take me back to the car hire place. He barely spoke English, couldn’t understand me so I wrote the address down for him. When we got there I pointed at the bag I was leaving in his car, got out, walked into the car hire place.

As I entered the guy that had checked the hire car walked off, went into an office. His colleague said, “He’s gone to get your phone.”

Back at the port security was straightforward, checking in was straightforward. I’d been given a card labelled Boarding Group 18 so asked roughly how long that would be. The man checking me in wasn’t certain so I asked if there was anywhere I could get coffee. He shook his head, started telling me about the soft drink machines, saw my face and stopped. I calmly thanked him and started to turn away, picking up my bags from the floor.

Before I could pick up the card telling me which boarding group I was in he whisked it off the desk, slid a new one towards me. As I looked at him in surprise he smiled,  said nothing, so I thanked him, walked off in Boarding Group 7.

Hotels in Florida: learn from the cruise port.

(Cruise port in Florida: get some coffee!)