For the third morning in a row I was woken by my alarm, one way to force my body into a new timezone. The ship was still as sea so I had coffee, read my book. 40 minutes later I popped out to check, found us tied to a pier, gangway open. By 8.30 I […]

I chose a good day for a lie-in. Only three things on today’s sea day itinerary that I wanted to do and two of those were talks about ports we’d be visiting. In an interesting twist from the previous cruise we’re docking at a town in Costa Rica rather than the commercial port near it. […]

Back on the ship I stood on the aft deck a while, watching boats enter and leave the harbour, birds sitting watching them too. I found coffee, retrieved my camera and book from my cabin and went to the deck below the aft deck, a secluded balcony, shade and solitude. I read little, my camera […]

Woken by my alarm I hunt down coffee, filling my cup to a surreal backdrop of a city at night, drifting past the windows. We’re in Mexico. I was off the ship and on a bus while it was still dark. The bus was old, rattling constantly even before we reached the cobbled streets, the […]

Timezone changes are great for assuring a lie-in. I got up at what a week in New Zealand had taught my body was 3am, had a shower and found coffee, which I took to the Crow’s Nest bar just in time for the 10am event. It was titled ‘Paper Flowers’ so I half suspected it’d […]

As predicted and hoped I slept well, a solid seven hours sleep then another hour or two drifting. I started the day with an unpleasant task: Telling Guest Services to reverse the service charge they’d added to my bill. She told me that she couldn’t do that on a per day basis, that I’d have […]

The day’s plan was simple, elegant, a good day. None of it went right. I was awake too early, got up, checked out of the hotel. I stopped for coffee on the way to the pier, found a good mix of options. At the pier there was nowhere to drop my bag. That left me […]

Likely to be offline for a few days, depending how connected the countries in Central America are. Will update when possible.

It took me three hours to get to lunch today. Three hours of mainly beaches, the place names a litany of movie locations or home towns of West Coast Swing dancers. The car needed filling again, another 6 gallons, another $20. US gallons are smaller than normal ones, 3.81 litres rather than 4.44. That makes […]

Elephant seals are surprisingly small. Not dissimilar in size to grey seals, only the biggest males are larger. Not as pretty as grey seals, and the pups can’t compete when it comes to being cute. I’d stopped to see some in the Año Nuevo State Park but the lady at the entrance told me I’d […]