Steve and Cathy's Blog

During the night, if we get up for any reason (wonder what that could be?) , we witness another huge lightning storm, this one off the coast of El Salvador as we sail southeast on our way to Costa Rica.  They are so far away that we rarely if ever hear the thunder, but it is an impressive sight, especially at sea.  I stand at the door to the veranda and watch for ten minutes or

We arrive at Guatemala’s largest Pacific Ocean port right on time around 8:00am.  Even on the way in, we can see the reason that almost all of the previously scheduled excursions in this country were canceled: 12,000-foot high Volcan de Fuego (a picture of what we see begins this post).  It began its latest eruption on June 5thand has killed 114 people.  In the interest of guest safety, any tour that comes within thirty miles of

We left Acapulco at 10:00pm last night and have 572 nautical miles to travel to our next destination, Puerto Quetzal, Guatemala.  During the night, we woke up to flashing lightning, with storms just off the shore in the distance.  These lightning storms go on for an hour or more.  Tis the season – the rainy season – in Central America.  The rainy season begins in June and, depending on the country, will last until September in

We arrive just around noon, which is a good thing, because we have booked Historical, Picturesque & Cliff Diversas our excursion that begins at 12:45pm. Immediately upon boarding our van, we are to go to “La Quebrada” to watch the world famous Cliff Divers at 1:00pm.  We have a quick lunch at Waves Grill, get our bus assignment from Destination Services and leave the ship.  In the terminal, we are greeted by beautiful young women and

We haven’t mentioned this part of our day in months, so we will do it now.  We start every day at 5:45am, when coffee, milk and a croissant are delivered to our stateroom.  For the past few weeks, it has been brought to us by a very cute and energetic young woman named Jay, who is from the Philippines.  First she calls on the phone, which is right on the wall next to Steve’s side of

This morning we receive a letter from Captain Maroje Brajcic announcing something we have been expecting for days: our stop in Nicaragua is canceled.  We have been hearing about the political protests and the street violence, and figured that Oceania would opt to play it safe and skip this call, especially after the news that an American was shot dead there.  So we can add that to our list of reasons that we have missed visits. 

On our way to Los Angeles, we became concerned with Hurricane Bud, a powerful storm coming up the pacific coast of Mexico.   We had Cabo San Lucas on our itinerary, but around June 12thand 13th, so did Hurricane Bud.  Fortunately, it veered northeast at the last minute.  Cabo got hit with a glancing blow on June 14thwith winds in the 50-60mph range, so we suspended our concern. Today we recharge a bit. At 10am, Peter Croyle

It is only 89 nautical miles from our berth in Los Angeles to San Diego.  We come into the harbor right around 8:00am and are berthed right next to the USS Midway aircraft carrier, which is now a museum.  What an honor. We also see two active ones on our way in, the USS Carl Vinson and the USS Theodore Roosevelt. We are right in the heart of this beautiful city, right in the huge, bustling

We arrive at Berth 93 of the Los Angeles World Cruise Terminal before we awakened at 5:45am. Today 400+ passengers will disembark and another 400+ will board.  The segment just completed went from Papeete, Tahiti in French Polynesia to LA and covered a total of 5,580 nautical miles.  By the way, a nautical mile is 1.1508 statute miles, so on land, this journey would have been measured as 6,622 miles. Today we have a very special

This is our fifth day heading eastbound toward the United States.  Seas are the same.  Los Angeles cannot come soon enough.  We plan a busy day that includes packing, because tomorrow we will ship four suitcases to the Spanish Community of Wallingford.  Originally we would have had to wait until we disembarked in Miami, but Cathy has been developing a plan of attack that is much better.  She has learned that we can ship stuff from