Geo: 14.0641, -93.6103Not much going on for us today. We mostly stayed in the room and read. We both spent a little time sitting on the balcony as it was not as hot as it has been, and the breeze was pleasant.Lunch was pub-style in the steakhouse for fish and chips. We shared a table and conversation with Buck from San Francisco and Lowell from Seattle. Suzann was the only other person with us at our table for dinner, and it was fun to have a one-on-one chat with her. We went to the show after dinner. Duncan Tuck was billed as a musical comedian. His jokes were silly, but mostly fresh with a lot of puns, and his singing was good. His guitar playing on a twelve-string and also on a flamenco guitar was the ... read more

Geo: 11.249, -85.8633The Pacific Princess arrived in the harbor of San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua early this morning—about 7 a.m. She anchored very near the port and tenders started running as soon as the ship cleared customs. Our tour was scheduled for the afternoon, so Philip and I had a leisurely breakfast in the dining room. He did the final upload of grades before we left on the tour and checked for messages from students about their grades when we returned in the late afternoon. Everything is fine so far. He'll check again tomorrow, I imagine.Our tour was rated E for easy by the cruise line so that means it would be very, very easy. I only walked about 1800 steps during this tour and that included getting from the tender to the bus which was ... read more

Geo: 9.18149, -79.8218Up early with the alarm as we were scheduled to enter the Gatun Locks at 6:55 a.m. I think we may have started even earlier as we were out of them about thirty minutes before expected. We watched the operation of the Gatun Locks from our balcony. A couple of days ago, I scheduled a time for one of the ship's photographers to come to our cabin to take our photo on our balcony with the locks in the background. He made it just in time as we exited the last of the Gatun Locks. There were also ship photographers who disembarked to take photos at the same time the lock personnel embarked to guide the ship through the canal. Those photographers were on the side taking photos of people on their balconies and ... read more

Geo: 11.2508, -74.2061Last night we went through some rough sea and strong wind that woke me up a couple of times. Although Philip and I had left our Fitbits on the desk, I had to hide them away, because the rolling motion of the ship activated them, and their green lights kept blinking. We made it through the night and woke up before the alarm went off.The ship docked in Santa Marta by 7 a.m., and Phil got up early to get online and check the status of his class and look for messages from students. He was able to get a lot of work done before we left the ship for the shore excursion. We took a half-day tour that went to the 16th century Santa Marta Catedral, which claims to be the oldest cathedral ... read more

Geo: 12.53, -70.03This morning, we skipped breakfast but were in line at the BBQ station about as soon as it opened at 11:00. We wanted to be finished and ready for our shore excursion early. The ship pulled into the harbor at Oranjestad, Aruba at noon. As soon as we saw land coming up, Philip jumped on his laptop to see if he could get a connection through the local phone service. It worked and he got some work done before we had to leave for the tour. It worked well enough that he was confident he would be able to get everything done when we returned in the late afternoon. He had thought about taking his laptop on the tour since the bus provided free Wi-Fi, but I am glad that wasn't necessary.We left the ... read more