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Published: February 23rd 2009
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Hello all,
Well, here it is…hopefully what you’ve all been waiting for - our first cruise blog! Now this cruise was our first, although it is not actually an itinerary that we repeat often. It was kind of called a “repositioning cruise” to take us from San Diego to Valparaiso, Chile…because for the next few months we have and will continue to do a regular route from Valparaiso to Rio de Janeiro (3 of which will include Antarctica!). It was also not a “regular” cruise for us because Melanie had many more rehearsals than she does now to learn all the spacing and choreography on the actual stage with actual sets, and of course, Larry was still getting accustomed to his new job and the crazy hectic schedule it requires. So, unfortunately because of these factors, we were not able to get off the ship as frequently and go sightseeing as often as we do now. But, we were still able to see and do some fun things…check it out!
After we left San Diego, we headed down south and spent about a week going down the west coast of Mexico. Some of the ports we stopped in were
Acapulco, Huatulco, and Puerto Chiapas - where Larry got to do a fun tour in which he saw a lot of the city, including a local market and church, and then he went to see some children perform a folkloric dance! Next we stopped in Puntarenas, Costa Rica. Larry also had a tour here where he saw a lot of the city and also some old ruins not too far outside of the city center. So far in all of these places I was only lucky enough to have a few hours at a time off the ship, so besides a few nice lunches on the beach and one dinner, I don’t have much to report.
Next we headed down into Panama, where Larry went to go see the Panama Canal with his friend Drew. After Panama we headed down into Guatemala, a little port town called Puerto Quetzal. Again, I only had a few hours off the ship on this day, but they were hours well-appreciated since if I had stayed on the ship, I would have had to attend a raft drill. When some of my friends and I heard the alarm signaling everyone to their raft
positions, we took some pictures from the café we were at, in honor of our friends who were stuck on the ship. Our next port of Manta, Ecuador again only gave Larry and I a few hours to go exploring, but we were able to visit a local street market selling some beautiful paintings and other art, and have a nice lunch.
The next set of pictures may look a little strange, but we assure you it was a fun time had by all! They are from an event we had on our ship called “King Neptune’s Crossing the Equator”. In this event, staff was broken down into a few different categories. At the top were long-term veterans of the ship who got to be the doctors and nurses - they got to pour nasty liquid food concoctions all over the polliwogs. The polliwogs were at the bottom of the totem pole, and they included those who were on their first ship contract with Holland America - or in other words, Larry! I was a pirate - not a newbie, but not a long term veteran - who just got to keep watch over the polliwogs and make sure
they didn’t try to escape! J
Our next stop was General San Martin, Peru. I was again too busy with rehearsals to get off the ship in this port, but Larry was able to get off, and he took full advantage of seeing the city with some of the other passengers onboard. I was, however, able to get off in our next Peruvian port: Callao, which is very close to Lima. This port scared us a bit…we were warned that it was quite dangerous around the ship and that a lot of people get mugged if not careful. Well, our trip was no different. I think at least 4 or 5 people from our ship had reported getting mugged - one man was even beat up! Luckily we were all safe - but we stayed in very large groups, and always got directly into a taxi cab from the ship’s gangway. Once in Lima we felt pretty safe though anyway. We had a nice time one afternoon visiting a local market, and then having lunch and sampling our first pisco sours (a popular drink of South America!)
Finally, we ventured into Chile - first stopping at Arica, then
Coquimbo (near La Serena), before arriving in Valparaiso to drop off some passengers and pick up some new ones. Some passengers, like our friend Bruce, ended up staying on from San Diego all the way to Rio de Janeiro - but we’ll tell you more about him in the next blog!
The final photos in this blog are quite a mix. Some are from a few of my shows, and the others are from some of the recreational events we have on our ship - Theme nights in the Crow’s Nest (Country Night and Disco Night to name a couple), crew BINGO, and one of my personal favorites: The Black & White Ball!
Well, we hope you enjoy reading about our ship life, and we hope to hear from you all soon!
Love,
Larry & Melanie
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