Manta part two! Okay so the port of Manta is a working area.....see by the photos, mainly tuna fishing. (i don’t think it’s really fishing when you dredge with a net though). There doesn’t seem to be a, line caught, fishing policy here yet! The ships and lorries are just outside our balcony and they worked all day yesterday and are starting up again now. Once Dave recovered sufficiently from his pass out spell, we headed out again. The artisan market was really nice and I bought an ivory nut necklace. As before, the nut is as hard as ivory, looks like ivory but is completely made from the seed of a plant. Once dried, the ivory nut seed is hard enough to drive coaches over without damaging them. It can then be dyed, carved and ... read more

I’m so lost with the days.....let’s say day nine as we started on. Sunday! Day nine - Monday Trujillo. As you know, we were struggling to dock yesterday because of the fog. Eventually though, we were in and met with scenery very similar to San Martin ..... it actually looked more like a slag heap....we couldn’t decide if the mountains were man made products of a long ended mining industry of if they were natural sand/rock dunes. It was an eerie looking place with the fog surrounding us....Dave mentioned something about lepers coming out of the fog, I was convinced he said leopards....this lead to a period of utter confusion on my part. ? Little little and Pew went into hiding until i convinced them that there were no leopards in the fog. A complimentary shuttle ... read more

Santa Rosa Day seven /eight- i lost count. Day in port -unsafe adventures. The ship remained in port last night and lots of people stayed late in Lima..... not us, nothing to see but a big mall. (Unless you took a taxi). Today we decided to take the shuttle van out of the port just to the entrance. The plan was to walk around the port town of Callao.... the reason you take a shuttle to the gate is it’s not safe to walk as it’s a working port with lots of heavy machinery moving everywhere. We reached the gates, disembarked the van and started to walk away. Almost immediately shouts of “no!! Not safe! Not safe!” rang into our ears... Several taxi drivers surrounded us and said it wasn’t safe to walk outside of the ... read more

Day seven (a day late as was too tired). A close encounter of a sea lion kind. Palomino Islands. Our sea lion tour didn’t start until around 11am and, by that time, we were both nervous and excited. The boat was much like the one we went on the day before, several rows of two seats and a capacity of just over 30 people. We were blessed with the weather too, hot and sunny with calm waters. The guide explained that, just last,week, they hadn’t been able to get out to the protected rocks where the sea lions live because it was too rough. Once we all piled off the coach, 28 of the thirty people on board decided they needed to go to the bathroom. O-o. Ridiculous really as the coach journey was around 4 ... read more

Day four/evening and day five. Surprises in the restaurant and expectations exceeded in Peru. Starting off with last night’s formal do. We booked a 7:30 pm slot at the restaurant as we had the night before. When we arrived the greeter pulled us to one side and said “ Sir, you don’t need to book, you are club class.” Turns out being club class (which was a free upgrade princess gave us) not only secured us the mini suite but means we get priority service at the restaurant. We get our own cordoned off area with our own wait staff and, best of all, a chef who cooks one item for us not on the menu or available to anyone else. Talk about upgrade! It was awesome and we thoroughly enjoyed that as a totally different ... read more