Day 5 - Sultry San Juan

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Geo: 18.4638, -66.1075

I awake before Peter today and head out onto the balcony as the sun is rising over the ocean. It is around 7.30 and we are not scheduled to arrive into San Juan until about mid-day. The ocean is a flat calm as we make a steady 17 knots southward. I see some flying fish flitter out of our way as they skim across the water. Peter is soon awake and fetches coffees from the concierge lounge which is situated just a deck below us.

Breakfast is in the main dining room. We are sat next to a nice Canadian couple that we get chatting to. They ask us what are plans are today and we tell them that Sue and Malcolm are going to introduce us to Geocaching. We fully expect them to reply 'what the hell is geocaching?' They don't as it seems they are avid Geocachers themselves. Geochaching is fully explained later in this blog.

All suite guests have an invitation this morning to drinks and canapés on the Peek-A-Boo viewing deck on Deck 11. The Peek-A-Boo is an area that overlooks the bridge where you can clearly see the captain and crew at work as they manoeuvre this leviathan into dock. We are greeted with cold soft drinks or wine and cocktails. Some of the management staff are on hand to greet us and chat which is very nice and gives us some insight into the running of this floating hotel.

We go ashore around 12.30pm with Sue & Malcolm and start the Geocache hunt. What is Geocaching you ask? Geocaching is a real-world, outdoor treasure hunting game using GPS-enabled devices. Participants navigate to a specific set of GPS coordinates and then attempt to find the geocache (container) hidden at that location. The cache is usually very small and carefully hidden. Sue and Malc have their GPS devices on and so we follow them to the first set of co-ordinates. The only clue they have is the letter P. They soon find it. It is a small magnetic container stuck to the back of a Parking sign (hence the P). They unscrew the container and remove a small roll of paper that is within and sign their names as evidence of the find. They have to be discreet so the general public don't see what they are doing in case they also investigate and inadvertently remove the cache making it impossible for others to find. Having careful placed the cache back we move onto the next one. All the caches on our trip are located at points of interest, a monument, a statue. It takes you off the beaten track and to places you would never think of going. Such fun.

We didn't find them all and we left Sue and Malc to continue as by 3pm the heat was getting oppressive and we needed to find an air-conditioned coffee shop to cool off. We locate a Starbucks and enjoy a White Chocolate Frappuccino each. Peter uses the wi-fi to skye call his father whose birthday it is today. We head back to ship and enjoy an afternoon snack in the Windjammer as we had no lunch today.

It's just Peter and I for dinner tonight. We have an really enjoyable meal. I have Thai salad for starter which is spicy but nice. I then have Sole for main followed by a white choc Gateaux. Peter has a Trout starter which he really likes followed by pork for main. Can't recall his dessert but we have noticed that although food in the main dining is good the desserts are less so, not awful, just unremarkable.

We try our luck in the casino again. I bomb out early as Lady Luck is not a companion tonight. Peter has better luck and so we cash out only slightly down (but I still think we are slightly up overall). We head up to the pool deck at 10.30 for dancing under the stars. There is a live band playing and what seems to me a lot of dad-dancing going on. It's mainly tunes from the 60s/70s. Funniest sight is a hells angel (I kid you not) tearing around on a mobility scooter, he must be getting Harley Davidson withdrawal symptoms (apparently he was thrown off the ship at the next port).

Quickly realising this is not our scene we head down to the Royal Promenade and get some snacks and some water from Cafe Promenade and head back to the cabin.

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