Day 5: Mazatlan

We started our trip in Mazatlan with a resolution to reach Stone Island. Right where we got off the ship, there was a parking lot full of taxis. The bad sign was a sign (posted in U.S. dollars) with destinations and the taxi cost to get there. Based on some directions from the internet, we headed out of the port and said no to all the taxi drivers. We took a left and started looking for the specific port that would take us to Stone Island. After about 5 minutes of walking, we decided to confirm our direction by asking a group of local ladies. They pointed us in the opposite direction. So, we gave the taxi drivers a good laugh by walking by them again, heading the other direction. :p After walking for about 20 minutes, we finally reached the port.

There was a little kiosk that sold tickets to use the water taxi. The price? 15 pesos roundtrip to Stone Island - that's like 1.50 USD! So for the two of us, it was less than $3 for that trip. yeah! We were on the taxi with a bunch of locals. There was some semblence of safety - we all wore life vests. When we got on the island, a guy offered to taxi us to the beach for...20 pesos! These prices were WAY better than what they were offering earlier at the cruise port! The "taxi" was a pickup truck with wooden benches strapped to each side of the truck bed. So we got a taxi ride through the village to the other side of the island where the beach was.

The beach was pretty empty, in terms of number of people. Along the beach were restaurants and bars and people offering activities like ATVs and horseback riding. Again, based on internet recommendations, we settled down at Victor's. We got two loungers and an umbrella and set up camp for the day. Through the whole time there, we read, drank, and ate. The great part was that they didn't charge us extra for using the umbrellas, like they do in the States. They didn't shoo us away either for occupying that prime spot the entire day. hehe. Very nice and relaxing day. We did have to fend off a lot of vendors though. They just keep coming up to you, plying their wares.

When we left the beach, there was a guy sitting in a rocker in front of a house. We saw a pickup truck nearby so Steven called out "Taxi?" to him. He acknowledged us and we confirmed the 20 pesos price with him and climbed aboard. After going maybe 100 feet, a mariachi group that was walking along the road hitched a ride with him as well. At the same time, there was a group from our cruise that was walking along the path and saw that there were taxis available and asked to get taxi'd. So our driver told them to go to the other taxi parked near the beach, which they had passed earlier without realizing that pickup trucks ARE the taxi cars of choice on the island. Steven, with his high school Spanish, struck a conversation with one of them-the guitar player. They talked all the way on the water taxi ride back to the mainland. Pretty funny to watch/listen to because there was some gesturing involved. When we got back to the mainland, we walked back to the cruise port.

Back on the cruise ship, we took pictures of the other side of Stone Island, the side from which you can't see the beach.

After dinner, we headed for our last game of bingo on the cruise. They jazzed the bingo up such that you had to complete two lines on the board to win. We were SO CLOSE to winning. We just needed ONE number! The bingo game then transitioned to the night comedy show.

Seems to me that the comedians on the cruise always joke about a) the confining shower facilities and b) the loud toilet flushings. Even though those jokes were getting old, all the comedians were overall entertaining.

That night, during dinner, the cruise ship started rocking a bit. The winds outside were over 40 mph! All throughout the after dinner show, the ship kept rocking. So we immediately took action because I'm prone to motion sickness - I ate bread to absorb the moisture in my stomach and sucked on peppermint. (All advice from one of Steven's old buddies that was in the Navy.) And just as a precaution, we bought a pair of acupressure bracelets that would ward off motion sickness. All the steps we took paid off!! I was FINE! Although some others weren't so lucky...we saw a spot of regurgitation when going back to our cabin. Poor crew!

Day 4: Puerto Vallarta

This was our longest port day, from 8am to 10pm we were allowed to be on shore. From our window, we could see a Walmart across the street! That was so weird. Anyway, we had booked a canopy tour and needed to get to the tour office by 11am. So after a big breakfast, we got off the ship and headed out towards the main road. We had printed out maps of Puerto Vallarta before the trip so we were looking for road names and trying to pinpoint our current location. We only had half an hour before 11am so we decided to just hop into a cab. We showed the driver where we wanted to go. He took a look at it for a little bit and then we were off! MAN, good thing we took a cab because we did NOT know how far the office was. We assumed that the cruise would drop us off at the pier we saw on the map. But we were actually docked north of downtown and the tour office was south of downtown. So we got there in plenty of time! :) The only downside was that in my panic, I jumped into the cab without giving Steven time to negotiate a taxi rate. So we paid for that...$10 for that taxi ride. oops.

We took a bus to the canopy tour location. It was a drive of about 10 miles and took about half an hour. The good thing was that we got to go outside of Puerto Vallarta. The guys who run the canopy tour were awesome! They were definitely seasoned guides who all spoke English well. There was this one guy who was like a cross between Elvis and a military officer when he spoke English. Obviously, he learned some of his English from watching American action movies.

The tour was really fun! Some of the zip lines went over a river so the views were gorgeous, when you remembered to look down. There was a wind blowing when I crossed the river line such that it would push me to one side, thereby slowing me down. So at the end of that zip line, I had to get "rescued". On another line, I got to rescue myself by pulling myself to the end. I also got to "rescue" one of the guides because I got stuck on one of the lines again and he was coming in after me. Lots of rescuing going on! They had a really cool last zip line where you can race each other. I got to take off first so I was ahead at first, but Steven caught up very quickly and totally passed me to win the race. We hopped on the bus after returning our gear and headed back to the tour office.

Now we needed to go find an ATM to get some pesos for lunch. The ATM across the street from the tour office was out of order, as some nice locals pointed out to us. And one of the locals tried pointing us to the next ATM but we didn't really understand all of what he was saying, something about going to the plaza. So we started in the direction that he pointed. We walked north, following the map that we had printed. We asked a local woman where the ATM was and she pointed us further north. We crossed a bridge and found the ATM! There were some other people from our cruise there withdrawing money as well.

With money in hand, we searched for one of the taco stands we had mapped out. We found it quickly and sat down to order. It was a simple restaurant with a few tables and chairs, lots of condiments on each table, mom at the cash register, and a few of the guys hanging out and watching tv. We ordered smoked marlin tacos...very tasty and very filling! I only needed one to feel full - amazing, huh?

After lunch, we just walked around downtown and along the beach. We had finished the canopy tour earlier than expected so we had a lot of time to kill before dinner. At the main plaza, we found the ATM the local from before was telling us about and we saw a photo shoot for a cell phone! We stood along with the locals and watched the progress of the shoot. One of the older local women started conversing with us although we couldn't really make out what she was saying. haha! She was really nice and offered us her seat when she left so we could sit and watch the shoot.

We had a very early dinner, 5pm, so that we could catch the sunset. From internet recommendations, we ate dinner at Barcelona Tapas, located on a rooftop. It was American prices and later on, the restaurant was filled with American tourists. haha! But the food was delicious! Why tapas in Mexico? Well, the other recommended restaurants we found were a bit out of the way. The water there was purified so we took our chances and had ice in our drinks. Plus, I had a tuna carpacchio so I was really praying that it was a sanitary restaurant. We had no stomach problems - yeah!

After dinner, we headed back to the ship. We watched the Mexican dance/song show where the locals performed mariachi and danced flamenco for us. When 9:30pm hit, all cruise passengeres were supposed to be on board, and that's when we heard the announcement for a certain passenger. There were many repeat announcements for this one passenger...but he made it...after about half an hour. It would've sucked if we had to wait around for this one guy. But thankfully, the cruise was still on schedule. :)

Day 3: Day at Sea

We started today a lot later than yesterday and generally took it easy. I think the only cruise activity we took part in was the galley tour where you get to see the kitchens. From the dining room, there are escalators(!) to the kitchen. Did you know that the head cook needs to order food a week in advance?? Talk about planning ahead! We also learned that all the food that we waste (i.e., order but don't eat) on the cruise gets ground up and fed to the fishes.

You know how the KitchenAid mixers come with different attachments, like the whisk and the stirrer? Well, we saw KitchenAid mixer attachment things that were like 10 times bigger!

For the rest of the day, we walked around the decks to get a view of the Mexican coastline. For dinner, we had made reservation's at David's Supper Club, a more formal restaurant aboard the ship. Why David's? There's a replica of Michelangelo's David in the restaurant. (The whole cruise ship has a Renaissance theme.) Dinner was excellent - we each had the 24 oz porterhouse steak. It was a BIG steak! There was also great live music throughout dinner. We were on the second floor so unfortunately we didn't get any dancing done. But all the food was a notch above what we usually get at the main dining room. And of course, after dinner, we walked around the deck again...hoping to burn off like 0.05 oz of the steaks we just consumed. :p

Day 2: Day at Sea

We woke up at 7:30am in the morning! This is because of the sunrise on our side of the ship. Because we stuffed ourselves at dinner the night before, we hit the gym...just like the rest of the ship. The gym was full!! So we went to an upper deck to use their jogging track. The breeze and the view make it so nice to jog out on the open seas! A lot of people were also walking around the decks.

We showered and got ready for the day. We played bingo for the first time this morning and we didn't win. :( At 1pm, we attended the art auction just to see what it would be like. We registered to get our number, previewed some of the art, and then sat down to wait for it to begin while they passed out free champagne. I understood the reason for the free alcohol later when the auction began...so many people bid on the art! The auctioneer was very smart about explaning why this piece of art was so crucial if you're going to start collecting art or why that piece of art was a must in any art collection, blah blah. They would also make us hold up our numbers to answer questions (so we get used to the idea of raising our numbers to make bids). It was all a very clever process.

Because the art auction took so long, we actually ended up missing lunch. We left before it ended to catch a comedy show. This show was the clean, family friendly show. After the show, we went for tea time (which was our lunch) where they served us tea and lots of little desserts: tarts, cookies, sandwiches, and cakes. Thankfully they limited our intake by only letting us pick once. haha!

Tonight was formal night so we had to dress up for dinner. I wasn't aware of how dressy it really got - there were women in full-length gowns and girls in prom dresses. There was a Captain's welcome cocktail party where they served free alcohol. When we sat down, the server came by with drinks and asked us which ones we wanted. We were looking confused when we tried explaning that we wanted non-alcoholic, so she took pity on us and offered fruit punch. Yeah for Asian servers who understand our alcohol intolerance! The funny thing is that there was this old guy who sat in front of us. We watched as he reached for one of the drinks on his server's tray. The woman next to him said,"Oh, that one's not alcoholic." His hand recoiled so quickly! :D

We got to the main dining room early to see if we could be reseated for the main dinner time as opposed to the late dinner seating we got yesterday. Well, thankfully they had an open spot for us! With a senior citizen couple for tablemates...but they weren't there that night...yea! Again, dinner was delicious with great service.

After dinner, we went to see their show which was song and dance from different countries around the world. We went to one of the upper decks to walk around to aid digestion. We bumped into the honeymoon couple from yesterday. We were all just walking around, killing time until the midnight comedy show - the adult version. Funny funny show! And well worth staying up for.

Day 1: Boarding

We drove down the night before and stayed with the in-laws. It was convenient to leave our CDs (for the long drive down) and winter jackets at their place since we didn't need those on the cruise.

After brunch, we headed to the port where we would board our cruise. There were SO MANY people in line when we got there! We got our cabin number and stood in line to check in our luggage. There was a really nice couple on their honeymoon from Washington who stood behind us in line. While Steven got out of line to make some inquiries, they helped me move our luggage when the line moved. When Steven got back, me and girl went into line to get on the cruise ship while the guys stayed in the luggage line. We could've saved like half an hour in line if we had known about the two lines!

It took like another hour to actually get on the ship because of all the new security measures...it was like being at the airport, but a little more organized. When we got on the ship, they took a picture of every passenger and matched it to our pass cards. (They use the pictures later when we get in and out of the ports for security reasons.)

When we got to our room, we were pleasantly surprised that we got a cabin with an ocean view (we paid for an inner cabin) and a king size bed (two twins strapped together). After the mandatory life boat drill, we wandered around the ship until dinner time. At dinner, we sat with a pleasant couple from Utah and had an awesome time at dinner. They went all our with the ordering! They each ordered two appetizers, three entrees and three desserts between them. For dinner, Steven and the guy ordered NY steak. The first set of steaks they got were really really bloody so the server sent it back. The second set of steaks were really really tough. Not wanting to waste food, Steven started eating his steak although it wasn't very good. The other guy sent his back. Thankfully, the server noticed that Steven didn't like the steak so he ordered another set of steaks for our table. The third set of steaks was fantastic! Just the right juiciness. So Steven ended up eating that steak as well. Two steaks for dinner...see how the crazy eating started?? :D

After dinner, we went to see the welcome show which involved the cruise director and audience participation. Watching older guys who can't dance but who are pulled on stage to be taught how to dance is very entertaining. Also, their performance is broadcasted on one of the tv channels in the room so people who missed the show could still see them!