The Showers of Blessings

Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “weigh/way/whey.” Use one, use ’em all, bonus points if you do that last thing. Enjoy! – Linda G Hill

 

We travel regularly, planned the itineraries on most of the trips and joined tours on four trips. Several months ago, my husband and I wanted to explore a different way of travel. We checked out some cruises and booked a short cruise for the Labor Day weekend which was last week. This is the shortest available, from Long Beach, California to Ensenada, Mexico.

Friends told us this is a party cruise. My interpretation of a party cruise is seeing some young people singing, talking, dancing and laughing. School started in August and college students and school-age kids are in school. They wouldn’t be partying last weekend on a cruise.

We boarded the ship last Sunday night. The ship stopped at Catalina on Monday. It anchored offshore and people took the boat to go ashore. We had been to Catalina several times, so we strolled along the waterfront, visited the gift shops.

 

The ship was in Ensenada on Tuesday and Wednesday. We bought tickets for a city tour on Tuesday. The tour bus took us to La Bufadora which is a blowhole on the Punta Banda Peninsula. We watched the water exploded upwards from a sea cave. The height of the explosion depends on the tide. We had one hour there. After staying for ten minutes we didn’t see a dramatic performance, so we went to the restaurant to wait for the group to return. The bus dropped us off at downtown, the tourist area, for another hour. There was not a lot of shopping I wanted to do. The tour guide told us to be careful about food and drink, so we didn’t get any of those.

The dock is right by downtown area, so it took us a few minutes to get back on the ship. That night after dinner, my husband had a stomach problem all night.

On Wednesday, the ship was at sea all day. People stayed on the ship going nowhere. There was a small scale of entertainment such as vocal solo with guitar or keyboard, standup comedy, and movies. People gathered in the pool area and cafeteria, eating and drinking. Oh, now I see the party, a big party. I know there are about 60% population in the US is over weighed. Yet I had not seen the concentration of these folks until this day on the ship. Several ladies seemed to have more weight than their legs could carry, so they were on wheelchairs (they might have other problems).

My husband continued to have a stomach problem and stayed in the cabin all day. I didn’t pay extra to subscribe the internet or phone services. I stayed in the cabin and read the only paperback with me. Every hour or so, I walked around the ship, grabbed some fruit or a piece of bread from the cafeteria. It seemed forever to wait for the nighttime. We packed our bags and went to sleep early.

 

On Thursday, the phone rang for the wake-up call at 6:45 a.m. It took us twenty minutes to dash to the line. We were the first one hundred people to get off the ship.

It was not a pleasant experience for our first cruise. It will take us a long time to get over with it before we consider another cruise.

 

SoCS 2019.09.07 – Cruise Experience