October 28 & 29, 2024 – Monday & Tuesday           Day 33 & 34 of this journey 

Sea Days 

We left Cozumel in the evening and headed south into the Caribbean. We have a long way to go to get to the Panama Canal. Rain is in the forecast as well as moderate seas. 

Sunday night was pretty much a rock and roll night with our ship plowing through the swells. We are near the front of the ship and that magnifies the amount of sound or noise that we hear. 

Monday, we spent most of the day in the cabin. Between the wind and the light rain, as well as the swell, it is not a day to be walking on the outer decks. But what we are treated to are boobies! I am quite certain we must have seen them on our last World Cruise, but not the way we are seeing them today. There are 15-20 that stayed with the ship all day as they fished. They would fly right up to our window, so we had excellent views.

Diving for dinner

This guy found a spot to rest and wasn't moving.

This is not my photo. But shows the catch well.

This is a flying fish. This is what the boobies were hunting for today.

Hello! (not my photo) This is how we saw them so often. Just looking at us.

They are a very common seabird and not at all wary of the ship. They dive after their prey, then pop up almost immediately and are back in the air. We saw at least 3 different varieties, including brown boobies, red footed boobies, and masked boobies. The masked ones have a light blue beak. Their markings really vary from bird to bird. We watched them all day.

 

On Tuesday, the rain is still with us as is the wind. The rock and roll isn’t quite as bad. And the boobies are still hanging around. 

At 10:00 am, the World Cruisers were treated to a cooking demonstration by Chef Wayan and his pastry chef. Chef Wayan is making ceviche for us, and the pastry chef is making Dark Rum Chocolate Mousse. We met Chef Wayan on the first World Cruise. He was a guest chef for several days and designed a menu for the Chef’s Table specialty restaurant.

The Spa decorated the pumpkin for the counter.

For the ceviche

For the mousse

The finished ceviche

Chef Wayan

Pastry chef preparing the mousse

Chef Wayan has a very upbeat personality, and we see him everywhere on the ship helping out the culinary staff. He obviously has a passion for food. He was demonstrating how to chop a jalapeno for the ceviche and popped a slice into his mouth. Then sort of choked and went for a bottle of water. He really laughed at himself over it.

Tastes of the ceviche were passed out while the pastry chef went to work on his mousse. In just a few minutes he has it ready, garnishing it with fresh berries. Then Chef Wayan brought out a bottle of Patron Tequilla, poured everyone a shot and we toasted. 

A very enjoyable morning. Chef says he’ll do more of these for us and hoped to give us a hands-on class for sushi making. 

We had a brief meeting at 11:30 to meet the other travelers that will be departing the ship in Manta, Ecuador. Some going to the Galapagos, some to Machu Pichu and some doing both. 

The Daily Briefing is back live in the Aula Theater, which is preferable to the recorded only version that they needed to do for a few days.

 

Tomorrow will be our passage through the Panama Canal.

October 27, 2024 - Cozumel, Mexico - Sunday

October 27, 2024 – Sunday       Day 32 of this journey 

Cozumel, Mexico 

We picked up the Pilot this morning, just before reaching the dock. It is a warm and cloudy morning. Things look pretty quiet. We are scheduled for a mid-morning “included” excursion of a ride on the Atlantis XII Submarine. 

Their pickup point is just the next dock over from our ship, so it is a short walk. The commentary provided with the synopsis of the excursion indicated the submarine would hold 26 passengers. This information is somewhat outdated as the submarine will hold 46 passengers and there are 44 in our group. We putter out to the dive spot just a couple minutes before the sub surfaces from its previous dive.

Our ride for this morning. Portholes are below the surface of the water.

We tie up to the sub, and wait as the passengers currently on board the sub are escorted off and onto our transport boat. Then it is our turn to board the sub. It is extremely well choreographed. In short order, we are all aboard, and although it is not exactly roomy, everyone has a decent view out the portholes.

Good size viewing windows

Curious little guys

Little fish are curious about this big fish and hover near the windows. We head down to the Chankanaab reef. This is the second largest coral reef in the world (second only to The Great Barrier Reef) and an extremely popular scuba diving site. It is fascinating to see the coral in all its forms and shapes. Lots of fish, in some cases, huge schools of fish. The depth we were at was between 50 and 100 feet.

 

A very large school of fish

All sorts of sizes and shapes

More fish

The nothingness at the top of the photo is where it drops off

A 2 second video

Then it appeared that the sand and coral just stopped. We were at the edge of a cliff. Just past where we were, the water dropped off by a couple thousand feet. The photos didn’t show it, but we could clearly see it. We then moved on to observe a sunken ship. This is an old mine sweeper that was intentionally sunk in this area to provide a man-made reef that would encourage the growth of the coral. It appears to be working as there is quite a bit growing on it. We even saw a barracuda.

That is a barracuda in the middle of the frame

When we surfaced, the transport boat was waiting for us, and we followed the same process as earlier. Again, very well-choreographed. The ride back to the dock seemed a bit quicker than the ride to the dive spot. As we walked back to the ship, we noticed that only one or two shops were open. With only our little ship at this dock, it isn’t worth it on a Sunday for the shop and restaurant owners to open.

Beautiful waters of the Caribbean

This was confirmed later in the day when we chatted with other passengers who had spent some time wandering around. They indicated there wasn’t much open. 

A pleasant day spent in Mexico. We both felt a little bit like we were home. 

The next couple of days are sea days, so there won’t be too much to report.

 

October 24 & 25 - Sea Day & Fort Lauderdale

October 24 & 25, 2024 – Thursday and Friday        Day 29 & 30 of this journey 

Sea Day and Ft. Lauderdale, Florida 

Sea Day: 

Usually, on a sea day, there isn’t much to relate. However, Viking is really trying hard to come up with things to entertain the Longitudinal World Cruisers. In the morning, we had a Survival Tournament in The Hide. We weren’t sure this was something we wanted to do, but kind of got talked into attending. 

The day started off with a gorgeous sunrise

There were about 20 people in attendance. We were given the scenario that our ship had sunk including the loss of the entire crew. We had a life raft, and a box of matches. We were given a list of 15 items that we needed to rank in order of importance to our survival. We had divided up into teams of 4. First, individually, we ranked the items, then we ranked the items as a group. We were then given the actual ranking as determined by the US Coast Guard. We compared our original rankings with the Coast Guard to get a personal score, then compared the group’s rankings against the Coast Guard to get a team score. The team with the lowest score won this round. Our team won! 

We will meet again in the next couple of weeks to go through the process again with a different scenario. The next time, we will be lost in the jungle. It was a lot more fun than we anticipated. We look forward to the next one. 

At 3:00 pm, Viking held a High Tea for the World Cruisers. Very very nice. Everything looked wonderful. We didn’t eat much as we were having dinner with the Captain that evening at 6:00 pm. The Captain’s dinner was also very nice. The four highest ranking officers of the ship joined us.

 

Fort Lauderdale: 

We pulled into Fort Lauderdale around 7:00 am. Coming in right behind us was a Celebrity cruise ship with about 2,700 passengers.

Most of the passengers of our ship are disembarking today. The ship has arranged a couple of tours for the World Cruisers. One is a drive around of Miami. About 1/3 of us took that tour. The rest had opted for an “optional” tour of an airboat ride in the Everglades. That is what we chose. 

Loaded onto the usual tour bus, we headed west into the Everglades. Our guide, Lance, is a hoot, but also a wealth of information on the area and alligators. He is passionate about his job and sharing the information in a light and entertaining manner. It took about an hour to arrive at the Safari Park. They have been in operation for about 50 years. We started with an airboat ride into the grasslands looking for wildlife. We had been advised that there wouldn’t be a lot of birds. As conditions have been changing with climate change, the birds have found new areas that are better suited to their needs. 

We did see Great Blue Herons, Egrets, Anhinga (Oriental Darter), and one alligator. The Park guide driving the airboat also said that the recent hurricane had caused a lot of the wildlife to head for islands that are in the river. And that would make it a bit harder for spotting critters.

An Anhinga (Oriental Darter)

An egret

Lower 1/3, center are black bumps. That is an alligator.

Although the Everglades appear swamp like, it is a river. Perhaps the slowest moving river in the world. But the water does move, therefore you don’t have the rot, stagnation and odor of a swamp. 

After about 45 minutes on the airboat, we returned to the dock and were then treated to a session of show-and-tell about some of the resident alligators. These gators were born in captivity and, by law, must remain in captivity. One of the four we saw is 50 years old. Lance had told us about this part of the program and assured us that these gators are very well cared for. He shared that they are quite intelligent and even trainable.

This is the old man.

This one is about 15 years old. He was quite interested in a snack.

This is the old guy again. It took a little more to get him moving.

Two of the younger ones.

The gentleman doing the talking about gators was quite obviously fond of them and they really responded to him. After the show, Lance walked with us through paths and boardwalks that wind through the vegetation. We saw numerous alligators, and turtles. Many species of plants that were extremely important to the indigenous peoples.

A young gator, just hanging out

This plant is everywhere. I think it was called spaderdoc.
Similar to water lilies.

About in the middle is a piece of fruit. It is a swamp apple.
An important part of the indigenous diet.

There was a small restaurant and most of us chose to get a bite to eat before we headed back to Fort Lauderdale. We chose gator bites and loaded French fries. Both were quite good. 

Back in Fort Lauderdale, the bus parked just off Las Olas Boulevard. Las Olas is a prime shopping venue. Russ and I stayed on the bus as we weren’t particularly interested in “shopping”. We got back to the ship right around 3:00 pm as planned. 

The Aula (our on-board theater) is closed for several days while the curtains are being replaced. So, the afternoon Daily Briefing is being filmed and viewable on our stateroom TV. It worked out well, but I think I prefer the live version. Tomorrow is another sea day, so there won’t be a whole lot on our agenda. 

We had dinner in The Restaurant, sharing a table with a couple from BC that embarked today. When we got back to the room, we discovered a lovely bouquet of flowers from the Viking team.

The third leg of this journey has begun. The next transition will be in Valparaiso (Santiago), Chile 17 days from now. It should be an interesting couple of weeks, but with lots more sea days than what we have had up to now.