Frequent Cruiser Hacks #2; Getting the Hang of Things

Frequent Cruiser Hacks #2; Getting the Hang of Things

The cramped quarters in cruise ship staterooms is particularly exacerbated by a lack of horizontal surfaces to lay things upon.  Therefore, taking advantage of vertical spaces is essential.

Nowhere is this lack of horizontal space more evident than in the bathroom.  There is very little space to spread out toothbrushes, tooth paste, hair brushes, shavers, medications and "products".  Fortunately, most people have discovered the handy travel toiletry kits that can hang from a hook on a wall that keeps all that organized.  The only trouble is that these cruise ship bathrooms have no extra hooks.  There are towel racks on the wall that serve their intended purpose, and hanging toiletry bags from them just gets in the way of using the towels.  The same goes for the hooks on the inside of the bathroom door, essential for bathrobes.  But there is an easy and inexpensive solution to this.  Pack some heavy duty 3M Command Adhesive hangers and a few alcohol wipes.  It is usually easy to find a spot on the wall between the door and mirror where one of these hangers can position a hanging toiletry bag in a perfect position for access and usability.  These hangers are perfect because they can be removed without damaging the wall.  Just make sure the tape has a chance to set before hanging any weight from them.

Another essential frequent cruisers hack is to bring magnetic clips that can be used to hang up the daily schedule, excursion tickets, invitations and coupons from the walls of your cabin.  The walls in most ocean going cruise ships are steel, and therefore magnets can stick to them easily.  This gets these items off the tiny desk, but easily accessible and easy to organize.  One notable exception to this  rule is I have recently encountered aluminum and composite walls in some Viking River cruise ships. For these, suction cup clips can be used on the mirrors and other smooth surfaces.  But don't hang anything breakable from suction cups because they are known to lose their suction and drop off unexpectedly.

Don't forget you will have to deal with dirty laundry, and there is nothing worse than a room with dirty laundry strewn all over the floor and furniture.  Your steward won't be able to effectively clean you room if you have dirty laundry strewn all over.  Make sure to pack a mesh laundry bag that can be hung in the closet.  It'll take up very little room, and will come in handy for carrying that laundry to the launderette on the ship, which may be several hundreds of feet down the hallway.

The final item to place in your cruise ship hacker bag is a 15-20' length of nylon parachute cord and a package of clothes pins.  There is usually a portable clothes line in the tiny shower, but things take forever to dry there, and you can't use the shower if you're trying to dry clothes there.  If you have a veranda or balcony, it is a simple matter to tie the parachute cord from the top of the balcony divider support posts to create an outdoors clothes line.  In tropical climates, things dry remarkably quickly outside in the breeze of the moving ship. This is especially true of gym outfits and swim suits. But there are two caveats to using an outdoors clothesline.  One- there can be very strong breezes around a cruise ship, so make liberal use of clothes pins and check on your line frequently.  Two- be considerate of neighbors and don't string your clothes line where it can be seen from other balconies, and don't leave anything hanging while in a port of call. Nobody wants to see your things hanging outside.

This final hack doesn't require packing anything.  Most staterooms have a mini fridge and those generate a little bit of heat, so if you want to quickly dry small items like a pair of underwear or socks, just lay them out on the top of the mini-fridge, and they will be dry in an hour or so.

Frequent Cruise Hacker Tips #1- Power Outlets

Cruise ship staterooms are universally small, but generally efficient.  One thing most have in common is very few power outlets.  This may be primarily a safety measure, but travelers nowadays have a lot of essentials that require charging, such as smart phones, cameras and laptops or tablets.

Some of the newest ships and recently remodeled ships now have USB charging ports on or near the night stands.  This is a really great feature, but many ships still lack this convenience.  These USB charging ports are also generally limited to 1.0A output- OK for most smart phones, but inadequate for tablets.  

There is generally one or two accessible AC power outlets near the desk.  Princess, Viking and Norwegian provide 110v North American type B outlets.  You may also find 220v European type C, E or F outlets, either near the desk or hidden behind the bed.  Many ships also have a limited duty 110v shaver outlet in the bathroom, frequently activated by a switch on the faceplate that provides power only when a type A two blade plug is inserted.

Most cruise ships will provide a hair dryer hardwired into the room, so there is no need to pack a hair dryer.  

Most cruise ships prohibit any heating appliances such as curling irons, tea pots and irons for safety reasons.  Another oddity is that because cruise ship AC power may be grounded differently from shore power sources, power strips and power distribution devices with built in surge suppressors are also prohibited.  

So with these provisos in mind, I have a couple of hacks that can make the most of your trip and maximize your convenience.

The first hack is to bring a small power strip that does not have built in surge suppression.  A simple cube splitter could fit the bill, but most ship outlets are in very confined spaces where a cube splitter will obstruct access to power switches or adjacent outlets.  I found a very handy one made by Monster Power that can be found at Ace Hardware and Home Depot stores. It is called the Monster Power Outlets to Go 4, model OTG 400.  It has a flat plug and cord that is just long enough to extend the outlets to where they can be accessed in most situations.  Another feature of this power strip is that the outlets are rotatable, so that power bricks can be arranged so they don't obstruct the other outlets.  There are also two outlets on each side of the strip, making it even more difficult to obstruct all 4 outlets no matter what you plug into it.  This also makes it very compact and easy to pack. Another plus is there is a LED in the plug head that acts like a night light.  It tends to be very bright, so I put a small piece of electrical tape over it to dim it considerably.

The next essential is a multiple outlet USB power source that can power all your USB devices.  Anker makes one that has two 2.0A USB ports for recharging tablets and quick charge rate phones, and three standard 1.0A USB ports for other smaller devices.  This saves you the space of five different charging bricks, and is also universal voltage, so it can safely be used in any country without fear of burning it, or an outlet out.

If you use an electric tooth brush, like a Sonicare, then a 3 way pivoting tap for type A two prong outlets is handy for using in the bathroom, along with a compact LED nightlight. Cruise ship staterooms can be extremely dark, so stumbling around in the dark to use the bathroom at night can be an misadventure in the making.

A small roll of gaffer's tape is also very handy for keeping things organized because space is always at a premium.  Gaffer's tape is sticky enough to do the job, but is also easily removable without leaving residue, and tough enough to work with electrical cords.

So those are my Frequent Cruise Hacker tips for dealing with Power Outlets.

Saturday, January 4, 2020; Disembarkation and return to Seattle.

Saturday, January 4, 2020; Disembarkation and return to Seattle.

We decided to keep our small carry on suitcases with us for check out, only putting out our large bag last night.  We were able to enjoy one last sit down breakfast in the dining room before disembarking. We had heard complaints by other frequent travelers that the service and conditions on this particular cruise itinerary had taken a noticeable downturn.  In all our prior cruises, we never had a problem with requesting eggs Benedict in the main dining room for breakfast, but this morning that was not possible. I can’t imagine the ship had somehow run out of hollandaise.  But the ship was particularly full with this New Year’s Eve cruise crowd.  

Janet and I have done a lot of cruises on Princess (16 on record, 205 days) and we prefer the longer itineraries.  The demographics of those cruises tend to skew more mature and less crowded.  On this short holiday itinerary, we encountered lots of first time cruisers- many being hosted by parents or grandparents- and a very much younger demographic.  There were occasional crying infants, lots of newlyweds, and we even had to dodge dripping wet elementary school age kids in swim trunks racing down the ship’s corridors.  That creates a particular kind of thundering sound you can even hear in staterooms on adjacent floors.  This contributes to more opportunities for people watching, and reminiscing about our younger days, so it’s not all bad.  

Getting off the ship was pretty seamless, requiring only a brief wait in the theater for our luggage to make it to the proper pick up area in the terminal.  Once we were lead to the disembarkation ramp, we walked straight through to pick up our checked bag, and then got stuck in the US Customs and Immigration lines.  These snaked back and forth like at Disneyland.  It took us about a half hour to clear Customs and Immigrations.  Then we boarded our Princess Airport transfer bus.  

Traffic was uncharacteristically light for Los Angeles.  We were able to get our checked bag dropped off and through TSA screening lines by 11am, so from the time we hit our disembarkation lounge appointment at 9:10am to the boarding gate at LAX was about 2 hours.  

The terminal this flight was going out of (Terminal 6) seems newer than the last ones we were in for American Airlines flights.  The bathrooms were still crowded and dirty, but at least they were larger and there wasn’t a line of 20 men outside the men’s room and 80 women outside the women’s room.  There were also newer, but all expensive food venues.  It was not possible to find a lunch for under $15 per person.  We ended up splitting some Chicken Ciabatta sandwiches.  John’s flight was in Terminal 7, a 15 minute walk from our Terminal, so the kids played a card game until it was time to board our flights.  There is still a shortage of seating in this terminal and you have to search to find water and power outlets, but they are there if you search hard enough.  LAX still ranks at the bottom of the list of International Airports we have encountered in our extensive travels.  We hope they will continue to modernize and upgrade.

The flight from LAX to SEA is mercifully short- under 3 hours.  There are no entertainment screens on Alaska Airlines seats, so you have to bring your tablet or smart phone if you want to stream entertainment.  You still have to download and install the Gogo-in-Flight app to access the content before the flights.  It’s funny they don’t cache it on servers on the plane so that passengers can download it during the flight.  If you didn’t do that in advance or at the airport, you were out of luck.  

The sun set rapidly and the ride was moderately bumpy because of weather systems all up and down the West Coast.  We arrived in Seattle greeted by wind, rain and temperatures in the upper 40’s.  That’s exactly why we like to travel during our winters to destinations in the south.  

This was the first time we actually left our car at the off airport lot to drive ourselves home the 3 hours to Whidbey Island from the airport.  It was comforting to have the car start right up, and the seats in our Volvo XC90 are soooo much more comfortable than the airline seats.  

We, of course, stopped at Chiang’s Gourmet Chinese restaurant for dinner on the way north.  It’s nice to be greeted like family there.  They are our kitchen away from home.  We know the waitstaff and they know us well.  That makes the trip home a little less onerous.  

My brothers did push ahead with booking this same cruise itinerary on the same ship to do with our Mother, so we will be returning in just 3 weeks to do this again.  We will end up spending more time caring for Betty, so it’s good that we have already been ashore at all the ports of call, and can look forward to a quieter and slower paced experience.  

Friday, January 3, 2020; At Sea, Puerto Vallarta to Los Angeles Day 2

Friday, January 3, 2020; At Sea, Puerto Vallarta to Los Angeles Day 2

We got most of our packing done last night, but left a few things out for today’s activities including workout clothes and swim suits.  We had a sit down breakfast and then hit the International Cafe to work on depleting our coffee card punches with Cafe Lattes and Chai Teas.  

We hit the Early Risers Trivia at 9am, and this time there were 7 teams.  We came in 3 points behind the winners this morning, who were the team we have been trading off with all during this cruise.

The rest of the morning was unstructured.  Ben spent time in the hot tub because his lower back was acting up again.  It had gotten tweaked during the camel ride, but had gotten better for a spell.  The kids did other activities including watching the Voice of the Ocean and exercising.  We did rendezvous for a sit down lunch- the first of this cruise.  It seems all too easy to overeat at the buffet.  In the sit down dining room, you generally have a more limited choice, but it is better presented and it is nice to be served at the table, and it is generally quieter so you can have more conversation.  

The afternoon was also unstructured other than an appointment to do the afternoon trivia at 4:15PM.  Ben spent much of that time trying to book future cruises on board after learning that his brothers had planned on booking another cruise with their Mother on the exact same cruise that we were just completing, but in 3 weeks time.  There is a great promotion that just came out offering free premium drink packages including tips, free gratuities and free unlimited wifi, but Ben found out that the promo is only good for cruises starting in April 2020 and must be booked by the end of February.  The fare that his brothers were eyeing was a bare bones last minute booking discounted fare so there are no applicable promotions.  Ben did find a set of ideal itineraries where he and Janet would spend a month cruising from French Polynesia through the Panama Canal and then end up in Fort Lauderdale just before Christmas, and an 8 day Christmas cruise out of Fort Lauderdale that they could take the kids on.  But when the future cruise consultant tried to book them, she discovered that Princess had just canceled the French Polynesia to Fort Lauderdale cruise, opting instead to keep that ship in the Australia/New Zealand market.  So it was back to the drawing board on that project.  

We missed winning the afternoon trivia by 2 points.  Do you know what the “C” in JC Penny stands for?  We didn’t, and we didn’t know who had written Murder at Rue Morgue.  Ben did surprisingly know the song that plays during the final scenes of Dr. Strangelove when the nuclear bombs go off.  Funny the random things that you remember over the years.  

We had our final sit down dinner, which featured a Baked Alaska dessert, complete with the parade.  The staff and guests were noticeably less sentimental about the end of  this short cruise compared with the way everyone was reacting towards the end of our longer cruises like our recent Rome to Singapore cruise.  You really get to know the staff during the longer cruises and develop a nice rapport, and friendships.  

The last Princess Theater show was a return of Zach Winningham, the singer and guitarist who had earlier done a great show with pop music from the 60’s and 70’s.  This time he concentrated on more country music, doing songs by Johnny Cash, John Denver, and the Creedence Clear Water Revival.  He also introduced his wife who did a few songs with him.  It was interesting to learn that Zach is a full time police officer in Las Vegas, but does these cruise ship shows during his time off the police force to relax and have a little fun.  It was another great show, and he earned a standing ovation again.  

We have to set our clocks back an hour tonight, and we got our large suitcases out before dinner.  The time sure goes quickly when you’re having fun.  Tomorrow promises to be another long and fatiguing day of travel to get everyone back home again.  

Thursday, January 2, 2020; At Sea, Puerto Vallarta to Los Angeles Day 1

Thursday, January 2, 2020; At Sea, Puerto Vallarta to Los Angeles Day 1

We had our first sit down breakfast in the dining room today.  It always seems like it is too easy to overeat in the buffet because there are so many choices, and you want to try a little of everything.  

We stopped at the International Cafe enroute to the Vista Lounge for the morning Trivia to use up some of our coffee card punches on Cafe Lattes and Chai Teas.  Since each punch on a coffee card is good for any specialty coffee drink, the tendency is to want to always order the most expensive items, but after a while, it seems like we really don’t need all the extra sugar in the flavoring syrups and whipped cream.  Nobody is certainly going home having lost weight on this cruise.

There were 5 teams playing in the morning trivia- the truly hard core trivia players, whom we have come to recognize easily.  We have traded off with them for most of the wins.  This morning was no exception- we ended up in a two way tie with them, and ended up winning on the second tie breaker, which was to guess which year Australia was federated as an independent nation.  The first tie breaker was what year the Panama Canal opened.  Both teams knew that correctly.  We had guessed 1910, while the other team guessed 1945 for Australia’s federation.  We were closer to the correct date of 1901, and won some notebooks.  Earlier in the cruise, we had lost a tie breaker with the same team, so I guess that makes us pretty even.  

There was no mid morning trivia so we had a relaxed morning with naps and working out in the fitness center. 

We received our disembarkation luggage tags, which are always a sad reminder that our cruise is approaching its end.  We will need to start packing up our formal and excursion clothes, along with most non-essential items tonight.  

John and Ciara participated in a water color painting activity in the Piazza.  This was set up in an interesting manner where there were 6 easels with 6 canvases in a circle.  Each participant started a painting on their canvas, and then every one minute, the participants would then shift to the right and work on the next painting, circling back to their original canvas to see how all the other participants had added to it.  It was amusing to watch as some participants took having their painting defaced by all the other participants better than others.  We ended up decorating our stateroom doors with John’s and Ciara’s paintings.  

We did take part in afternoon tea and then we did the afternoon general trivia, which had a number of interesting and difficult questions such as what US state is closest to Africa, what land mammal has the largest eye balls, and what do the M&M stand for in the name of the candy?  We missed winning by 2 points.  

We had dinner in Sabatini’s to use our specialty dining vouchers. Ben and Janet had their Captain’s Circle reception and managed to bag a few extra cocktails to share with the kids afterwards. 

We finished up the evening watching the production show “Encore”, which is the Royal Class ships’ version of the “Bravo” show.  The set is a little more elaborate, and there are a few different songs.  The guest soprano had some trouble with the high notes in one passage of her main piece, but managed to pull it together at the very end of that song.  

Tomorrow is our last sea day, and last full day of our cruise, so this trip is winding down rapidly.  We will soon have to change gears to getting back to the real world, but we have one last day to enjoy tomorrow.  

Wednesday, January 1, 2020; Puerto Vallarta

Wednesday, January 1, 2020; Puerto Vallarta

The Royal Princess tied up to the dock in Puerto Vallarta early in the morning so when we got up to get breakfast at 6:30am, the ship was already tied up to the dock.  One of the most noticeable feature of the Cruiseship terminal in Puerto Vallarta is that the Walmart and Sam’s Club are only about a block away.  The ship’s crew really likes that feature.  

Our excursion started with a drive to the center of old town Puerto Vallarta, characterized by a town plaza and church.  Our driver said you could tell when we entered old town because the road became cobblestone.  There is a large pedestrian mall along the waterfront, but you can drive just two blocks up from the water.  The waterfront is backed by a moderately steep hillside.  On cross streets, you could look towards the ocean and see a statue at the end of each street, just before the beach.  

The old town square has a gazebo centrally, decorated with streamers of paper cut-outs in all the primary colors.  The square is heavily planted with tropical vegetation, and surrounded by shops and restaurants.  Our mandatory shopping/bathroom stop was a jewelry store just down the hill from the church.  The church is well cared for and well illuminated.  It seemed to be celebrating some sort of centennial.  As we were touring around the church, it began to rain on us.  We boarded the bus and were taken a short distance to the Teatro Vallarta, which is a large theater venue with a small museum dedicated to Tequila making.  The museum was arranged with a multimedia room for an introductory video, then a room with pictures of agave growing and harvesting tools, then a room with bottles of scents that can be associated with the various stages of producing tequila.  Unfortunately, all of these areas were designed for a tour group of half the size of ours.  That made each room uncomfortably crowded and we were rushed through the whole thing too quickly to really learn or appreciate too much.  

We were then herded into the gift shop for “tequila tasting”.  This was really not a formal tasting, but they passed out thimble sized samples of their moderately priced Anejo tequila, aged for 3 years in oak barrels, and then samples of flavored ready to drink tequila mixes.  It felt more like a duty free airport shop than a learning experience.  

We were then herded through the rain about a block down hill from the theater to have lunch at a restaurant called Mango.  The rain had turned into a real gully washer, turning the cobble stoned Street is into full on stream beds with several inches of water rushing down hill.  There fortunately was a large open grate over the sidewalk that allowed the water to drop below the street so we could walk across the street and not swim.  

The restaurant was on the waterfront, but there wasn’t much to see because it was raining so hard, you could hardly see to the ends of the beach, and the roof of the restaurant was leaking pretty badly in several spots.  The lunch was street tacos with hand made tortillas that were pressed and cooked at the buffet table.  The food was mediocre, but better than yesterday’s.  However, there was no sort of beverage included with our tour lunch.  It’s a good thing the beans were watery in texture.  

After lunch, we were herded back up the hill to the Teatro for a folkloric dance presentation.  Up until then, the excursion had turned out to be pretty disappointing, but the show was actually quite well done, with fabulous dancers, live mariachi music, colorful costumes and good stage lighting and effects.  The most impressive display was a lasso demonstration.  The male dancers were also very energetic, and they even managed to out-dance the girls on a few numbers.  Lots of heavy rhythmic foot stamping and hollering.

At the conclusion of the folkloric show, a better video on the culture of Tequila and the history of tequila making was shown, followed by a real tequila tasting in the theater.  They had racks that were custom made to sit in the cup holders of the theater. Each held several small tequila sampling glasses, a bottle of water, and a few things to clear the palate and nose.  We were walked through sampling a silver tequila, a reposado tequila (aged in oak for 1 year) and an Anejo tequila (aged in oak for up to 5 years).  The tequilas were good, but the portions in our glasses was probably only a quarter of an ounce, or barely enough to swirl some around in the mouth before swallowing.  

We had a much better tequila tasting experience in Cozumel during our Western Caribbean cruise leg last spring.  But at least we did get to more or less properly sample their tequilas, and it was raining cats and dogs outside, so any other outdoors oriented excursions were guaranteed to be a wash-out.  

We returned to the ship and attended the afternoon trivia. We missed winning by two points.  One point would have resulted in a 3 way tie, while two points would have granted us an outright win.

We were able to have dinner in the dining room along with dessert.  The Puerto Rican comic was the featured entertainment in the theatre, but he spoke so quickly that none of us was interested in seeing him again. So we watched the evening game shows including a Movie Madness trivia, which we lost by quite a margin.  There was a team near us that consisted of 20-40 hear olds who got a perfect score, which was quite impressive.  They had outscored anyone else in the room by at least 7 points.  

This was followed by a “Strike Out” game show where participants moved back and forth across the center line of the stage to vote on answers to music trivia questions that were binary choices of years that a song was released in.  They had songs dating from the early 1950s to 2017, and many of the binary choices were just a year apart.  It didn’t take too long to weed out a single winner as the last man/woman standing.  They did several rounds, and the winners got the usual trivia prizes of notebooks, string bags, water bottles and wine bottle stoppers. Price and Ben each managed once to get into the final 3 but didn’t manage to win anything.  

Next we watched the Liar’s Club. The words were Pisonia, Hopack, Eruct and Schemoozle.  We wound up the evening with a battle of the sexes gameshow, which divided the room into men on one side and women on the other side. Half the game was trivia questions, and the other half was Minute to Win-it physical challenges like card house building, coffee bean chop sticks transfers and ping pong ball bounce and catching.  It was entertaining.  

Tomorrow is a sea day.  We’ll get our last batch of laundry out so that we can get it back in time to pack it back into our suitcases.  We’re having some of the kids’ stuff laundered since its a free service for us.  Tomorrow will probably be full of trivia and game show challenges.  

Tuesday, December 31, 2019; Mazatlan and New Year’s Eve

Tuesday, December 31, 2019; Mazatlan

The weather this morning looked a bit threatening, although the forecast was for cloudy skies, it sure looked like it wanted to rain.  The Royal Princess entered Mazatlan’s harbor as we had breakfast in the buffet.  There is a huge rock outcropping that marks the harbor entrance channel.  The Carnival Panorama and Oosterdam were already tied up along the cruise ship dock.  

Our tour bus loaded up on the pier just off the ship.  Mazatlan is well developed around the tourist trade with hotels, shops and restaurants lining the waterfront.  Our bus took us to the end of the Golden Zone and unloaded us at a jewelry store for shopping and a bathroom stop.  Ben and John headed across and down the street to a mall with access to the beach, where you could actually walk up and down the beach.  There was a jetty with several fishermen catching small striped bass for their dinners.  At the other end of the beach, you could see Valentino’s, a landmark structure on the beachfront.  We didn’t have much time to do anything more than grab a few pictures up and down the beach and then head back onto the bus.  

We headed out of Mazatlan and worked our way into the foothills of the Sierra Madre Mountains.  The countryside is very lush and hilly.  This part of Mexico gets 50” of rain each year, and is a major supplier of fruits and vegetables to Mexico and for export around the world.  We drove past many Mango orchards.  We also drove by a large coffee processing plant, so there must be significant coffee production up in the higher hills.  

Our next stop was in a tiny village that consisted of one main street down the center.  We visited a small family owned and operated bakery that had a huge wood fired oven adjacent to their residential kitchen.  We had to walk through their living room, which featured a family shrine like what is seen in the Disney animated movie Coco, where photos of the family reside.  They had some fresh baked rolls 2 for a dollar, which were delicious and warm from the oven.  Our guide brought a large bag of baked goods back to the bus for his family.  It was almost like we were making a grocery stop for him.  Unlike many more tourist oriented villages or squares, this little village didn’t have tourist shops or hawkers in the streets following us around.  

We walked up a short side alley from the Bakery to a tiny shop where someone was manufacturing decorative tiles.  He manufactures them individually by layering paint colors, crushed marble and clay into a steel mold, and then uses a hydraulic press to compact it all into a thin wafer.  This is then dried for several days, and then ultimately fired.  This created a round 5” disk with a unique color pattern.  Since all are individually made, no two are identical.  They could make unique coasters.  

We got back onto the bus and then hit the highway again.  Our next stop was at a town called Concordia, which has a Catholic Church at it’s heart, facing the town square park.  We have seen in South America that this is a standard layout for a Spanish colonial town.  The church is well cared for, as is the park, which was decorated for the Christmas holiday season, complete with a large fake Christmas tree.  For some reason, there was also a red devil, complete with horns and menacing pitch fork.  They also had a life-sized paper maché nativity scene, complete with camels and elephants.  The town square was surrounded by small shops and restaurants catering to locals.  We were the only tourists in the town.  The Carnival Panorama had also booked a parallel tour running on a different schedule.  Apparently a couple from the Carnival Panorama tour got lost and missed their bus, so they ended up catching a ride on our bus to catch up with their group at the next stop.

That next stop was another small village called Copala, which was founded as a silver mining town.  There are still mining operations going on.  They brag zero percent unemployment among their 1000 odd population.  Only some work in mining.  Most manufacture bricks or furniture- two items this part of the country is renowned for.  

We made a brief roadside stop at a brick yard which was closed for the holidays, and our guide explained how these family run brick yards are all over this part of the country.  They make the bricks by mixing straw with clay or even just dirt if they don’t have clay on their property.  This adobe mixture is dried in a mold for a period, and then stacked in rows.  The firewood is stacked between the rows, and when enough rows are completed, they light the whole thing on fire as an outdoor kiln.  Our son John said that he had seen similar techniques used in the countryside outside Mumbai to manufacture bricks.  

We also stopped at another family owned business manufacturing terra cotta goods.  They offered us a free soft drink while we browsed their store and toured their “factory”, which was simply their daylight basement.  Some demonstrated the manufacture of a sun faced garden decoration by hand pressing clay into a mold.  This is then dried for a period and then fired in a kiln.  They had a few brick kilns out back amongst their mango trees.  Most of the merchandise in their “showroom” had a primitive look and finish.  Our guide said they have been in business for generations in this location.  

But there was something a bit creepy in the basement.  In a corner, in plain view, was a cot with a very short, middle aged man lying in the middle, shaking with either a severe tremor or frequent seizures.  His hands had such severe contractures that they looked like stubs at the ends of his arms. 

Copala has a large grade school with steel playground equipment including a very tall steel slide that we could only imagine would be hot enough to fry eggs and little bottoms on during the summer.  Their town square was beautifully landscaped with plants and their church was modest but well cared for.  There were a few children running around offering donkey rides and small carvings or rock specimens for sale.  The most interesting shop on the square was one which manufactured Carnival masks made of various types of leather.  These were very elaborate and quite handsome.  We later also saw these masks at the cruise ship terminal. 

We had lunch in Copala.  The restaurant was a primitive affair with no indoor lighting or skylights.  We were sat at a table next to the door, but it was still very dark.  It had started to rain while we were exploring the church and town square, so the outdoor seating was not an option.  The food was modest in quality and quantity, but it was adequate to tie us over until we got back to the ship.  It was raining pretty steadily during the long drive back to Mazatlan’s port.  The bus driver actually pulled over at one point and ran to the bathroom at the back of the bus to relieve himself.  

We were dropped off at the Cruise ship terminal which was about a quarter mile from where the Royal Princess was actually docked.  They had a trolley service from the terminal to the ship.  There was a building full of vendor stalls where we ended up buying some chocolate and Mexican vanilla for souvenirs.  

The ship left shortly after we got back on board. We had to quickly change into our formal attire for our last formal evening.  It was New Year’s Eve, after all.  The dining room did feature lobster for the evening, as well as pheasant and beef tenderloin.  

The ship’s planned pool side New Year’s Eve party had to be relocated to the Piazza due to rain.  There were also mini celebrations at all the regular entertainment venues. We watched the Production Show “Colors of the World” after dinner. Janet and Ben had seen this before during their Hawaii cruise.  It is an interesting and colorful show featuring choreography from several different parts of the world.  It opened with a Bollywood-like sequence, and also featured some Chinese/Japanese fusion with martial arts, Ancient Greek and Roman themes, Tango and Salsa, and some western styles as well. 

After wandering through the various venues around the ship, we decided to retire to our rooms where we played a few rounds of Scattegory to kill the time until midnight.  Then we headed down to join the huge throng around the Piazza.  The crowd was 5 or 6 deep at the railings around the atrium, so we couldn’t really see anything down below at all, but when the countdown sounded, the only thing that mattered was that we were all together on New Year’s Eve, along with nearly 4000 other strangers in the middle of the Sea of Cortez.  After a round of hugs and kisses, we hit the buffet which was stocked with appetizers and desserts to welcome in 2020 with gusto.  

Tomorrow, we arrive early in Puerto Vallarta, so we’ll have to get up early to make our excursion.