Cruise ship held up by drunken pirates!

Tuesday, March 6, 2018

Sorry for the late post...here is a quick wrap-up!

We've been off cruising...we did two weeks on the same ship with the same itinerary in late January, early February. Western Caribbean, our favorite due to the amount of scuba diving available for Stu. Normally all four ports have diving: Grand Cayman, Roatan, Belize, and Cozumel. This time around, there was no diving offered in Cozumel but after three days in a row of underwater fun, that was okay with him.

I do want to share this photo of the ladies room in one of the truck stops on our way south (we drove). Not your typical one at all!

Oh, wait, you don't understand the blog title? Let's go back to day one - embarkation day. We had driven to Tampa and spent the night in Wesley Chapel, giving us a short drive to the port. What we hadn't realized was it was also day for the Gasparilla Pirate Fest. We worried about road closures driving to the port but were met with none. Light traffic, actually.

We were scheduled to leave at 4pm but they were still loading luggage and provisions. So we missed our window. Due to the number of boats on the water due to the celebration, our next window was 6pm. Oops, we missed that one, too. We finally left at 10:15pm. It didn't really matter to us, we enjoyed seeing the port lit up at night. But it did matter to the Captain - he had to make adjustments to the amount of time in our first port of Cozumel. So, we were held up by drunken pirates!

We tried to get a photo of the Sunshine Bridge when we went under around midnight but just not enough light.

The rest of the cruise was pretty much the same as previous cruises - Stu dove almost every port and I wrote/edited to meet my publication deadline for Paradise Drift. I did leave my comfort zone, I promised myself I would try some new foods and I did. Stu was impressed {snicker}. I had fun using my new insulated tumbler, too!

We did have fun with another band new to us, ALTERR. What a wonderful group of guys, all from the Philippines. The group has been through several iterations before sticking with the current core group consisting of Sonny (lead guitar), Mario (drums), Geraldo (bass guitar), and Lito (keyboard). They all shared vocal duties and they did quite well with a wide variety of tunes ranging from oldies, to 70's-80's, pop, hard rock, country and more!

You can see all their photos and videos in our SmugMug Album.

We saw them almost every performance and on the second week of our cruise, we got to meet the folks behind ALTERR. Alva & Terry - the sweetest couple, we fell in love with them. Here are a few shots of them.

A few photos from formal night - now that is a shrimp cocktail!

Caught a nice sunset from our balcony....

We had a couple new towel animals - a whale, a bat, and Stu just had to decorate the frog!

We had the best wait team in the dining room...

...and the best room steward. She reminded us both of our sweet friend Angelita in Ecuador!

Oh, and when we were in port between the cruises - our balcony faced the valet parking and we spotted our car. We're the little black Jeep in the back row. LOL!

The last night at sea, the captain came on the intercom and announced that heavy fog was in the forecast for Tampa in the morning. In order to hopefully avoid a stalled arrival, he was going to push to arrive very early (by 4am) in order to beat it. And he did! Wow...

Here are some select shots taken during the cruise - all the photos and videos are HERE. As always, click any photo for a larger view.

And wonder of all wonders...who would ever have believed it. A husband wife duo who were entertainers - were in Cuenca, Ecuador when we lived there. The Musical Nomads! Small world for sure...