14 - 10/15/2021 - At Sea to the Panama Canal - 3rd Day

Relaxing can be informative,  repetitive, entertaining,  boring, exhilarating, and even musical.  Such was my day today.

 

Our day started with a most informative coffee chat when a male stateroom attendant and a female bartender were interviewed by Valerie.  They recounted how they came to be on ships and what it was like coming back from the pause in operations.  Both were super appreciative about being back to work.  

 

The repetitive part of my day occurred many times.  First was my breakfast.  If you read yesterday's blog, today's breakfast was exactly the same.  And there would be more repetition as the day progressed.

 

We then watched a repeat of the canned EXC talk on Rum before I repeated my photography vigil on deck 3.  Except that today, there wasn't much action (boring), so we walked a mile around the Promenade deck before I ate a repetitive sushi lunch.  Interestingly, I saw a ray leap out of the water followed a few minutes later by a blunt nosed black fish and some small porpoises.

 

Repetition and instruction continued with attendance at the culinary demonstration with chef Steven from the Pinnacle Grill.  He prepared Caribbean salads and a seafood soup while another chef carved ornamental watermelons.

 

I then returned to my perch and watched for a long time only seeing a few flying fish.  Then while talking with another passenger I caught a splash and a black dot about 1/2 mile in the distance.  I raised my camera, brought it into focus and started shooting.  After reviewing my      photos I discovered a great photo of a dolphin leaping back into the water about 1/4 mile away.  It was truly the money shot and quite exhilarating.  I continued to scan for wildlife and met another passenger, Mike from Michigan,  when a small turtle came floating by.  

 

 

We received more instruction when Ross, the naturalist, presented a slide show on diverse habitats of Central America.  I showed him my dolphin picture and he was impressed. We then went back out to watch for more wildlife but all we saw were brown and masked boobies.

 

After another light dinner in the Lido we started a full evening of music with the Main Stage presentation by the Alley Cats.  The show was so good we returned for the 9pm show which bookended watching the classical  quartet perform Latin American composer music.

 

Following our evening musical entertainment we went up to the aft Lido pool deck and watched huge lightning displays towards the distant shoreline of Costa Rica.  We couldn't see land and the view is around 21 miles to the horizon.  While there the lead musician from the Alley Cats came by and my wife asked if he knew a lady by his same last name.  It turned out it was his sister.  We took photos and he sent one to her.  It was a very cool experience!

 

We wrapped up our day with a very light snack from what I affectionately call the 10:30 feeding.  Back at our room was a notice that our Covid Antigen testing scheduled for tomorrow was postponed to a future date.

 

And so ended another relaxing day.  We have one more tomorrow and it's going to be a bit different. Stay tuned.



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