Mexican Cruise  -  Spring 2004

In March, 2004, to celebrate Jenny's birthday, we took a cruise to Mexico with our good friends, Don and Linda Peters. The voyage was aboard the Royal Caribbean ship Vision of the Sea. We sailed from the Port of Los Angeles  to the Mexican Rivera. Our ports of call were Cabo San Lucas, Mazatlan, and Puerto Vallarta, all on the Pacific coast of Mexico. The ship was big but not huge, the sea was very calm, the calmest of any cruise that we have ever taken. The Mexican ports were familiar to us because we have been to all of them before. Because of this, we felt no urgency to rush to see everything. We relaxed, took our time and saw some interesting things.  

Our first port was Cabo San Lucas at the tip of Baja California. We wanted to snorkel even though we knew that the Pacific coast of Mexico was not a great place to snorkel. That adventure turned out to be great fun. We went on a small boat (a Zodiac)  with a few other people. This boat went very fast and was airborne much of the time. The snorkeling was predictable poor but we did  get very close to several humpbacked whales. We have never been this close to a whale before. This was the highlight of our cruise.

Our next stop was the city of Mazatlan. We went ashore and found a local bus tour of the city. We saw the sights, and went to the obligatory shopping spots. Linda helped the Mexican economy with a purchase of beautiful emerald and diamond  earrings. These emeralds made all of us feel happy. We tried to visit the notorious Senior Frog's Bar but it was too crowded to enter. In 1990, a visit to this dive bar had proved very entertaining for those of us who stayed sober (Jenny and Linda were not among us).  

The last stop was the tropical city of Puerto Vallarta. This city has no industry except the tourists and is quite clean. No air pollution or dirty beaches. It resembles Hawaii and it has an impressive rainforest at the edge of town. We hires a local driver with a van to show us the sights and to take us to the rainforest. We had a very pleasant day.

The onboard portion of our cruise was filled with all of those reasons that people cruise. A beautiful ship, good food and lots of it, relaxing on deck, evening shows in the theater and, of course, gambling. I won the first hand of Blackjack that I played and was ahead for the full seven days. Jenny and Don actually brought some of the ships money. Linda had a good time.

This was the seventh cruise that Jen and I have taken and it was one of the best. Being with Don and Linda made it that much better.

Look at the pictures. I have posted them with no captions, they should speak for them selves.

Hal