Captain's Log, Days 6-12

aka: Shit Hits the Fan (metaphorically speaking)

Day 6 started out like most others: sunrise photos (this time at our first port of call, Cartagena, Colombia), breakfast, and a trip to the nearest public bathroom, 7 floors down. We were scheduled for a free walking tour in Old Town at 9:30, so we left the ship at 8, giving us plenty of time to get off the pier and finagle a taxi.

The port in Cartagena is really interesting….you walk through the normal duty free touristy shops, and also through a zoo/aviary maze to make your way to the taxi zone. We had reached said zone and started haggling taxi prices (I don’t love haggling, but am usually pretty decent at it, but these guys really sucked – they wanted $40 for a 2.5km drive…..ummmm, no. AND they weren’t even trying to drop the price and bargain when I said $20, which was still an absolutely ludicrous price, but at least one I was willing to pay) when my innards told me I wasn’t quite done with breakfast and to find a bathroom post-haste. Jack sat waiting patiently while I went to the bathroom. All I can say is I am glad nobody was in there to audibly witness what happened, and absolutely horrified that I was once again pooping on a toilet that wouldn’t flush. I certainly wasn’t going to try my hand in Spanish to explain to someone of authority, so I hightailed it out of there muttering apologies to both the universe and whoever went in there after me. It might make you feel better to know that karma found me, and a bird shit on me on the way out.

At this point, as I was sweating profusely from the extreme heat, humidity, and sheer mortification of everything that had transpired in the last 10 minutes, Jack politely offered that maybe we sit this one out today. Since the pressure was off after I notified the company, we wandered around the zoo, which was pretty neat, even to one like myself who doesn’t like birds. This place had the kind of birds I do like – peacocks, flamingoes, toucans. I’d never seen a toucan in person before, and they’re a lot smaller than I’d believed, but really neat to look at. Also, this was my first time seeing an anteater in person, which are so weird and fun!

There were adorable little monkeys swinging around, and I was enjoying taking pictures and watching them until I realized the one right next to me was masturbating, with Way. Too. Much. Eye. Contact. Feeling I’d already had enough animal schmutz on me for the day, we went back to the ship.

Both here and at several other ports, it was interesting to watch anyone in a security position try to politically correctly answer the question, “Is it safe here?” Like, they would always say yes, but body language clearly leaned towards, “Not for you, gringa.” BTW, it was never me asking this question, but some old white lady wearing too much jewelry and perfume.

Day 7 had us in a full transit of the Panama Canal, which was both extremely interesting and extremely slow. I wanted to sit out on the balcony and enjoy it, but without any wind, it was just too hot, so we largely watched it on our TV. The first set of locks were my favorite, since 1) it was early morning and I could actually be outside, and 2) there were alligators in the water that both freaked me out and fascinated me. Those prehistoric relics are the things of my nightmares.

The tides have a lot to do with transiting the set of locks on the other side, due to the height of the bridge and the vessels transiting underneath it, so we ended up whipping shitties (that’s doing donuts for you non-Michiganders) in Lake Gatun for several hours, which kicked up my vertigo something fierce.

While using this day to do our first round of sink laundry (laundry on a cruise ship is as out of control as the Cartagena taxis), we managed to get our sink drain stop down, and then couldn’t get it back up. I decided to wait until our toilet next gave up the ghost (it was inevitable; it had happened every day on the cruise thus far) to alert housekeeping that we fucked up their sink. When they came in later that day (in hazmat suits, mind you), a very nice man said, “ma’am, may I show you something?” Why yes, please, by all means, show me anything that will alleviate me calling you guys in here every goddamn day…..and then he proceeded to show me where the latch was for the drain stop. Stupid Americans. The plus of this is that this was the first time we were in the room for them unclogging the toilet, and we learned that they actually do this remotely, easing some of my embarrassment from Day 5.

Day 8 is when we both started feeling poorly. Our intestinal distress, which was ramping up quickly, coupled with the altered port time in Panama City (it was scheduled for overnight, leaving at 3pm the following day, but because of the tides and whatnot, didn’t get in until 9am, plus the actual city was a good 40-minute cab ride away), we spent the day relaxing and reading/napping.
Day 9 was a sea day, and was well spent riding the water slides, seeing the NCL musical Six, (which was fantastic), and accompanying Jack, Sarah, and Chris to their first art auction. I’m a big fan of the art auction, and most of my artwork at home has come from them, stemming back to my very first NCL cruise in 2009, when I went to the art auction solely to get the free champagne (this was before the days of drink packages), and purchased a few hand-embellished Emile Bellets. These art auctions are actually what started the fire in me to eventually get my Art degree in 2014.

I digress. Everyone enjoyed it, and Jack was adamant about buying me something, since we couldn’t splurge for the terribly-expensive-but-truly-whimsical delight that was Nano Lopez’s bronze camel called Phillipe. If I ever have an extra $9k lying around, he’s mine. I was adamant that we don’t bid on something that we don’t really LOVE, which is when the mystery bid comes in very handy.

The mystery bid is either art you don’t see before bidding on it, or art you see, but don’t know the price of it until after you’ve bid. This may sound awful, but with the mystery bid, you don’t have to decide until you have all the facts whether or not you actually want to purchase it. Sarah and I both bid on one we didn’t see, and that was a bust once we did see it, but Jack and I bid on a piece called Sailing Journey by Duaiv without knowing the price, and that one turned out to be the big winner for us. So in anywhere from 3 weeks – 45 months, we’ll have something new on our walls.

Day 10 took us to Puerto Quetzal, Guatemala. I knew this port wasn’t going to be the bees knees based on reviews, and the fact that every shore excursion involved at least 3 hours on a bus, which between my general anxiety, fancy-passenger-anxiety, and questionable digestive system, knew was a hard no. But we thought we’d get out to check it out, say we’ve been in Guatemala, and most importantly, find a little bit of WiFi. Cruise ship WiFi is expensive, and even though we had 300 minutes each to use, Jack forgot to logout sometime earlier in the cruise, leaving him with, well, Jack Shit, and I had to use mine really sparingly between checking in on the dog and house-sitter, and making sure things were running smoothly with Gatsby’s Getaway (why does everything always go all cattywampus when you’re on vacation?). I’d booked us an excursion in Puerto Vallarta before we left on the cruise, and they contacted me while we were on the ship saying they had to cancel us, so I wanted to come up with some alternate options for us to maximize out time in that port. Unfortunately, Puerto Quetzal did not provide us with Wifi, but did provide us with $2 coconuts full of milk, which seemed like the best idea with all our ailments, but that we promptly threw up as soon as we were back on the ship.

Days 11 & 12 are when things really and truly (and literally) went to shit. By Day 9, I had started in on the Azithromycin my doc had prescribed me for just-in-case (after the DR, it seemed like a really good idea), so I expected that by Days 11 & 12, I’d be feeling reasonably better, if not fully cured. This was not the case. The Gremlins continued to 1) eat after midnight, 2) get wet, and 3) bathe in bright light. Stripe was maaaaaaaad. As I came to find out when we got home and I went back to the doctor to get a round of Cipro, Azithromycin can do one of two things: either clear you up quickly and completely, as was the case when I came back from South Africa in 2018 unable to drink water for fear of shitting my pants, or, if you take too much/too long, it will wipe out all of the good bacteria as well, leaving you starting from scratch, or worse off than you were.  Let’s just say that Days 11 & 12 made my afternoon in Korea akin to shooting rainbows from my stomach in Care-A-Lot, regardless of the Imodium & Activated Charcoal cocktail I was aggressively consuming. Because of this, our well-intentioned plans to get off the boat in Acapulco on Day 12 to quickly find a pharmacy and internet did not come to fruition.  We instead spent those days in bed on a hunger strike.

We'll round out the rest of the Captain's Log tomorrow, and end with all the miscellaneous bits and pieces that don't fall neatly into the scheme of each day.

Adios!​