Day 11: At Sea
Tuesday April 28th, 2009
Today was a day at sea. It was a good day to rest and relax after yesterday’s hot and humid experience in Costa Rica. We lost an hour because we crossed a time line during the night. We set our clocks ahead an hour. Both Angie and I were really tired and we slept in this morning.
We were given the bad news today, that the Swine Flu outbreak in Mexico has caused the closure of all the Mexican ports we had planned to visit. The home office of Holland America decided that it was in the best interest of the passengers to not continue on the current itinerary.
While we waited to find out what they would be doing to prevent a seven day sea trip, we ate breakfast, shopped at their deck sale, played some games in the casino, had afternoon tea and played bingo.
The Holland America staff was able to figure out what to do so we are not stuck on the ship for seven days. They had been working to setup access two new ports for the next year. They were able to coordinate port access and tours for the passengers. Instead of heading to Mexico, we turned the ship around and headed back south to Guatemala. They announced that they would be arriving in the morning and that they would have shore excursion information available shortly. We headed to the excursion desk and picked up a brochure.
We signed up for a trip in and then went to relax in the crows nest bar. We read and relaxed. Tonight was a formal night for dinner. We returned back to the cabin and got ready for pictures and dinner. We met with our table mates and discussed the days events and what we thought we might expect to see tomorrow. Our table mates have decided to enter in a talent contest. They are writing lyrics to a song and plan to perform it on the last night of the cruise. Pretty gutsy to get up there and sing in front of all the guests.
I found it interesting how some guests choose to deal with the reschedule. Many choose to go with it and realize things out of their control are not worth worrying about. Some people felt they should receive a complete refund on their trip. This was the silliest attitude I have seen in a long time. For Angie and I, we are disappointed that we will not be able to go to Acapulco, but we will get to see two countries that we would never have planned to visit otherwise.
We headed back to the room for the night.