Ensenada then home again

I managed to get some photos uploaded today. If you click on the email post and visit the web site you should be able to find them. Click on the Christmas Cruise 2019 under the Photo Gallery menu.

January 1, 2020 and Gail is in rehearsal for the Aloha ‘Oe Farewell Show where the ukulele and hula students show what they have learned. Dave and Leialoha, the Hawaiian ambassadors and entertainers work with groups of passengers during sea days to teach several melodies and hulas. This year there will be around 150 passengers performing this year.

Without doubt this has been the roughest Pacific crossing we have experienced a dozen trips. It has also been one of the coolest. It seems we have always been at the edge of a storm system but I suppose we should be glad it was only the edge. I don’t mind the motion of the ship; Gail and others find it uncomfortable to varying degrees.

Princess Cruises has been introducing a high speed internet service called MedallionNet but not yet on this ship. I was surprised to learn that it will be implemented this year even though the ship will leave the Princess fleet in 2021. It is interesting how our expectations change. When I first began the travel journal I was happy to have any internet service on board even if it often vanished when far offshore. The current service provides reasonably reliable service globally but not at speeds needed to deal with the amount of data associated with photos and video. The new services like MedallionNet which are becoming available on most ships is capable of meeting the demands of streaming music and video. Coincidentally, I am currently reading a book titled “TUBES, A Journey To The Centre Of The Internet” by Andrew Blum. This book takes me back through my career with computers which began before the Internet.

We are in Ensenada today, January 2 and it is sunny but not hot. Never-the-less it is warmer than home in Burlington. We have enjoyed traveling with a number of people we have met on previous cruises and today we started our good-byes. Tomorrow we start home.

I managed to check-in with WestJet and get electronic boarding passes with no difficulty this year. Last year it was extremely difficult as the ship’s internet was paralyzingly slow. Today was just fine.

See you all soon.