Tuesday 7th April Puntarenas, Costa Rica Puntarenas is a port on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica. It is situated on a four mile isthmus. We arrived early this morning and the temperature was already very high. After leaving the ship there was a long pier to walk along and we spotted some rays swimming by the pier. We joined a minibus tour to see some of the local area and wildlife. We drove further around the bay to a wooded area near the beach where we first o...

Friday 3rd April Cabo San Lucas, Mexico Over the last three days we have sailed south back into the Tropics. We have anchored at Cabo San Lucas which is on the southernmost tip of the Baja Californian Peninsular of Mexico. The ship is anchored near the Land's End rock formation which includes El Arco, a lovely natural arch. The morning started very hot but by the time we got our tender it had clouded over a bit and this made it a more pleasant temperature. We w...

Monday 30th March San Francisco, California We sailed into San Francisco early in the morning and docked at Pier 25. We are here for two days and met up with our good friends, Phil and Brena, outside the terminal on The Embarcadero. We went to Union Square looking around Macy's and Ferragamo before we had coffee. We then drove to Golden Gate Park and had a drive around there. We stopped at the Dutch Windmill and Queen Wilhelmina's Tulip Gardens. The windmill wa...

Wednesday25th March Hilo, Hawaii Overnight we have sailed to another Hawaiian island. Our port is Hilo on 'Big Island' Hawaii. Together with our table companions and two others, we took a minibus tour of the island. We started by driving down Banyan Drive towards Hilo. This road is lined with Banyan trees that have been planted by famous people over the years. We saw a statue of King Kamehameha who came from Big Island and by 1810 had united all the islands int...

Tuesday 24th March Honolulu, Oahu As this is our first American port we had to go through a face to face interview with American immigration. They started at 7am for people going on tours. We joined the queue at 9.30 and eventually got through an hour later. We then took a bus over to Waikiki Beach. Surfing is of course very popular here and The photo shows a walkway to the beach where local surfers 'park' their boards. The day was hot and the beach was very bu...