Our Inaugural Bus Trip Part 3
Saturday March 19, 2016
I am continuing to post a series of travelogues from the first trip in our 1985 Eagle bus.
In the original travelogue, I did not post a picture of our bus at our friends house in San Diego. I thought it might be fun to show the somewhat tight fit. You can see his house in the upper left hand corner and on the right is the driveway that is quite steep and curvy. I had to back down that driveway! It was an amazing stay.
Hello again from aboard the USS Oosterdam
Wednesday afternoon March 15, 2006. Third travelogue of this trip.
The Oosterdam is a great ship. We took this ship on our Alaska cruise. This time Stampin’ UP! has chartered the whole ship. Slightly more than 500 demonstrators earned the cruise. With spouses, children and other family members, that takes the “earned” folks up to around 1200 (guess). The rest of the folks are mostly other demonstrators who decided to go on the cruise and pay for their trip.
The Oosterdam was built in Aug of 2003. It can accommodate a bit over 1800 passengers and 800 crew. The ship has 11 decks, 16 elevators, is 935 feet long and 106 feet wide. Ships are often rated in gross tonnage and this ship has a rating of 82,000. We have been on bigger ships, but this seems like a nice size.
The sailing from San Diego was pretty darn rough. Pat and I had no problems, but many folks were sick the first two days.
Yesterday we docked in Puerto Vallarta. I did a two tank dive and the dives were OK. The water is not as clear here as it is in the Caribbean. The second dive had several long tunnels and that is a lot of fun. I saw lots of neat fish including some tiny sea horses.
The boat that took us out held about 50 folks. About 16 of us did scuba diving and the rest did snorkeling. The water was pretty darn cold (66 degrees during our dive at about 40 feet), so the snorkel folks did not have much fun. We had wet suits and most of us could handle the cold water. On the way out to the dive area we saw a couple of whales and many dolphins.
While I did my dive Pat went into town. She did not stay long and did not buy anything.
Today we landed at Mazatlan. We did not have a tour scheduled. We went to the dock area and decided to take a funny looking open taxi (based on the old Volkswagen “Thing”). I have some pictures and will send them or post them on our website after we get off the ship (the ship system is very slow and quite expensive). We paid the driver $20 and he drove us around old town for about an hour. The driver spoke good English and he was a great guide.
Tomorrow we arrive at Cabo San Lucas. There we will take a whale watching cruise, hoping to see a Blue Whale (largest mammal to ever inhibit the planet). We are told they are in the area, but are not often observed.