Fran met us at 10 and we drove out across the Golden Gate Bridge. It is an extraordinary construction achievement. I had no idea it was over a mile long, but, no, it doesn’t sway when you cross it!

We drove through Sausalito and went to Tiburon for brunch at Sam’s, which is a beautiful restaurant in an even more pretty little town, overlooking a marina. We had a delicious meal – mum had a salmon Caesar salad, Fran, Dad and I had burgers. We then shared a nut-free brownie sundae (called a Mondae). We then returned to Sausalito, to have a walk through this (also pretty) little town and take in the beauty of the little town and the houses on the neighbouring hillsides. Mum apparently held a seed in her teeth for a cockatoo to take from her. Rather her than me!

We then returned to San Francisco proper, where we dropped mum and dad at Pier 49 to go and see the seals, while Fran and I caught a ferry to Alcatraz.

Alcatraz is creepy, even in blazing sunshine and the clearest skies San Francisco can ever recall seeing. What it would be like in the fog and the cold and the dark, I can’t begin to imagine. It’s cold, and shadowy and primitive and not a little chilling. The basic nature of the cells, and their absolutely tiny size, causes a genuine shudder, and being somewhat claustrophobic doesn’t help. It is just like you’ve seen on TV, but MUCH smaller in real life. There are a lot of metal stairs, and despite the fact that, outside, the birdsong and the silence of the wind in the trees is quite calming and beautiful, the clanging inside must have been deafening, as every footstep reverberated against the stone walls and glass roof. How to not be permeated by a sense of foreboding and doom, I don’t know. And I could leave at any time!

Then we returned to the mainland and a drink at Pier 39, before the sadness of goodbyes and boarding the ship with 15 minutes to spare. I was so exhausted, there was no way I could change for dinner, so I just went in my jeans and polo shirt. We have two new people at our table. Wayne and Sherri are Americans, doing the SF to Vancouver thing (remember Jones’s Law?). They’ve been to Alaska before and are desperate to do it again. They live in Boulder City, near Vegas, so it’ll make a nice change from the desert for them! Wayne is into golf (nobody’s perfect) and works in construction and they are both very pleasant company. That’s me done. I’m going to bed.

P.S. Today was the first day my sunburn didn’t hurt, so it was obviously the day it started to itch and peel. Stands to reason.

As mentioned, no one leaves the ship until we have all been immigrated. They intend to start very early in the morning, so that our day is not unnecessarily truncated, although the excursions aren’t planned to start until nearly 11am, so they’re not in THAT much of a hurry. We have been instructed to go at 7.15am. This seems awfully early to little me, although those who intend to get up at 5am to watch us go under the Golden Gate won’t mind, I suppose.

Come to think of it, all that will be put back an hour, because the Captain announced last night we wouldn’t be arriving until 6am. So that’s 8.15 for immigration, presumably.

Mercifully, and surprisingly thoughtfully for P&O, they held back one of the hours of clock changes until the last night, so that we can have an hour’s extra sleep by way of compensation.

And yet, to wake me at 6.32am with an announcement telling people NOT to go to immigration yet, seems unnecessarily cruel. This announcement was repeated at 06.53 and again at 07.02 and 07.18, to ensure that everyone who had not been woken by the first one was definitely awake. Not able to go anywhere or do anything, but awake nonetheless.

Dear Lord. We set foot on land at ten to twelve.

I’ll say that again. We arrived at 6am and we got ashore at NOON. I thought I had witnessed the heights of P&O incompetence, but I hadn’t seen anything until today.

Not only were we “immigrated” by 10, so I had time to go back to the cabin and have a nap for an hour and a half, but when they let us off, we were only allowed to use ONE GANGPLANK.

Two thousand frustrated and angry people, who had been waiting to disembark for nearly SIX HOURS, trying to get off a single gangplank. They had two gangplanks in place, but they turned the disabled people who had gone to use it away from the lower one and made them go back up to the upper one, where they were expected to join the back of the queue.

Never in all my born days have I seen such monstrous incompetence. And this was only 2000 passengers, remember. The larger ships have three and a half, four, even five thousand. Just when I think P&O can’t possibly get it any more wrong, they do something like this.

We barged our way in and got ashore to meet our cousin. She took us to first to the Farmer’s Market and then to Gott’s for superb beef hotdogs for lunch. With proper lemonade! With free refills! I love the US!

Then we went to Macy’s and mum bought up most of their Clinique stock, and then we went to Bloomingdales and bought some more. Fran and I popped to the Discount Shoe Warehouse, where I bought two pairs of shoes and Fran got one. Then we stopped for tea (crepes and cakes and cold drinks in the basement food court of the Westfield shopping centre) before going to Nordstroms, where we bought nothing, sadly. It is all designer labels with matching prices. There were some nice Ralph Lauren pyjamas, but I’m not paying 80 dollars for a pair of pjs, no matter how soft they are.

We had intended to have tea in the Cheesecake Factory at the top of Macy’s but they accused mum of queue-jumping so we left and took our custom elsewhere. It was insanely loud and utterly packed, and there was a half hour queue just to get a table. I don’t care how pretty your decor or how good your cake, I’m not queuing for half an hour for the right to sit down, particularly when one of our party walks with a stick.

Fran took us to the Hunan Home Chinese Restaurant for dinner, where we stuffed ourselves on the loveliest Chinese food for a tenner a head. We had egg rolls (fat spring rolls) and mu shu chicken (which I now know to be a stir fry with egg, bamboo shoots and veg rolled into a pancake), followed by asparagus and chicken in black bean sauce, lemon chicken and chicken chow mein. All delicious.

We then headed back to the ship, at the end of a 13-hour day, truly worn out! But I got my second wind, so I texted Fran and she came and got me and we went to a bar in her neighbourhood called Specs. What a dive! It’s clearly a passionately loved local to those in the area, but, personally, I think you can judge how dodgy a place is by the fact that there are no locks on the toilet doors! Specs has a variety of memorabilia on its walls and ceilings. Flags and liferings from old ships, artefacts from African tribes, ivories, rude signs, Victorian photos of naked women, posters from the Second World War, all sorts of stuff, all crap. The drinks were cheap, though, so that was nice.

After we had put the world to rights for a couple of hours, we walked across the street to the City Lights bookshop. This is a bookshop that I think could only exist in San Francisco. It has every book on philosophy, politics, gender, race, psychology, religion, spirituality, history and music and every sub-genre thereof. It is also open 10am to midnight. It was founded in 1953 by Peter Martin and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the poet. How cool is that?! The shopowner was very friendly and very knowledgeable. When I mentioned that I couldn’t find Will Self’s Psychogeography, despite the fact that Walking to Hollywood had pride of place near the till, he said that Psychogeography 1 and 2 had only been released in hardback in the States, and even that was hard to find. He certainly knows his stuff. I bought a Jonathan Franzen I’d been promising myself for a while and then Fran took me back to the ship. Home by half midnight. Better go to bed, I’ve got to be up at half nine!

I have discovered something mysterious. The remote control for the television in my cabin has a Magic Button. Really. It’s clearly labelled. I’ll put up a photo. It doesn’t seem to do anything when I press it, but if someone finds a new country at the back of their wardrobe, it’s probably my fault. Sorry.

San Fran tomorrow. Have emailed the poor cousin who is meeting us to tell her we have no idea when we’ll be allowed off or even where we’ll be moored, so no change there then. US Immigration are due on board at 6.30am, but we won’t be allowed off until every person on board has been “immigrated”, which is always nice.

Went to the shop to look at what was on offer. They have special Alaska anoraks, but they aren’t going on sale until 17th May, AFTER we have visited most of the Alaska places where we would need said anorak! I pointed this out and was told the stock wasn’t coming aboard until Skagway (although I think they mean Whittier, as they were talking about the 16th May). Really not all that bright, P&O, are they?

Today I have achieved a bit of a coup. I have bagged the comfiest chair on the ship. It’s a wicker sofa on the back of Deck 9 and it is so soft, even my sunburnt shoulders are happy. I have pushed it back into the shade (not making that mistake again) and it is all I can do to stay awake. To assist with this, however, they have put on a CD of music that is indescribably bad. It sounds like a male voice choir doing show tunes, but they only have two settings: loud and really loud. It’s a recording of a live performance and at the end of each song the audience breaks into rapturous applause, and all I can think is “Don’t encourage them”. It’s atrocious. Oh, this should be good. We’ve got to “Sit down, you’re rocking the boat”. Ooh, the soloist sounds very Welsh.

There are a lot more outward-facing people on this cruise than I’ve noticed on previous ones. I’ve commented before that people don’t seem to want to look at the water, instead turning their backs on the enormity of the oceans and pointing themselves determinedly towards the sun and the pool. But on this trip, there are such frequent dolphin and whale sightings, people are facing the water so they don’t miss anything. They are still missing stuff, because you can only watch one side at a time, but it’s the thought that counts. We’ve seen turtles, orcas and the other night, at dinner, an entire school of dolphins, jumping in our wake, diving for the fish we were churning to the surface.

Rhythm of Life now. Much more suited to massed voices than Bridge Over Troubled Water. Yes, it must be a Welsh male voice choir. They did Bread of Heaven as their encore.

It’s very hazy today. You can probably only see about 10 miles, if that, in any direction. The haze makes the water look a much lighter colour than usual. Dad said it’s a light sapphire colour and I can’t come up with a better description, so you’ll have to make do with that. It’s not like you care much anyway!

I had to transfer from Aquarius bar to Neptune, as although Aquarius has internet and Neptune does not, Aquarius doesn’t serve Magnums, and I was in need of Ecuadorian dark yumminess. This meant a merciful end to the dodgy music, but the roof was closed over Neptune, so there was no breeze. What you make on the swings, you lose on the roundabouts. It’s a complicated life, you know. You don’t appreciate the sacrifices I have to make.

At dinner today, Sheila said that a friend of hers had witnessed a bit of an incident at Reception today. We have all received a Customer Satisfaction Questionnaire (we get one at the end of every sector) and a woman went to Reception, said “This is what I think of your cruise” and tore it up and threw it at the Reception staff. Crumbs, I miss all the excitement. The immediate assumption at the table was that the woman had been ill with the norovirus and blamed P&O for it. That’s what happens if you behave badly on board. People assume you don’t wash your hands. It is also a silly thing to do, tear up the primary means of complaint given to you. It’s four pages long, this thing and asks your opinion on every single department on the ship. To have an opinion and not impart it seems counterproductive, but we don’t know how much complaining she’s already been doing, I suppose. Still, dramatic, bless her. Ineffective, but dramatic.

The cabin opposite mine has a room service tray outside, with paper plates and cutlery (easier to burn). Norovirus. It’s been working its way down the corridor for several days, and it’s now all getting a bit close for comfort, frankly. Help!

My face is now peeling. I thought the backs of my hands were bad, but you should see me now – forehead, nose and chin. How attractive. Bleurgh.

What’s the point? Why am I washing and gelling and washing and gelling and re-gelling and re-washing and washing and gelling? Why am I bothering? When I sign for a drink, I’m using the same pen the wine waiter hands to every other passenger he serves. When I get up from the table, they wipe the table, but not the chairs. It is the most lackadaisical Red Level Alert I’ve ever seen. They should be wiping down the handles and backs of every chair on a rolling basis, preferably as each person gets up and leaves. If I can’t pick up my own plastic sachet of vinegar without having to have a member of staff put it on my plate with a set of tongs, and my mum is served a jar of marmalade at breakfast the same way, what’s the point if every time I sit down on a chair, I can pick up the germs of whoever sat here before?

Now, this may all sound a bit OCD to those of you who have never been on a ship with norovirus on board, but, trust me, there is no such thing as too paranoid. You use your elbows to call the lift and select your floor, you go down the middle of the staircase, with your hand hovering over the handrail, so that you can grab it if you need it but avoid it if you don’t. We wash our hands and then we gel them every time we go in and out of the restaurant. But what’s the point if, when you sit down, the chairs are just as dirty as they were before? If someone sick pulled in the chair in that you’re now sitting on, you’re going to catch it. Norovirus is contagious, not infectious. You don’t get it from the air, you pass it on by touch and to find that the chairs are not being wiped at this level of alert is, frankly, alarming.

Yesterday, when coming back aboard, our tablemates spotted that the six members of staff getting back on board in front of them did not gel their hands. They went BERSERK, and I don’t blame them. They and several other passengers screamed the place down until they were forced to gel their hands. It’s all very well saying we’re too risky to serve ourselves but if the staff who serve us instead have not cleaned their hands, we’re not really any better off, are we? In fact, the risk increases, instead of decreasing.

There is simply not enough cleaning going on on this ship. Particularly in view of the fact that we will shortly enter US waters and be subject to the most stringent cleanliness checks on Earth. If we don’t get 85% or better, we won’t be allowed into America. Simple as that. They should be cleaning the drinks gun hoses with toothbrushes by now (they really do this). Instead, the level of activity is so low, you’d never know we had a norovirus outbreak at all, never mind the US Public Health Inspection in less than 48 hours’ time. If you’re not even wiping the chairs down, you really don’t care.

I appreciate there may be a balance to strike, between alarming the passengers and making them paranoid, and getting the job done, but right now, we have neither, which isn’t balance. It’s negligence. And that’s no way of getting norovirus under control, believe me.

In the queue for the burger grill, I spoke to the restaurant manager, who is a friend of ours, and told him that I hadn’t seen a chair wiped in over two hours. He said he would get onto it and, less than 15 minutes later, a man with a bucket appeared and started wiping chair arms. Only the arms, mind you, not the backs, not the seats and even then, only the bits he could reach. Seriously, anyone putting any less care or effort into it would have had to have been actually asleep upright. It was clearly just an exercise in getting the restaurant manager off his back, and probably getting me off the restaurant manager’s. It seems a shame that it is so little, but I suppose every little helps.

The woman behind me in the grill queue said that the attitude of the staff was noticeably deteriorating and that she had complained about the lack of chair wiping to the Head of Catering yesterday. She owns a restaurant and says this is the dirtiest ship she’s ever been on. Seems a BIT strong, but, like I said, they really don’t seem to care much. It’s all just extra work to them. Her comments actually bordered on the racist, and I won’t repeat them, but I can’t fault her as regards the general attitude around the ship at the moment. Coming back to my cabin afterwards, I noticed that my corridor doesn’t seem to have been hoovered in quite some time either, although there was a boy with a bucket doing the stair handrails. When was the last time I was woken by a hoover wand being slammed into my door? It is a while ago, now I think about it. Maybe I should have an afternoon nap? That would guarantee some hoovering, if only in order to wake me up.*

On the plus side, sitting in the shade, on deck, watching the cleaning, I got a lovely breeze on my sunburn. It’s gorgeous. I really am a stupid. I will show you a picture, but I am in surprising amounts of pain. The main problem seems to be that my swimming cozzie straps are narrower than my bra straps, which means that the sunburn is under my bra. And that hurts. I may have to admit defeat and go back to the cabin and take off the bra altogether, which is lovely at the time, but raises the spectre of having to put it back on again later, which hurts even more. Decisions, decisions.

Monica has spoken to her friends today. It wasn’t a burst appendix, it was her gall bladder, which has now been removed. I know nothing about gall bladders, so I can’t comment, but she still thinks they’re getting back on in Seattle. Call me a cynic, but I doubt it. Five days to recover from gall bladder surgery? Nah.

*The Captain made an announcement today, explaining the lack of hoovering (!). Apparently, it kicks up more dust than it clears and causes the spread of infection. No HEPA filters then?

What a wonderful day.

Before I go on, I need to clear something up. Acapulco is a DUMP and don’t let anyone convince you otherwise. It has a very expensive part of town (where Sylvester Stallone and Timothy Dalton have houses and have filmed and where Bob Hope and Liz Taylor used to stay) and a very cheap part of town (where the ship moors). It has one historic building (the fort) and several shopping centres. But, man, is it ugly. Acapulco has to be one of the ugliest seaside cities we go to. It may have a glamorous history from the fifties and sixties, but these days, it’s a dump. Don’t get me wrong, the people are lovely, and although they speak Spanish, most of them speak, if not English, then Spanglish, which is perfectly understandable! But it had a major influx of money and prestige In the sixties and seventies, when aesthetics were not particularly sought after, which has resulted in an agglomeration of ugly concrete high rise hotels that stretches right around the bay, along the beach, obliterating the view from behind and also of the bay from elsewhere. Seriously, U-G-L-Y, you ugly, Acapulco. It doesn’t matter how lovely your golden beaches (all public, no such thing as private beaches in Mexico), and they are lovely, and it doesn’t matter how luxurious your hotels and their congruent swimming pools, and they too are lovely, and it doesn’t matter how good the food, how cheap the souvenirs, how friendly the locals, and they are, they are and they are. It’s an ugly dump – a mixture of expensive concrete and cheap shanty wood and metal structures, side by side. There are at least three McDonalds, plus all the other major Americans – Burger King, Starbucks, Walmart, you name it, it’s here. These do not count as redeeming features.

An hour’s drive takes you to what our tour guide repeatedly called the New Acapulco for the 21st Century. He said it at least a hundred times. This translates as ‘just as ugly but one bay over’ and with more greenery between the ugly, i.e. a golf course. Oh good. That’s better then.

We got up at the crack of disgusting (7.30am) to catch our excursion bus for a trip called Highlights and Baby Turtles. The hotels were the highlights and, although our guide, Juan, and our driver, Mario, were brilliant and quite funny, that’s pretty much it. Just hotels, oh, and the conference centre. I kid you not. It was all just so much filler on the way to the turtles, but no one minded much.

We stopped at the top of the cliff at the edge of the bay to take photos of the bay, which is very pretty, as long as you keep the hotels out of shot. Some of the less developed islands in the bay look rugged and interesting, but you should photograph them soon, because land without buildings on it doesn’t stay that way long in Acapulco. Last time we were here, I took a taxi up to Senor Frog’s bar to buy a t-shirt. At the time, Senor Frog’s was a ramshackle bar on the side of the cliff with nothing around it but trees and wild bougainvillea. Now, there are four bars and restaurants, with tarmaced car parks, and viewing platforms and toilets and refreshments and stalls selling souvenirs while you gaze across at the bay. In addition to which, Senor Frog’s now has three merchandise shops down in the town, so you wouldn’t need to come up here anyway.

Filler duly filled, we went to the Elcano resort, where they host the turtles. First we were offered a free drink (and coupons for two more, which was a nice touch), and then we waited for the other coaches to arrive. The pool looked lovely, but as we had not been told that we would have time to use the pool, or, indeed, permission, no one had bought swimming stuff with them. I made my feelings on this subject clear to the excursion escort, Claire, and then I took off my denim shorts and went in in my clothes. I’m not letting P&O incompetence get in a way of a swim in a pool that inviting! When I got out, they gave me a towel and then the talk started.

The guy giving the talk, from the turtle conservation charity, had a very strong accent, which rendered some of it unintelligible, even to me, but the gist of it was that the turtles come back to the same place each year (within a couple of kilometres, anyway – they’re not as accurate as penguins!) to lay their eggs on the beach and only 1 in a 1000 makes it to adulthood, although by releasing them under controlled conditions, we increase their chances 100 fold. Then we got to hold some little ones, that fitted in my palm, born yesterday and this morning, mine hadn’t even opened its eyes yet, and then we went down to the sea, where we released each one onto the sand and cheered it on its way to the ocean. We held them between a thumb and forefinger and you could feel their tummy muscles tensing as they flapped their flippers. They were clearly very eager to get to the sea. The surf was up to about four to six feet in places, so I was a bit worried about them, but they seemed happy enough to be swept up, tumbling around in the water until the waves bore them away. In fact, it was the conservation staff’s footprints that caused the most bother! We stayed behind the rope, but their footprints in the sand were rather deep and once a little fella (or fellarette, they don’t DECIDE their gender until they’re about three years old) fell in, he either quite wore himself out climbing out, having to then stop for a rest to recover, or the staff lifted them out, which was the better option, overall.

Then, when they were all safely in the big blue, we retired back to the hotel restaurant for chips and guacamole, tortillas and tacos, which were very popular indeed. In the queue for the buffet, several people came up to me and said how jealous they were that I had gone in for a swim, but I couldn’t persuade anyone else to give it a go!

We then took a circuitous route home, via some more developments that are being built and planned and got stuck in traffic on our way back to the terminal. Once in the terminal, there was time for shopping or having your photo taken with the local parrots (for a fee). Then it was back on board for a late lunch. I then went on deck and found a sunlounger in the shade, where I read my book in between bouts of swimming in the pool. It felt odd to be back on board and done for the day by 1.30pm, but there really isn’t that much to see in Acapulco that we hadn’t already done (apart from the cliff divers, which I wouldn’t go to if you paid me). Added to which, I got quite burned yesterday, so it was good to get the damp t-shirt off my back and air my sore bits.

Tonight is hoedown night, which means country and western garb for dinner. I can’t find my checked shirt. I must have forgotten to pack it. Oops. One man came to dinner dressed in a full Sheriff’s uniform, complete with hat, which I thought was taking things a leetle bit far!

We have a new person on our table, Monica. Her friend was taken off today with a burst appendix, and her husband went with her, which left Monica all alone, so she joined us. She has a great sense of humour and fitted in very well. We are not sure how long she’ll be sitting with us, but she is very good company, however long it is for, and there was a lot of laughter tonight. She is disembarking in Vancouver, as she has family there. She thinks her friends will rejoin the ship somewhere around Seattle, but, personally, I’d be very surprised. Even if the appendix is removed, it has already burst, which means a probable infection. I’m not convinced that will have abated enough in the six days between now and Seattle for them to fly to rejoin the ship. I’d be happy to be proved wrong, but I won’t hold my breath.

Today I met three people from St Neots! Well, Eynesbury and Great Barford, to be precise. One of them has a nephew who runs the farm shop at the end of my road! They even recommended a good Chinese restaurant for me, when I mentioned the firey demise of Yim Wah House. The Golden Cross at Great Barford. Duly noted. In return, I told them about the restaurant in Lisle Street in Central London, The Empress of Sichuan, which has the chef from the old Ming Wai that used to be in Little Paxton and was widely thought to have been the best Chinese in Cambridgeshire.

This evening they are showing a talk with the Captain, recorded a few days ago, on one of the television channels. He’s got a point, though. There cannot be many people who have been thrown out of the Cubs for wolf whistling at a nun… Other tidbits worth noting: We burn about two tonnes of fuel an hour on Arcadia. Catching up from Barbados to Aruba, we used 48 tonnes more of fuel than was planned. He was once on a cruise ship that was trapped in a hurricane for three days and one of the decks actually broke in two. It was able to go back to port for repairs and luckily had no passengers on board at the time. But what a terrifying thought.

My sunburn seems to hurt even more today than yesterday. I’m going to bed.

Despite the ongoing disagreements about how to pronounce it, here we are (consensus: Wa-tull-co). We got off early and headed for a resort hotel called Las Brisas. There was a ship excursion going there, but dad reckoned we could do it cheaper ourselves. So we pitched up, paid our money and settled in for a nice, relaxing day of doing nothing at all.

Huatulco is what happens when there is money available. What a beautiful little town. Absolutely pristine and spotless – our taxi driver says there are over 300 street cleaners working daily to keep the place perfect. The dual carriageway was astonishing clean and tidy, and virtually devoid of lumps and bumps as well. They are currently building a huge road to connect the port to the town. There is currently no such road, so there are no cars in town, only pedestrians.

They like to make people walk here. Just to get from the ship to the shore was a good fifteen minute walk, for starters!

They have stalls, shops, musicians and a lovely pedestrianised area by the ship’s pier. Unfortunately, this area is VERY large, which means the walk to the taxis takes a full half hour. No, really. Half an hour. Granted, that’s at Mum’s speed, but I’m not sure I could do it in under fifteen minutes, myself.

The whole of Huatulco is exquisite. Dad describes it as the most beautiful place he’s never heard of. Built on eleven bays, the sand is golden and empty, the birds are vociferously cheerful, it’s all lovely.

We went to Las Brisas, a five star hotel that used to be a Club Med. I am lying by a beautiful pool on a slightly rickety sunlounger with the pool in front of me, the private beach behind me and the sun trying to force its way through my umbrella. The only fly in the ointment is that the chillout tunes being played are (a) too fast and (b) FAR too loud!

Well, I can attest to the fact that the water is lovely. The main part of the pool is too deep to stand. Only beyond the yellow floats is it under 5’5”. Even Dad came in, which is unusual for him. Mum seems reluctant. The heat doesn’t feel nearly so oppressive now that I’ve just got out, maybe because I’m still evaporating. Dad reminisced about when I was tiny and had a fever and the doctor said to get me wet and just fan me. He said my temperature “dropped like a stone” so it’s obviously a very effective way of cooling down.

The hotel is a bit tired-looking. The sunloungers are faded, the umbrellas have small holes in, the kind that will grow into fraying, eventually. They have also painted the ugly seventies building a rather unfortunate shade of terracotta brown. It’s a frankly dismal colour and does nothing to improve the look or feel of the place. I can’t help but feel that a pale pink or white would be more pleasant and also prettier to look at. The presence of the building currently looms over the pool and it may sound silly, but they might find they need much less loud samba music to lift the mood if they just painted it a lighter colour.

I must confess to being somewhat amazed at the number of Mexicans who have brought their families here. I rather assumed that all the racist stuff I read and heard would be true (whites in the pool, Mexicans as staff), but I’m delighted to say that it is simply not true. The pool is almost entirely full of Mexicans right now, in fact. This may be in no small part due to the fact that despite the fact that this place claims to be 5 star, it is surprisingly cheap, costing only 23 US dollars per person for a day pass. Presumably sprogs cost less, because they’ve brought plenty with them! The Mexican families seem to treat this place as some sort of country club or sports club. They probably come here every weekend (although, oddly, today is a Monday) to use the pools and facilities. It’s probably their “local”.

Samba lessons. Oh, good grief. No wonder the music has become so samey. Or is it aerobics? It’s hard to tell from here! But, no, I’m not going closer to find out!

I couldn’t take the heat any longer so I got back in the pool. Had the whole thing to myself. Lovely. I have been warned that there will shortly be an aquarobics class, so I didn’t stay in long!

I’m astonished how few Arcadians there are here. Probably less than a dozen, unless there are fifty on the private beaches (three) that I haven’t been down to. These sorts of trips are usually very popular.

Lunch was a buffet of pizza, burgers, hot dogs, salads, nachos, fruit and ice cream. I think it worked out about eight quid a head. A bit steep for lunch, particularly a lunch of cold fries (what do you do to make fries cold when it’s 35 degrees in the shade?!), soggy nachos and salad that the birds kept landing on, but it filled a hole. Then I went back in the pool until it was time to head back. Bob* was 4.30 today, which was irritatingly early, but can’t be helped, and we do have over 300 miles to cover to get to Acapulco tomorrow on time, so every hour helps, I suppose.

So the parents went back to the ship, and I browsed the stalls on the quayside, the little beach next to the ship and wound up in the vicinity of a cafe with air con and free wifi, so I sat there and watched the world go by til it was time to go back on board.

Got back and had a very long, very cold shower (am a bit burnt). Found a note on my bed about norovirus. We’re upping our alert level, so that although the self service restaurant is not yet completely closed, hours are restricted and I get the impression we won’t be self-serving per se; it’ll still be a buffet, but we’ll be served, so that the number of people holding the spoons is restricted. I hope it helps, because someone has mentioned the possibility if us not being allowed to enter the United States if too many of us are ill…

*Bob = Back On Board

I give up. It is 18.15, fifteen minutes til dinner. My day has gone thus:

0850 Woken by the 9am announcement. This happens every day. I just go back to sleep.
0950 Woken by CHURCH BELLS being piped into my cabin. They normally don’t do this. They normally keep the bells to the corridors, allowing those of us who aren’t Christian or aren’t well or aren’t interested to avoid them. Not today.
1050 Woken by an announcement from the Captain about the arrival of norovirus on board. Surprise, surprise. Well I never. Someone who embarked at Barbados (remember? 500 off, 500 on?) doesn’t wash their hands properly and now we’re all at risk. Marvellous. Thanks a bunch.

At 11 I gave up and got up, because at 12 we had The Grand Voyage Luncheon, which was a surprisingly pleasant experience. Our officer was Andy Beaton, the Head of Security, and what a joy he was. What a lovely person to spend time with. We spent nearly two hours chatting and laughing with him. He told us all sorts of stories about cruising, and his life before, as a policeman in Hertfordshire, and plied us with free booze. This took us to 3pm.

The more eagle-eyed among you will have spotted that we are now three hours ahead of where we were after a two-hour lunch. That’s because at noon, the clocks were put FORWARD an hour to 1pm. Don’t ask me why we have to change time zones between Costa Rica and Mexico, but we do. So that’s the missing hour.

After lunch, I went back to my cabin and prepared to go out on deck and do some sunbathing, but I was so tired that, at about 4pm, I went back to bed. I promptly went out like a light, so I obviously needed it. And guess what? At 1810? Another announcement by the Captain about norovirus. And, yes, I was sound asleep at the time. But not after he started, as there is a speaker in the HEADBOARD. No, really. When they want you awake, they want you AWAKE.

So here we are. It’s 1830 and all I’ve done today is eat, sleep and get woken up by announcements. Ain’t life grand?

2030 Norovirus is a pain in the behind for the passengers (if you’ll pardon the pun), but I feel bad for the staff. The extra working and cleaning that the waiters have to do is a nightmare, but hopefully we won’t reach the next stage. If the problem persists, they will close the self-service restaurant, and then the staff are in real trouble, because everyone will have to be served by a waiter, for six meals a day (breakfast, elevenses, lunch, afternoon tea, dinner and late night snacks). Every chair has to be wiped every time someone gets up and every handrail wiped and every lift button wiped every time they are used. There are 2000 passengers, and they have a tendency to not stay still. The cleaners and waiters get about three hours’ sleep a night during the bad patch, because there is so much cleaning to be done. It must be a nightmare. So here’s hoping we don’t reach that stage. On the plus side, we have two port days in a row, so that will take the pressure off the staff a little, although there are always those that don’t disembark to take care of.

It never ceases to amaze me the number of people who don’t get off the ship, sometimes ever or at all. They get on in Southampton and they get off in Southampton. It seems totally alien to me to go to a place and not disembark. You haven’t seen a place if you don’t get off and there is nowhere on Earth that doesn’t bear another viewing. In addition to which, newer guide books, such as the Berlitz Caribbean Ports of Call Pocket Guide I have, positively beg the reader to go ashore. I have already explained the local benefit of a disembarking passenger, who eats and drinks and takes a taxi. Many of these places have economies largely or even entirely based on tourism, and if we don’t give them our money, there is nowhere else to get it from. The Berlitz guide has a How You Can Help page which says:

• Disembark at every port.
• Check out tours at the quayside or sign up for locally run tours.
• Use local restaurants and cafes.
• Buy island-made souvenirs and visit museums and churches.
• Only take photos of people with their permission and offer a tip.

It amazes me that any of this needs spelling out, but there’s nowt so queer as folk. Places change, so having been before is no excuse. We went to Phuket many years ago, and went again only months after the tsunami. When we had the chance to go again, of course we went! We wanted to see what had changed, what remained the same, what was better, what was worse, what was different, how much the prices had gone up (answer: lots). We go to Madeira fairly regularly, but last year they had mudslides that tore through the capital, killing over 50 people. So the next time we had a chance to go, we went. Not only to see for ourselves the damage, but also to contribute to the cleanup and recovery by spending our cash on the island. We’ve been to some places many times, but there is always more to see.

But there are people on the ship who stretch their money to the absolute limit. They don’t disembark, they eat only in the restaurants that are free of charge and they spend only their onboard credit and no more. It is possible to do, if you don’t use the internet, wash your own clothes and drink only tap water. This essentially transforms your trip into an all-inclusive holiday. You paid to get on board and you never pay again.

But, with the best will in the world, what kind of a holiday would you be having? Doing your own laundry is clearly doable, if sitting in a steaming hot room for a couple of hours guarding your knickers from those who would do them harm is your idea of fun. No internet, easy enough for the non-technology minded, I suppose. No spa treatments or hair dos or manicures or pedicures or massages is easy enough, I suppose. No alcohol, fair enough, if that’s your idea of fun. No new experiences, if that suits you. You can sail the Caribbean, the World, even, and not buy anything, not see anything, not do anything, not go anywhere and not eat anything. But no ice cream?! Seriously?! Madness, utter madness. What’s the point?!

2200 local time. Holy cow, Osama bin Laden is dead? Really?! Wow. That’s huge.

I stayed up to listen to Obama’s speech live and then I went to bed. Not going to end the day any better than that.

Welcome to Punterenas, Costa Rica. Well, welcome to a container port somewhere near Puntarenas, Costa Rica. Huzzah. P&O strike again! I’m going to have to write that book soon. You know, Container Ports of the World that P&O have Dumped Me In. At least it’s only 20 minutes from town, not like the 45 minutes we had in Singapore.

Anyway, the heat is ludicrous. I wish I could think of another way of describing it. It’s not the hammering down on your head hot we had yesterday, but it’s humid enough to make breathing hard work and you do not want to be standing waiting for a shuttle bus with no shade over you, you really don’t. Even my insect repellent somehow cooked on my skin into white lumps. Very attractive.

The twenty minute drive into Punterenas was very enlightening, not only taking us past corrugated iron shacks with holes instead of glass windows (better ventilation, less greenhouse effect), which later gave way to brick buildings with glass as we got nearer town, but also odd-looking trees that seem quite desperate to get away from the ground and up to the sun. They don’t seem to bother with lower branches. It’s almost as if, when they burst through the soil, they realise how hot the ground is, and immediately start trying to get as far away from it as possible. There is some scrubby grass and brush, but for the most part the first couple of feet are bare. In fact, it was all rather stark and dry-looking. The rainforest proper is about an hour and a half’s drive inland, but what with there being over 34,000 species of insect, I was glad to give it a miss.

Costa Rica is (apparently) famous for its ecology. Anyone interested in stuff that grows should come here. Never mind Galapagos, this is the place to be. Over 1000 species of orchid, 900 species of tree, 9000 types of plant, 850 types of bird, the aforementioned 34000 species of insect and so on. It has three different kinds of terrain, I think: rainforest, cloudforest and dry forest. Cloudforest is exactly what it says. Rainforest at an altitude that puts it up IN the clouds. It doesn’t rain there – there’s a permanent mist instead – which makes for a completely different ecosystem, or so I understand. Although Costa Rica has 0.05% of the World’s land mass, it has 5% of the world’s species. That’s a lot in a small space. It all sounds rather crowded to me, frankly. How they fit in all the coffee and fruit as well, I have no idea (there were about a dozen Del Monte artics lined up on the quayside ready for work on Monday morning). Funnily enough, we didn’t drink any coffee at all. I think the heat was a bit much for coffee, myself. I know people say that hot drinks cool you down, but when it’s over 30 in the shade, there’s no way you’re getting me near a steaming cup of anything!

And then there are the beaches. Miles of them, by the looks of it. It’s not pretty, white, coral sand, like the Caribbean, and it’s not black sand like the volcanic places we have been (although Costa Rica does have an active volcano), it’s sort of dirty grey, sort of pigeon-coloured, not even as golden sandy coloured as British beaches. But a beach is a beach, frankly, and the sea looks beautiful. They were also utterly deserted. Maybe less than a dozen people in sight. Which surprised me, bearing in mind it’s a Saturday. Maybe this isn’t hot enough for the locals?

Those familiar with my ‘thing’ for public art will be pleased to know that there is a series of white stone sculptures dotted along the beach for a couple of miles. They were part of the International Festival of Sculpture in Stone which took place in Punterenas in 2006. I also spotted a steam locomotive in the middle of a roundabout, but I couldn’t get a picture in time.

The shuttle bus dropped us in town, ironically and not a little cruelly, right next to the cruise ship pier we were supposed to have parked at, which was instead occupied by the Infinity, which we followed through the Panama Canal locks. They even got a little white train to take them down the pier to their gangways. There were dozens of lovely stalls and cafes along the front, one of which was showing the Royal Wedding on the telly! So we wandered and browsed and browsed and wandered and when we got the end, a lovely taxi marshal with one arm hailed us a taxi, which took us up the coast about a mile, to the “posh” hotels. We stopped at one called Las Brisas (not THE Las Brisas, just A Las Brisas – THE Las Brisas is at our next stop, Huatulco), where we had a lovely lunch at a restaurant between the pool and the ocean. My request for vinegar caused some brief consternation, but was eventually resolved successfully. The food was superb and cost very little. Then we grabbed a taxi back to the shuttle bus and the shuttle bus back to the ship. There is a small terminal building with more souvenir stalls, some free wifi, and The Most Efficient Air Con In Central America. Unfortunately, it is right down the other end of the quayside, which makes for a surprisingly long walk!

And when we got back, there was the usual gangway struggle. The security lady allowed mum to go on the ‘off’ gangway, which was shorter and less steep. We normally have to have a blazing row first, but this time, she just caved as soon as she saw us coming. The rest of us had to climb the ‘on’ gangway, which was at probably more than 50% to the horizontal with no steps or frets or anything. It was quite frightening and people with bad knees were having all sorts of problems. I took a run at it, because I figured if I lost momentum, I’d be in trouble, so I waited til Dad got to the top before I started my climb. One woman tried to overtake me, but soon regretted it!

I’m not telling them again. We’ve already had this row at least twice and, frankly, they’ll do what they’re asked as soon as someone gets hurt.* If I had to listen to a security person give me that drivel about the ship isn’t configured that way round again, I would be forced to hurt someone. So best avoid the whole thing and just wait for them to figure it out for themselves. It’s 30 degrees in the shade – I imagine there will be a few fairly short fuses around, other than mine …

So, to sum up, Costa Rica is delightful, the people are friendly, everyone speaks Spanish and everything is cheap. I can see why people would come here for a short break, but it is not yet “developed”** enough for a long stay, I don’t think, unless you’re going into the rainforest to stare into the canopy for lengthy periods.

* Post script – at 4pm, they changed the gangways. Which they wouldn’t have done if they didn’t know PERFECTLY WELL that there was a problem.
** read “touristified”

My opinion? It’s a very nice dress. I can see why they mention Grace Kelly when they talk about it. It’s the collar/ neckline. Think High Society. Or her wedding, if you remember it. The trees in the Abbey were a nice touch. I have to say, I am very chuffed they are the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. Yay Cambridgeshire! Take that, Oxford! Hah!

Things were rather disorganised on board. No bunting went up until after dinner last night and my special Horizon newspaper, telling us what was happening when, specially printed in gold ink, no less, was never delivered. Eventually, I went to Reception and got one. Not an impressive start. They showed the wedding live at 4am. No, I didn’t get up especially, sorry. I watched it at 7am instead! There was an apparently last minute “street party” organised on the back of Deck 9, but I didn’t go. The heat was way too intense to sit outside for two hours singing Roll out the barrel. I sound like quite a misery guts, don’t I?! But I was actually rather excited about the whole thing and was rather sad I was on the wrong side of the world on such a momentous day. I would have liked to have gone to The Mall with my mates and seen it all for myself. But, hey, I’m on a 72-day cruise to Alaska! Not that bad a gig, all in all!

The special True Brit musical show was very good (songs from British musicals with an emphasis on Cockney accents wherever possible – you know, Oom Pah Pah from Oliver! and the like), although it ended rather abruptly, and the sing-song at the pub was standing room only, so everyone seemed to have a good night.

But what a shame. At dinner tonight, we all got a free glass of bubbly with which to toast the happy couple (nice touch). It was a formal night, and we had a special menu, printed with Kate and Wills’ CW logo in gold on a purple background. Lovely. Shame no one bothered to SPELLCHECK THE MENU INSIDE. I mean, you’ve heard me rant about careless spelling from P&O before. In fact, a large proportion of the last cruise blog was devoted to almost daily error-spotting in the menus. There is a now a trend at dinner for people to try and spot spelling mistakes on the Passenger Information Channel PowerPoint slides every day. But this is atrocious. Seriously, I’m really aghast. How little effort would it have taken? We will now forever all own a copy of a menu advertising “srawberry” ice cream for dessert. It is really disappointing and not a little sad.

But what do you expect from P&O? Apparently, not much. Well done, P&O, you’ve really screwed this one up. You don’t get a second chance at a Royal Wedding. I feel it is a terribly appropriate indictment of the shoddy lack of attention to detail that symbolises P&O these days. There’s a general lack of care, whether it’s general customer service, loyalty rewards, spelling or rust-proofing, or even allowing the disabled passengers to use the shorter, less steep gangway to come back on board, no one seems to bother taking their jobs seriously or doing them well and no one puts the passenger first. Personally, I think that whoever authorised the menu to go to print should be fired or at least demoted. They are clearly not interested in doing the job properly, so they should hand it over to someone who will. Utterly shocking. What an ignominious end to what was otherwise a magical day.