Ok, another month....

 But at least I have an excuse this time:  we've been traveling!  Back on 20 February we took Gus to the dog kennel and headed for Las Vegas.  The next morning we flew off to Miami (crappy seats & a fat 3rd person!) then on to Barcelona, Spain!  Yep, another Viking cruise in the Med.  I know, it's a tough life!

Of course one of my excuses for not posting is that my new HP computer is FAR from friendly with the camera.  Damn, it took 3 or 4 tries and reading stuff online to figure out how to upload any photos.  I mean that's just stupid.  And the photos from my phone are just crap.  Grrr!

The cruise was really quite nice but it was definitely a one-day-at-a-port cruise.  We got to visit a few places we've been before and a few new ones.  First on the list was Corsica.  We've been there before but this time we found a weird back road tour.  It was pretty enough but the driver often had to make a partial turn then back up and turn more; the road was that jack-knifed and narrow.   If we averaged 10 mph I'd be surprised.

 Because of my wife's broken ankle that still isn't fixed correctly we kept to the bus tours.  We took her wheelchair along but mostly it got used in the airports.  She got around on the ship ok as long as we took regular pauses for rest.  It's funny but many of those rest areas served wine.  Thank goodness!  

Our next port was Civitavecchia, Italy.  There is no way we were going to take a bus tour of Rome (it's at least an hour and a half each way) so we just stayed on the ship.  I'm sure the town is nice but there wasn't any tour that called to us:  too much walking for one thing.  It is a pretty port though.

 Our next port was the town of Valleta on the island of Malta.  We did manage to find a bus tour that took us around with the guide pointing out various buildings, etc.  It wasn't our favorite tour for sure and part of the problem was the roads:  tiny isn't a small enough word to describe them!

 

Because of my wife's difficulty walking we usually got the front bus seats so we were right behind either the driver or the guide.  It sure gives you a better view of oncoming traffic!  Shit-oh-dear!  Happily the driver of that truck had room to back up and off the road.  What a great guy!

Next stop was La Goulette, Tunisia.  We took another bus tour but they forgot to mention that we'd be walking for about an hour.  Nope!  We just stayed on the bus.  One of the things that surprised me was how the local drivers were totally unafraid of accidents.  I mean red lights are a suggestion; lanes don't mean a thing.  It's just amazing and as we got farther into Africa, it got worse!  I got a few photos from the parking lot but, well, that's not to exciting.  There was this guy snoozing next to a window.

 

Our next port was Algiers, Algeria.  It was kind of an interesting collection of old places and very new modern places.

 

We took a bus tour again.  In one area we actually got out and I got to push my wife around in her chair!  Happily it was only a couple of blocks but those paving stones can be pretty tough on both the rider and the pusher.

Our next point of interest was the Strait of Gibraltar - we've been through it a couple of times but it's usually at night!  So this time it was supposed to be earlier; around sunset.  Unfortunately it was foggy so all we could see were a few lights!  Maybe in out next lifetime we'll see it.

The next port was Casablanca, Morocco!  We got to visit a church we weren't able to enter and one that we could.  Who knows how that crap is worked out!  The one we got to visit had some pretty fantastic windows!

 

 

We also got to wander through a small shopping area.  Our guide on this tour was blind.  He had an assistant who told him where we were and helped him move around.  Amazing but it was actually ok.

One of the reasons we aren't taking lots of tours is shown in the following photo.

 

It is well over half a mile off the ship and down the pier to get to the road and the bus!  That is definitely a wheelchair trip.  Of course all those containers are beautiful as well.  LOL.

So it was time to leave Africa and head back to Europe.  Our first stop would be Cadiz, Spain.  We've been there so we just stayed on the ship.  They do have some fine architecture.

 

Next came Malaga, Spain.  Again, we've been in the area before so just stayed on the ship.  The crew did have some fun trying out a couple of the lifeboats.  

And while I was walking around on deck I got to see this guy splashing around.

 Yeah, I know, life in the slow lane.  Anyway, that's what took up the end of February and the first part of March.  We got off the ship in Barcelona  at about 08:00 a.m. and headed for the airport.  It was a couple hours until we got on our flight to London; then more waiting in London.  Do I have to say there was lots of wheelchair time in both airports?  Then, finally, a non-stop to Las Vegas!  I got some sleep on that trip;  no dinner but a nice sleep.  And we got home about 8 p.m. local time.  Well, it took us each about three days to get back to regular hours; that 8 hour difference between Europe and the West Coast of the USA is quite a lot.  

So we are back to our usual stuff:  lunch at our favorite places; doctor appointments and fooling with our new computers.  I'll post again when anything exciting happens.  Don't hold your breath!

 

Well, two weeks in....

 How is 2024 treating you?  

We've had an interesting start for sure.  On December 28 we got on a Viking cruise ship in Los Angeles and headed for Hawaii!  Yeah, it's not like visiting Columbia or the Sudan or Pakistan but, well, it's not sitting around in the house either!

It was a fine trip.  My wife and I like being out at sea and Viking did everything it could to make our trip a SEA trip.  We took 5 days to get to Hawaii and the first two were really kind of rough.  It doesn't bother us but there were plenty of seasickness wrist bands and behind the ear plasters to be seen.  We did celebrate the New Year onboard.  I'm pretty sure we've never had little hat things for the New Year before!

 

Then we got to visit Kauai, Oahu, Maui and Hawaii.  On each island there were tours  and we planned on taking one of them on each island.  Ok, with that lead in, do I have to say it didn't work out?  Kaua'i worked out just fine.  The only problem was that much of it was at a 'plantation' which has become a tourist town with lots of small buisnesses to sell stuff to tourists.  Unfortunately many of them were closed!  Duh!  You have 400-500 tourists coming by and you are closed???  Retail has changed a lot since I worked in it!  We did manage to find this Christmas ornament.  It is glass and is painted on the inside; not the outside.  It has chickens because many years ago chickens became wild on Kaua'i and they still are!  You are driving somewhere and here are 6 or 8 chickens just pecking around by the side of the road!  It's amazing!  And fun if you like chickens.  I was trying to take a photo of this rooster trying to have his way with out of the ladies but it just didn't work.  Darn!

The next day we were on Oahu in Honolulu.  We were getting dressed to go out and my wife remembered she wanted something from the bathroom; she turned, caught her foot in some bedclothes that were hanging down and fell!  Oh shit!  Of course she's been recovering from her broken ankle and now she was down again.  Slowly I got her up and we headed down to see the ship's doctor.  The good news is that there was nothing broken; the bad news is that she really couldn't walk and her toes, arm and ribs hurt and were bruised where she had fallen on them.  SO, back in the wheelchair for wifie!  

 

The staff were really quite nice.  They would find us places to sit and places to hide the chair.  The bar staff got to know us better than usually since we did have more time on board and alcohol helps the pain go away.  But really that was only for that first day.  Then I left my wife.

NO, not for ever, just for the Maui tour.  We decided that I'd go do that and she would just relax in our cabin.  Well, actually, she could have come with me except for climbing onto the bus and out of it.  However I did go on the tour.  The first part of the tour was up to a tourist shopping area in Lahaina.  Well, shit!

 

Here you are driving through residential neighborhoods where everything is burned down and then you are in the Hyatt, Hilton & whatever neighborhood with their pristine buildings and lovely golf courses.  Oh, and in the middle was our destination:  the Whaler's Village (Mall).  Well, shit!  Just what I wanted to see:  Louis Vuitton, Sephora Cosmetics, Tommy Bahama clothing, Lululemon sportswear,  Keani Hawaii jewelry, Maui Divers Jewelry.  Really???  The folks who lived there are still working on finding places to live.  There are tents on every beach where people are trying to live.  Of course there are vans parked along the road as well.  It was nasty!  These tents were probably 30 feet from condos that are worth $700K on a bad day!  Oh, and the people in the background are tourists getting on their sailing trimarans for the morning.

Anyway, the second part of the tour was up to a crazy little river, oh, and a rock!  Where you got to climb 147 steps (or something like that) to see the river falls and a weird rock.  The rock is the Iao Needle; it just sticks up there in the middle of a canyon like it was meant to be there.  Weird but photogenic.  The steps were just awful!  They didn't even have hand rails on both sides!

Our last day in Hawaii was on Hawaii, the big island.  We checked with the tour people and they said that going while using a wheelchair was fine so we decided to do it.  Our tour started with viewing the Rainbow Falls.  That was ok; my wife couldn't view them being in the wheelchair but I got a couple nice photos.  This is the falls.

 

Then we wandered off to the Panaewa Rainforest Zoo.  That would probably have been ok too but it was really raining in the rainforest!  And my wife was in a wheelchair and, well, it was pretty wet for her!  So we were definitely first back on the bus!  

THEN came the thing we wanted most from Hawaii.  My wife's sister and her husband sold their huge, fantastic home in Washington a year or two ago and are building a smaller place there; however she hates the winters up there so they have purchased a condo on the island of Hawaii for winters (also golf which is a passion).  We were hoping to meet them for lunch.  Their condo is across the island and it is about a 2 hour drive to get there so visiting at their place was out of the question - so we had lunch together in a local restaurant near the ship.  That was fun.  We'll be back to visit them when we can rent a car and enjoy the island.  No photos, we just all forgot!

And then we were on the way back east!  It was another 5 days of 18 knot speeds and we landed in Ensenada, Mexico.  Apparently there is an old law saying that foreign vessels can't go between US ports exclusively; they have to go somewhere like Canada or Mexico too!  Ensenada is close; Carnival Cruise Lines likes it too!

 

Anyway, we had a nice day in Ensenada; well, except for the tour!  There is a blowhole, La Bufadora, that is pretty impressive with seawater spouting up through this hole in the rock.  That was really nice; the 2/3rds of a mile of trash and trinket sellers on the way there and back was kind of a pain in the ass!  Or, in my wife's case, in the foot!  But we managed it, two + hours of walking may not have been what she wanted but it worked out ok.  There was a nice musical party going on a mile or so from the boat but we just crashed!

And then there is an overnight very quiet ride to LA. and hop off!  Well, it was kind of screwed up since they didn't bother announcing that we were cleared to go but we managed to get off about 08:40 - probably an hour later than we had hoped.  Zoomed through customs; a nice guy named Cassady spent way too much time checking out our passports and then we were in the taxi line.  Amazingly there were no taxi's waiting but a guy showed up and took us to the hotel where we'd left the car and ZOOM!  

I've got to admit that I haven't driven that fast in a while.  We were doing 80-85mph most of the way across California.  Not that we were passing anyone but still!  We got to the kennel about 13:45 - and they want the dogs out by 14:00!  So we just made it; the clock showed 14:00 (2 p.m.) as we drove into the yard.  The house was just the way we'd left it; didn't clean itself or anything.  But, we were happy to be here.  And we had a lovely sunset.  What's not to like?

Thanks for stopping by.  Keep washing those hands and be safe!

Another month absence!

At least this time I kind of have an excuse.  We took a trip!  It was kind of a combination of good and not so good.  But it was certainly interesting.  It was another Viking cruise; this time around southern South America.

We took a flight from Las Vegas to Houston and then to Santiago, Chile.  We got on the plane just before 2 pm local time and it was 08:30 the next day when we landed.  Usually Viking does ok with the airport transition, this time is was AFU!  We got to stand in this huge line of passengers then wander around the parking lot in groups of 30 or so to find a bus to take us to the ship.  That was a 2+ hour bus ride to the port of Valparaizo.  All of that was ok but tiring, of course. The port in Valparaizo isn't small by any stretch so when you got off the bus at the port entrance you got to get on another bus to take you over to the ship.  What a deal.  Anyway, we finally made it on and our luggage arrived only a couple hours behind us.  

Viking ocean ships are all the same so even though we'd never been on the Viking Jupiter, it was exactly like the Viking Sea or any other.  The expedition ships are probably different and, of course, the river ships are very different.  Anyway, we wandered around, got comfortable and had a nice night.  

The next day we had signed up for a visit to Santiago.  At the time we signed up we either didn't realize it was a 2 hour bus ride there and 2 hours back or we didn't realize how dumb we were being.  There are mainly small towns and agriculture between Valparaizo and Santiago; our guide talked about all the grapes that are grown along the route.  That's when he wasn't talking about how the upper classes take total advantage of the poor.  Anyway, let me just say that it takes a lot to make up for 4+ hours on a bus and the Santiago tour didn't provide it!  I don't even have a photo to share that is worth the pixels.

Of course having spent the whole day busing around we didn't see much of Valparaizo.  This would be the view from our balcony.

I think it is really interesting that there are a few high rise buildings down near the water then it turns instantly into much smaller buildings.  Valparaizo is one of several cities around this part of the coast.  We missed out on them as well! 

The map up above shows the route of the ship going out into the Pacific Ocean and, yep, it was fairly rough going.  Especially where you have a whole shipload of people who just got on board.  The crew must get a few laughs at the clumsy old folks who don't have their sea legs yet.  But it didn't last long, only about a day.  Then we were sliding into Puerto Montt.  There wasn't much in the town (well, no tours anyway) so we went up to Puerto Varas where we were supposed to check out the lake and and the volcano on the other side of it.  Happily this bus trip was only 12 miles so it didn't take long at all.  We got to see the lake but the volcano was kind of a no-show.  It was just cloud covered.  The town was kind of cute but small and filled with tourists.  Our guide on this trip was an older lady who thought things were going pretty well in Chile so that was a nice counterpoint to the previous guide.  

We had a good helping of more rough seas the next day but then somehow the ship found calm water heading for the fjords.  The weather started to get a bit gray and moist though and that would follow us the rest of the journey through Chile.  The fjords are amazing though!

We have lots of photos of  this sort of world.  No tours but amazing views.  That photo shows the snow/ice on the mountain tops but there were plenty of places where it was right down to the edge of the fjord.  

The star of the show is supposed to be Amalia Glacier.  And what you could see of it was pretty impressive.  

The ship has a little putt-putt golf area on the top deck and this photo shows people lining the fore area to check out the glacier.  The ship just stayed there for maybe half an hour so people could get some photos.  Then we saw this little boat out there next to us.  It was from the ship!  The guys on the little boat were trying to get some ice that had broken off the glacier so passengers could see it.  Later it was on display in a public room.

Of course the lighting was a little on the dramatic side but I do believe that it was actual glacier ice that we were admiring.  

The next day we were headed for Punta Arenas, Chile.  It is a fairly large city for being so far south!  Here we managed a guide who was an idiot.  He started out walking us around the port so we could admire the bird life.

Yep, the birds like it here.  And, of course they have some statuary to honor those folks who founded the area.

Then the stupidity started.  First he kept getting his centuries wrong; like the city was founded in 1848 and he said 1948.  Then he started crossing streets against the traffic lights!  Jeez!  He started us on a march at top speed up a hill so we could see the entire city.  Nah!  My wife especially wasn't feeling like it so we turned around and found our way back to the ship.  

I'm going to stop for today.  There is plenty more of our trip.  Thanks for stopping by and keep washing those hands!