We hung out at the Marriott until after lunch. The cruise line has a hospitality room at a nearby hotel. If you arrive the day of the cruise, they pick you up at the airport and take you to the hospitality room. Since we came in the day before, we had breakfast, enjoyed the pool/beach some more, ate lunch and then took a cab to their hospitality hotel. After checking in and handing over our luggage, we had a little bit of time to wander around the town of San José del Cabo before the formal meet-up time.
It’s a cute, very clean town, but seems to be full of pharmacies and other touristy shopping opportunities. Oddly, for some reason the pharmacies were able to sell antibiotics and other drugs that the ones near Cancun have stopped selling without prescriptions. We asked the pharmacist (or clerk - who knows) about it and he didn’t really have a good answer. He said something about paying for a certificate to be able to sell everything. Seemed slightly fishy.
Back at the hotel, we got some margaritas and sat in the lobbing playing a new game we called “spot the Uncruise passengers”. The hotel was fairly busy and there was at least one wedding happening that afternoon. We soon found that despite the number of people, it wasn’t too hard to pinpoint the folks who would be on our cruise. Basically, if someone looked like their entire set of clothes came from REI, they were a shoo-in.
Finally, our cruise directors (dated Love Boat reference) gathered everyone together. We all were given our name tags for the week and had a photo taken (they put a book of all the photos in the bar to help people learn everyones name) and then we were off! We were on the “odd” bus. They assured us it was because we were staying in an odd-numbered cabin, but I have my doubts. The boat is leaving out of La Paz (where the water is much calmer) so we have a three hour drive to get there. The last 20-30 minutes of that was driving through very slow traffic due to a carnival which was happening along the waterfront in La Paz.
Once on board, we gathered in the lounge and had brief presentations by the Captain, the Chief Mate, the lead Expedition Guide, and the head of Hotel Services. We participated in a life boat drill then ate dinner (which was the first of many excellent meals). We’re looking forward to a great trip.
Our cruise ship mug-shot
