Here we are, on the road: Cruise to Mexico

December 14, 2008
Lorraine's Report

So now we’ve left Los Angeles on the Norwegian Star Cruise ship for a seven day trip to Mexico, with stops in Cabo San Lucas, Mazatlan, and Puerto Vallarta. Both Chuck and I are excited and I even cry while talking with my sister Thelma, telling her bye. While we were both fighting heavy colds, we were looking forward to having a great time, and I hoped we would get some much needed rest, we’ve had some busy weeks this past month.

Saturday afternoon we spent the time exploring the ship. The staterooms weren’t ready for the new occupants-all 2200 of us. We heard that there were at least 500 plus other winners of this cruise from all fourteen Terrible Casino’s. This was their fifth year of taking winners on a cruise. They had a cruise a week for fourteen weeks give-a-way drawings. Norwegian Line calls this type of cruising Free Style, because you can choose where you want to eat, when you want to eat. There is no assigned time or place or people to eat with. You don’t have to dress up for dinner if you don’t want to. They do have dress up night, Sunday, and then again on Thursday if you wanted to dress and have your picture taken before dinner.

Saturday they had a welcome show in the main theater featuring all the assorted acts they had booked for the cruise. We enjoyed the show, retiring early.

Sunday was a day at sea, traveling to our port on Monday. We went to the buffet for breakfast; I went to a bingo game. On Ship they play bingo every day, you can buy four paper cards, with six cards per sheet for $29.00 for the four games they play. Or, you could buy an electronic bingo machine, which they load up with thirty six cards for the four games for $49.00 or you could buy the grand slam bingo machine with sixty nine cards for the four games for $89.00. You also received raffle tickets, based on what you spent for the drawing at the end of the cruise for a free cruise. I bought the $49.00 package and received three entries for the free cruise. The four games were over in a flash, with all winners coming from those who bought the $89.00 package. I didn’t play bingo again. But I did get a free mini facial from the drawings they had. The only catch was that the facial was good only on a port day, you needed to stay on board ship instead of going ashore. I ended up using it on Wednesday when we got back on ship early.

Later on, I went to a matinee in the movie theater, while Chuck watched football in the Pub.

This was dress up day, so we dressed up for pictures. We didn’t know they do not rent tuxes for evening any more. After pictures we went to Aqua dining room for dinner. We got behind a large family having pictures taken, and that made us late getting into dinner. We had forty five minutes to eat and get to the Andrew Lloyd Webber Show. We were fortunately put into a section of the dining room where the waitperson knew what to do when I whispered to her we wanted to attend the show. She had us seated, fed us appetizers, salad, main course and dessert in forty minutes. We made it to the show with minutes to spare. I wrote up a Thank You they give you on ship to fill out for outstanding service.

Of the three ports we were in I must say I liked Cabo San Lucas the best. It is a small fishing village at the end of Baja. I enjoyed the walk into town, the people and the air there was wonderful.

We did tours with six other people in a van for four hours in Mazatlan and Puerto Vallarta. I believe this was cheaper than booking an excursion on board for the same thing, and the tour drivers were just as knowledgeable and were able to give you extra attention. We saw the towns from end to end, the rain forest, the tequila factory, the beaches and shopping.

Coming back on the ocean I got sea sick and am still rolling from the waves, even though the weather was fine, with no storms or big winds. Guess I wasn’t meant to be a sailor.
I loved the cruise, I loved the sights, the sounds, the water, the warm air, and the food was good; I would do this again if I won another cruise.

Till next time, stay well and I’ll see you down the road….Lorraine

12/14/08
Chuck's report

Here it is Sunday night and I’m just getting started on this report from last week. We decided to move today so I didn’t get it done in the morning as usual.

Most of the prior week we were on the Norwegian Star, on the cruise that Lorraine won in May. We boarded on Saturday about noon but couldn’t go to our stateroom until later in the evening. We explored the ship, trying to find our way around and get the layout of where to go. We had an early dinner and retired early as we were still fighting our colds.

We did find out a couple of things about the cruise that we were unaware of before. I knew we would have to buy any alcoholic drinks we wanted but didn’t know we had to pay for soda and bottled water. Lorraine ordered a soda and with the included tip, it came to over $5.00. They have a “deal” on board that if you pay a fee upfront, you can get soda from all the bars and some of the restaurants without having to pay more. We decided to get one of these and share it between both of us.

Another unknown cost was a required $10.00/day gratuity per person. At first I was a bit upset about this but realized I wouldn’t be tipping at meals, wouldn’t tip the stewards for the room and wouldn’t tip the barmaids. Of course, when we left the ship, we did leave a tip for the stewards, they did an outstanding job of keeping our room nice. But all in all, I think I would rather decide who and how much I would tip but we didn’t fight this charge.

One more cost we were unaware of was two of the restaurants had cover charge just to go in. The steak house had a cover charge of $20/person. We could order a steak in any of the other restaurants so we never did go to the steak house. The Italian restaurant wanted a cover of $15/person so we didn’t go into it either.

On Sunday we wanted to sleep in a bit but because we had gone to bed early on Saturday, we woke up early. Having already found our way around a bit, we decided to go to the breakfast brunch. Afterwards, we attended an informational meeting in the theater room; they also had all the entertainment acts perform a short bit to show us what to expect. After that, Lorraine wanted to play Bingo. Turns out, this is a real big money maker for the ship too. They play 4 games, prizes from $150 - $500 but the cards cost $29 for 6 paper cards and up to $69 for an electronic machine with 24 cards loaded. With over 500 people playing, they took in some good money, I figured. Anyway, Lorraine didn’t win at Bingo but did get her name drawn for a free facial at the SPA.

We were told that I could rent a Tux on board for dress night, wrong again. They used to do that but don’t do that anymore. I didn’t bring a suit along, couldn’t rent one so my dress up was a good long sleeve shirt, even so I was dressed better than some. Lorraine had brought along some nice dresses so she looked very nice, not just for this dinner but for most of the evenings.

We had a nice dinner and then had formal pictures taken. They have quite a setup for taking pictures. They have formal setups for pictures every night, roving photographers at each meal and a setup every time we left the ship. They posted all this pictures and we could purchase any we wanted. Lorraine found a couple she liked but we didn’t get too many.

After pictures we went to the theater room for the evening’s entertainment. They had a dance/singing group that was good enough to perform at Las Vegas. They had the place jumping. Afterwards, we decided to try the casino, no luck at all there so back to the stateroom for the night.

Monday was a shore day at Cabo San Lucas. We anchored in the bay and caught shuttle boats to shore. Cabo is fairly small town at the end of the Baja peninsula and is set up just for cruise boat tourists. We enjoyed our time ashore, even the little tourist traps were fun. Some of the locals wouldn’t take no very easy but we just keep walking and they would attack the next person. The cruise ship has some shops they recommend and approve so we checked some of them out also. Of course, we had to try some local restaurant for lunch too. After shopping, we decided to go on a glass bottom boat tour in the bay. We saw some colored fish but the highlight was going out to the arches. This tour took about 45 minutes and we really enjoyed it, probably the highlight of our stop in Cabo.

We returned to the ship, cleaned up and put on good clothes and headed to dinner. We were able to get window seats and watched the sunset as the ship left the harbor. This was a busy day for us, not the relaxing time we hoped to have so we slept well that night.

On Tuesday, we had another shore day, this time in Mazatlan. This is a big town and we could have bought shore excursion trips on board the ship but decided to see what we could do on our own. We left the ship and rented a van with a driver for a tour of the city. This was a very good way of seeing the city and getting a bit of local flavor too. We did some shopping (not buying) here as well, they sure push different jewelry at each of the stores.

Wednesday was our last shore day, this time in Puerto Vallarta for a full day. Once again, we anchored out and took a short shuttle boat trip to shore. This is another big city and once again we waited until we got to the dock and rented a van with a driver. This tour was about 4 hours and very informative. We went through the city, out about 12 miles to an overlook, went though the rain forest and stopped at a Tequila factory with free samples. We actually left the van in town and had lunch at Buba Gump Shrimp restaurant. After lunch we caught a city cab back to the ship.

The ride from Puerto Vallarta across the bay was a bit rough on Wednesday night; Lorraine actually got a bit sea sick from the rocking. Thursday and Friday were both “at sea” days. On Thursday I sat outside in a lounge chair for a few hours (can you say, slept?) while Lorraine went to movie. There was always some sort of entertainment going on and of course someplace to eat at almost any hour. We didn’t over eat, most days we just had breakfast and dinner.

As we were both still not felling up to par, me with a cold and Lorraine being sea sick, we didn’t stay up and party until the early hours. Lorraine did return to the casino once more where she won back what she had lost the first time, we called it even and didn’t go back there. The slots were all pretty tight so we thought we were lucky to leave without losing.

The ship has it set up that you pay for all the extras you want using your room key card which is tied to a credit card. At the end of the cruise everyone got a statement of their charges. On Saturday morning we talked to a couple of folks who spent a lot more than we did, one couple said their bill was over $1500, this was just money spent once they boarded the ship. We noticed most people didn’t have alcoholic drinks with dinner, most had water only or a soda. If you wanted a glass of wine with dinner, you had to buy the whole bottle as they didn’t sell by the glass.

Reading back over this, it looks like I talked a lot about money. It really wasn’t that bad, just some costs we didn’t expect. It seems like they didn’t miss a chance to make some money from everyone. I guess I thought it would be more all inclusive and the extras would only have been alcohol and any excursions off the ship. Oh well, for our first cruise, it was a good learning experience and the cruise itself was free. We both agreed we enjoyed ourselves, had a good time and as more experienced cruise travelers, we would know more about what to expect.

So we dis-embarked about 10:00 on Saturday morning and headed to our motor home. We had to move from the storage area to the camping area, got set up and Lorraine started doing laundry. We had to TV turned to the local stations and they were predicting a storm on Sunday night through Wednesday, including snow in the hills where we were. As we were planning on leaving on Monday, we would have been in the worse of it and would have hit snow in the “grapevine” North of LA. So, once again we changed our plans and left on Sunday before the storm hit.

As I write this, we are in a campground about halfway between LA and the Bay area watching the Cowboys and Giants. It is raining, they really need the rain, it’s pretty dry around here. We are headed back to the Bay area on Tuesday and will spend Christmas with Susy, Mark and Kaitlyn. It’s only been a week and already Lorraine is missing her grandbaby time!

Since we left our home in October, 2007, I had to sleep in a hotel one night due to some painting being done on the coach. I have now been away from the coach for a total of 8 nights and can say it’s good to be back home! Home truly is where we park it. This was a different week for us, sort of like being on vacation. I don’t know, can someone take a vacation from this type lifestyle??