Day 81

Day 81 – Puntarenas to Los Angeles – Saturday 4/8/12

Weather – Fine and Sunny. 25C – 27C

Sunrise – 5.51am

Sunset – 7.08pm

Time difference - minus 17 hours ex Sydney (back an hour last night)

Throughout the day Sun Princess steered a north-westerly heading through the Pacific Ocean. At 9am we were going to pass 30 miles off Cabo San Lucas, however we had to make an unscheduled detour into the bay to make another medical evacuation. No helicopters this time, a ship to tender transfer of two critically ill passengers. We hope they too will make a good recovery.

After the transfer, we continued on our way, past the Golfo California, past Banco San Jaime, and then continued throughout the day parallel to the coast of Baja California, which is one of the 32 states of Mexico. The Captain advised that the detour will not affect our arrival time into Los Angeles on Monday as we have been tracking along nicely in calm seas.

Today was all about finalising arrangements for holiday on our holiday, by making our hotel bookings for LA and Hawaii. What is usually a short task on land can be quite a challenge whilst on board with the problematic Internet connection. The LA hotel was relatively simple as we wanted to be near LAX, so we confined our search to a small area and picked one, and got online at 5.30am (when the Internet usage across the ship is light, therefore a bit quicker) and had it booked in no time.

The Hawaii hotel was not so simple. There are sooooooooo many to pick from, so we listened to as much advice as we could get from others who had stayed there, and came up with a short list. Getting a booking was not so easy as summer holidays makes for booked out hotels, but with the help of Pam and Randy we got it sorted, so we are all systems go.

Hawaiian Airlines have very generous hand luggage allowance, 11kg, plus a personal bag, so we should not need any check in luggage, which makes life easier. Randy, who is a retired Airline Captain, was kind enough to inform us that the flight from LA to Hawaii is the longest flight going that does not have an alternative airport to land at...gee thanks for that Randy, very reassuring. Someone else at drinks told us that a 767 only has two engines, and if one goes, the 767 just falls like a brick...yep we are on a 767 !!! Anyone else want to have a slice of this pie ???

This evening we had pre-pre dinner drinks, before our pre dinner drinks, which will now be a regular occurrence on formal nights, which we have one of tonight. When I said this was a very social cruise I meant it, though having a double dose of pre dinner drinks which start at 3.30pm in the afternoon, for dinner that starts at 8pm can only lead to one thing...drink fatigue!!!:), but it is good fun getting to that point !!