Monday, April 18: Puntarenas, Costa Rica

We docked on one side of a very long pier with the Europa docked on the other. She's a much larger ship, from a German line and rumored to be six stars in rating. Her passengers and ours intermingled in the very long and very hot walk to shore where the usual freelance tour hawkers, the cab drivers and the souvenir sellers accosted us as we made our way, the three of us - Ted looking for crafts for his store, Billy following his nose for bargains and me, lagging along behind already tired but searching for photo ops - through the streets of what is realy just an ordinary, fishing-centric village, not pretty, not clean, the residents going about their Monday morning business and trying not to look at us (as we were trying not to look at them), strangers invading their town. We did find a candy store where boxed and packaged candy filled all the shelves, from floor to celing on both sides, and where there was a huge pile down the center of suckers that turned out to be very photogenic. We wandered through the market, which smelled of fish - no surprise - and caught a group of women, laughing and jabbering away as they cleaned shrimp. Ted, always garrulous,engaged them in tourist pidgeon Englo-Spanish; they laughed at us good-naturedly. Bill and Ted pressed on in their search for things to buy but I was very tired and went back to the ship, pleasantly thinned of passengers, most of whom were booked on some one of many shore excursions. Because I have been to Costa Rica before and once in the rain (or cloud) forest is enough for me, I lounged on deck with a Stephen King, a long way, indeed, from Marcel Proust.

In the afternoon, the boys went off to their zip line extraveganza while I took a nap and then had tea, oh so properly served - white gloves and all - in the Panorama Lounge. I was in shorts and a T-shirt and felt a little like Tommy Bahama meets Gosford Park. The tea was Earl Grey, steeped to timed perfection and served with little crustless tea sandwiches - cucumber and egg salad - and pound cake and banana bread. Sir Francis and "Honey," the chinese page boy/girl out of Doonesbury, kept me company. Francis is soon leaving the ship to return to his home in the Philippines where he will join his wife and son for the birth of his first daughter. Mario played classics from Rodges and Hammerstein and other bland piano accompaniments to the Earl Grey. "Once on a high and mighty hill, two lovers kissed in the morning mist..." You get the idea.

I met Ted and Bill in the bar where Myra (not Beckenridge) gave us our usual - a Grey Goose martini, very dry, straight up for Bill; a margarita, no salt, for me; and would you believe, a Cosmo for Ted. The drinks fortified us for a before-dinner show by Judie, ouor cruise director, who chronicled her long careet at sea among the gliteratti of the 1960's: Van Johnson, Merle Oberon, Omar Sharif, and comapany through her many years on the QE2. She ended the story of her life with a song, belted out from her very sequined 70-year-old chest. What a trouper!

Tomorrow is another day at sea as we grow always closer to the Panama Canal. Onward!

Stay tuned.