Tomorrow, at 4:30 AM

Yippee! I’m on the road again. Or to be more exact, ahoy, for it’s actually on the sea again. I’m leaving tomorrow morning – a pick-up is set for (if you can imagine this) 4:30 AM – for a flight to Philadelphia, then on to San Diego where I and my friends, Bill and Ted, will board the Silver Cloud for a cruise down the Mexican coast, through the Panama Canal and back home through the Caribbean. Sixteen days. And THIS TIME, as a passenger/guest, not as a workhorse dance host. I’m looking forward to being pampered. No more dancing with ladies who just want to stand still and jiggle up and down, or the ones who want to rigidly steer me around the floor, or the timid ones who can’t keep time and didn’t want to dance in the first place. No more arranging Solos for dinner, trying to avoid the problems of “I don’t want to sit next to her,” or “not that table; I ate there last night,” or most especially, “…no dear; the limes there are not green; they’re yellow!” No. I can be as lazy as I want, without having to samba though morning and afternoon dance lessons. I can eat breakfast alone, without having to play host to slug-a-beds, hung over from the night before and, thank goodness, best of all, no Austrian roommate to complain endlessly about my conduct and warn that “…on Cunardt, you vouldn’t last ten minutes!”

Our itinerary takes us to Cabo San Lucas, at the tip of Baja California, site of Liz and Dick’s famous filming of a sorely failed “Day of the Iguana” and a place I’ve nonetheless always wanted to see. Then we’re on to Zihuatenejo, where one of my dear friends has traditionally spent the winter. Acapulco and its beautiful bay come next. Reputedly somewhat faded from its heyday as the resort of the rich and famous, I still look forward to seeing again the glorious sunsets I remember and a chance to catch on film the cliff divers in the middle of their plunge to the sea. Puerto Quetzal, Guatemala, at least sounds exotic; I’m going on an “auto safari” there. Then it’s on to Puntarenas, in Costa Rica, a port in the northwestern, more Americanized, part of the country. And next the highlight of the cruise: transit of the Panama Canal. In preparation for this, I read “Path Between the Seas” by David McCullough, of “John Adams” fame, almost 600 pages of the French and American slog through the mosquito infested dig toward a shorter route to the Pacific. We’ll also see the San Blas Islands, a part of Panama but administered by the original Indians, much like the Maori in a part of New Zealand. And finally, Categena, in Columbia, an ancient city, port of much loot from the Americas back to Queen Isabella of Spain.

Between these ports, there are a number of days at sea, a part of every cruise that I especially anticipate, where I can laze on deck with a good book and a bartender bringing me one of those fancy drinks with an umbrella and a slice of pineapple, or where I can sneak up on the jogging track to take candid photographs of the passengers below, slathered in expensive sun tan lotion, or sleeping with their mouths open.

My routine is to take notes every day of events or facts I think might interest you, my faithful readers, and then post to this blog early the next morning. That is, unless, like those guests I once took care of, I’ve drunk and dined and danced all night.

Stay tuned.