Another day in the middle of nowhere

Here we are about a day out of South America and as our Captain says, another day in the middle of nowhere. We thought we should tell you and show you what life is like when you are at sea or otherwise known as 'sea days'. These are our favorite days on the cruise. When you see the following photos you may figure out why we like them so much. First let me tell you about our ship, the Pacific Princess. The original Pacific Princess was used in the show Love Boat. This is a newer replacement ship but it holds about the same amount of passengers (690) and crew (380). We are sailing with only 385 passengers and slightly less crew. Princess has three of these small ships out of a fleet of 17. To show you the difference, their largest ships hold more than 3,100 passengers. So they are over four times as big. This is our first time on such a small ship and we really like it.

The first photo shows how they have decorated the ship for Christmas. It was kind of funny each night when we went to bed the next day we would get up and Santa had added more decorations to the ship overnight. By the way, that is not an elf by the tree, that really is Cindy!

The next photo is of my favorite person on the ship. Her name is Roberta from Alice Springs, Australia and she is the Future Cruise Consultant. We love going to talk to her so we can plan out our next cruise.

Now we get down to the real nitty gritty of the tough life on sea days. The next photo is of me exercising on the outside of deck five. My friend helping me with my exercise gear is Rosalindo. He said he was the fitness coordinator.

Cindy saw how much fun I was having with my workout. She joined in with her own workout gear.

I guess you wonder how we are sending you all of our updates here in the middle of nowhere. The next photo gives away our secret. Cindy is sitting in the internet cafe with the crew member who staffs it (and gives instructions to the high-tech-challenged passengers, not that we needed him. . .)

One tradition that is done on many cruise ships when they cross over the equator is to have a King Neptune ceremony. This is done for all the passengers and crew who have never crossed the equator on a ship. These people are called pollywogs and once you go through the ceremony and cross the equator you become a shellback. (Cindy and I became shellbacks last year when we sailed to Australia.) The next photo is of King Neptune and his Queen.

They hold court over all the pollywogs. Once the court is held and the pollywogs are found guilty, they are all plastered with outdated food such as eggs, pasta, whipped cream, mashed potatoes, jello and all kinds of other food. The photo below shows some of the pollywogs getting initiated. Great fun was had by all and since we were watching and taking photos, we had the most fun!

Now Cindy will add a few lines.

On these sea days, Bill & I have been enjoying the pool. For some reason, despite temperatures in the 80's, it's never very crowded. I guess a lot of the passengers are playing bingo or participating in the art auctions. Yesterday we were in the pool for about 45 minutes all by ourselves!

Also, there is never a problem finding a lounge chair in the shade, where we prefer to be. Here's a photo of Bill bringing a couple of iced teas to keep us hydrated. We can't drink champagne all the time!

We've been attending the port talks and are very excited about entering the Amazon. We began our series of malaria pills today and got our yellow fever shots in October, so we're all set!