Inca Empire Cruise - Day 19 At Sea

Good news, Val woke up this morning and was feeling better.  She still has a sore throat and a cough, but she doesn’t feel so sick so we’re hoping she’ll feel even better tomorrow.  Later in the morning we attended a talk by our location guide Kainoa on our next two ports, Manta, Ecuador and Puerto Caldera (Puntarenas), Costa Rica.

After the talk, we returned to the room and I finished up the blog for the Machu Picchu trip and Val read until it was time for trivia.  After trivia, Val and I met in the casino for another futile attempt to qualify for the final round of the slot tournament.  Actually the futility was mine as Val found herself in fifth place, but that is a precarious position.  After that it was lunch and then back to the room.  Val did some reading and I started working on our Machu Picchu trip pictures.  We were interrupted by an announcement by the captain that there was a school of dolphins passing by on the starboard side of the ship.  That happens to be the side we are on so we rushed out to the balcony and there they were jumping out of the water and swimming past the ship, it’s quite a sight.  It was very difficult to take pictures as it was hard to know when and where they were going to jump and they were far enough away that it was hard to get a sharp picture.  Val did manage to get some which are below.

As you can see in this picture, there really were a lot of them.  Very entertaining to watch.

We passed a leisurely afternoon reading and rushing out to watch as schools of dolphins passed by from time to time.  Otherwise it was a totally unproductive, but completely relaxing way to spend an afternoon at sea on a cruise.  We did our usual MIX, dinner and the casino, but the unusual thing about this night was, Val and I both came out ahead in the casino.  After nothing but losing, it felt good to walk out of the casino with more money than we went in with for a change.

Tomorrow we are in Manta, Ecuador and have an 8:00 AM excursion so we will have to get up early so it’s early to bed tonight.