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The Panama Canal-Ft. Lauderdale to San Francisco-20-night Voyage, May 6-26, Regent Seven Seas Navigator

Text by Snookums, Pictures by Filbert

Part Five

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May 11 (Tuesday, Day 7, At sea) -

Today was a slow day. Not much interested us on the schedule of activities. Filbert and Snookums were invited to the “Titanium, Platinum and Gold Members” Seven Seas Society gathering at 11:15 since we sailed at least 75 days and are Gold. 80 people were there and the ship has 500 guests on it. That’s a pretty high ratio of very frequent cruisers. We hobnobbed with various officers and Paul, the Cruise Director. Randy Cabral, the master of juggling and comedy, also gave a 5-minute performance for us so that was neat.. Snookums was hoping for some good food, like a light lunch, but had to settle for a dessert waffle bar with various sweet toppings. She actually didn’t have any but instead waited for lunch. Bill was part of the party, too, since he turned Gold on this cruise and was able to finagle an invitation to this event.

Snookums went to “Cardio Circuit” and managed to raise her heart rate a lot for 45 minutes and didn’t pass out. In the meantime, Filbert ate some bad seafood salad and paid the price later. (He didn’t go to dinner since he was sick but felt better immediately after ridding his body of the bad seafood salad.)

Mom, Dad and Snookums went to Randy Cabral’s juggling/comedy show after dinner and once again Mom had to use her inhaler since she laughed so much. Randy does some really stupid tricks and says some really stupid things but he’s hilarious.

May 12 (Wednesday, Day 8, Puerto Limon, Costa Rica; 510 Costa Rican colon to the dollar) -

A dreary start

We had an early shore excursion today. We met at 8 AM for a trip to Veragua Rainforest.

More after the jump . . . Although it was only about 20 miles away, it took about a 1-hour to get there since the last 7.5 miles were on an unpaved road. After we got there, we were split in two groups. Our group was to walk to the waterfall and the other group was going to do an easier walk. The tour guide said that after we went to the waterfall we would join up with Mom, Dad and Judy for the rest of the tour. Wrong! Filbert and Snookums spent 4 hours with a tour guide that wanted to teach us everything he learned in his ecology classes. And we got to listen to his lectures while in buildings looking at cartoons of frogs.

Meanwhile, Mom, Dad and Judy were with a tour guide that felt that the best way to understand the rainforest was to actually walk around in it. They saw bright red frogs in the wild and other things like that. Mom even saw a translucent pink stink bug on a railing that the guide had only seen in a book. We saw spiders and ants when we walked from the restaurant to the bus at the very end of the tour. Other than that, we were mostly inside looking at pictures, glass cages of snakes and exhibits of mounted butterflies.

You want pictures? Oh yeah, we got pictures. Bug and flower pictures, mostly, but you get what you pay for (unlike some of the rest of us . . .)

Bird on a wire, on the way to the rain forest

Cat and house

This used to be rain forest. Then we invented machetes. Part of that is a joke. Punch line later.

A little horse in a little country

Big dragonfly

Grasshopper orgy--the plain green one in center right is--we think--a female, the others are male suitors

Little purple flowers

Little purple berries

Yellow grasshopperish bug, with blue-tipped wings

Next: More bugs! And butterflies! (Which, yes, are bugs, but pretty ones . . . )