Encinada

Julia and Nanny elected to go ashore at Encinada. I didn't: I stayed aboard and caught up on some digital photography tutorials I'd been meaning to study, and had a salad for afternoon tea. Holidays - to me - means: somehow manage to do as little as possible, in as quiet an environment as possible, for as long as possible. I'm nine of world's ten most boring people.

What about Encinada? Julia and Nan will have to tell you about it, but from the maps (on my new tablet, one of the few things that work, sort-of) it's the next major settlement south of Tijuana. From what I remember of Tijuana and what I could see of Encinada, it looked considerably up-market to that border-town.

The ship was mostly empty much of the day, so there were no queues anywhere. Even the Lido deck was not too noisy. I think that's one of the things I found a bit off-putting after a while: the night-club entertainment atmosphere on steroids. I reckon a lot of the people present at some of these gigs were mostly deaf, since I was the only one wincing at the decibel-level. It was like the Elephant and the Wheelbarrow day in and day out. Even at dinner in the Mardi-Gras dining room - an otherwise nice, gentle dining experience - the atmosphere was brutally crashed by the maitres-d breaking out his best Hollywood-night-club voice at the top of his lungs... and the place erupted in exuberant song and dance. Yes, dance: the head-waiters shared their other talents with us. A good time was had by all.

The air still had a bit of a cool bite to it, particularly with a breeze, even as far south as we were. The captain made a point of saying - in a silky, Fernando Lamas accent - that this was the nicest weather he'd seen in some time, which instantly added five degrees to the warmth from the sun's rays.

We sailed at 21:30... and sailed all night.