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Tuesday, January 27, 2026 Homeward bound The Lights of Havana We were up at 5 to clean up and do last minute packing. The World Café opened at 6 and it was crowded. We saw many of the folks we had talked to in the past 2 weeks and everyone wished each other safe travels. We were scheduled to leave for the airport at 830 for a 3:15 PM flight. Yesterday guest services advised us that the Fort Lauderdale Airport would not check our bags until 3 hours prior to the scheduled departure. Hmmmm … Sitting at the airport with our luggage for 3 hours did not appeal to us. So, we accepted our friends Mirtha and Greg’s offer to pick us up at the pier, visit, have lunch and deliver us to the airport.  And so, we did. We arranged an early departure and met our friends at 9 AM. We had a delightful time chatting at Starbuck’s and having lunch at PF Chang’s. While Mirtha navigated, Greg expertly wound his way through a lot of traffic from the pier to the Galleria and then deposited us at the airport...
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  Bob’s underwater pictures Bob took over 150 pictures on his various dives and snorkeling forays. That plus many videos. He had to wait until he could get them downloaded to send to the blog.  So here are a few of them, telling a beautiful story:
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January 26, 2026 Sailing the Florida Strait Weather sunny, 80’s We spent this day packing and resting. We ate breakfast at the Restaurant, Lunch at the World Café and dinner with Bob, Anna, and our new friends from Iowa, Dave and Becky. We filled out our surveys as well.  Viking takes these seriously and they are hard. The choices are all about our expectations.  Did Viking “far”, “just”, “only met”, “fell short of”, or “did not meet” them.  And that is so misleading. For seasoned Viking travelers, we have very high expectations and they are usually met. So, we mostly put met expectations and added the caveat that as Viking loyalists, we have these high expectations! We did signal out several of the staff that we thought deserved it.  I think Viking pays attention to that as we heard several staff comment that they had been promoted because f passenger comments. Out suitcases were outside our Stateroom at 9 PM ready for the workers to work their m...
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Sunday January 25, 2026 Sailing the Gulf of Mexico Weather: sunny, 70’s.  Seas: mild, 1.5 meter swells, trailing wind at 20 knots Sunrise over the Gulf of Mexico We have a sea day and we needed it. So, we slept in, ate a leisurely breakfast in The Restaurant, promenaded a few cycles, zoomed with my brother John, watched Mass with Father Charlie (St. Jude) and then went to a lecture. Ginny Stibolt, our naturalist, talked about modern agriculture in the Caribbean basin and then had a Trivia contest that was taken from all her lectures.  Shirley and I only missed 2 questions and won the 6 Mimosas they had as a prize.  We gave the Mimosas away. The Winners of the Trivia Contest with Ginny Stibolt Then a small lunch in the World café set us up for a nice afternoon of doing absolutely nothing! Chilling on the Veranda with Barbara Kingsolver At 6:30 we listened to a very reasoned lecture about the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Mark had done his Master’s Thesis on ...
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  January 23, 2026 San Miguel de Cozumel Weather is sunny and 80’s Sunrise over San Miguel de Cozumel We have 3 separate tours today. Bob is going scuba diving, Shirley is going Alebrije painting and Ann and I are visiting the Mayan ruins in the interior of the island. We docked on time and had a leisurely breakfasts as our tours left at 9:30, 10:00, and 1:00. The Mayan ruins Ann and I queued up along with 5 other groups going to the ruins. This was the most chaotic departure I can remember.  Since 5 groups were going to the same place, the local tour guides just randomly assigned stickers to the first 24 people they found and there we were. Our guide, Junior, with a very long Mexican/Mayan name turned out pretty good. He was half Mayan and spoke that language. He described the Island as very flat (true), 24 miles long and 7 miles wide. As we traveled the 35 minutes to the site, he spoke about his culture and the history of the ruins.  It was dedicated to the fe...
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January 23, 2026 Belize City Weather Sunny and 80’s We have an early day today as we are the first ones off the ship and the last ones back to the ship. We queued up in the Star Theater until 7:10 when we were ushered on to an 80-passenger shuttle boat for a 35 minute ride to the dock. Once on the dock we were rushed onto a bus because we were a bit late getting to shore. Once on the bus with Gus(tavo) and Soso, our driver we took the North Highway for an hour.  Belize has four highways-- the North, the South, the Western and the Hummingbird Highways.  There are 14 traffic lights in the country and maybe 10 of them function as advertised. The road was poor after we left Belize City. We were pleased to hear that education is mandatory from ages 3-14.  Belize has the 2 nd  highest literacy rate in Central America.  Again, there is no military.  Health care seems to be good. There seems to be a lot of poverty.  The minimum wa...
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