Panama Canal Cruise 2013:
Day 11 - At Sea

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Panama Canal Cruise 2013: [Day 1 - Ft. Lauderdale] [Day 2 - At Sea] [Day 3 - At Sea] [Day 4 - Colombia] [Day 5 - Panama] [Day 6 - Canal] [Day 7 - At Sea] [Day 8 - Costa Rica] [Day 9 - At Sea] [Day 10 - Guatemala] [Day 11 - At Sea] [Day 12 - At Sea] [Day 13 - Mexico] [Day 14 - Mexico] [Day 15 - At Sea] [Day 16 - San Diego]

	Monday, January 28, 2013: It's nice to wake up to a sunny ocean.
	After sleeping in, we had breakfast outside in the bar area in the back of the ship.
	While we were there, we watched a small group of dolphins frolicking near the ship's wake.
	We needed to kill some time so our cabin steward could clean our cabin, so we went up to Deck 14 to sit out in the sun for a little while. After a bit, we decided to look out over the railing. These birds are the first in a long line of wildlife that we saw.
	Tom's sharp eyes spotted this whale shark with her baby.
	We saw lots and lots of dolphins, usually one at a time.
	We saw a turtle and didn't realize that it was a turtle until it was nearly past us. That was the first of dozens of turtles we saw.
	This blurry photo exists only to remind us that this was a turtle with a ray. At first we thought it was two turtles, but further investigation proved that it was a ray just under the water a couple of feet away from the turtle. Awww, they were little friends.
	Another turtle. So easy to spot, so difficult to photograph without blurriness.
	The turtles often followed the pattern of staying on the surface until the ship was about 90% past them, and then they'd dive.
	This choppy section of water turned out to be a huge mob of dolphins. There must have been something delicious just below the surface, because there was a whole lot of dolphin hysteria.
	Here's a closer shot of a few of the dolphins. In the larger version of this photo, you can see some of the dolphins below the surface in addition to the ones jumping.
	This is a pair turtles spending some quality time together. Some turtles had been floating on the surface so long that their shells had dried, such as the one in this blurry photo.
	Seriously, there were a lot of turtles. Here are three of them floating on the water as we sailed by. It stopped being an effort to spot them because they were everywhere.
	Another dolphin. It was fairly common to see a dolphin head toward the front of the ship and then swim along side of it.
	It was really quite amazing wildlife watching. We saw two sailfishes swimming right below the surface and enjoyed many, many flying fish swimming away when the ship came too close. We even spotted a whale or two. We were pretty far away from land when all of this was happening, so perhaps that contributed to the amazing quantity and variety of what we saw.
	Earlier in the cruise, we had been promised a taco bar by the cruise director and finally, it appeared. However, since we were only a day away from our "Tacos and More" tour in Puerto Vallarta, we decided that it was better to save our taco craving for then and stick with burgers on the balcony for lunch.
	The party band played the hits of the 70s and 80s every day at sea, ...
	... but we preferred the privacy of our balcony. Tom read "Cold Days" and "The Host" while Debbie worked her way through a four-month backlog of Entertainment Weekly magazines. The only reason to leave this utopia would be for our early afternoon ice cream/sorbet cone run.
	At-sea days spent on balconies are even better when a butler shows up to bring afternoon tea.
	We made it a point to leave our cabin for sunset every night.
	A man and the sea.
	And the sun is now set, ladies and gentlemen.
	That was our cue to head to the back bar and enjoy a plate of sushi.
	An afternoon spent grazing makes it much easier to make it to our 8:00 PM dinner time without starving, and that's a good thing. Day 12 >