Sunday – January 25, 2026 – at sea to Puntarenas
Today’s featured photo show Jan after bouncing a ping pong ball to try and get it to land in a Dixie cup filled with water. Today’s World Cruise game had 10 cups filled with water and arranged in a pattern like bowling pins on the end of a table. The object was to get a ping pong ball into the water with only one bounce on the table. The table had a line to separate the area where the ball could bounce from the area where the cups were positioned. Both Jan and I were able to get a ball in a cup. This allowed us to contribute to Air’s score in our direct competition with Fire. We won the elimination heat and faced Water for the final. Unfortunately, we lost the final heat so no score for Air today.
Tonight’s theater production featured a dance troupe from Colombia along with the Magnifica dancers and singers. The Colombia dancers were very energetic and threw several of the women from one group of men to another. Jan and I decided not to try those moves when we returned to our cabin – at least not until we had more practice!
I forgot to mention it, but we won’t be stopping for a visit to Guatemala. Yesterday the captain announced our itinerary was being revised to move up our stops in Puerto Vallarta and Cabo San Lucas plus the addition of a day in San Diego. Gang violence in Guatemala has made it unsafe to be in the country. Two gangs (MS13 is one of them) took over 3 prisons, held hostage 43 prison guards, killed 10 prison guards and escaped from the prisons. We knew about the unrest several days ago and mentioned it to Sonja (the cruise director). Sonja told the captain and the captain consulted with MSC authorities in Italy. I’m sure they had to do lots of fast work to re-arrange our schedule but we are glad they were able to do so.
Today’s photos can be found here.