At Sea: Mexican Feast & Changes Galore

Quiet day at sea … busy, but quiet.

Massages in the morning. Lunch with OCA Cella in the dining room. Lots of desk time in the afternoon. A delicious Mexican feast up at the Terrace Café for dinner … with an al fresco cooking station on deck where the various protein options for the taco salad were being cooked. No veranda time … a wicked wind made it too chilly to sit out for any length of time.

Why so much time at the desk? Changes, changes, and more changes to the itinerary. Thank you Sonia for sharing the emails you received from Oceania … still no direct notice to those of us already onboard Insignia.

I only had 6 ports where I had to contact tour operators for adjustments to pick-up times, but I had to go through 53 line items to figure out which ones needed my attention.

At this point, we are up to change #13. Every segment but the one between Singapore and Bangkok has seen multiple revisions. Thankfully, the only major one was #4 … which replaced the ports in China with ports in other countries, and jiggled the order of some of the ports that were already on the itinerary. That one we received in advance of boarding the ship. Every change since then has been minor adjustments to arrival and departure times … though in cumulative, there is a good chunk of port hours lost.

You know that CD Ray has something important to tell us when he “bing-bongs” the P/A system into the cabin. Tonight was no exception. He had news to share about San Diego … tomorrow’s port of call. Yup … change #13.

Despite the rather rough sea state today, we’ll actually be arriving in San Diego early … around 10:30a instead of at noon. Once we go through the face-to-face immigration process, which will be conducted on the ship, we will be free to wander around San Diego.

But we will have to be back on the ship for a 6:00p departure instead of the originally scheduled 10:00p. Turns out that as bumpy a ride as we got on Insignia today, conditions are expected to deteriorate further after we depart San Diego to head north up the California coast. “Unfavorable” is the word Ray used in his announcement. The four hours we’re losing in San Diego are going to be needed to get us to San Francisco on time to pick up a new complement of passengers … and load up on supplies.

Yes, changes can be frustrating … but they are what they are. We will go with the flow.Read more