Puerto Vallarta, Mexico

May 8, 2023

Today was our last port of call on our world cruise. The time has sped by, however, our first port of call in Honolulu seems like ages ago! As I look over my last few blogs, I notice that they are shorter and with less pictures. I think that this is due to a little cruise weariness, the heat, and the fact that we’ve been to most of these ports before. Also, the atmosphere on the cruise has changed dramatically with the departure of at least half of the world cruisers in Fort Lauderdale and the addition of the same number of new cruisers. It’s not the same cruise we’ve been on for over three months. Perhaps that is good. We’ve become more focused on getting ready to go home in three days.

However, today we were in Puerto Vallarta. The weather, while still warm, was much less humid. We decided to go out for a short walk. Brian and I had been here just over a year ago and had done more exploring then. We walked off the ship and just wandered around the surrounding area. There was a mall and a flea market to explore.

The mall had the usual cruise port shops you see in the Caribbean like Diamonds International and Cariloha. There was an interior courtyard where a man dressed like an Aztec looked like he was available for pictures for a small fee. The courtyard was shaded by many umbrellas.

The flea market, which was just down the street a block, was full of small shops selling pretty much the same t-shirts and knickknacks. The sellers were a little aggressive but very friendly. All in all, we may have been off the ship for about an hour.

Today was also our niece Emily’s birthday. I had told here that I would drink a margarita in her honor, so I did! This frozen strawberry margarita was the first one I’d had on board the ship. It was delicious!

We now had to seriously think about organizing and packing. We had two days to get it done, so we planned to do it in stages. We went back to our cabin to begin weeding our paperwork and throwing things away. Both of us had clothes that we were going to leave behind to be donated and shoes to be thrown away. Our poor room steward would have a bit more trash than usual to get rid of!