On sea days you will not find this group lolly gagging in the hot tub, sipping margaritas poolside, reading in a quiet corner, wine tasting, warming a seat in the casino, or sun bathing. No way. Intellectual pursuits, entertainment, laps on the deck, and shopping infrequent sales are about the only things powerful enough to pull us away from the trough. No time to enjoy the pod of dolphins frolicking off the side of the ship or the boobies flying low to take advantage of the treats the ship’s passing stirs up.

Two very spirited lectures filled our morning on Halloween. The first was on whale migration. Not your typical riveting topic, I admit, but Brent Nixon mixed humor with fun facts (think whale poop and ear wax), migration patterns, types and differences of whales, diets, lactating, and the astonishing size they can reach if they are lucky enough to live to old age. He had no problem holding our attention.

An equally enjoyable lecture was on the enormous treasure that has been lost to the sea over the past 2,000 years, most of which is waiting to be discovered. Mary Amanda covered shipwrecks with treasure lost and never found, the overwhelming majority, and shipwrecks with treasure lost and later found. Entire museums are dedicated to the bounty from individual ships. In today’s dollars the value of what’s been found as well as what’s still to be located is easily in the billions!

Today we took in a lecture on black tip reef sharks whose ancestors date back 400-500 million years. We learned that these night feeders are around five feet long, weigh in at 30 pounds, are color blind, immune to cancer, and have two pups a year that will probably not live to adulthood. Again, not your typical riveting fare, but when the microphone is in the hands of our new friend Brent it is suddenly all we want to hear about.

The stage was passed to Mary Amanda for a fun review of the history and culture of Colon and Cartagena which I’ll share when the time is right. Unrelated but special: Mary Amanda was wearing a skirt that her grandmother bought in Bogota in 1920!

In the spirit of Halloween, Dan decorated our table with confetti and trick or treat bags and he and I brought themed t-shirts from home which were fun surprises for our travel buddies.

I had a fun chat today with the head of the Captain’s Club, Violeta, a Celebrity employee of 20 years. She was an engineer in her home country of the Philippines before she decided she could help support her extended family better if she took a job with Celebrity and she has never looked back. She shared fond memories of her grandparents and the hard life they hoped she could avoid. They supplemented their income by harvesting salt. She described how they brought ocean water to a pond and by late afternoon the sun had evaporated the pond enough that crystals had formed on the top. Her grandparents scraped the damp salt off the top and formed a cone which was left to dry until it was ready to be taken to a salt warehouse and later sold.

Two relaxing days at sea, two more date nights, and six more contest questions had us ready for another shore day.

Entertainment these last two days:
Singer and pianist Heather Sullivan. Think Bette Midler meets Shirley Bassey meets Diana Krall to create a nightclub feel.
Comedy laced with magic or vice versa with Jason Bird. Excellent.
Claire Gobin on the violin in a spirited matinee.

For what it’s worth….

Today we sailed in water 14,700 feet deep.

After setting our watches forward two times, we were told to move our watches back an hour tonight. Say what?