Day -5 - 12/28/21

 This cruise is our third and fourth since cruising resumed after the pandemic.  It's also an attempt to be away from the cold and wet winter weather found in the Pacific Northwest.  When I say third and fourth, it means that we've booked two cruises which are linked together on the cruise company's records to become one cruise and called a "back to back" or B2B cruise.  We've done a number of these previously including at least one B2B2B2B2B

 The plan is to fly to San Diego and board the Zuiderdam for a 14 day cruise to Fort Lauderdale and then stay on board for the return voyage.  One pre-cruise item we're challenged with is getting to San Diego because of the rise in corona virus cases related to the omicron variant plus very adverse weather surrounding the Seattle Tacoma airport.  Read that sub-freezing temperatures and 3"-5" inches of snow on the ground.  With flights being cancelled left and right, we had to abandon our typical flight plans of flying standby and purchased two seats on a flight on New Year's Eve Day.  Hopefully that flight won't be cancelled. For New Year's Day, we'll likely watch football games at the hotel from our room which is not much different from what we would do at home.

In  any event, all but one of the ports are repeats and there are no Caribbean stops, so we're okay if Covid issues keep the ship from docking at a port; we'll still plan to enjoy ourselves.  Here are the planned stops:

Cabo San Luis, Mexico

Hualtulco, Mexico

Puerto Quetzal, Guatemala

Corinto, Nicarauga

Puerto Caldera, Costa Rica

Cartagena, Colombia

 Early Friday morning before we catch our flight, we'll do the mandatory covid test using the Abbott Labs Home proctored test so we'll have the results within 15 minutes. 

If you have any questions about the cruise or cruising in general feel free to post the question in the box below.