This area was just north of our hotel. I love the pastel colors of the buildings.

Photo by Randal Schwartz

There are lots of retaining walls to hold back the mountains.

Photo by Randal Schwartz

The mountains were beautiful and green.

Photo by Randal Schwartz

There are many tunnels along the road. I found it interesting that the way they deal with a mountain is to put a tunnel through it. In the US, we usually cut it back to add the road.

Photo by Randal Schwartz

Many of the tunnels are a half mile or longer.

Photo by Randal Schwartz

This structure fascinated me. We could see the sky above, but the walls looked to be a tunnel.

Photo by Randal Schwartz

There were several Costa ships in port, and this first sight of them should have served as a warning!

Photo by Randal Schwartz

The Costa Cruise Terminal was very large…On past cruises the terminal has essentially been a warehouse with a few counters where ship personnel quickly checked you in and sent you on your way to your cabin on the ship.

Photo by Randal Schwartz

However, Costa’s boarding procedure was quite different. After everyone (all 2200 of us) arrived, along with the passengers for another Costa ship (probably another 1500), we were divided into groups and after much waiting, we cleared immigration and were allowed to board the ship.

For a time, we enjoyed visiting with our fellow passengers, meeting old and new friends, including Don and Barbara McAllister.

We were in group 23. Each group took a minimum of 20 minutes to process! After waiting over 5 hours, they were calling group 13. We did the unthinkable…we “lost” our numbers and joined the line, pointing to someone ahead of us and telling the personnel that we were with them!

Photo by Geneviève Nault

The first order of business on every cruise is the mandatory lifeboat drill. Passengers remove their life vests from the closet in their cabin, don them, and then head for the lifeboat deck of the ship.

However, as we were leaving port (1.5 hours late due to the terrible check-in procedures), a windy rainstorm struck. The weather was miserable, so they had all the passengers assemble in the largest rooms of the ship. Our station was the main bar.

We caught up with our new friend, Gerry G, a miner from Mongolia. He is from Elko, Nevada and is a young, well-equipped Mac geek. The best place to put you hands when wearing a bulky life vest is you chest--sort of like being pregnant!

We also met up with fellow MacMania alums, Ron and Judy H. Judy tells me she read MacMousecalls regularly.

The next order of business was the welcome aboard cocktail party hosted by Microsoft.

Photo by Randal Schwartz

Cocktails, wine and punch was served, along with salty snacks.

Photo by Randal Schwartz

We received our name tags, and they were quite helpful since there were 180 MacMania cruisers aboard the ship. Unfortunately, there were many interesting people we never got the chance to meet.

Photo by Randal Schwartz

Captain Neil Bauman handed out our schedules for the week and introduced us to the fauclty.

You could tell it had been a long day and that many were shy. We generally sat in our chair and only socialized with those near us. The next cocktail parties were much more friendly.

Photo by Randal Schwartz

The final event of the day was dinner, held at 9:30. For this first meal, Captain Neil had assigned our seats. After this dinner, we were free to choose our own tables and dinner companions from the area assigned to our group. We were fortunate to be looking out over the ocean, but with dinner so late, we only saw a few light when we were near a port.

Dinner on Costa is a six or seven course meal. It began with an appetizer, then soup, pasta, the main dish, salad, cheese, and then dessert. This sounds like a lot of dinner, but you did not have to order something at every course. While I am an adventurous eater, the Costa menu often had many unusual items and we always at very late. It was sometimes difficult to find enough that sounded "good" to make a complete meal!

We have cruised on the Disney and Holland America Lines. Their food is wonderful! Unfortunately, the same can not be said of Costa.

Photo by Randal Schwartz