It wasn't supposed to be like this

Today was supposed to be Acapulco.  I was looking forward to seeing the cliff divers as we have not seen that before.  Not this time.  The vestiges of Covid are all around and are insinuating themselves into our world cruise.  It started with the dispatch of several people from our boat way back at Key West because of Covid.  Further along things started to change on the ship.  Our cruise director who gives a daily presentation on shipboard activities which is taped for broadcast on our shipboard tv was giving those presentations mask-less in the beginning and changed to masked four or five days into the cruise.  Reminders to wear masks at all times became more prevalent.  They began to cancel planned shipboard gatherings like an afternoon reception for their Oceania Club members (us) after they had held a reception for their ATW guests (us) that very morning.  They went to having two showtimes in the evening to reduce the number of people watching in an enclosed space at any given time, and they stopped serving drinks during the shows so people could leave their masks on.

Somewhere along the line the show band stopped performing altogether.  We learned that several people had come down with Covid and had been put into quarantine.  It seems likely that they had caught the disease pre-cruise, but we do not know for sure when the illness was identified.  The loss of the show band is related to at least one of them coming down with Covid.  That seems likely to have been transmitted on board (my opinion based on timing).  Because of their work together they were probably all quarantined.  We are unsure how many people on the ship have shown up as positive.

 Shortly after the confirmation of cases on board came the bad news that another port was going to deny us entry.  The original itinerary had us stopping at Grand Cayman, San Juan Del Sur, Nicaragua, Puerto Quetzal, Guatemala, Acapulco, and Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.  We knew about Grand Cayman which was replaced by Key West, Cabo, and San Juan Del Sur before boarding.  We also lost San Diego two days before boarding, but the day we boarded we lost Acapulco and regained San Diego.  Puerto Quetzal denied us entry just after we left the canal leaving us a seven day stretch on the boat without a port of call.  To give an idea of expectations the longest stretch without a port in the original itinerary for the entire world cruise was five days.

Next came the CDC announcement that nobody should board a cruise.  Since that warning all the world cruisers have been flinching when the bell signals a ship-wide announcement expecting that the world cruise is about to be cancelled.  A number of cruisers on this trip were on the ill fated 2019 ATW trip that got shut down in Rio de Janeiro. 

We were rewarded with free alcohol all day on the 31^st and 1^st.  We did attend a gathering on deck for New Year’s Eve.  It was clearly not a party as that would be breaking the rules.  It will be interesting to see if the ship can put Covid back in the bottle.  If this ship can’t do it, then it is probably not doable.  Mask discipline on board is excellent.  I have yet to see an unmasked worker, and travelers are masked except for eating, and when outdoors. Even then many keep their masks on.  Everyone is supposedly vaccinated, most have been boosted, and most of the passengers are of the same mind set which is keep everyone safe and we can continue.  We remain hopeful.