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| Great Green Macaw. |
“Sightings from the Veranda in Costa Rica”
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| Thanks, Atenas neighbor Charlie for identifying these birds as the Gray-headed Chachalaca. They visit flocks every few days but are difficult to photograph when they’re constantly on the move and hidden in trees. |
In yesterday’s post, we discussed the number of cruises we’ve sailed over these past five years, a total of 19. With the upcoming back-to-back (two cruises) by the end of 2017, we’ll total 21 cruises.
In all, not counting future cruises, we’ve been a passenger on a ship for a total of 244 nights which accounts for 13% of our time from October 31, 2012, to October 31, 2017 (1826 nights from start to our fifth anniversary of world travel).
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| A pair of Harlequin Macaws. |
On Tom’s Cruise Critic website listing 18 cruises are listed since the site doesn’t include river cruises, of which we’ve completed one, in July 2016, on the Mekong River.
Many of those nights counted as “time at sea” weren’t all “at sea” when us 58 passengers (of a possible 60) were on buses and tours in Vietnam and Cambodia. Many river cruises spend fewer nights on the water when docking at ports of call may transpire over several nights. Nonetheless, we count the Mekong River cruise in our totals.
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| Our dear friend Louise in Kauai Hawaii wrote to tell us this is a Fiery-billed Aracari. What a fantastic bird! Thanks, Louise! |
When we sail on Ponant’s Le Soleil in January for the Antarctica cruise, it also won’t appear in Cruise Critic’s count of the number of cruises we’ve been on. The system used to list cruises in Cruise Critic only accommodates the major cruise lines.
For more details on the exceptional cruise, please click our link here and the following links listed in our archives when we posted photos and stories over weeks with further information of the 15-night “cruise” from start to finish.
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| An Owl on the lookout. |
The remainder of our cruises were on huge ships with a few different cruise lines to include: Carnival, Norwegian, Royal Caribbean, and Celebrity. After these experiences, we’ve settled on Royal Caribbean and Celebrity as our favorites, with RC having a bit of an edge with perks provided to its Crown and Anchor members, of which we are classified as “Diamond.”
On Celebrity, we’re Elite Captain’s Club members. These designations are predicated on the number of nights at sea and specifications as to cabin selections, not the number of actual cruises. More on this topic when we’re on our next cruise, and we discover any changes in perks since our last Celebrity cruise to Alaska in May 2017.
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| A pair of Green Parrots. |
At this point, although we’re enjoying every day in Costa Rica, we’re chomping at the bit to board the upcoming 30-night South America cruise on Celebrity Infinity which begins 28 days from today.
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| A Harlequin Macaw. |
We’ve never sailed on this particular ship with a passenger load of 2170 with a crew of 999, a perfect size for easy socializing, attending various events and venues, and providing the best service.
If you’d like to view information about our “listed on Cruise Critic” 18 cruises in the past five years, please click here. Here is an example of what you’ll see when you click on the link:
At this link, you’ll also be able to see details of all of our past and future cruises (except the upcoming Ponant). Hopefully, this information will provide a little insight to those who have yet to cruise and maybe consider the possibility of those who have sailed and enjoy seeing what others have done.
We’ve found that reading about the experiences of others at Cruise Critic has been helpful for us in many ways, including the get-togethers suggested by members for upcoming cruises where we’ve had an opportunity to meet other passengers we’ve seen posted at the site online.
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| Scarlet Macaw. |
Tom is the Cruise Critic enthusiast. I’m but a lurker occasionally stopping by out of curiosity to read passenger’s comments on past and future cruises.
That’s it for today, folks. In a mere two days, we’ll be on our way to Nicaragua, returning on October 30th with lots of new photos to share with all of you.
Have a lovely day!
Photo from one year ago today, October 26, 2016:
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| Pretty statue near the hotel pool at the Hilton Garden Inn in Denpasar near the airport where we stayed before leaving Bali. For more details, please click here. |
Oh Jess, what a fabulous bird. You appear to have found a Fiery-billed Aracan! ����
redorbit.com/reference/fierybilled_aracari/
Aloha – Louise
Louise, thank you! We are so excited for this sighting! We love the black dot on the breast which we also noted on the other two birds with this one at the time. We'll update this post to include the name you corrected, the Fiery -billed Aracari!
So sweet of you ton update us! Hope you and Steve are doing well.
Much love always,
Jess & Tom