I peeked out the balcony curtains when I woke up, and I caught this sunrise. The picture never does it justice, but including it anyway.

Sail in pictures. Huatulco is in the Mexican state of Oaxaca.

We planned snorkeling and read that Playa La Entrega had good snorkeling with availability snorkeling equipment for rent for about $8 / 150 Pesos each. We have snorkel gear but could not spare the luggage space so just planned to rent. We first walked out of the port to the close taxi stand. The taxi was around $7 USD for two people; agree on price before hopping in. There are no Ubers or Didis (a Mexican Uber version that was available in Mexico City) available in this city.

We arrived at the beach and could see our ship popping through.

As soon as we arrived, someone asked us if we wanted to rent snorkeling equipment. He had the right price -- what we expected from reading others' experiences online -- so we agreed. He noted a life jacket included. I read that currents could be strong, so that a jacket was recommended. Travis does not like using a life jacket because then he can't dive down. We saw others in the water with the snorkeling life jackets that you can blow up or deflate, but that's not what we got.

He walked us to his shop on the other side of the beach and outfitted us with equipment. We were also allowed to keep our bag and shoes there. He pointed out where the reef was. There was not a bad current; it was very calm.

The beach and surrounding area was very pretty. We were very impressed with the snorkeling. We saw lots of fish types that we have not seen before snorkeling. There was a puffer-looking fish in navy with glowing spots; there was others with glowing spots; some eating from the bottom. There was great coral; though some shadow coral that we had to be careful to avoid. At a few points, the current was trying to take us into the coral.

My new swimsuit bottoms has a skirt with pockets. I put my carmex in the pocket when getting off the ship and meant to take it out when we geared up. I realized halfway through snorkeling that I forgot and now it was gone. It was dumb; I will have to avoid using the pockets in the future. We were both looking for it where we had snorkeled previously; I expected it to sink so was looking at the bottom. Later, Travis was doing his own thing, looking at the fish. I get his attention and say that wow, he found it. I saw it floating right next to him! I thought he had it in his hand, at first. He did not realized that he had found it. I was happy that we found it; I did not want to litter in the pretty fishes' home. I held it in my hand until we finished snorkeling.

When we were done snorkeling, we returned the equipment and dried off. Princess is the first cruise line that we have sailed that allows you to take towels without checking them out to confirm that you return them or get charged for losing them. We grabbed two from the pool deck the night before and packed them for today. Next to the reboarding area, they have a dirty towel drop, so we didn't have to haul the dirty, sandy towels back to the pool deck or store them in our room.

Travis went for two quick swims before left the beach. The beach also had restaurants and bars, but we did not stop at any. The snorkeling area is to the left and back in these pictures.

We planned to walk back and had scoped out the sidewalk options on the taxi ride there. The taxis heading back to the port were eager for us to hop in. One stopped three times, and I was starting to feel that we were being overly harassed. But, we kept walking. We got to see plants closer up and saw a coati run across the road -- cool! Travis was the designated photographer since we only brought his phone for my waterproof pouch since he had the eSim. A good view of the ship in the pretty bay. A cemetery with art.

We stopped at strip mall closer to the port and used some Pesos. Travis got a beer, Teecat, and me a soda at a convenient store. Then we got some ice cream, chocolate brownie flavor. It seemed pricy despite him telling us that it was a great deal. It was good. Travis also got some horchata, a cinnamon milky drink, at a vendor. He liked it, and despite it not really being my thing, I said it was not bad.

Walking back to port, this was to get a Huatulco sign picture, but it is very far away. This church and ship look good together. Anchor and sign.

Sailaway

We found reboarding the ship in port had long lines most days, more so than other cruises that we have been on.

It was very good snorkeling with a pretty surrounding area. I did get sand flea (which I read were not real) or jellyfish eggs (where we did not see any jellyfish on the snorkel) whelps from this snorkel, like I had gotten before at Princess Cay in the Bahamas. Weird, totally different places, different oceans.

For Guatemala on October 28th, we booked a ship excursion before the cruise to hike up a volcano. When we first got into our room on embarkation day, we found the printed ticket and a letter saying it was cancelled. I have tickets with a meeting place and time and a cancellation letter. Are they trying to confuse me? It said that the cancellation was because it was rainy season; how would they not known this when they sold it to us? I wondered if they did not get enough bookings on it since this cruise had an older crowd. The letter noted that they would give us a 10% off another Guatemalan excursion. We did not really see anything else that interested us, but I found a Costa Rica one that did. I looked for the cancellation in the app, in our Folio; they refunded the OBC used for one excursion (OBC before the cruise could only be used on one person's shore excursion, but other cruise lines may not let you use OBC for booked ahead of time at all). The other person's was not refunded to the credit card used but added as additional OBC; annoying that they would do that. Our original Costa Rica tour was with an independent provider and did not get enough people to make. So, we were going to try to buy a tour after getting on shore, which I read was available -- vendors selling tours at the port, but Costa Rica was also a very important port to me. We had a coupon pack in our booking on the Princess website that I downloaded, which had a 10% off shore excursions booked on embarkation day, so we booked the Suspension Bridges in Costa Rica tour.

All that to say that we did not have anything booked or planned for Puerto Quetzal, Guatemala. The main city near the port was about 2 hours away. It did sound interesting, but was far away. Someone who attended the port talk said that the speaker seemed to discourage going. So, we were just going to walk around. We were not here until later -- noon to 8pm.

I was impressed by all of the empty container ships just anchored.

Scoping out Guatemala from the ship while they were docking the ship. They tried the mooring line gun at first, but it was not getting anywhere near that the guys on the pier that they were not even trying to catch it. So, they brought out this boat to drive the mooring lines to the pier instead.

We had lunch before going ashore. Travis had the buffet, and I had the Salty Dog Cafe hotdog, which was very good but was very hot sitting outside eating.

Before going ashore, Travis was trying to tell where we could walk since there were container ship areas on several sides. There was not too much. On land, there were many vendors, including a band performing and cocoa demonstration in the port area. There were a few bars and restaurants too.

We found some iguanas and got some good pictures. They were very cool looking. We did not see too much more being a container port. We saw one ship picking up and dropping big piles of dirt. There was a long conveyer belt going from the ship area to a building far away.

After dark, we watched the line of semis lined up to collect their container in the container port with lots of cranes. Some of the semis had nice colorful lights on the cab.

The ship used lights shined on the ocean. I do not think other ships normally do that. It made a cool picture and view from balcony.

The Halloween decorations are out. We frequently went to trivia in this lounge -- The Wheelhouse Bar.

A light got in the picture, but I read before that P&O used to own Princess, that I had not known. So, I got a picture. This was in The Wheelhouse Bar too.

This was an Officers vs. Guests game that I saw on the schedule multiple times that looked really hard and frustrating. They had to flip an upside down cup at the edge of the table and get it to land upright. Then they could put it on their chosen spot on the tic-tac-toe board. The cups never seemed to flip upright.

On October 29th Sea Day, we shared a table at breakfast at the buffet because it was crowded. I found this very little cruise duck. Others had not heard of cruise duck, so I was telling them about it.

After formal night dinner (2nd formal night), we changed and went to the indoor hot tub and pool. Another night we noted how quiet and peaceful the indoor pool area was and that we needed to come swimming some night. We went twice. This area also had Swirls -- soft serve and gelato available until 8pm.