Monday – Cozumel, Mexico – Changeover Day

Today, we arrived in Cozumel, a small island off the coast of mainland Mexico.

It was changeover day, which means it was the end of the holiday for those passengers who were doing the two-week ‘Contrasts of Latin America’ cruise, and were due to fly home.

I’ve worked on back-to-back cruises before, and they never get any less weird. It’s weird because a large percentage of passengers who you’ve got to know and whose faces have become familiar over the last two weeks suddenly disembark, and a whole new batch of unfamiliar faces take their place.

There’s a brief period of time between the last passenger from the previous cruise disembarking and the the first of the new lot arriving, when the vessel is quiet and sparsely populated. Crew take the opportunity to do extra cleaning, and, of course, all the cabins need to be prepared in readiness for their new occupants. It’s all strangely relaxing.

I took the opportunity to remain on board all day and catch up on some online work. Tracey went aboard briefly to find a pharmacy to buy some factor 300 sun block. Between times, we enjoyed the relative peace and quiet, drinking lots of tea up on deck and looking out across Cozumel (which we intend to explore more fully tomorrow). From about 4pm onwards, the ship started to fill up again with new arrivals, tired and incoherent from their 12-hour flights, and the cruise cycle started all over again. Neil and Louise Bonner left for home today, as did James the Cruise Director. We’re pleased to see that Stephen Smith and Steve Ragnall are joining for the next two weeks (two lecturers who we also know from the Marco Polo), and the new Cruise Director is Emma… who, hopefully will be coming armed with a huge box full of art kits to replace the ones that we didn’t have on the first two weeks… fingers crossed…