Day 10: Saturday, March 7, 2026

Another rough night of sleep for me, being awake from around 2A until sometime after 530A and then getting up around 815A.  As a result, I'd end up taking a nap at 1130A before lunch.  But first…

CABO! Yes, on the 4^th possible day to visit we finally decided to go ashore and walk about.  At Cabo they contract for local tender service, and a variety of vessels handle the roughly 11 minute ride into the marina.  Our inbound boat was a smallish one, where the driver (I can't give him the honorific of Captain) crashed about as we left Quantum and as he backed into the dock at the marina.  Our outbound boat was a much larger affair and we had a calm, smooth sailing.

As expected, you are assaulted by vendors selling glass bottom boat tours, boats to The Arches, private yachts, fishing, jewelry, hats, and what looked like fridge magnets.  We stuck to the boardwalk (actually a red concrete walk) and while most vendors were concentrated in the 1^st hundred yards or so, there was never a point in anywhere that we walked when we were less than about 200’ from someone trying to offer us something.

E was interested to see if she could find something like a dress or shawl or similar, but everything we saw seemed to cater to younger women.  In a building signposted as a market we discovered dozens of individual stalls, mostly sharing the same merch.  E did find two silver pendants that she intended to get for Ash and herself, but when they indicated that they wanted USD 200 each (or a “deal" at USD 300 for both) it was apparent we were in different worlds, so we had to take a hard pass.

Somehow my mental map for the boardwalk was way off from reality.  I thought much more was within just a couple hundred yards of the cruise ship drop-off, but some of the really well-known places were a longer walk away than expected.  We got as far around as Solomon's before turning around, and since we had no plans to do any kind of excursion we were fine heading back to the ship after an hour onshore.

Post-nap we made an obligatory stop at Windjammer for lunch, although neither one of us was very hungry, and then headed to the Music Hall for mid-afternoon as that was the location for trivia today.  During that time we each tried new drinks found on the MH menu.  I had a Hotel California (essentially a tequila-forward marg with Tabasco sauce which left me unimpressed, while E had something with vodka, raspberry liqueur, a berry sparkling water, and topped with club soda which also left her wanting.

Figure 8: We saw several seals hanging around barking at boats.  We'ree guessing that they are used to getting fed, either by fishermen or, more likely, by tour boats.

Figure 9: Evidence that we went ashore at Cabo.

Figure 10: Our home away from home for 12 nights.

As we waited for the first trivia to start, a guy named Dan sat down at our spare chair and announced that he'd be on our team and he'd lead us to victory.  Turns out he's another one of these solo cruisers who lives/dies by his trivia playing.  He then proceeded to play a mostly silent game when he'd write down “the team's" answer with smugness.  He didn’t want us to be on his team – he wanted us to be witnesses to his greatness.  Whatever, Dan.

The instructions as we (the room) understood things was we had to give the airport and location, as in YVR=Vancouver, Canada.  However, when we started grading the host said he wanted the NAME of the airport (so “Vancouver Int'l").  No one, including Dan, had written that down but he named several – but certainly not all of them – on the fly.  However, when it came time to announce our score it seemed like we (he) was still going to trounce the room so when we were asked our honest score I wasn't about to do what he wanted (claim a perfect 40) because I'd heard him guessing wrongly at a few names.  When he looked to me to feed him “40” I arbitrarily said “32”.  Well, turns out there was another solo player in the room who claimed 36 which led Dan to mutter “I should have said 38” and basically pout because he wasn't going to win a keychain.  There was a team sitting behind us that also suffered from “not fair" syndrome.  Thankfully, Dan left and didn't insist on “teaming up” with us on later rounds.

A recap of our trivia day:

·         Airport Codes: 32/40 (2^nd, 36 wins)

·         Visual Trivia, Landmarks: 35/54 (54)

·         TV Theme Music:  13/20 (17)

·         Afternoon General Trivia: 11/20 (12 – by “Mr. Blue Shirt" aka Wally)

It is interesting that Wally, when the questions are (I think) reasonably unique and not part of their catalog of themed questions, does as well as we do.  So this just makes his (and similarly, Dan's) obsessive need to “win" their 20^th time through a random themed trivia all the more sad.  At best they are self-focused somewhere on the autistic spectrum.  At worst they are selfish narcissists.  This is why we have always made a habit of allowing ourselves no more than one public trivia win on a cruise.  When we piled up multiple wins in the past we were simply silent about our scores in later games.  Who needs more key chains, zipper pulls, pens, and similar crap?  (We won the “best" prize several years ago when we got our Royal-branded baseball caps – and even then, once we had won 4 of them in a single game we stopped claiming more caps.)

Other than both sail-aways, today was the first real use of the balcony.  I sat outside while E napped and I typed up these notes.  Our first time through Cabo it had both been too hot and the balcony was too sun-exposed to be comfortable, but today it was just lovely.  The screaming baby in the cabin next door didn't detract from my enjoyment.  J

Just like our TA on Brilliance, our in-cabin time has been limited.  Other than naps we've mostly been sitting out in public spaces (like the bars and The Library) and the value proposition of a balcony is becoming increasingly questionable.  Not sure whether we’d feel like shut-ins if we took an interior cabin or maybe a virtual balcony, but I'm hopeful that we'd be OK doing this, as it plays into my dream of occasionally taking advantage of Royal's “Going Going Gone” offers to perhaps score a last minute cheap cabin out of LA.  My calculations suggest that we might be able to take two “cheap" cruises for the price of what we're currently paying for a balcony cabin.

Dinner at Jamie's Italian was pretty good.  Certainly, in comparison to The Taste of Italy menu in the MDR, well…there's no comparison.  Our only real disappointment at Jamie's were the gummy and mostly tasteless garlic rolls.  Both of our pastas (Penne Arribiatta for me, Penne Carbonara for E) were excellent, as was my Banana Split for dessert.  Post dinner we relaxed in the Music Hall while a game went on in the lower level, and then continued our reading with the very good band Pulso playing in the background for a couple of sets.

Once back in our room we debated whether we needed to change our watches or not.  The waiter at dinner said we should turn back 1 hour tonight due to crossing back into Pacific Standard, BUT…we believe we are also LEAPING FORWARD 1 hour due to the start of Pacific Daylight time, with the end result being that we shouldn’t change anything at all.  Curiously, today's Cruise Compass made no mention of any time change, nor did we receive a printed reminder on our bed from our stateroom attendant, so we decided to simply leave our watches set as-is and we'll sort it out tomorrow morning.