deladane

We were having such a lovely time that we ended up ordering a second round of beers. We were both still full from that breakfast burrito at Blue Iguana this morning or I would have suggested we order some food too. When we finished our drinks, it was time for the mile-long walk back to the bus station. At first we walked along the Malecon, admiring the views, but then we got too hot so we crossed over to the inland side because there was shade from the store awnings. We got back to the bus station at 1:30pm and at first, we weren’t sure where to go. There were lots of locals coming and going because the city and regional buses also used this station. We noticed there was a line wrapping around the corner, and when we looked closer, we realized some people had Carnival towels and Sign and Sail cards in their hands. We found the end of the line and asked the people ahead of us to make sure this was the right place. It was, so we got in line behind them. Even though the line seemed really long, it only took 20 minutes to reach the front of the line. This time, the shuttle was a public city bus instead of a coach bus, so there wasn’t space underneath to put the stroller, but they just let us collapse it and carry it on through the wheelchair door at the back of the bus. It took about 30 minutes to drive back to the ship, and there was just a short line of people waiting to board. We went straight back to the cabin so Ian could nap, and this little guy was waiting for us: Jason stayed in the cabin with Ian while I went to Lido to get us a Fungi pizza to share. Like yesterday, it wasn’t crowded and I got my pizza right away. I brought it back to the cabin and we took it out onto the balcony. As pleasant as the weather was while we were out in the sun by the beach, it was actually kind of chilly sitting out on the balcony. We were on the shaded side of the ship, and I needed to wear a light long sleeve shirt to avoid goosebumps.

We walked about a mile down the Malecon until the beach ended in a marina. There was a fun restaurant and bar right on the water called Estrella del Mar. It wasn’t busy and they had lots of tables outside on the patio with shade, so we stopped in for a drink. Dos Equis was 50 pesos (just under $3 USD), so we ordered a round of drinks. Ian had fun dancing around on the deck and burned off some energy while we relaxed in the shade and enjoyed our beers. The thatched roof made some weird shadows across our faces. Too bad, because otherwise this would have been a great photo!

Like most touristy cities, La Paz had the giant brightly colored letters spelling out the city name as a photo opportunity. We waited for a few families ahead of us in line, then we had our turn. It was nice that people just naturally lined up to give each family their own photo op. I have seen similar touristy photo ops when people weren’t nearly as civilized, so everyone ended up with strangers in their photos. No one wants that! While we waited in line, a guy came up to each family trying to sell footage from his drone at the La Paz sign. He said he would get a video of you standing in front of the sign waving, then he flew the drone up and down the Malecon, and then came back towards you from out over the water to capture your image from the other direction. The people ahead of us did it, and Ian loved watching the drone fly, but we opted to just have the people behind us in line take the photo on my phone for free. I do wish I had thought to ask him what he charged as we were curious about it, but we never found out. Ian wouldn’t cooperate and look at the woman taking our picture, and he was getting fussy in his stroller, so we just rolled him off to the side and Jason and I took a nice photo together. After that, we continued walking down the Malecon. There was a nice wide pier jutting out into the water, so we took a detour to walk along the pier and see the views.

As I mentioned, we didn’t have much of a plan for today besides walking along the Malecon and getting a drink or maybe lunch somewhere. The weather was absolutely perfect with temps in the mid 70s, low humidity, and a slight breeze. The Malecon is beautiful with lots of shops and restaurants on the inland side, and a long walking path along the ocean side. There were a bunch of sculptures along the way, so Jason pushed Ian in the stroller and I tried to snap a few photos as we walked along. It was such a perfect day for a walk along the beach! I’m not sure how deep the sand was at the beach where the bus dropped people off, but the stretch of beach along the Malecon was beautiful and there were lots of people swimming and sunbathing. You could very easily have a beach day down here at the beach and skip the other beach stop.

We pulled over at the beach at 10:20am and the guide explained that we had the option to exit the bus here to go to the beach, or we could stay on until the next stop downtown. She said the buses would come every 20 minutes, but that if you wanted to go to the beach, you should get off now because after leaving downtown, the bus would return back to the ship and not stop at the beach again. Nearly everyone got off the bus here. I tried to get a sneak peek at the beach, but I couldn’t really see much from the bus. No one was ready to leave the beach this early in the day, so the bus left with those of us who stayed on, and drove another 15 minutes until we reached downtown. I took a screenshot of Google Maps so we could find our way back to this spot later on to catch the shuttle back to the bus, but that wasn’t necessary as it was very easy to find. We were at the main bus station downtown and it was a busy hub for both tourists and locals alike. Sorry about the sun glare but this was the outside of the bus station:

It was a short walk past the 4 or 5 vendors and through the port building, and then we found the large shuttle bus waiting for us. The bus was nearly full when we got there, so Jason and Ian boarded while I loaded the stroller into the storage compartment under the bus. I was surprised that there was no wait or line to get on the bus. I’m not sure if it was more crowded earlier in the morning, but this worked out great for us. Jason snagged the 3-seater row at the very back of the bus so we could all sit together. We left the port shortly after boarding the bus. Ian has never ridden on a bus before and he loved it. He stared out the window for the entire ride. Maybe he was just excited to face forwards on a moving vehicle, since his car seat is still installed in the backwards facing direction? When he returned to daycare the week after the cruise, his teachers asked him his favorite part of the cruise. Ian’s response: “I rode on a bus!” …#Toddlers! A minute or two into the ride, a lady stood up at the front of the bus and introduced herself as our guide for the bus ride. I don’t remember her name, but she told us lots of facts and information about La Paz, which helped pass the time as we drove the 15 minute ride to our first stop at the beach. I tried to snap a few photos along the way, but it’s always challenging from a moving bus and with the window glare. I happened to capture this man riding his bike… I didn’t even see him coming! Good timing, I guess! I knew that the Baja Peninsula was in a desert climate, but I had no idea they had this many cacti! I live in Phoenix. I see cactus every day, but rarely do I see so many cacti so close together. It was beautiful!

Oh wow, that's quite a schlep just to get to the beach! Even if it is beautiful, that doesn't seem worth the effort.

We were wondering about that beach where the shuttle stops. Looking back, I'm really not sure how people get to Balandra Beach... maybe on an excursion? I didn't see taxis at the port.

I'm guessing they immediately gave you the 50% refund in hopes that you don't sue them for emotional distress! What a horrible experience! I noticed Carnival doesn't have any excursions to swim with the whale sharks. Maybe they couldn't find a reputable company to partner with?

@jerseygirlinAZ No worries about the hijack. I was riveted reading your post. My heart rate is up right now. You must have been going crazy that whole time with nerves and anxiety! That's such a crazy story! I would have demanded a refund. You definitely did not get what you paid for!! I hope your knee heals up soon!

Nope! But considering the best season for seeing whale sharks is in the winter, maybe the tour companies have wet suits you can use??

Ian was sitting in his stroller with a baggie of prepackaged snacks... he was the most comfortable person in that line! 🤣

More details about La Paz coming soon! We really enjoyed our low key day there. I'm so glad you find my review helpful for your planning! Let me know if you have any questions 😄

I have never ordered the MDR sushi before, or any cruise ship sushi for that matter. I enjoy it at home, but I never think to get it on the ship 🤷‍♀️ So glad you are enjoying the review!

Since we weren’t in any rush, I left the boys at our breakfast table and went up to deck 11 where I could take some photos of the port without windows blocking the view. As you can see, there is a whole lot of nothing nearby the port. This is definitely not a place where you can get off the ship and just walk around on your own. Thank goodness for those complimentary shuttles to take us somewhere with something to do! We finished up with breakfast, then got off the ship at 10am.

Last night, Nino left us a paper with details about the complimentary shuttle bus to transport passengers from the ship to the beach and/or to downtown La Paz. I was so relieved to get this information because it made it possible for us to get downtown. Whew! With no specific plans for the day, I didn’t set an alarm and figured we could sleep in until our toddler alarm woke us up. After going to sleep so late last night, I really hoped Ian would sleep in, but nope! He had other plans and woke up at 7:30am today, so he only got 8 hours of sleep instead of the 12 hours he gets at home. From the balcony, it looked like a beautiful morning in La Paz. We all got dressed and went to Lido for Blue Iguana burritos and arepas. Even Ian loved the arepas!

Tuesday, January 2 | La Paz, Mexico | 8:00am to 5:00pm Back when I was researching daily excursions, I decided to start my research with the smallest, least touristy port, and move on from there. That was La Paz, and no surprise, it proved to be the most challenging port to pick an excursion. The port itself is industrial and there isn’t anything to do in that immediate area. Most cruise passengers go to the center of town where they can walk along the Malecon, go to a restaurant, or shop in some of the touristy shops. I’m not really a fan of shopping for trinkets that will just gather dust on a shelf once we get home (and Ian gets bored quickly when we put him in the stroller to go shopping at home), so while this was a possibility, it was not my first choice of what to do that day. There are 2 popular beaches located about 15 minutes north of the cruise port. They looked very pretty, but also very remote. I was unsure about the idea of spending the day at the beach, especially one with few resources. I was not sure if there was any natural shade, or a place to rent an umbrella and some lounge chairs. When we go to the pool at our community center, Ian is content for about an hour and then he’s ready to go home. It seemed like a lot of effort to go to the beach if he was only going to tolerate it for an hour and then want to leave. This was still a possibility on my list, but not the ideal choice. Another very popular activity in La Paz is swimming with whale sharks and/or sea lions. Pre-child, there is no doubt in my mind that this is how Jason and I would have opted to spend our day. La Paz is one of the top places in the world to swim with whale sharks, and this seemed like an incredible bucket-list opportunity. The problem was that this would definitely not be a toddler-friendly excursion. It would involve riding on a small boat out into the Sea of Cortez, and spending several hours on that boat. My past experience with similar tours was that everyone jumps in the water together, so who would be left on the boat to watch Ian? And even if Jason and I could somehow take turns going in the water, it still seemed unsafe to take a toddler on a small boat in the open water. We spent a lot of time debating back and forth on if we should leave Ian in Camp Ocean while we left the ship to do this excursion. There are some tours which last the whole day and include swimming with both whale sharks and sea lions, then having lunch somewhere, then going to the beach, and we would be gone for 7+ hours. We knew we couldn’t do a tour like that, but we thought it would be possible to pick a shorter 2-3 hour tour in the morning. Ian has been going to daycare full time Monday through Friday for 10 hours a day since he was 6 months old. He loves daycare and always has so much fun (based on the reports from his teachers and from all the photos they upload into the school app), but we had no way to know in advance how he would react to camp on the cruise with all new kids and counselors and a new environment he wasn’t used to. Unfortunately, swimming with whale sharks would have to wait for another time, but it wasn’t in the cards for this cruise. Every few weeks through the fall, I did another search online for things to do in La Paz, hoping to see something new. In the end, I really couldn’t find anything specific that would work for us, so we decided to do something we almost never do and have no plans for the day. We would find our way to the downtown area, walk along the Malecon, and see where the day took us. The biggest question was how exactly would we get downtown? La Paz is not a very common cruise port for Carnival, so there was basically no information about it on Cruise Critic. Some Princess itineraries go there, and I was able to find out that Princess offered their passengers a free shuttle bus to get downtown, but I had no idea if Carnival would make the same arrangements for us. Princess is owned by Carnival Corporation so I kept my fingers crossed that they would handle things similarly for us. Planning to have no plan kind of gives me anxiety with all the unknowns, but worst case scenario, we would just cut the day short and go back to the ship, or just never get off the ship at all that day.

I only ever saw the lime flavor. Maybe they have other more popular flavors that they only give out upon request? Does anyone else know?

Thank you! So glad to have you back again to follow along!

When passing the Arch, we were on the port side of the ship. Those photos between breakfast and tendering were all taken on deck 11, right above where we ate breakfast at Blue Iguana. I know how you are about soda, but I just have one can a day at home. We carried on a 12-pack to share in case either of us wanted soda during the cruise, and we took 8 cans home at the end of the week lol So needless to say, I never bought a soda on the ship and I can't answer for sure, but maybe someone else know? My guess is that they give you a cup without a straw, and if you ask for a straw, you get a lime one. There are no plastic straws on the ship.

We finished dinner at 7pm and took Ian up to Camp Ocean. We made sure to give a thorough goodbye with our usual routine from daycare drop off, and that did the trick. Ian ran into the play room and was very excited. We called an hour later to check on him and they said he was happy and playing, so mission accomplished! We took advantage of a child-free evening and went to the 7:30pm show in Liquid Lounge. It was a Motown solo act singer named Ron Mitchell. We arrived at the theater literally 3 minutes before showtime and there were still plenty of seats available. He was a decent singer but the show was so awkward because he didn’t have back up singers or dancers or anything so it was just him on stage with a backing track. It felt like it was missing something, and we thought it was under-produced and had so much potential to be a better show. We do enjoy listening to Motown music, so at least we liked that part of it. After that, we went back to the Limelight Lounge for the Punchliner Comedy Club. We got there at 8:15pm and it was almost full already for the 9pm adult show. That was surprising because the Fun Times said the doors didn’t even open until 8:30pm, but when we arrived 15 minutes early, the doors were open so we just walked in and found a seat and no one stopped us. We tried to flag down a bar waitress for a while and couldn’t get her attention. I found it so weird that there isn’t a bar in there! Jason went over to the sports bar next door to get us some drinks. I’m not sure what he had, probably some kind of martini, but I got my favorite Carnival drink: the Funship Special. There are no regular plastic straws on the ship. Instead, they serve edible straws with a lime flavoring. Since I tend to prefer fruity drinks, this wasn’t an issue (although I could definitely taste the sour lime flavor, the drink was sweet enough to overpower the lime) but I would imagine the lime didn’t mix well with a chocolate or coffee flavored drink. John Heald actually just addressed the topic of straws this week. I knew they made the switch away from plastic straws to protect the wildlife in the oceans, and he confirmed that reasoning. He suggested people can bring reusable stainless steel straws if they don’t like the lime flavoring, but I can’t imagine most people would want to deal with washing their straws while on vacation. The 9pm comedy show was rated R-18+ and featured JC Coccoli. She was by far the funniest comedian I have ever seen on a cruise ship. Yes, her act was a bit dirty, but that’s to be expected in an 18+ show. She came across as very professional, with a great set of prepared material, while also thinking on her feet to react to comments from the audience. And to anyone reading this who may have seen her show, I will never think of spaghetti and meatballs the same way again! Spagoot! Right after the show, we went upstairs to get Ian from camp before the 10pm cut off when they start to charge. On the way back to the cabin, Jason found a rubber ducky hiding behind a pillar on the ship so he gave it to Ian and he was thrilled. (Look up “Cruising Ducks” if you don’t know what I am referring to) Ian kept referring to it as “my ducky” and he played with it for the rest of the cruise. Ian was so happy and riled up from playing that it took an hour to get him to fall asleep, but that was ok because he was so happy and having a great time on his first cruise vacation. He kept sticking his head out from the blackout curtains like it was a game. Silly boy! Even though Cabo and La Paz are in the same time zone, we didn’t change our clocks last night because of New Year’s Eve. That meant we spent all day in Cabo with ship time being one hour behind local time. Tonight, we did have to change our clocks so we lost an hour of sleep heading into tomorrow in La Paz, but that’s no biggie because we didn’t have anything specific planned anyway. Up next: La Paz, Mexico

We arrived at our dinner table right at 5:30pm, and it took until 5:50pm for Raf to take our order. In an effort to help speed things along, Jason asked Raf to bring all of our appetizers to the table at the same time, and then all our entrees at the same time. We have done this on prior cruises and it works well for us. Plus, that way if we don’t like one of the dishes for whatever reason, we already have our other dish sitting on the table, ready to eat. No need to flag Raf down to ask for the next dish sooner than he planned. For my appetizers, I ordered the stuffed mushrooms and the linguine with clams. The mushrooms were always one of my favorite appetizers from the old dinner menus. They used to serve them in the round tin with 6 little circles, which doubled as the tin to serve escargot. Now that escargot is no longer served, I guess they got rid of those tins. Instead, the mushrooms were just served on a plate, and there were only 4 of them instead of 6. This cutback didn’t really bother me though because I usually end up ordering more food than I can eat at dinner, and if I did want more mushrooms, I could have ordered a second plate. The appetizer portion of the linguine with clams was perfect. I really like that the entree pasta dish is always listed as a smaller portion in the appetizer menu. I ordered the chicken parmigiana for my entree. I wish it was served with a side of spaghetti with marinara sauce, but at least I got the linguine appetizer to satisfy my pasta craving. The chicken was served hot and tasted delicious. I ordered my first melting chocolate cake of the cruise as my dessert. As much as I like my steaks served rare, I like my melting cake served well done and cooked all the way through. I find that they are either served barely cooked with a warm liquid under the top cooked layer, or they are fully cooked through, and there’s no way to know what you got until you dip your spoon into the dish. Luckily, my dessert tonight was served exactly how I like it!

I went up to the padded chairs on deck 11 overlooking the pool to take some notes for this review. The sun dipped behind the hills at 4:45pm, so I took that as my cue to go back to the cabin and wake up the boys and get ready for dinner. It is so rare to see ports on a cruise at night, but since we didn’t sail away until 7pm, and the sun set so early with it only being the first week in January, we had a stunning view of Cabo from our balcony!

We were back on board by 3pm, so our first stop was to go back to the cabin for Ian’s nap. This little guy was waiting for us on our bed… I think it’s a ram? Jason decided to take a nap too, so I left them there and went to find something else to do around the ship. We hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and surprisingly I wasn’t hungry, but I thought it was smart to eat a little something. The Lido buffet was totally closed so I went to the Pizzeria del Capitano, and there was no line at all! Score! I asked the guys if they were open and they were, so I ordered the Funghi and they made it fresh for me in just a few minutes. Hot and fresh from the oven, it was very yummy! As I ate, I admired the beautiful view of the sun setting behind the hills. A few people enjoying the Tides Pool, with the sun illuminating the Princess ship behind us: Perfect weather in Cabo!

As we were walking back to the tender dock, we spotted a restaurant with a good happy hour deal- $5.50 USD for Corona/Pacifico/Dos Equis and a shot of tequila. After the day we were having, we needed a drink! There was only one other occupied table when we arrived, but it filled in shortly after that. We had a great view of the marina and all the people walking along the path, so it made for a fun pit stop before returning to the ship. I can’t remember the last time I took a shot of tequila, but when in Mexico… #YOLO We were enjoying ourselves and the great people-watching, so we decided to order a second round. This was certainly better pricing than we’d get for drinks on the ship! 4 beers and 4 shots of tequila cost us $22 plus tip. Can’t beat that! When we finished our drinks, it was a quick walk back to the tender pier. There was a big tour boat already filling up to bring passengers back to the ship. We got on and quickly found seats for the short ride across the bay.