[ There are 8 photos in this post. Much of the text is in the form of captions. ]
TUESDAY 28 February – Acapulco, Mexico
We arrived in the harbor at Acapulco, Mexico in the pre-dawn hours and proceeded to moor at the cruise ship dock under the first vestiges of the rising sun. This is a composite image of 10 photos showing a 180-degree view from our stateroom balcony. The image is actually 1920×418, so might be viewable at that resolution if clicked and displayed on an appropriate device.
The NCL Joy slowly nudges up to the dock at the cruise ship terminal. The building with the open doors facing the water was eventually filled with motorcoaches waiting to take cruise ship guests on numerous shore excursions.
A view from the inside end of our front balcony. You might be able to see through the glass at the right down into the Haven front lounge on deck 17 below.
A view of Acapulco looking forward from our stateroom balcony.
We arrived in Acapulco, Guerrero state, Mexico and docked at the cruise ship area. We had not arranged a shore excursion here, opting instead to disembark and wander around on our own. As a general rule, we would never wander very far on our own as the ship will not wait for us if we are late getting back. With ship-organized shore excursions, however, you are guaranteed that the ship will not leave without you (as long as you don’t separate yourself from the excursion guide/group).
We disembarked from the Joy and strolled along the sidewalk between the main road and the shore towards the up-scale end of town across the harbor.
Looking back towards the NCL Joy from the promenade along the shore leading away from the cruise ship terminal. You don’t really understand the size of these large cruise ships until they next to something that provides a sense of scale.
Acapulco was noticeably larger than Cabo San Lucas but we confined our walking to the area NE of the dock. Once the hangout of Hollywood elites (a long time ago), the “party” had since shifted to Cabo. There is still a lot of money and nice housing here, but we did not see those areas up close, and what we did see did not entice us to return. We got the impression that Puerto Vallarta would have been more interesting, and were disappointed that it had been removed as a port-of-call from the itinerary.
A view of the Acapulco harbor as the NCL Joy heads back out to sea. (This is a composite of 10 photos and might be viewable at 1920×294 if clicked on an appropriate device.) We arrived this morning in the dark but departed around 5 PM.
WEDNESDAY 01 March – At Sea
One of the TV channels on the ship provided continuous information about the ship’s position, heading, and speed, as well as weather information. We often had this on when we were in the stateroom, with the sound muted. Even though the Joy was consistently doing 20 to 22 knots, the distance down Mexico’s Pacific Ocean coast is considerable. One of the things we did not anticipate was that we rarely had clear skies at night. I never discovered the actual reason for this, but my presumption was the warmer and somewhat more humid air the farther south we traveled.
Our last look back at Acapulco, Mexico from the port side of our stateroom balcony as the NCL Joy leaves the harbor and heads out into the Pacific Ocean.
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