Today’s port is Huatulco. Unfortunately, kinda a short stop here today (I know on the 10 day itineraries it was actually dropped as a port). We chose to do the Huatulco Swim and Sail excursion. Just as a short note, in the past on cruises, we’ve tended to go with independent operators on most of our stops, but when researching this cruise, we really didn’t find as much in the way of choices of independents, and ultimately pretty much ended up doing ship excursions in all the ports. Makes the trip somewhat more expensive (this was by far our worst bill of the cruises we’ve taken). This trip involved about 3.5 hours out on the Luna Azul sailboat, a 44 foot sailboat, had about 18 people on the excursion. Unfortunately, in the morning, there really wasn’t much of any breeze, so all our early travel was with motor. 
Went up the coast a ways, past some of the bays that Huatulco is known for. Swung by the bay that the guy normally stops for the swimming part, but unfortunately, the waters in that area were just inundated with tons of small jellyfish. Needless to say, that didn’t look like a great area to go swimming. So we went back to another bay, which had a little more development (although still part of the national park I believe, so not much, and there still were very few people), and since there were no jellyfish there, moored and we had about a half hour, 45 minutes to swim. 
Shorter than what we were supposed to have, but that was caused by having to go to the backup choice. Very nice water, pretty clear, although we weren’t in a good area to try snorkeling. Never really noticed this before while swimming in salt water, but it’s amazing just how much of a difference a deep breath makes in the buoyancy of your body. With my breath expelled, floating straight up, I found the water to come up to a point just under my mouth. Taking a deep breath, I’d rise several inches out of the water, really to the point where my shoulders were exposed. After the swimming it was time to head back to port, and at least for this section, we did get to do a little sailing because at least a little bit of a breeze had set in. All in all I’d say that it wasn’t a bad excursion, no hordes of people, and the price wasn’t bad.
Got back with just a little time to do a bit of shopping. Cathy ended up picking up some vanilla, and I picked up a bottle of tequila. Other than that, just pretty much back to the ship for sailing. I do think it would be nice if they did a slightly longer stop in this port, because I think there’s things one could do with more time.
Tonight’s comedian was Kevin Hughes, and the title of his show was “A Night of Romance and Passion”. To be honest, this didn’t sound like it was going to be encouraging, and after two bad comedians, we weren’t sure how this was going to go. (Kevin actually had performed the night we sailed, but we hadn’t gotten a chance to see him, and hadn’t heard anyone say anything about him). This performance however was well worth going to. Unlike the previous two comedians we’d seen, he was actually very funny, and is really one of the better comedians we’ve seen on a ship.