Musings of a Traveler in a Jet Lag Coma

Thursday, April 8, 2026

Konnichiwa, tomodachi. (Hello, friends.)

We left our house at 4 AM on Tuesday and landed at Narita at 4PM on Wednesday. It took us another 3.75 hours to disembark from the plane, clear immigration and customs, and get to our hotel in Shinjuku.

This gave me time to think about what I wanted to say about our last trip, which I didn’t have time to finish writing about once we got home. That trip included the Caribbean, the Panama Canal, and Mexico.

I want to write about three different topics: the places we visited, the cruise, and using AI to plan travel.

I will start with our ports of call. I last wrote about our visit to Cabo San Lucas and Todos Santos. After a slightly disappointing visit to the (sold and closed!) Hotel California in Todos Santos, Mexico, we returned to Cabo San Lucas and our ship proceeded to San Diego, where the cruise ended. But not for us. We booked a B2B2B cruise and we still had one more B to go. San Diego was just a port of call for us, though we did have to change cabins.

We went for a walk along the lovely Embarcadero while our cabin stewards moved our belongings to our new cabin. Or most of it. We were supposed to leave our clothes on hangers and they would move them directly to the closet in our new cabin for us. We packed the items that weren’t hangable, and they moved our bags for us, too.

Our new cabin was the exact mirror image of our old cabin. It was very disorienting for the first couple of days. We didn’t check our closets right away, but when we did, we realized that about half my hanging clothes were missing. It was soon sorted out, fortunately.

Then there was the Telephone War. As we were unpacking in the new room, I noticed that the room did not have a large phone console on the tiny nightstand like our first room did. What a great idea, I thought. Who needs two phones in this room?

Not long after I had these thoughts, there was a knock at the door and a man was bringing us a console phone that he had fixed and he wanted to install it on the nightstand. I said “No thank you, we have a phone already, just across from the nightstand, and we are fine.” He was not happy, but he went away with the phone. A while later, two officers knocked on the door. They said we had to have a phone for safety reasons. I said we did have a phone. They didn’t believe it, so I let them in and showed them the other phone we had. They still wanted us to have phone number two. I said no, we don’t need it for an emergency because we have the other phone. They didn’t really have any other argument so they left grudgingly, taking phone number two with them. All I can say is, it is quite thrilling to win an argument with an officer from the ship.

So, the third B began. It was a rarely seen itinerary to Baja California. It started and ended in San Diego and included La Paz, Loreto, Guaymas, Topolobampo, Mazatlan, Puerto Vallarta, and Ensenada. It also included a second visit to Cabo San Lucas, but that was cancelled due to poor weather.

I thought I wouldn’t like Baja California because it is mostly a very barren desert. It turns out it is much more beautiful than I was expecting. I am glad I had the chance to take a deeper dive into this part of Mexico.

My favorite port on this part of the cruise was Loreto. (Not coincidentally, Loreto has been designated a Magical Town (Pueblo Magico) by the Mexican government. This is a wonderful idea, by the way. Look it up.) We had a delightful tour to an old mission up in the mountains called San Javier. A true oasis in the desert, with a lot of history and natural beauty.

My least favorite ports, as with the Panama Canal part of this trip, were the ports that really weren’t ready for prime time. They wanted tourists to come, but they had very little to offer. I am talking about Guaymas and Topolobampo. These are working towns that are barely scraping by. Topolobampo is sort of a special case, though. The reason the ship stopped there was Copper Canyon. There is a famous bucket list railroad there. The Copper Canyon tour offered by HAL was arduous and super-expensive. The group of about 175 on this tour paid $800 per person for this 15-hour tour., and this did not include meals. They had to leave the ship at 4 AM for a 2.5 hour bus ride to the place where they boarded the train. They spent hours riding on a scary narrow-gauge track through very steep and remote canyons. Not my idea of a bucket list. (There is a very good YouTube about this trip if you are really interested. Maybe when I get home I will remember to add the link for the YouTube.) HAL only offers this once a year. Maybe not even that often.

I will give Topolobampo points for having a cool name, but it has nothing for tourists. We walked around and it was sad. It also looked like a good place to get food poisoning.

Just after we arrived in Mazatlan, the Captain announced that our port call on the following day, Puerto Vallarta, would be cancelled due to “civil unrest.” You probably heard about this. The Mexican government had just killed a top cartel leader (“El Mencho”) and there were consequences in PV. People in their cars were being stopped by gang members and forced out of their cars, which were then set on fire. The roads in and out of PV were blocked by the burning cars. The airport was closed. There were a lot of questions and few answers. Passengers were advised that Mazatlan was currently safe, but we were advised to be careful and to stay close to the port.

We have had many port visits cancelled over the years due to wind and weather, but “civil unrest” was a first for us.

Later in the day, the Captain made a longer announcement. He explained that a dozen new crew members had been expected to join the ship in PV, including a “replacement captain” and another senior officer.  Nine crew members were on planes that turned around on the way to PV. The new captain and the senir officer and one other made it into PV but they were now stranded there. Instead of skipping PV entirely, Zuiderdam would proceed toward PV and anchor at a pilot buoy about a mile offshore. At 8 AM the next day a pilot boat would bring the three crew member out to the pilot buoy, and they would climb up a ladder to board the ship.

The next morning we learned that the rendezvous had been successful, with some minor changes. Instead of a pilot boat from shore, Zuiderdam sent one of her own tenders to shore to pick up the crew. When the tender returned to the buoy, the ropes that are normally used for tenders were attached and the tender was hauled up to the promenade deck, where the new crew members plus the tender crew were able to exit the tender easily and bring their luggage with them quite easily. Hooray for a clever and successful mission!

We couldn’t really see the city from our point of anchorage, nor could we see any smoke. Nonetheless, I think a collective sigh of relief issued from the ship as we quickly sailed away from PV.

I can see that it is going to be more time-consuming than I thought to cover my three topics, so I am going to save the other two topics for another time. I will end with this:

• If you are visiting ports that are new to the cruise industry, either stay on the ship and enjoy the quiet atmosphere that ensues once a large portion of the passengers have gone ashore, or take one of the tours offered by the ship, even if it seems expensive. (Not talking about Topolobampo here.)
• People who took tours that were an hour or two from the ports seemed to enjoy their tours the most. 

(Now I have a little bad news. I have been having some technical issues with Blogger. I have not been able to add photos to the blog since I got here. I don’t know if it is the hotel’s wi-fi or something else. I have sent a message to Google. I hope this gets resolved quickly. 

I can’t even post a photo of today’s fabric, but I will put a link at the end so you can look it up if you are interested.)

Today’s fabric is by Jalene Kanani of Noho Home for Hawaiian Airlines, now part of Alaska AIrlines. The comforters and slippers on the plane featured this fabric and the design was echoed in the printing on the toiletry kits we received onboard. The packaging explains that “through the use of artful pattern, color, and textures, woven with native Hawaiian intelligence and cultural storytelling, Jalene reimagines the island home aesthetic, rooted in aloha.”

(Here is a link to the fabric. Scroll down in the link for a photo of the toiletry kit and a video in which you can see the comforters that inspired “today’s fabric.” https://nohohomehawaii.com/en-jp/pages/hawaiian-airlines-collaboration )


What story do you think this fabric tells? Just think about it. You don’t need to tell me, unless you really want to.