MITSUGIRLY's ENCORE pictorial and extensive REVIEW

[mitsugirly]

Ok, on with the review for a little longer.

 

Now it is time for Sakari's pictures.

 

At least she managed to get one of me to prove that I was actually on this dive right?

 

 

The hubby in action...

 

 

Here's one of the sharp nosed puffers...the kind we normally see that is really small. The coloring is a little different so maybe the other bigger ones are just a different kind. I don't really know my variety of puffers unless it's a porcupine puffer....my absolute favorite for their personality. 

 

 

 

A couple of Four-Eyed Butterfly fish. 

 

 

More Blue Headed Wrasse:

 

 

 

Feather Duster

 

 

Up close and personal with a Parrot Fish.

 

 

Feather Duster

 

 

Blue tunicates

 

[mitsugirly]

 

Sakari loves her macro photography but I honestly didn't get much out of her this time around. There just wasn't as much to see as there normally is when we are diving a wall loaded with goodies. 

 

 

 

Yellow Tail Snapper

 

 

 

Trisket over there watching us do our thing. He knew going in that we were loaded down with photography equipment and made the comment "Well, I see you have that covered so I won't even take our camera" LOL (They use the same Olympus Tough camera I use anyhow). He had told us to go nice and slow and enjoy everything...there was no need to rush. Little did he know, that's EXACTLY what we like to do and we are usually going much slower than the instructor because we are busy taking pictures of everything we discover. We enjoyed this go-at-your-own-pace dive.

 

 

Trumpet fish

 

 

 

 

Now isn't that the saddest face you've ever seen?

 

 

 

Yellow Striped Grunt

 

 

[mitsugirly]

Trisket must have spotted something...no idea what it was.

 

 

Just look at that burst of color! So beautiful.

 

 

Another one of those very small puffers and a Goby beneath it. 

 

 

 

Like I said, she gets up close and personal with fish and that's exactly what she did with this Lizard Fish. Kinda scary knowing they have razor sharp teeth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Spotted Goatfish

 

 

Arrow Crab: See the little blue pinchers? So cute!

 

 

 

 

 

[mitsugirly]

As I said before, she spotted the Tarpon out in the deep blue...she managed to get somewhat decent pictures of them I guess. At least better than mine turned out. There's one thing I've learned about photography in the ocean...you point the camera out and you don't get good pictures. You point it down or are close up to the object, you can get some amazing and colorful pictures. You do what you gotta do in order to get a picture though. This is one of those cases. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some other random fish swimming by out there in the deep blue. 

 

 

Squirrel Fish

 

 

 

 

 

[mitsugirly]

 

 

 

 

Squirrel Fish

 

 

Fire worm:

 

 

 

 

Flamingo Tongue Snail:

 

 

Then I noticed she must have seen another grouper that I didn't see and managed to get pretty close to it...along with a bunch of baby fish. 

 

 

 

 

 

Feather Duster:

 

 

A nice close up of the Puffer fish

 

 

Mr Crabby I didn't see but she did:

 

 

As I was taking pictures, I noticed that Trisket had his "stick" out and had Sakari over by a rock. I swam over to see what was going on and what they might be looking at. He had her hold the stick and motioned for her to pull it out of the rock. She tried and tried and couldn't. Then he had the hubby pull on it. He didn't pull it out either. At this point I'm looking very puzzled as he handed me the stick and motioned for me to pull on it and gave me this water sign with his hand up to his chin and fingers pointed down and moving back and forth. I know a lot of the symbols for different fish, but for the life of me couldn't remember what that one was. 

 

As I grabbed the stick and pulled, it felt stuck. I looked over at him and he motioned to pull again. I pulled again and it started to come out only to be forcefully pulled back in. Wait...what just happened. I tried again. It came out some and then was pulled back in again. What is this force??? What is in there? I gave it one last try and the stick came out. I was left scratching my head at that point. I would later find out that we were playing tug of war with a decent sized octopus. Sakari managed to see it and said the arms and suckers on them were pretty large. 

 

In this picture, in the large hole, the brown area was one of it's arms.

 

 

I'm going to crop and zoom in on this portion of the picture and hopefully you'll be able to tell the size of that arm...it's pretty big. 

 

 

When we had first started our dive and got out to the reef part, Trisket had made that exact same hand signal (octopus) and pointed somewhere with his stick. Sakari went over and looked, but I did not get to see anything because at that point the hubby was in my way and I looked like I was doing somersaults in the water while trying not to get too close to any coral around me and I finally gave up trying to see what it was everyone was looking at. After the dive, he would tell me there was two different octopuses that they had seen. Darnit! I missed it. 

 

 

But...I did get to play tug of war with one of them (even if I didn't have a clue what it was at that time) and I won the game by getting the stick out after my third try. If that doesn't count for something I don't know what does. 😄 

 

Now whether or not the hubby managed to get any footage on the GoPro of it, I don't know yet. I haven't even looked at any of it and that is next on my list of things to work on tomorrow. 

 

We were at the end of our dive and you can always tell as the topography was changing from coral to sand...

 

 

 

I took a look at my watch to see what time it was and this is what I seen...

 

 

Whoopsy! I now know what that pop sound was during the dive. After going back to the beach, I would discover that the back of my watch popped off and that is why I now had a new watch face to sport around, filled with salt water. Oh well, it was a cheap waterproof (supposedly to 30m lol) and I had used to twice before several years ago for diving but kept forgetting to replace the battery in it until now. I will have to go back to my other watch I wore before it that held up pretty good. 

 

 

 

As we got to the beach, I seen the rest of my family standing in the water. I savor every last bit of the dive and go as far as I can before coming up. Then we started talking about the tug of war with the octopus and the other things we had seen under there. 

 

Then it was time to get out of the water. Ok, this is where the problem begins that I hadn't thought of before now. You know how it's hard to get up onto the beach with the water going in and out and the sand sinking? I hadn't taken into account for this when I tried to get out. I was on the struggle bus and struggling hard for sure. The hubby came back down into the water to grab my hand to help pull me out. It wasn't working. Trisket noticed what was going on and grabbed the other arm. Still not happening. I have a lot of problems getting out of the water at any beach without a tank and I just didn't see this happening. My foot does not bend that way to allow me to step forward to effectively get out. Before long, there were two other guys that had joined this circus of a show getting the crippled lady out of the water. Oh how embarrassing! But, eventually I was rescued and pulled to shore...or beach...or at least out of the water. 

 

I continued to hobble along, up the beach and over to our spot to take our equipment off. It's just easier for me to walk on the ball of my foot when this happens and that's how I managed to get back after that fiasco of a show. I mean seriously...four guys pulling me out of the water. LOL Yes, I can laugh now but at the time, I was probably about three shades of red in the face. 

 

 

 

Edited December 29, 2023 by mitsugirly

[mitsugirly]

Ok, I'm going to stop here for the night. I will resume tomorrow some time after work. I hope you all enjoyed the scuba pictures even though they weren't the best and I feel the color was off on a lot of them. Have a good night. ❤️

[scubamargie]

The pictures are great! I loved the octopus!! I know exactly how you feel about trying to get out of the water with a heavy scuba tank, weights, etc. I've been there and fell about 8 times because of the surf. Eventually got out with lots of help -- so embarrassing! I'm glad you got to dive there and see so much. Can't wait until our cruise. We are certified divers. You all need to get certified -- looks like you had no problems at all underwater. 

[broberts]

19 hours ago, mitsugirly said:

My foot does not bend that way to allow me to step forward to effectively get out.

 

I was wondering if walking backwards would have made it any easier?

[JoeTec]

Kim - Sakari's pictures are so crystal clear. What kind of camera does she use? 

My son & I both have Galaxy S22 phones & he can take pictures of any animal that comes out awesome & mine come out looking like Milo the dog on The Mask 🤣

[mitsugirly]

On 12/29/2023 at 4:27 PM, scubamargie said:

The pictures are great! I loved the octopus!! I know exactly how you feel about trying to get out of the water with a heavy scuba tank, weights, etc. I've been there and fell about 8 times because of the surf. Eventually got out with lots of help -- so embarrassing! I'm glad you got to dive there and see so much. Can't wait until our cruise. We are certified divers. You all need to get certified -- looks like you had no problems at all underwater. 

 

Thank you! I just wish I could have actually SEEN the octopus and what I was pulling against. At least Sakari got a few pictures of it. 

 

Well good to know I'm not alone in the struggle to get out of the water. I swear everyone up and down the beach was starring. So embarrassing. LOL

 

Yea, we are told each time that we need to get certified...if only not to have to repeat the classes over and over. I'm not sure when our schedules will line up that we could all do it now. Hubby is on the road a lot now. This was our 21st Discover Scuba Dive this time around. 🙂 

 

On 12/29/2023 at 4:42 PM, broberts said:

 

I was wondering if walking backwards would have made it any easier?

 

Ya know I didn't think of that. I might have to try that next time (even when getting out of the water at the beach). Thanks for that suggestion!

 

 

9 hours ago, JoeTec said:

Kim - Sakari's pictures are so crystal clear. What kind of camera does she use? 

My son & I both have Galaxy S22 phones & he can take pictures of any animal that comes out awesome & mine come out looking like Milo the dog on The Mask 🤣

 

We both have an Olympus Tough TG6 camera. I know what you mean about the pictures...Sakari is a pro at it and can get right up on animals. They see me coming and leave immediately. LOL

[mitsugirly]

Well, I've spent most of my Saturday trying to deal with this video of our dive. I struggle so much with underwater pictures and video's when diving. This time I even bought filters for my GoPro housing and had it on and it still came out the same as before. You'll get green tinges when pointing down, super blue when up and anything in between. UGH! I just don't know. Underwater photography is so hard!

 

You'll see in the video all the "floaties" going by and the cloudiness of the water when the camera is pointed straight ahead instead of down. So, that didn't help with the video either.

 

But, at least you'll get to see some of the things we were able to see. 

 

 

 

So after my fiasco of trying to get out of the water and back onto the beach, we headed back to the dive shop (up a flight of stairs) and had "Trisket" fill out our dive book for our records. 

This would make our 21st Discover Scuba Dive. Experts I tell ya! 😄 

 

 

In case you are wondering what the beach looked like on a cruise day...

 

 

 

We stood around trying to decide what to do next. Should we hang out on the beach for awhile? Should we go back to the ship? Should we do a little shopping at the port? We knew that the last time we were here (on a land vacation) that the food place on the beach only accepted cash and well...now that it cost us $42 to get here and will cost $42 to get back, we didn't know if it was a good idea to stay and eat here. However, the mini-me was hungry. Therefore, I must feed! That meant we were going back to the ship for free food.

 

 

 

 

We found an open air bus and decided to get on and head back. There were only 2 other people on the bus with us. 

 

 

 

It was a short ride back, since we took the quick way back that didn't involve having to go by Sapphire Beach or Red Hook, and was back to the port in no time.

 

[mitsugirly]

 

Once back on the ship we decided to shower real quick and get out of our wet clothes and then head up to the buffet for some lunch.

 

 

Only once we got there, they were closed. We were told to go down one floor to find food.

 

Down at the observation room we would find odds and ends comfort food but it was enough to tie us over for a bit. 

 

 

 

 

 

I decided since I didn't give my family a proper meal for lunch, I would make reservations to use our Platinum dining rewards and booked our dinner for tonight. 

 

 

Since we were in port until 7pm tonight, I wanted to get back off the ship and do some walking around and possibly some shopping. So, we headed back down and off the ship. We are definitely getting our exercise today!

 

Man the walk toward the port seemed longer than a little earlier and we were the ONLY people heading in that direction. Everyone else was headed back to the ship. I checked and double checked my phone for the time. Eh, plenty of time left.

 

We went up and down the street browsing at the shops and picking out gifts for the family back home. 

 

 

They had a beautiful large Christmas tree at the port.

 

 

I did manage to find the Taxi Rate sign...if only I would have noticed it before we left the port it might have not been such a sticker shock.

 

 

Can someone tell me why it cost more to go to Red Hook and Sapphire than it does Coki? Weird since Coki is further down the road.

 

After shopping, we headed back to the ship again. 

 

 

 

[mitsugirly]

The sun was setting and our home away from home was waiting to welcome us back...again. 

 

 

 

The palm trees were lined with Christmas lights. I couldn't wait to see them in the dark when we were pulling out. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We were back on the ship at 5:30pm and we hung out in the room on the balcony to people watch. Would there be an pier runners today?

 

 

 

It was now pretty dark and we seen the last few people making their way back to the ship. 

 

But...what was this? A bride and groom! They had just gotten married in St Thomas and was making their way back to the ship. They allowed them to be the absolute last people to get on the ship and he picked her up and carried her onto the ship. Awww...how cute. We all cheered them on.

 

 

 

[mitsugirly]

 

Everyone was on the ship and it was time to sail away. Everything was lit up so pretty.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Time to get ready for our dinner reservations. Sakari wanted to wear her new dress she bought for the cruise so I had her model it for me. 

 

 

 

Then we headed off to Los Lobos.

 

 

 

Now for those that don't know it, they have changed up some of the restaurants for the "free" latitudes on this ship. We usually go to La Cucina and La Bistro to use our coupons. However, on this ship they have a few different restaurants and would be using ours at Los Cobos and "Q" (the smokehouse) this time around. 

 

Edited December 31, 2023 by mitsugirly

[mitsugirly]

 

 

The menu's:

 

 

 

 

 

 

I ordered the Quesadilola De Tres Quesos as an Appetizer:

 

 

That thing was HUGE!! It could have been a meal itself. I would end up having Sakari help me eat 2 pieces of it. 

 

Sakari only wanted Ceviche, which ended up being a very small bowl.

 

 

 

 

[mitsugirly]

Ok, I'm having some major issues with this forum. Not sure if anyone else is? I tried to attach pictures and it's giving me an error each time. I have to refresh my screen and try over and over. Then when posting it's asking me to "confirm I'm human" and put a marker on this puzzle with a car in order to post. Is anyone else having issues with the forum? This is getting annoying. 

[blarko]

2 minutes ago, mitsugirly said:

Ok, I'm having some major issues with this forum. Not sure if anyone else is? I tried to attach pictures and it's giving me an error each time. I have to refresh my screen and try over and over. Then when posting it's asking me to "confirm I'm human" and put a marker on this puzzle with a car in order to post. Is anyone else having issues with the forum? This is getting annoying. 

Yes!!! It’s happening to almost everyone who is trying to post today. Some have noted that they’ve let the mods know about the issue. Hoping it resolves soon.

[mitsugirly]

The hubby ordered the Poblano Relleno (stuffed pepper)

 

 

 

I also ordered the fish taco's as my main course and couldn't eat all of them either. I pushed some off on Sakari where I believe she only took a few bites of the fish and couldn't eat anymore either. 

 

 

They ask what we wanted for desert. Oh man, where am I going to put desert??? Well, I found a place to at least try it.

 

I ordered the Bunelos De La Abuela: Fried Beignets/Brown Sugar Syrup/Cinnamon/Guava. Yep, I was going all out tonight with the sugar. I was hoping I wouldn't pay the price later. 

 

 

 

 

Edited December 31, 2023 by mitsugirly

[mitsugirly]

2 minutes ago, blarko said:

Yes!!! It’s happening to almost everyone who is trying to post today. Some have noted that they’ve let the mods know about the issue. Hoping it resolves soon.

 

Thanks for letting me know. It's only letting me post a little at a time here and there. So, I'm trying to get through this day of the review. Ugh!

[mitsugirly]

The hubby opted for the Torta De Chocolate, which was a chocolate cake/pecan/cocoa glaze.

 

 

Our bellies were over stuffed and he presented the check to us. I think it was $96 total! I took a picture of it but must have been in a hurry because it ended up being really blurry. 

 

 

 

 

[mitsugirly]

Since we are platinum and get this meal for free, we are only required to pay for Sakari's meal...at least for another few years until she becomes platinum herself (or diamond...who knows at this point). You are welcome daughter. 

 

Sakari's bill was $16.80 and yes they also add on a service charge to the bills.

 

 

 

Was the meal good? Yes it was. Is it worth that much money? Absolutely not. Outrageous. I can't imagine paying that much for the meal. That's crazy. 

 

After dinner the hubby and I requested permission to head to the casino for awhile and Sakari granted permission and off we went. We had a great time winning here and there.

 

 

I love these slots that start stacking money when you hit the bonus.

 

 

 

The hubby was sitting next to a lady playing this bat game and watched her win $250 on it. So I knew I had to try it and did pretty good with it on the cruise off and on. 

 

 

 

 

After awhile we decided to cash out our winnings while we were ahead and head back to the room. Sakari was already sleeping. The day must have worn her out. 

[mitsugirly]

I can't remember if I posted the dailies for this day, so I'll do that now for those that want it. 

 

 

 

[mitsugirly]

Ok, gonna take a break for awhile and let them get this forum thing figured out and then I will be back with the next days review. 

[MoCruiseFan]

On 12/22/2023 at 6:27 AM, mitsugirly said:

So I do these reviews as a informative, yet humorous (at least some think so, so don't burst my bubble ya'll) review of our fun times during our travels.

 

Great review, very informative.  One of the best reviews I have read here,  One minor thing...  Any true Southerner knows the word is Y'ALL not YA'LL.  Y'all is a contraction of "you all".  Take out the "ou" and add the ap[ostrophe and you get Y'ALL.  LOL 🙂 🙂 😉

 

Happy cruising to you and your family!

[MoCruiseFan]

Thanks again for the review and pictures.  While that is a HUGE amount of pics (you did warn us ahead of time) and I am not a big picture person (I take maybe 3-4 pics  year on my phone), the array you took gives everyone at least some that are very helpful.

On another note, I want to say (not in the creepy internat stalker guy way, please) that yoru daughter is a reak cutie.  Also you and you husband look familiar, I may have seen Y'ALL (he he he) on a crusie or two.  I'll watch for you guys on any roll calls for future crusies...

Oh yeah, in the Miami area the hotels just south of teh airpory in the Blue Lagoon area are really nice and not too expensive!  Give them a try next time.