Incan Empires
Cruise

I like to take a lot of thin white coat hangers as you never get enough in your stateroom. I just leave them on the ship when we leave. I like to take some battery-powered stick on lights for the inside of closets, the inside of your room safe, and the inside of the bathroom (the light switch is on the outside so you awaken your spouse when you turn on the light at night). Take a small flashlight or head light for emergencies and for looking under the bed. I take at least a dozen plastic clothes pins and a good string for a clothes line (you usually have a clothes line in the shower already). The thin white coat hangers are useful for drying clothes also. You can not take a clothes iron on a cruise ship; they X-ray the luggage and it will be confiscated. Irons are available in the launderette. Take some stickers or pictures and double sided tape to decorate your cabin door. Stateroom cabin walls are metal covered with vinyl. Some really strong magnets are great for hanging papers, clothes to dry, daily activity schedules, and if strong enough for anchoring clothes lines. You always get a terri robe so you don't need to bring one. You will have a combination room safe. The cruise ship lends you a beach towel to take if you go to a beach. Take good sun screen and insect repellant and pack them in plastic boxes or Nalgene bottles. Take extra glasses and sun glasses. A copy of your vision prescription has been a Godsend to travelers on several of our trips and could come in handy in some ports such as Hong Kong where glasses are inexpensive. There is a large lending library of books and DVD's on all cruise ships we use. I like to have my insulated travel mug. I rip a lot of videos to my computer with Handbrake to view on my iPad. You move videos on & off of your iPad through iTunes. In much of the developing world you bring your own toilet paper with you to public toilets so we carry a lot of small packs of tissues. On most cruise ship shore excursions you can leave your backpack on the bus when you get off to visit sites. Susan carries her own dual voltage curling iron. You might swap photos with other travelers by using an SD card or usb stick so carry a few cheap ones. One of the most important thing not to forget is to take some photo copies of your passport picture page. Because you use the photocopy of your passport rather than the actual passport (which the ship holds for you) you may still need your driver's license or other government issued ID at some money exchanges etc or if you have marked your credit cards CID.

As retired healthcare professionals Susan & I appreciate the excellent job done by Holland America. This was the second cruise (among many we have taken) that gastrointestinal virus affected the ship. For the last week special precautions were taken to prevent spread and involved passengers were quarantined to their rooms with room service provided until 24 hrs after symptoms abated. We were allowed to come ashore at all ports although we know Brazil, Tunesia, and some other countries are stricter about restricting their ports to affected ships. It is fair to say that we were aware during the entire cruise that other Cruise Lines in the area were much more affected than our ship was. We always carry bismuth tablets for this possibility. We have been on ships with widespread respiratory outbreaks but we had no such problem with this cruise.

Be sure and take some bandaids. Carry medication for a common cold, for gastroenteritis, for cuts & scrapes. Carry several types of antibiotics. I like to have some Augmentin, Cipro, cephazolin, and some doxycycline. Take some handkerchiefs When visiting malaria prevalent areas we choose to take mefloquin but some people have bad dreams on it. We have learned to get medical evaluation of infectious diseases in the area the disease it was acquired as so very many local physicians and pharmacists know exactly what is prevalent in that area and it's treatment. I would rather have invasive or surgical care back in first world countries. Know what your health insurance will cover over seas. Oceania and Holland America have excellent physicians onboard. Take some laxative as you will be less active on a cruise than at home. Sea sickness medication would be a good idea as would cough drops, ear drops, eye drops.

We carry two Nikon D90 cameras and take Nikon raw photos. Susan uses a 18-200mm lens exclusively and I vary from a similar lens to a Sigma 10-20mm lens. Using different lenses give us the chance to capture different views and particularly the 10-20mm lens allows me to capture buildings or rooms in their entirety without having to get too far back from the subject. We certainly do discard more of the wide angle pictures. The 18-200 is good for standing at a distance and capturing shots of people without being so very obvious. We have given up using lens filters as Aperture can simulate any of them. I occasionally use a circular polarizer when at higher latitudes. We also carry on our trips small point and shoot cameras that often we carry to markets and areas where we don't want to take our larger more visible cameras. In most of the world we use neck or wrist straps but in some parts of the world (particularly Brazil) it is dangerous to use a strap as we have seen several people hurt by the straps when their cameras were stolen. We saw a lady dragged over a block by a thief in Santerem because she had her camera strap around her wrist. She sustained damage to her wrist. We had been warned that camera theft was so common that it was dangerous to use the straps. We carry plastic bags with us for two reasons. When we take our cameras out of air conditioned rooms in plastic bags they don't fog up from the outside humidity. The plastic bags com in handy if it rains. We import our pictures daily to Apple Aperture and quickly discard (reject) the out of focus or poorly-exposed ones. Then we next pick the best of any particular shot. Be sure all of your cameras are set to the exact same time to the second. Aperture handles the Nikon Raw files so much more seamlessly than the Photoshop or Lightroom we used to use. The most common adjustment we make in Aperture is white balance. Many light fixtures that in the past were incandescent now have the energy efficient fluorescent bulbs and need white balance changes made.

The Holland American ships have the standard cruise ship MTNSAT satellite internet system. It is slower than shore based systems. We usually spend $100 to $200 for internet time in a month long cruise but this time we never connected while on board. We took our iPad & iPhones on shore to read email and stay connected. In some towns we had to sit at restaurants or bars and order cokes to get a password on shore. I was pleased that most iPad news apps will download the entire day’s news to the iPad to be read later when not connected. Onboard you can connect to the NY Times site but have to subscribe to get more than 5 stories a day. You can roam to the ship’s system for phone texts or calls or roam in ports. Susan always goes to Verizon in the US and makes a list of connection charges in foreign countries. We communicate with our families by texts or emails as the most cost effective choices. I take my MacBook Air and our iPad and we both take our iPhones. You will want to swap some digital photos with other passengers and most people either use usb key/thumb drives or SD cards to do this. Most people don’t have CD/DVD drives on their computers any more to use to swap files. The one electronic item you see most often used by cruise ship passengers is a book reader. Kindle’s and iPads are most popular but you see Nooks and android tablets a lot too. We rip most of our audio books from CD’s at our library but do get digital downloads from the library too. The digital library downloads usually have an expiration date so we read those books first. Susan buys a lot of ebooks from Amazon and we get a lot of audio books for our iPods from Audible. Don’t forget to bring chargers. Luckily the apple charges are all dual voltage

On this cruise we carried two MacBooks (laptops), an iPad, and our iPhones. This allowed Susan to type her story and me to edit pictures in Apple Aperture at the same time. We decided that next time we will only take one laptop but will get a keyboard for the iPad for Susan to type he travel story on. The internet plan we were given free as a promotion allowed only one device to be logged onto the WiFi network at a time.

The Holland America ships have a single 110 volt and a single 220 volt European plug at the desk/dressor in each stateroom. If you pack a power strip it will be taken from you and given back at the end of the cruise. We take a couple cubes that haven’t been confiscated. We take only dual voltage electrical devices so either works well. There is a switchable voltage plug in the bathroom for shavers that only works if the light is on. On our two nights in Peru we had 220v using European plugs. I take a European 220v to American/Japanese 110v adapter but since we take only dual voltage appliances (curling iron, iPad, camera battery chargers, Macbook Air, shaver, Kindle charger) we don’t have to carry a heavy voltage converter. There is an excellent hair dryer in each room.

We take only appliances that will run on either voltage and since we are from the US we use small plastic adapters that turn the 220v plugs to 110v. I carry a couple splitter cubes. We have seen people have power strips confiscated on cruise ships so don't take them. Some plugs only work when the stateroom lights are on or a room key card is in a slot in the room. The Nautica and Holland America ships have a shaver 110/220v plug in the bathroom. You don't need to take a voltage converter. Be sure and bring battery chargers for any appliance that needs one. Most modern chargers will run on both 110v & 220v but check before you come. There are hair dryers in Holland America and Oceania ships. On the Nautica we had a built in one in the bathroom and a good hand held portable 220v one for use out in the cabin. There is a wake up function for the phone so you don't need an alarm clock.

The more we travel the less we take. We take a couple pairs of Exoficio underwear and Capilene layers & I love my Magellan socks. We have a large portion of our clothes that can be washed out in the room, squeezed out, wrung out in a towel, and hung up to dry in just 3 or 4 hours in the room. We wash underwear, exercise clothes, and socks after each wear. Take lots of clothes pins. REI in the US is a good source for easy maintenance clothes. You certainly need zippable pockets for your money & documents on shore.

We have special travel socks and underwear such as those by Exofficio or Magellan that we can wash out daily and need very few pairs. These usually dry within a half day if washed in the room, thoroughly rung out, rolled up inside of towels, and hung up to dry in the stateroom. These dry more quickly inside than outside on the veranda. We also have travel shirts and pants (long & short versions of each) that dry this quickly when hand washed in the room. We carry a small Nalgene bottle (from REI) of concentrated washing detergent for this and I pack this Nalgene Bottle inside a waterproof box or Nalgene water bottle to avoid the consequences of a leak in route. There are usually laundromat services on cruise ships but be advised that these are closed if there is an outbreak of gastrointestinal illness on the ship. Cruise ships offer laundry services at a charge. We have culled the clothes we take over the years to be those with the most wrinkle resistance and to dry the quickest. In many parts of the world, we really appreciate the secure zipping pockets of our travel clothes (safari type clothing). Don't forget your hat for sun protection. The more years we travel the more we find we can take less and less clothes with us on our trips. Oceania has no formal nights but I find my blue blazer appreciated at times. Holland America has one formal night a week but a suit is fine as very few formal clothes are seen on those nights. Some cruise ships are cold so be warned. Even if you don't plan to swim, take a bathing suit as the hot tubs and saunas are wonderful and you might need to work on your tan.

We like suitcases that will compress enough to keep under the bed so they don't take up room in the stateroom. We often carry a thin gym bag in case we buy items that will require another suitcase on the way home. On every cruise we take there are passengers whose luggage did not arrive on the airline and they are stuck without their luggage. We put a couple changes of clothing in our carry on luggage and we almost always go a day or two early so any tardy luggage has a chance to catch up with us. On the flight to catch our cruise I label each luggage item with our final destination for the flight (hotel name) because luggage could get mixed up on the shuttle from the airport (this has happened). When flying through remote third world airports we often choose to pack our clothes in plastic bags inside our suitcases as we have had our clothes soaked with rain or covered in dust in the past. Susan & I mix our clothes in each other's suitcases in case only one suitcase doesn't make the airline flight. I use Nalgene water bottles and plastic waterproof boxes to pack my fragile or liquid items.

On every cruise we go on we sail with people who flew in to the destination port the day of sailing and their luggage was delayed. We always fly to the destination port at least a day before, always take some of our clothes in our carry on luggage, and Susan & I always mix our clothing among all of our bags in case only bag is delayed.

We have found that having a couple hundred dollars each in one and 5 dollar bills (or euros in parts of the world) opens up so many possibilities to get us good service, pay porters, and buy trinkets. We find out immediately upon entering a country how to tip and who. The US dollar is still king. We split up our credit and debit cards so if we are robbed we can continue our trips.
One of the most important thing not to forget is to take some photo copies of your passport picture page. Because you use the photocopy of your passport rather than the actual passport (which the ship holds for you) you may still need your driver's license or other government issued ID at some money exchanges etc or if you have marked your credit cards CID. I have records of credit card numbers and the international phone number for the card. We know which ones have foreign transaction fees. Before we leave on our trip we call the credit card company and let them know which days we will be in each country so they will allow the transactions. We still have cards frozen by the banks when we withdraw large amounts out of the country or make large purchases. This problem is easy to resolve by logging in to the card's web page and checking messages. Keep up with your plane tickets and any vouchers you carry with you. In Europe and Japan in particular be sure your credit cards have been upgraded to Smart Cards that carry the computer chip.

We more often cruise on smaller ships such as the Prinsendam or the Oceania Nautica but do like these mid sized ships like the Statendam, Veendam, & Noordam. There are 3 show times each night on the Statendam. There is an excellent gym with great exercise classes and running track. There is a basketball court and a volleyball court. We love the amount of activities and the age group of cruisers represented. There is a formal night every week on Holland America cruises but men now wear suits rather than tuxedos. Susan & I both took lectures in Windows 8, video making, photography, cooking, geology, local cultures, marine life, ecology, etc. The library is excellent as is the shopping. Other activities include art lectures and auctions, wine tastings, mixology classes, dance classes & competitions, crew shows, equator crossing ceremonies, poolside BBQ’s, sail away parties, organized walks on the promenade deck, port talks, shopping talks, navigation & sea talks, and excursions. Food is legendary and we have more access to spicy foods (which we like) than we have on Oceania Cruises. We consider Holland America ships to be a a step up in class & cleanliness from the usual cruise lines. Our favorite onboard activity is sorting & viewing our digital photographs & videos made during the cruise.

We always give our guides about five dollars when we go on shore excursions. We love our travel agent Dianne Blackburn at Gateway Travel in Spartanburg, South Carolina. She usually follows our progress when we fly and has even called ahead and rebooked flights when she knows we won't make connections. We call her from all over the world. We have used her for over 20 years and feel she consistently gets us the best deals. Susan takes whatever deals she can find to her and Dianne tries to get a better deal. Even when we book a cruise etc we make sure Dianne gets credit with the Cruise Line.

On this trip our main goal was to get 3 more countries we had never visited (Guatamala, Nicaragua, & Peru) and visit Machu Picchu. Puerto Vallarta & Cabo were the most tourist friendly cities & best shopping. Most gave a good picture of local life if you ventured away from the ports and tourist centers. The passengers that went on the shore excursion to Tikal really had a trip of a lifetime and this Mayan site is on Susan & my list of sites to visit in our lifetimes but it required a flight that we didn’t want to pay for at this time with a lot of travel in 2014 already planned.