After a wonderful dinner with superb service in CR last night we went to Christian's show. It was wonderful. This guy is a real asset to Regent. At cocktails he offers an unusual blend of typical cocktail music and some more serious stuff which sets him apart from ordinary lounge lizards. And he's a fine solo performer with a most pleasing personality. All of the entertainment was been very good indeed. The only weaker performer so far IMO has been the our second singer who has now done two shows. I couldn't connect with her first performance. Her second performance was "An Evening With Barbara." She has the Streisand speech pattern down pat and is quite funny. But one has to be very brave singing Streisand to people who have been listening to Streisand for more than two decades. Her vocals sounded like something you'd expect to see on the first couple of American Idol shows of the season. I sort of felt sorry for her. Oh, and twice she referred to the new and superb Regent Orchestra as Russian. They are Ukrainian. Ouch!

Several folks have asked me to say more about the ship. Yes, the vibration at the rear is still there but I think milder than it was before dry dock. It doesn't bother me at all but I would still think twice about booking an aft cabin. All of the upgrades on the pool deck and in the restaurants are wonderful improvements except the beautiful but cumbersome chairs in the restaurants that are hell for the crew to maneuver around. The air conditioning has been significantly improved. We couldn't be cruising in hotter weather and the air conditioning his keeping us very very comfortable. That wasn't always true before dry dock. But I guess brown water will always be with us occasionally. We experienced it on Voyager when the ship had only been in service for six months. And just this morning Fred was running hot water into a wash cloth to soak his temporarily ailing left eyelid and the was cloth turned brown. All in all this ship is simply marvelous, a treat to experience.

Yesterday's tour of Puerto Chiapas was excellent. Comfortable bus with only 30 of 50 seats occupied, a great guide, a good group of people, and a very interesting Tapachula city tour and visit to a local archaeological site. Unfortunately, the heat got the best of one of us. The lady was walking along just fine one minute and the next minute passed out cold landing with a loud thump. Fortunately, she wasn't hurt in the fall and she was recovered and back on the bus in about 15 minutes. Puerto Chiapas has a beautiful new port and visitors center, quite stunning indeed. We were greeted with live music and dancers on both arrival and departure. Unfortunately, life aboard Navigator took a brief nose dive when we returned to the ship after our tour. We got back at 1:30 pm, the latter part of the lunch hour. A lot of the tours also arrived late in the lunch hour. CR was closed so we went up to LV. The pool deck wasn't an option for most of us because the temperature and humidity up there were well into the nineties. LV was simply impossible--all the tables occupied, a line stretching out to the elevators, and a wonderful crew simply frantic trying to accommodate everyone. To add insult to injury, several large tables were occupied by visiting local officials who were lingering over the free food and booze they were enjoying and in no hurry to leave whatsoever. And a very large and comfortable and empty dining room remained closed five floors below. We were really distressed seeing the fine crew of LV working under such impossible circumstances, circumstances that could have been partly avoided had management kept CR open and wined and dined the lingering Mexicans there. Management knew the tours were scheduled to arrive late and they knew it was hotter than hell outside rendering the pool deck functionally off limits for most and they knew the Mexicans tended to linger. So we shared our distress with management. (I know it may surprise you, but we tend not to be lingering wall flowers when confronting circumstances like these!) My guess is we were not alone in complaining. And the response we received was what you would expect from leaders of the highest quality: this was our mistake, it won't happen again, and we intend to assemble the LV crew to personally apologize to them for putting them in such impossible circumstances. End of story.