Today was our first ever visit to the West Coast of Mexico as wells as Baja, California.

David decided he had "Man Flu"/ lazy-boneness so I went on tour to the Guadalupe Valley myself.

Apparently the valley makes 90% of all of Mexico's wines. However, it seems production is still quite limited and I believe they sell most of their product within Mexico (this isn't confirmed).

Along the way we drove through the city of 400,000. It's a very dusty, dry place.

I was extremely surprised at the desert like terrain of the valley. I don't recollect such a dry valley in all our wine tours around the world (perhaps the Coonawara Valley in Australia might be similar).

We went to Finca Tre which produces 36,000 bottles a year. They are only 10 years old and are very much a passion project of 3 families from Tijuana. They grow all their own grapes over 6.5 acres, including Merlot, Malbec, Cabernet, and well as a few other more newly planted grapes.

They have clay soil which is good at retaining water. They do use drip irrigation and typically pick the grapes in August (much earlier than Europe) but this year may be delayed due to unusually cool weather.

They provided a reasonably good explanation of the wine making process.

We then had a lunch with some tastings. It was extremely pleasant weather and we enjoyed lunch outside with a beautiful breeze and birds tweeting around us.

After that we returned to the port. I asked the guide if I should pop downtown but she suggested there wasn't much to see so we relaxed onboard before our 4 pm departure.

Just before departure Captain Abhi, the original captain from the beginning of the World Cruise, having just returned from his vacation, gave his first announcement. I joked that his single announcement was longer than the combined length of all of Captain Saro's announcements during his leadership from Sydney to LA. We are thrilled to have Captain Abhi back onboard.

I usually don't write too much about onboard activities but tonight we were invited to a large dinner by Marianne & Larry. She gives her Italian recipes to the chef onboard and then reserves 3 tables for about 30 of us.

Of course the food was great but we had an incredibly funny incident that warrants a comment here. We had a World Cruiser, Susan, at our table along with her daughter Anne that is on only on for a segment. Anne said she has 2 daughters. The younger is 13 and we thought we heard her say that her daughter has stated she is considering two different career options- "Chef or Prostitute." There was silence around the table. I then cocked my head in wonder and asked if at 13 she understands what a Prostitute entails. Anne replied "yes as I am an attorney." David couldn't understand the relevance of that reply unless the plan was to use Anne's lawyering skills to bail her out of jail when she inevitably got arrested. Finally Susan leaned back and said, I think everyone thought you said "Prostitute." Anne quickly said "Prosecutor." Everyone broke up in hysterics. We went on for a good 10 minutes with many guffaws, near moments of passing out from lack of air and stares from all the neighbouring tables. In writing and retelling the story it is hard to convey the hilariousness of the experience but trust us--- it was! (PS. Reading this note out loud to David just now led us to more hysterics!!!)