I’ve found a home in Mastodon, but it won’t be to everyone’s tastes either, even if it’s nazi-free and advert-free, and there’s effort involved initially in getting the best of it and getting used to it that a lot of people these days don’t seem to have the patience for. I’m keeping Facebook as a point of contact with family members who won’t leave it even though I’m privileged enough to drop it entirely if I really wanted. As I don’t engage in politics there, it’s no big deal for me.

Yeah, we won’t be going through the canal this time around, but we did that at the end of 2023 and it was great, even though local unrest meant we couldn’t get off to do the trip into the jungle to meet a local tribe that we’d planned. We’ll likely just see what the options are in Panama City itself this time around, assuming they let us off the ship at all. Given that itinerary and some of the ports on it we’re not expecting to stop at all of them. The risk you take on any Latin American cruise.

Your future plans sound great despite the uncertainty with your job. Silversea are definitely not on our radar because they’re definitely not in our price range but I imagine the itinerary and service will be superb and you can’t fail to have a great time if that comes about.

Your upcoming Panama Canal cruise sounds interesting. Our Panama Canal cruise on the Viking Mars went very well. Viking Ocean is definitely a do-again for us, if they can come up with an itinerary that interests us. We looked through their catalog onboard and just didn’t see anything. We are looking a some expedition cruises up the coast of West Africa and/or some cruises in Western Australia/Indonesia with Silversea for 2026/2027 timeframe, when I’ll be retired. We haven’t booked much for this year, except my November cruise with Azamara in the Eastern Caribbean and Hubby’s Mt Kili climb/gorilla trek trip in August. Things are just so uncertain now with my job that we are holding back to see what happens.