Panama Canal Cruise Adventure

Jan. 14 Today we are in Cartagena, Colombia.  We had very rough seas leaving Panama and did not arrive in port until mid morning.  We were finally allowed to leave the ship and those that had excursions planned were able to spend an abbreviated amount of time seeing the sights. I hooked up with some friends and we hired a private tour guide and got to see the high lights of Cartagena.  Steve is nursing a damaged heel so he stayed on board the ship, did the blog write-up for Panama and basically stayed off his feet.   Our tour took us to the La Popa Monastery, Built atop a hill in the 17th century.  It has a great view of the city and remains inhabited by monks even today.   Our next stop was Castillo de San Felipe de Barajas.  This fort stands guard on a hillside overlooking the city and harbor.  It was build by the Spanish for protection against pirates while shipping gold out to Europe. The Cathedrals that we visited were ama...

Jan. 12 6 am in the morning found us waiting in the ships theater for our excursion to the Panama Canal Locks to start.  We had anchored off shore so we had to get loaded into a ship tender for a short trip to port where we would board another boat that would take us thru the Pacific side Panama Canal locks.  The excursion would take all day.  As we entered the first lock we found ourselves with two other boats/ships.   First some history:  In the 1880's, the French were contracted to build a canal thru Panama from the Pacific ocean to the Atlantic.  This was the same company that built the Suez canal so they had some experience in this type of project.  In 1904 they failed and went broke.  At this time the US decided that they could build it and bought all the permits and land leases from the French and started building.  First they had to tackle getting malaria and yellow fever under control.  They found out that Mosquitoes...

Today our excursion started at 7:15 a.m.  We boarded a bus for about an hour drive through the town of Puntarenas and out into the country side for our Jungle River and Crocodile boat tour.   Our tour was on a river boat that took us through the Rain Forest, Mangrove Forest and out to the breakwater of the Pacific Ocean.  We saw quite a few crocodiles in the water and on the shore.  Take a look at one of the attached pictures for the crocodile that was just barely visible in the water.  This guy was about 17 feet long.  We saw lots of exotic birds, a monkey, and of course the Black Hawk just stood there and watched us go by.   We decided that it was not a good idea to put your feet, hands or other body parts in the water.  We ended our tour with fresh fruit and Mango juice.  We got back on the bus and arrived back to the ship a little after 12 noon.   Very knowledgeable tour guide and an enjoyable time.   ...

Today our Port of Call was San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua.  The ship had to drop anchor out of the marina and we took Water Shuttles in to shore for our excursions.  The wind was blowing and the water was very choppy, but we made it to shore and got on our bus for a 90 minute trip to the town on Granada.  Our tour guide was very informative and spoke English very well.  He pointed out the Sugar Cane fields along the way.  Sugar Cane is a large part of the economy in this part of Nicaragua. In the town of Granada you can still see signs of destruction caused by the political unrest in that area.  We had a nice lunch while there.  The little kids were quite pushy with their trinkets for sale, but Steve and I came away without buying anything more for me to dust.  We stopped at the beach with a great view of two volcanos on the way back.  We got back to port and boarded our water shuttle for the short ride back to our ship in time for a dri...