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VACATION 2000 - THROUGH THE PANAMA CANAL |
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| We wanted to experience the Panama Canal, and what better than a cruise to do it. | |||
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The cruise line flew us into Acapulco. We were happy about that because we had never been there before, but we were a little disappointed to be whisked directly to the ship with not time really to see the town. Ah well, another time perhaps. We consoled ourselves with thoughts of the special treatment "Princess" had given us on the flight. |  |
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An uneventful day at sea found us docking in Costa Rica. We opted to take a full day tour into the heart of the country and San José. A lot of time in the bus but enough information and things to see to give us quite a good impression of Costa Ricans, even allowing for the obligatory stop for "cultural" tourist shopping. | |
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Another day at sea and we were at THE
CANAL. We arrived nearby Panama City very early in the morning and took our place in line to enter the locks into Lake Miraflores. Currently the canal company
loads up those ships traveling West to East early, for a morning parade through the basic canal section (the Gaillard Cut). Ships traveling East to West enter from
the Caribbean but have to wait around in Gatun Lake for an afternoon parade in the opposite direction. East and West are actually relative terms. The direction
taken from the Pacific to the Atlantic is actually SE to NW, which is a little counter intuitive. We were quite impressed at the ability of the handlers to maneuver the big ships through the locks, with only about 18 inches to spare each side .... at least until they scraped one liner (top R.H. picture) all along the side of the lock .... whoops ... s o r r y ! The canal company maintains a web site which is well worth a look. |
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| We proceeded along the North coast of South America until we reached Cartagena in Colombia where we, and passengers from two other cruise ships all went ashore. It was something like a circus; hoards of tourists all being ferried around the town en masse, in a fleet of buses. The fact that we hardly ran across the local population and there were armed police around constantly, leads us to believe that the arrangement was deliberate, and for our general security, but it didn't allow for a decent 'sense' of the area, which is rich in history, being amongst the earliest settled parts of South America. We were allowed to see a couple of the more picturesque areas, the Cathedral, the old Fortress and, of course, the tourist shopping area where Emeralds are the big attraction. | |||
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A little further along the coast, off Venezuela, is the semi-desert vacation island of Aruba. We know people who rave about it. As we didn't stay in one the of the beach hotels we didn't share their experience and, as we're not really beach hotel people, one visit is probably enough for us. We were fascinated by the ubiquitous cactus and the size of the island (small). |  |
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A brief stop in St. Thomas allowed us to take a tour around the island. As a cultural destination, there's not much to see ... as a place to go to unwind in a tropical paradise it definitely gets points. | |
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Puerto
Rico stands as a destination in itself, with cultural as well as scenic aspects so, when we disembarked here, we chose to stay a short while. We "tootled" around Old San Juan for a couple of days, visited the old Fort (El Morro) and went up into the Rain Forest (El Yunque). Much more to see and do but we didn't have time. Maybe we'll get back here sometime. The stay was marked by a "major experience" when we became trapped in an elevator during one of several power blackouts. Fortunately we were near enough to a floor that we were able to force the door and clamber out into the darkness and feel our way down a stairway to the street. Hey ! It doesn't happen to everyone ! |
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This was our first cruise experience with Princess
and we were very happy with the experience. |
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Copyright © 2000 -2004 - Bella and David Shore |
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