At 05:45 a.m. we arrived at Puerto Quetzal, Guatemala. Smoke and a smell of burning was carried into the ship by the air-conditioning. This was the start of today’s sugar cane harvest. The dead leaves and scrub at the base of all of the plants, thousands of them in total, is set alight to clear …
Today we have been at sea on our journey to Guatemala. We have been very busy doing nothing! We have seen no ships at all but watched the sun from first light until 5:00 p.m. do its apparent journey from east to west around the ship. A highlight of this morning was the blowing onto …
We arrived in Puntarenas, Costa Rica, at first light (05:30a.m.) and at 7:00 a.m. we were on our way by coach to the Braulio Carrillo National Park which protects the rainforest in this region. The whole rainforest extends across the country from the Caribbean to the Pacific. The government of Costa Rica have determined that …
During the night we passed into another time zone which meant our clocks went back by one hour to -6 GMT. Today is a day at sea as we make our way from the Panama Canal to Puntarenas in Costa Rica. We anticipate being there early tomorrow. There has been very little to sea apart …
The terminal on the Island of Flamenco is incomplete so we were moored offshore and transferred to the terminal by a tender. The bus that took us to the rainforest village drove along the Amador Causeway which gave us sight of the Old Town of Panama which was built in 1671. This replaced the original …
We arrived at Panama at 6;15 a.m. and from the cabin window we could see illuminated ships waiting to go through the Atlantic entrance which is a breakwater at Colon which protects anchored ships from the northerly winds. Spoil from the canal was used to make this. Panama is the shape of a …
At 5:00 a.m. one of our party was awoken by items falling onto the floor in the cabin above us. The sea was white with crashing wave tops and spume so much so that the moonlight ’s reflection made it easy to navigate the cabin without lights. We arrived offshore at Cartagena, Colombia at 06:25 …
Today we are at sea. It is lovely and warm and sunny but windy, as a result the Promenade Deck is closed, because passengers could easily be lost overboard. When went for breakfast the water in the pool on Deck 14 was like a rough sea, so much so that waves could wash a bather …
After a smooth overnight journey we moored at a buoy offshore from Georgetown, Grand Cayman. This is the largest of the three Cayman Islands and its name is thought to derive from the Carib peoples’ language for crocodile. However, there are more turtles here today and in fact Columbus in the 15th century called it …
Today we are at sea. We awoke this morning with a distant view of Cuba from our cabin window on the port side of the ship. We are leaving the Atlantic Ocean and by late afternoon will be heading south passing the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico and entering the Caribbean Sea and travel overnight …