This will be a wrap. There really isn’t enough on sea days to write about (except food). So tomorrow, Sunday, will be our last day. I would normally post Sunday’s blog early Monday morning. But Monday will be hectic. We have to be out of our stateroom by 8:00 and will be off the ship by 9:00. Then we have a car to the airport for our afternoon flight back to PHX. So, no blog post for Sunday.
Thanks to everyone for reading and commenting. We read and appreciate each and every one. (My sister Sue and Elaine’s sister Cindy will have to start emailing each other directly to keep in touch with each other.)
Saturday was another perfect weather day with smooth seas. Sunday promises to be the same.
Saturday morning sunrise and Saturday night moonscapes. The big moon picture didn’t turn out well but you can the star in the picture to the moon’s upper right.
Dinner was in Manfredi’s with a nice bottle of French wine. Elaine had Fritto Misto to start and a Tomahawk Pork Chop. I had the delicious Pasta Fagioli followed by Beef Tenderloin. Desserts were good too.
Sunday morning as I post. Another great sunrise. See everyone in June when we explore the Great Lakes on Viking Polaris. Ciao!
Absolutely nothing to report today. Never took a picture. Maybe I’ll be inspired tomorrow.
Actually, there is one thing to report. We have jointly decided that we will not go to Ireland this fall as tentatively planned. Instead we will do yet another cruise. You get a significant savings if you book a cruise while on board. On our last cruise we did that, booking our planned Great Lakes Cruise in June. So now we have booked another. In early October we will sail on Viking Mars from Montreal to Fort Lauderdale. The only really new port for us will be Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. We never hit PEI before. I don’t think either of us has been Bar Harbor, ME either. That’s hardly on a bucket list, but at least it will be new.
Our June cruise is on the smaller Viking Polaris that we took last year from Fort Lauderdale to Toronto. This one goes from Duluth, MN to Toronto.
So, enough for today. We’ll continue sailing (and blogging) on Saturday and Sunday and disembark in LA on Monday. We’ll be home by Monday afternoon.
Dull and boring day blog-wise. Sea days are mostly about relaxation, eating, drinking, reading, napping, etc. Nice for us. Boring to write about. And I forgot to take pictures of sitting areas, so tomorrow you will see three (unless I forget again).
Weather: perfect once again. Elaine spent a lot of time reading out on the balcony.
We did have one exciting (but sad) event. Around lunchtime the Captain came on the loudspeakers to announce we were coming to a stop off Mexico to allow a medical launch from shore to come along aside to evacuate a passenger. We don’t much more than that, but we watched the evacuation. Apparently it was a wheelchair-bound woman who had fallen and done some severe damage to herself. We hope she gets the care she needs in Mexico and gets home again soon.
Reading. I am on my third book. Here’s what I have read so far, Click on each image to read more about the book.
I haven’t talked breakfast much. Elaine often skips it. I don’t. Today we had breakfast together. I had my usual. (Yes, I’ll have to diet when we get home!) Elaine looks grumpy in the picture and will kill me for posting it. She wasn’t grumpy. Blame the photographer.
Cocktails as usual in the Living Room Bar. We haven’t made any great mates as we did on other cruises, but we often sit with Debbie (a single from Tucson) and with two retired (and now married) FBI agents. They have some great stories. The bartender is Sharon from the Philippines. She’s the best bartender we’ve had on any cruise. (That’s not Sharon in the background of the picture.)
We had dinner in the Restaurant. Excellent as always. My main was swordfish. Elaine had grilled octopus.
Weather has remained perfect for the whole trip. We had a few brief rain squalls a couple of times awhile back, but it has been sunny 95% of the time. Today kept that streak alive. BUT we did get some rougher seas. We rocked and rolled during the night and most of the day before it calmed out again by dinner time. The rough seas don’t bother us at all – we kind of like it. But lots of people were sick and not out and about.
I forgot to take a picture of a sitting area, so maybe I’ll do two tomorrow. I did take some pictures though. There was caviar and champagne available at the Living Room Bar at cocktail hour. We stuck with our regular drinks. Neither of us are caviar fans. Bar looks empty, but it wasn’t. Everyone was crowding around the caviar/champagne stations.
We had our second dinner at the Chef’s Table Restaurant. The theme tonight was Xiang (inspired by China’s Cantonese and Huaiyang cuisines). Hot and Sour Soup Cantonese Style. Crispy Fried Prawns with garlic and chili. Coconut Granita. Wok Fried Beef in black pepper sauce and rice in a lotus leaf. Chilled Mango Cream. It was all yummy.
After dinner we had a cocktail or two is a strangely quiet Explorer Bar. Elaine got her picture taken with Carlos, the regular bartender.
We passed by the pool deck on the way to bed where there was to be dancing under the stars.
Some people may have stayed up for the actual start of the new year in Torshavn Bar. We didn’t. We kind of missed watching Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen from Times Square.
Posting this at 7:00 AM on Thursday morning. It looks like another fine day at sea.
This port stop was originally scheduled to be Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, but the US State Department issued a warning about crimes against tourists in Cabo. That was ten months ago or so. So Viking heeded the warning and substituted Acajutla. I noticed that Cabo is back on the schedule for next year’s itineraries. Been to Mexico but never to El Salvador, so I was glad of the change.
Thanks to everyone who has been reading and commenting. We read every comment and appreciate them all. The blog will continue for five more days on this trip, but it will be fairly boring as all five remaining days are at sea on the way to disembarkation in Los Angeles. But back to today.
Acajutla is El Salvador’s main port city. Population right around 30,000. We actually spent no time at all in Acajutla except when passing through on the bus. The bus looked great.
It wasn’t! The seats were built for people 5’8″ tall or less. I couldn’t even put my legs in front of me in my seat. And we were on the bus for four hours. Not pleasant. Worse bus seats ever! But I persevered. Our tour was to two of the five mountain towns of El Salvador on the Ruta de las Flores.
First stop was in Juayรบa. It’s a bustling little town that was celebrating with a Christmas market selling just about everything but especially locally made candies. Our bus seemed to bring the only tourists to the town today. Interestingly, we had a police presence at all times. (Five years ago El Salvador was the murder capital of the Americas. Now the new president has put the gangs in jail and it’s one of the safest countries in Central and South America.) Juayรบa is one of three cities in the world (another is in Guatemala) that celebrates a black Christ as you’ll see in pictures from inside the impressive Santa Lucia Church. Here’s a picture fiesta (with Elaine hiding in one):
Click on the galleries below to bring up scrollable windows with full size pictures – the gallery previews may show just thumbnails of the pictures. By the way, the pictures look much better on a tablet or a computer than they do on your phone. Just saying.
On the way to our next stop in Concepciรณn de Ataco, we stopped at an overlook to take pictures of some of El Salvador’s volcanos. There are more than 150. Many are dormant; some are active but not at the moment. In the valleys below coffee beans are growing.
Then it was on to Concepciรณn de Ataco. Slightly more modern. Still bustling with locals. Still a police presence. You’ll see our guide (in blue shirt) in one picture.
These towns are of Mayan heritage and Mayan ruins have been found. These stone are all jaguar stones.
Finally we stopped at a very upscale restaurant, Casa 1800, for a taste of El Salvadorian coffee and a piece of cake. Like Colombia, Panama, and Costa Rica, El Salvador is noted for its coffee. I have never drunk a cup of coffee in my life. But I finished a cup here. I don’t think I’ll become a coffee devotee, but it wasn’t half bad. Elaine said it was the smoothest and best ever! The last two pictures are views from the restaurant down into the town. Police still with us.
Then it was a long ride back to the ship in our prison bus. We sailed at 6:00 PM. Next stop, five days from now, in Los Angeles where we disembark. I’ll keep blogging but it will be boring. Well, for you it will, but we love sea days!
Short post today. We were at sea en route to El Salvador. Weather remains perfect. Seas calm. We saw pods of jumping porpoises off our balcony.
Today’s sitting area:
A few shots from around the ship. First the Torshavn Bar, a late night venue that doesn’t open until 9 PM. That’s usually past our bedtime. I took this picture in the morning.
Here’s an old friend you’ve seen on previous cruises:
Viking ships all have a Viking Heritage Center:
The featured cocktail at the Living Room Bar tonight:
As I write and publish this post, we are arriving in El Salvador at 6 AM. Red in the morning, sailor take warning? More tomorrow.
Weather continues to be exceptional as you’ll see in the pictures. After our first times ever in Colombia and Panama, we are now in our first visit to Costa Rica.
The locals at Puntarenas greeted us with lots of friendliness.
Our excursion today is a bus ride to the Tarcoles River for a river boat tour in the Costa Rican rain forest. Here’s a few pictures taken from the bus as we headed out.
After an hour or so we arrived at the river dock and set out on our adventure.
So what did we see? Well. herons, hawks, fly catchers, cormorants, iguanas, lizards, and most especially crocodiles. Costa Rica has LOTS of crocodiles. No alligators. What’s the difference? See here. We were worried that we hadn’t brought any insect repellent, but thankfully there were no bugs. These pictures are roughly in the order I took them from the boat.
Click on the galleries below to bring up scrollable windows with full size pictures – the gallery previews may show just thumbnails of the pictures. By the way, the pictures look much better on a tablet or a computer than they do on your phone. Just saying.
Some general scenic views along the way. What do they fish for in the Tarcoles? Tilapia, mullet, tarpon, and snook.
More cool birds:
And finally a stop at what I’ll call Crocodile Beach.
After the boat trip there was a stop at a very nice place with a huge gift shop / snack bar / restaurant / rest rooms. And then back to the ship for a 5:00 PM departure for El Salvador. Tomorrow is a sea day. Dinner was in the World Cafe. Cocktails pre-dinner in the Living Room and post-dinner in the Explorer Bar.
Quick and easy post today. We are at sea enroute from exiting the Panama Canal and on the way to Puntarenas, Costa Rica. Another beautiful sunny day and significantly cooler and less humid. Perfect for sitting on the balcony and reading or just watching the ocean. We saw other ships – big container ships and LNG gas ships. We have only seen one other cruise ship since we got past Cozumel (where we saw the Disney Magic). Here’s picture I took of it on Gatun Lake:
Google image search identified the ship for me. It’s the Celebrity Cruise Lines Beyond. 3,900 passengers. It looks like it might topple over. It’s big, but not big like the new behemoth that holds 7,600 passengers (Royal Caribbean’s Icon of the Seas). We prefer Viking’s small ships.
Today’s sitting area:
Very quiet day. Reading. Napping, Eating. Dinner was at the Chef’s Table restaurant. Set menu with a theme; the theme varies every three days. Today it was California cuisine. This is the actual menu we had. Since we have the beverage package, we get the premium wine selections.
Here are pictures of the courses (minus the Moscow Mule granita). The crab cake was fabulous. Everything was good.
The Explorer Lounge Bar after dinner was quiet except for the bar itself. We had one drink and headed to bed.
It’s Boxing Day in the UK. It’s St. Stephen’s Day in many countries. It’s Wren’s Day in Dingle. For us it’s Panama Canal Day. We’ve done canals before. Just last year we were on the Viking Jupiter going through the Welland Canal which connects the St. Lawrence Seaway, Lake Erie, and Lake Ontario. And years ago just the two of us piloted a 60-foot narrowboat on the canals of Wales and the UK. I was at the stern steering with a tiller. Elaine had to jump off at every lock to manually operate the locks and then jump back on after I passed the boat through. And there were plenty of locks. But the Panama Canal is the grandaddy of lock canals, so this was a grand experience. The weather, by the way, continues to be sunny, hot and humid.
Brief history – Ferdinand de Lesseps and the French started the Panama Canal project way back in 1880 after very successfully completing the world’s other best known canal – the Suez Canal. But Suez was way different. No locks for one thing. The French plan for Panama was for a sea level canal (a la Suez) with no locks. Well, they tried hard and failed miserably by 1903 with over 6,000 dead in the process. The United States wanted a canal too, but the original plan was to build it through Nicaragua. Eventually however in 1904, they bought out the bankrupt French project and took on the Panama Canal. They firsts managed a huge effort to defeat the mosquito so that malaria and yellow fever were not the issue it was for the French. And they promoted and succeeded in Panama gaining its independence from Columbia. Most importantly the US created a Panama Canal Zone that split the country and was to be totally governed by the US. The sea level canal idea was replaced by a lock system, and after lots of issues the Panama Canal opened in 1914. In 1977 we negotiated a twenty-year transfer process of the Canal Zone back to Panama and it was completed in 1997. In the 2000’s Panama created a second canal channel that could handle the ever larger ocean vessels that were becoming more common. It opened in 2014. Enough history. If you want the whole story read about the Panama Canal on Wikipedia or buy David McCullough’s book The Path Between the Seas.
We entered at the Gatun locks after going under the Atlantic Bridge. The Gatun locks are a series of three locks. Then we crossed Lake Gatun, entered the Gaillard cut, passed through three more locks at Pedro Miguel (1) and Miraflores (2). Then we sailed by Panama City into the Pacific Ocean under the Bridge of the Americas. It all took about eight hours. The three locks at each end take you first up 85 feet above sea level and then down 85 feet back to sea level.
Here’s a picture story of the crossing. First leaving Colon and the passing under the Atlantic Bridge.
Click on the galleries below to bring up scrollable windows with full size pictures – the gallery previews may show just thumbnails of the pictures. By the way, the pictures look much better on a tablet or a computer than they do on your phone. Just saying.
Then through the three Gatun locks:
We took a fewer pictures as we passed through the huge Gatun Lake. We hoping to spot some of the protected jaguars on the shorelines. But no such luck. We did see deer. And one lonely scraggily heron. All through the locks and the lake the ship is under the navigational control of local pilots who board off and on at different points. While they are on board, the Captain cedes control of the ship to them.
Then we passed through the second set of three locks. I only took a few pictures. Below you can see the electric “mules” that are attached to the ship when passing through locks. We had three on each side. They are very powerful and ensure that the ship stays centered in the lock. You can also see how close the ship got to the side of the lock.
Finally we were out of the locks and we passed under the Bridge of the America at Panama City as we sipped cocktails with a couple of our friends at the Living Room bar. Now we’re in the Pacific Ocean (unless, of course, Trump has renamed it).
Dinner was in The Restaurant with Peggy who is pictured with Elaine above in the bar. Peggy is from Australia. The other woman (whose name escapes me) is from Tucson. There are lots of people from Arizona on board.
If you missed yesterday’s Christmas Eve in Cartagena, it’s here.
Aside from Christmases in Melrose and Scottsdale (and I think one in Albuquerque), we spent three Christmases in Dingle. Now we are spending our warmest Christmas ever in Colon, Panama. By the way, we both read the book The Path Between the Seas by David McCullough before we began our trip. Tomorrow we will be on the canal to experience what we read about.
Early morning arrival in Colon:
Today we had a six hour excursion around Colon. It was really just two stops plus one for lunch. First stop was at the Agua Clara Panama Canal Visitor Center at the north end of the canal where we will enter tomorrow. Since we’re going from the Atlantic to the Pacific, you’d think the canal ran east to west. But it doesn’t. It runs from north (Atlantic side) to south (Pacific side). There’s yet another geography lesson for you.
The visitor center is very well done. After being greeted with Christmas candy canes and cookies, we watched a huge container ship entering the first of three locks at the north end. After the locks, ships traverse man-made Gatun Lake (which is mostly fresh water) before entering the three locks at the south end of the canal emptying into the Pacific. Gatun Lake, when it was created, was the largest man-made lake in the world. Now there are a couple in Africa that are larger. These locks at the visitor center are the new locks (opened in 2014) to allow much bigger ships to use the canal. The original locks are still in use – they opened in 1914. I believe we will go through the original locks. The locks operate 24/7. The new locks are one directional – ships alternate going north to south and south to north. The old locks are two way – ships pass each other going in opposite directions. In one picture you can see the Atlantic Bridge off in the distance.
Next we went to the Shelter Bay Marina located in what once Fort Sherman, an American military base in the Canal Zone, the portion of Panama that was run by the United States until we handed it back to Panama when Jimmy Carter was president.. We had lunch at the Shelter Bay Yacht Club. We had nice fish and local beer.
Then it was off to the Castle and Fort of San Lorenzo at the mouth of the Chagres River, the source of all the water that produced Gatun Lake. You can see the Chagres in the first photo as it hits the sea. The Fort and Castle are now a UNESCO world heritage site and restoration has begun.
Then we headed back towards ship by way of the Atlantic Bridge and a view from the bus of the Gatun Dam that allowed the creation of Gatun Lake. The second picture is taken from the Atlantic Bridge and shows the old and new lock channels as they empty into Gatun Lake.
Then it was back to the ship for Christmas carols, Christmas cocktails, a turkey dinner with stuffing, and a good time had by all.
