Sunny, hot and humid in Cartagena, Colombia. First time either of us has set foot in South America. Colombia interestingly is the only South American country that lies on two oceans – Cartagena lies on the Caribbean Sea while another part of Columbia lies on the Pacific. That’s your geography lesson for the day.

Our tour for the day was a Journey through Cartagena. The bus was blessedly air conditioned. The guide, Vicki, was delightful and a fountain of information. Cartagena is a city of 1.4 million, the fifth largest in Columbia. There is a very modern new city filled with skyscrapers and large apartment complexes. And there is the old city including a walled portion which has been designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Our first stop was at Convento de Nuestra Señora de la Candelaria, or Convento de la Popa for short, at the summit of a large hill. The views from here are outstanding and stretch all over the city. The convent’s name literally means the ‘Convent of the Stern,’ after the hill’s similarity to a ship’s back end. Founded by Augustine fathers in 1607, it was initially just a small wooden chapel, but when the hill was fortified two centuries later it was replaced by a stouter construction.

City scenes in Cartagena.

Elaine is in one picture. Our guide Vicki is in another. There are street vendors everywhere selling everything (Panama hats, sunglasses, trinkets, Colombian cigars, water, beer, etc.). They are persistent but they do take no for an answer. You’ll see one picture of a woman in traditional dress that I had to pay one American dollar for permission to take the picture. You will also see a statue of Simon Bolivar (Simón José Antonio de la Santísima Trinidad Bolívar Palacios Ponte y Blanco) on horseback. There are statues everywhere of him. Bolivar led what are currently the countries of Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Panama, and Bolivia to independence from the Spanish Empire. And you’ll see a Christmas decoration depicting Santa Claus.

Our last stop was at Iglesia de San Pedro Claver. Saint Peter Claver was a Jesuit who dedicated his life to helping the poor of Cartagena. Pope Francis visited here in 2017. (The only American president to visit Colombia was Barack Obama.)

A Christmas eve mass was taking place in the Cathedral when we stopped by. It’s just a short walk from the church above.

Back at the ship we wandered about for a bit in the aviary that is part of the terminal complex. We also enjoyed a local Colombian beer.

Whew! That’s enough for today. I’ll skip dinner on the ship. At 2 PM we set sail for Colon, Panama. I’ll be back on Christmas day from Colon.

Partly cloudy, hot and humid, and an occasional rain squall. That seems to be the weather pattern we are in. We are chugging towards Cartagena, Columbia.

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.

Today was breakfast and then some reading. Today’s sitting area is Elaine’s locale of choice for her morning reading. It’s part of the Explorer’s Lounge on deck seven. Self-service coffee, juice, and smoothies.

Nearby is Mamsen’s, an alternative breakfast and snack venue. We’ll try the waffles there some morning.

Lunch today was at the Pool Grill. Hamburgers and fries. Beer.

Then Elaine did some reading on the balcony while I napped. Then we went to the Star Theater to watch a talk about Cartagena and Colombia.

Cocktails at 5 PM as per usual in the Living Room Bar. Here are some pictures of the Atrium near the bar.

Then dinner tonight in Manfredi’s, the Italian themed specialty restaurant. Their specialty is a steak. This is not the exact menu from tonight, but it gives you an idea: The Bistecca Florentina is the pièce de résistance.

We had a nice bottle of wine. Naturally I had the steak. Elaine had a risotto dish which looks appetizer size because it was. We both had soups as starters.

I forgot one detail from our visit to Pueblo del Maiz yesterday. We got to watch them make Mayan chocolate. And, of course, to taste it. Muy bien. The cocao bean is actually quite bitter, so the crushed beans are infused with melipona honey from local stingless bees (melipona beecheii) to make a delicious treat. By the way, Elaine had been to Cozumel many years ago (before we even met). First time there for me

Today is mostly sunny and hot and humid with an occasional brief rain squall. The ship is wonderfully air conditioned, so you only feel the heat on the pool deck or walking decks.

Today (and tomorrow) we are and will be at sea on the Caribbean heading from the island of Cozumel to Cartagena, Colombia. We’ll be on the underside of Cuba and will pass by (well out of sight) Jamaica on the port side and Honduras and Nicaragua off starboard.

Sea days are a challenge for pictures. A new feature on sea days will be pictures of different places to sit on board. Today we feature one small area of the Explorer Lounge:

A word about the ship’s restaurants. All fifteen Viking Ocean ships have the same restaurant configurations. There are:

The Restaurant – main dining room, no reservations required (BLD)
The World Cafe – Casual dining cafeteria style where you serve yourself from buffet stations (BLD)
Manfredi’s – Italian themed with a great steak – reservations required but no up charge (D)
Chef’s Table – Set menu with rotating themes – reservations required but no up charge (D)
Mamsen’s – Breakfast and lunch snacks and specializing in Norwegian waffles (BL)
The Winter Garden – Only serves afternoon tea
The Pool Grill – Specializing in hamburgers and hot dogs at lunch time (L)

We (or sometimes just I) always have breakfast in the World Cafe except for maybe once at Mamsen’s. Lunch is either in the World Cafe or the Pool Grill. We will have dinner twice in Manfredi’s and twice at Chef’s Table with the rest of our dinners split 60/40 between the World Cafe and the Restaurant. We would be perfectly happy eating every meal in the World Cafe – serve yourself, no waiting, enormous choice, delicious food.

We normally have cocktails at 5:00 PM in the Living Room bar with is located near the atrium on deck one. The atrium extends upward for three decks and today there is a welcome champagne reception for repeat Viking cruisers. I would guess 80% of the 980 passengers are repeat Viking cruisers. So our normally quiet happy hour with just a few regulars was very crowded tonight. Our lovely regular female bartender (from the Philippines) was busy but we were well taken care of. The Captain spoke briefly as did the delightful female Cruise Director (she’s in the last picture). And there was entertainment on the piano and from the four young vocalist entertainers.

The weather continues to be good – mostly sunny but very hot and humid. It’s not like our Arizona hot but the humidity can be oppressive. The seas have been pretty calm.

This morning we docked in Cozumel, Mexico. Also docking here today – the Disney Magic, full, I’m sure, of screaming children. It’s on a five day cruise in the Gulf of MEXICO from Galveston, Texas. We love Viking’s “no children” policy. The Magic holds 2700 passengers; the Sky holds 980.

After breakfast we headed ashore for our excursion for the day.

Our excursion today is to El Pueblo del Maiz, a Mayan village. Cozumel’s heritage is Mayan. We learned all about the Mayans and met many of them. We were treated to several Mayan cultural shows. It was a good excursion.

We had our faces painted with traditional Mayan symbols.

And we created some Mayan painting using the traditional Mayan paper and paints, all produced naturally from natural materials. Nal is corn. Ajk’ot is carving (I think).

Mayan dance was next including fire rituals.

It’s hard to upload videos on the ship’s wi-fi but here’s a link to one that I managed to upload during the night:

Mayan Fire Ceremony

I posed with some of the performers. Do I look Mayan?

We also learned a lot about Mayan traditions and way of life. It was a fun experience. The last picture below is not upside down. The first two pictures are of two Mayan beauties.

At the end of the excursion there was one more not so traditional Mayan custom to observe. We participated willingly given our satisfaction with the whole tour. Elaine also bought some Mayan earrings from the Mayan artist who made them. Perhaps a future picture will display them (when she wears them and if I remember).

Want to know more about the Maya civilization? – visit Wikipedia here.

Then it was back to the ship for lunch and a quiet afternoon. Dinner was in the World Cafe with a new friend – an Australian woman we met at the Living Room bar at cocktail hour.

Today we are cruising through the Gulf of Mexico (yes, Donald, MEXICO) heading for Cozumel tomorrow morning. During the night we’ll be pretty close to Cuba. “Where exactly does this cruise go?”, some have asked. Here’s the original cruise map:

However, it’s not totally accurate. Instead of Cabo San Lucas, Mexico we will be stopping where the “X” is on the map – Acajutla, El Salvador. After Acajutla it’s non-stop (five sea days) to Los Angeles. We’ll be in Colon, Panama on Christmas day (does Santa come here?). On Boxing Day (or St Stephen’s Day or Wren’s Day) we’ll be on the Panama Canal. On New Year’s Eve we’ll be chugging northward on the Pacific towards Los Angeles.

I didn’t get a chance when we boarded to get a good picture of the Sky. So below is a picture. All Viking Ocean ships are identical in design and hold roughly 980 passengers. So this ship is the same in almost every regard as the ship we took from Bergen, Norway to London and to the ship we took from Vancouver through Alaska to Tokyo, Japan. We are in stateroom 5099 toward the rear on the starboard side. You can learn all about the Sky here if you’re interested.

Here are today’s random pictures from around the ship. Two pools – the main pool and the infinity pool at the stern. You can see my shadow in two of the pictures.

Dinner was in the Restaurant, the main dining room. We shared a table and met some nice people. Elaine had some vegetarian thing. I had roast duck.

After dinner it was drinks in the Explorer’s Lounge.

I am reading this book from the ship’s library.

We had breakfast at the hotel and then drove just down the road to turn the car in at Enterprise. (The car rental was free because of all the Enterprise points I have accumulated on our car rentals in Ireland!) We walked back to our hotel (fifteen minute walk max) to kill time at the hotel until our limo pickup at 12:15 PM to transport us to the cruise terminal and our ship.

The limo was on-time. We were to Port Everglades in fifteen minutes. Viking took our luggage and we had a seat inside the terminal to await boarding (which was slightly delayed because of a Coast Guard ship inspection). We were aboard and in our stateroom by 1:00 PM. The luggage arrived shortly thereafter. We had a quick lunch in the World Cafe and then proceeded to get unpacked.

At 5:00 PM we were at the Living Room bar for cocktails and chit chat. We sat at the bar. The woman to our left, travelling solo, was from Tucson and loves Dingle in Ireland. The couple to our right are on their first sea cruise and quite a cruise it will be – they are onboard for 120 days of the Viking World Cruise. After Los Angeles they will be off to Hawaii, French Polynesia, New Zealand, Australia, Java, Singapore, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, the Seychelles, a bunch of stops in Africa, Spain, France, and ending in London. Yikes.

Dinner was quiet in the World Cafe. After dinner drinks were in the Explorer Lounge where we met more interesting people. And then it was off to bed. No pictures today.

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Saturday Morning

It’s Saturday morning as I post this. Smooth sailing last night and a good night’s sleep. Breakfast was grand. Here’s a potpourri of pictures from around the ship this morning. The first group is from our (messy) stateroom including two from the balcony looking forward and back.

Then random shots from my morning walkabout after breakfast. Elaine’s in there in one of them.

Today is a sea day in the Gulf of Mexico, so probably not a lot more pictures for tomorrow’s blog.

We’ve been coming here for a long time, We used to come down for a week or two in the winter back when we lived in frigid snowy Boston. I was doing it before I met Elaine. We loved going to the old Gulfstream when it was a beautiful race track. Now it’s a casino with a race track outside. It lost all its character. Anyway, there’s not a lot new to see in the area, so we just relax. In the morning we took a walk on the beach. The grounds of the hotel are massive, and few people were up and about yet. It was windy and red flag warnings were posted all along Fort Lauderdale’s beaches – no swimming! There are dangerous rip tides and currents all about, I guess. And there were purple flags out as well – Portuguese man-of-wars, jelly fish and sting rays out and about. Made the pool look like a better idea. We stayed out of all water (except the shower).

Reminder
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.

After our walk, we retrieved our car (2025 Mazda CX-30) from the valet and took a ride. We drove all the way the coast road from the hotel through Fort Lauderdale, Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, Pompano Beach, Hillsborough Beach, and Boca Raton. Then we turned around and backtracked down, stopping in our old stomping grounds at Lauderdale-by-the-Sea. A visit to the Village Pump is mandatory here. It’s a Boston bar through and through. In the old days we almost always ran into someone we knew when we were here. Not so much anymore – lots of those people have died. We had drinks (beer for Elaine, Cape Codder for me) and lunch. Elaine had a patty melt, I had six delicious Blue Point oysters (from Connecticut) and a Cuban sandwich.

Back to the hotel and I napped. Elaine read on the balcony. At cocktail hour we headed to the bar for one pina colada each (with massive rum floaters) followed by Coronas. (Eat your heart out, Tim.) No dinner required after our big lunch.

Tomorrow we turn the car in just down the road from the hotel. We can walk back to the hotel on the beach. We have have a car picking us up at the hotel to transport us to Port Everglades to board the Viking Sky. More on that tomorrow.

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It’s tomorrow morning now. A couple of pictures: one from our balcony at night before we went to bed and two from our balcony early this morning.

Be back later from the ship.

Off again. Today we flew to Fort Lauderdale. 12:55 PM flight on Jet Blue in their new Mint class. Lie flat seats, plenty of leg room, and more than decent food. We left on time and arrived 30 minutes early at 6:30 PM. The food service is interesting: four small plates of which you can select three. I chose Radicchio Salad with Apples & Prosciutto and Rigatoni in Parmesan Cheese Sauce. Yes, I chose just two! And then there was vanilla ice cream with caramel sauce for dessert.

Our hotel, the Marriott Harbor Beach Resort, is not far from the airport and I thought I knew the way. I didn’t. After getting lost, I resorted to Google Maps and we were quickly at the hotel. Nice room on the ocean on the 14th floor. We quickly found the (nearly empty) beach bar where we enjoyed some ice-cold Coronas and some food (a trio of dips with an added queso blanco and a medley of sea food including fish, shrimp, and calamari. Then it was quickly off to bed.

It’s Thursday morning as I write this. We’ll have a quiet day in Fort Lauderdale. We board the ship on Friday. Here are a few pictures from our balcony taken at 6:30 AM. See you again tomorrow.