Panama Canal. February 20 to March 10, 2025

After enjoying my Mississippi River cruise I looked at my schedule after the Christmas and New Year holidays  and found .... Nada, Zip, Nothing! Its going to be a long boring winter I thought, Why not look for another trip? Florida ?-Just went there last winter I thought;  Somewhere not south? Get away from the cold I thought. I looked and looked on line and found that AAA was offering a Cruise through the Panama Canal. Fly to LA, cruise the Mexican Rivera to Costa Rico and Panama, though the canal to Aruba and back to Ft Lauderdale. Bingo!! I made and appointment with AAA travel agent Tammy Cook who arranged my trip to Alaska. She set me up just in time to get one of the last staterooms on the Coral Princess ship. 

partial map of the trip

Coral Princess

February 20 Fly to LA from Syracuse

 After all the widespread snow, wind and ice of February it was not surprising there were airline delays, I was delayed out of Syracuse so the agent put me on a later flight to Charlotte which also got delayed!

After leaving the Endwell at 9:30 am I got to my hotel in LA at 11:45 pm. I had lots of help within the airports and even the shuttle bus at LAX to my Holiday Inn near the airport.

The first day was getting around the ship, There is an app that is helpful.

February 21 Board ship

A lot of getting adjusted and getting my phone I sync with the ship. We go one hour later for each of the first days then we go south and eastward and come back to EST

February 22 at Sea 

Not very exciting but a presentation on the on shore excursions. There are 2000 on board and everyone was looking for the right place to go for dinner. It was mobbed at the restaurant mid ship and I asked to sit at a table with others. They then took me to a table for 6 and I was all alone. Finally they brought 3 ladies in who were traveling together and we had good conversation. In fact became a team in a trivia contest that was scheduled for 3 days. They named the team "3 gals and a guy".

Marseille, Jim, Liz and Susan

February 23 at Sea

Presentations throughout the day and part 2 of the trivia contest. There was a really good presentation of music, while not my style, very well done by one singer with  dancers, singers and a band with him.

February 24 Puerto Vallarta Mexico  (Porta Vi Yar ta) (My attempt to help say the Spanish name)

The excursion included a combination of Mayan dancing and amazing acrobatics, all dressed with Mayan attire and body paint. The acrobatics reminded me of Cirque du Soliel. It could not be filmed

These were performing along the boardwalk in the old section of the city, all cobblestone streets and very busy.

There were statues along the boardwalk right in the center of the old city. The city is around 500 K people

The view from where we had tacos for lunch.

Entrance to the Taco Shop. I didn't think they were very good

That night a woman sang a bunch of ABBA songs, Like all the events here, she was a powerful singer and the band was great. The Princess Theater was jammed and it holds 688.

February 25 at Sea

3rd day for the Progressive Trivia game. There will be 7 days in the tournament, all days while not in port. 

February 26 Huatulco Mexico (Wa tul co)

Land tour pictures disappeared. The city was just a small fishing village in 1984 and now it is building hotels and condo's everywhere. There are  60 beaches in the area and we toured past 6 to 10. beautiful and mostly empty of people. We were aboard a large catamaran for about 1.5 hours and coasted by rocky shore line and beaches. 

Our ship as we returned from the catamaran

The evening entertainment was a singer / Irish dancer! sounds funny but he was really good. Did some Johnny Cash and Elvis somebody

February 27 Puerto Chiapas  Mexico (Po-where toe Chi ah pa)

 As part of an excursion today we went to an elementary school in the middle of a huge banana plantation.

1st,4th and 6th grade were visited and our guide who was a teacher at this school at one time coached the kids to give us greeting in English. Later we assembled with all the school kids. It was very fun and interesting. Some of the kids gave us drawings etc.

This senior student played a mean saxophone for us.

2 adult  couples danced for us. (I cut out on of the guys in this picture 😒)

After the school we toured a banana processing plant. They supply for Chiquita, Dole, Del Monte and other big companies in the US and Europe. Delivery time to US 10 days, 15 to Europe, They are shipped from here in refrigerated trucks daily 6 days a week.

Bananas come from the field in 3 large sections on a stalk and are hung on these conveyor racks .

A dividing sheet is inserted to allow the workers who cut the sections into manageable size without shearing or damaging the tender skin of the fruit.

Insert Video here

They are washed after being cut in groups of 4,5,and 6 bananas then removed from the bath and sprayed with a natural substance that wards off "critters"

He has separated the groups into the same weight for each tray and sent it on to the boxing station, These groups are now in the sections we see in our stores.

Our bus drove through miles surrounded by banana plants. They are not considered a tree. They are planted as sprouts and grow into these plants in 9 months!! As the groups grow on the plant, they are covered with the blue plastic bags you can see to prevent spiders and mosquitoes etc from getting on the group. After the bananas are harvested they are cut down, the stalks and leaves are ground for fertilizer and the field replanted. Each plant only yields one crop. The brown specks you see in a banana is the seed source. There is no season for bananas due to the 9 month "gestation period" and the warm environment.

Because it only rains during 6 months of the year irrigation ditches are dug  and river water is diverted into the fields-

 February 28 at Sea
Not much to record today travel wise but yesterday was a special event, Granddaughter in law gave birth to Bridget Ann, my 19th great grand child. Luke and Mandy are now parents of 2 kiddos.

Back on the boat  we had another Progressive trivia contest. Our score was "average". We saw a great show in the theater and had some good meals.

March 1 Puntarenas  Costa Rico ( Pun ta rain ah )

Today I took an Eco Jungle cruise in Costa Rica and saw several crocodile and a lot of various birds including a pink toucan. It was a long ride to the river that rises in the mountains. The water becomes brackish close to the Pacific. 

Three Crocodiles we saw. Did not see any on the shore.

Moving along with our boat

The pink Toucan asleep in the tree

March 2 at Sea

March 3 Fuerte Amador Panama ( Foo air ta Ah ma door) and March 4 traversing the canal

Panama Canal tour

The tour was very long and there was a lot of wait time in the lock waiting for another ship to come in with the small tour boat we were in. The basic concept is simple but execution is complex. The ships are boarded by a professional pilot who has trained to guide the ship and has control during the lock portion. There are tug boats and small electric train looking devices to keep the ship on a straight path.There are the shiny vehicles you see in some of the pictures. The ship powers itself.The cost for the cruise company can be $300K up to $500K  for one pass through the canal. smaller boats are less but still expensive. Our ship had about 1 to 2 inches on either side of the concrete walls of the canal.

The canal depends on a large lake, Gatun in the middle of Panama which is higher elevation than the Pacific and Atlantic. Each end of the system connects to the lake which is fresh water. Rivers flow into the lake to sustain the level.The canal is about 50 miles long.

 

You can see how tight our ship was to the canal wall.

This ship next to us on the other side of the canal is easier to see the cement gate in front of the tugboat.

The small shiny rail cars can be seen in these 2 pictures.

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Much of the traffic is barges with boxcars and also liquid gas tankers.

There are also train tracks to transport boxcars across to / from ships who are too big to pass through but still cheaper than sailing around South America

There are a few homes we could see close to the canal 

A tributary river flowing into the Lake Gatun which was partially man made to accommodate the canal process.

March 5 at sea

Nothing much happening other than the tough routine of having all your meals brought to you and someone cleaning up the stateroom and bath, going to musical presentations and playing trivia games and meeting interesting people, mostly Canadians, Aussies, Brits and a couple Americans.

March 6 Aruba

 I opted for a bus tour of the island which took us to a deserted area as well as the wealthy side of the island.

These tall cactus grow all over the island. In the background are huge boulders thought to have been the result of volcanic activity.

This lighthouse was built after a ship ran into the island in the early 20th century. No one was killed but the government had this built to prevent further problems.

Of course there were souvenir opportunities.

This small Roman Catholic Church was visited. On Good Friday the members follow the Stations of the Cross to this rather remote part of the island.

The church is small so there is seating on these concrete benches for overflow.

There are plan homes in some parts but many expensive hotels an condos.

There were several beaches that looked nice but very crowded and many parking lots that were full near the beaches.  

March 7 at sea

There is an outbreak of GI problems on board so lots of hand washing and Covid like rules are in place. No salt, pepper, sugar on the table, no self serving at buffet etc.  Marseille from our trivia team was ill but got good care at the medical center.

Spent the day in chats with people. I seem to get to meet a lot of folks. I also attended a couple trivia sessions and failed  miserably compared to some folks. Had dinner in the Italian restaurant with Geraldine and Barbara, ladies from Alberta whom I met the first day and had dinner with a few times. It was formal dress night and we had pictures taken.

Tomorrow is the last day and we must have our luggage outside our stateroom door by 9 PM for transfer to land in the morning.

March 8 at sea

Last day and lots of prepping to leave. Marseille was able to be with us for our last Progressive trivia session. We finished in the middle of the 49 teams playing but we enjoyed it. 

March 9 Ft. Lauderdale

Staying at a Residence Inn

March 10 Fly from Ft. Lauderdale to Syracuse