My review of the Jewel's 16-night WB Panama Canal cruise, Jan. 20-Feb. 5, 2017

[Turtles06]

A few additional photos from Cartagena

 

 

 

[KajunCruiser]

I enjoyed your review & pictures of your cruise. My wife & I are cruising the Panama Canal on the Pearl on October 7th on a 14 day cruise from Los Angeles to New Orleans. Our stops Carbo San Lucas, Mexico / Acapulco, Mexico / Huatulco, Mexico / Puntarenas, Costa Rica / Panama Canal Transit / & Cartagena, Columbia / returning to New Orleans. I was wondering if there are any decent excursions worth seeing. I am 62 and plan on retiring at the end of June, after working in the same refinery for 42 years. I am getting ready to have hip replacement next week so I hope everything goes good with that. We are really looking forward to this cruise. I've been 20 cruises so far and they have all been to the Caribbean out of New Orleans. We been on Carnival, Royal Caribbean & Norwegian. We live about 15 minutes from the dock. I would appreciate any info / suggestions you may have --- Thanks & Your review was excellent

[Turtles06]

I enjoyed your review & pictures of your cruise. My wife & I are cruising the Panama Canal on the Pearl on October 7th on a 14 day cruise from Los Angeles to New Orleans. Our stops Carbo San Lucas, Mexico / Acapulco, Mexico / Huatulco, Mexico / Puntarenas, Costa Rica / Panama Canal Transit / & Cartagena, Columbia / returning to New Orleans. I was wondering if there are any decent excursions worth seeing. I am 62 and plan on retiring at the end of June, after working in the same refinery for 42 years. I am getting ready to have hip replacement next week so I hope everything goes good with that. We are really looking forward to this cruise. I've been 20 cruises so far and they have all been to the Caribbean out of New Orleans. We been on Carnival, Royal Caribbean & Norwegian. We live about 15 minutes from the dock. I would appreciate any info / suggestions you may have --- Thanks & Your review was excellent

 

Hi Kajun, thanks for the kind words about my review. I'm still working on the rest of the review, covering the remaining ports, some of which overlap with your cruise. But since you asked, I will tell you that in Huatulco, which was the 5th of 5 port days in a row for us, we had decided in advance that we just wanted a quiet beach day, and we had a wonderful one. There's a very nice beach that is just steps away from the pier. In Puntarenas, six of us had a fabulous tour with Gio Tours (their "8-in-1" tour) and I highly recommend them. In Cabo, we had a spectacular morning whale watching with Whale Watch Cabo, but you'll be there too early in the season to see whales.

 

I'll be putting up more info on the ports,with photos, soon.

 

Congratulations on your upcoming retirement; and I hope that your surgery goes well. Your cruise will be a great goal (and reward) for the work you will put into your successful recovery!

[Turtles06]

My completion of this review (including comments on the rest of our ports) got caught up in CC's board problems over the weekend. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that things are fixed now. :)

[Turtles06]

After our visit to Cartagena and the Canal transit the next day, we had a very welcome and relaxing beautiful day at sea. I spent a chunk of the morning just sitting on our balcony watching a dozen or so brown booby birds flying around the bow, landing on the pole and railing, pushing each other off to get a better spot, and, on a couple of occasions, crashing into the ship's structures, falling to the deck, and staggerig off. It was mesmerizing, maybe you had to be there. :)

 

 

 

 

 

Down on the promenade deck, I was lucky to spot a sea turtle swimming by. It was just a beautiful day.

 

 

(photos by turtles06)

[Turtles06]

Two days after our transit of the Canal, we began an intense stretch of 5 ports on 5 consecutive days, starting with a visit to Puntarenas, Costa Rica. Here, we joined four others on a full day, private shore excursion that one of the wonderful folks on our Roll Call had booked with Gio Tours. We had a terrific time with a great guide and a great driver, and I highly recommend this company.

 

The tour was Gio's "8-in-1" tour If you look at the web sites for other tour operators in Costa Rica, they all have some version of this numbers title for their tours ("10-in-1" etc.). Maybe it's a Costa Rica thing. :) Our guide even counted out for us the 8 main things we were going to do, and revisited the number at the end of the day, by which time we decided we had done far more!

 

The day was particularly spectacular because of the wildlife. Our guide and driver spent a good bit of time looking up onto a particular stand of tall trees to try to find a scarlet macaw for us, and they were successful. It was truly amazing to see this beautiful bird in the wild. Also white-faced monkeys (aka Capuchins) and howler monkeys.

 

As part of the tour, we spent a couple of hours on a boat trip along the Tarcoles River, which is teeming with crocodiles. At first I thought this "jungle river cruise" was going to be quite hokey, but it was actually beautiful and fascinating. Besides crocs, there were many different types of birds, and, oddly, Brahman cattle grazing along the river.

 

Here and in the next post are some photos from this amazing day:

 

Scarlet macaw:

 

 

White-faced monkeys:

 

 

 

Big croc:

 

 

Howler monkey:

 

 

(photos by turtles06)

[Turtles06]

A few more photos from our great day with Gio Tours in Costa Rica:

 

Black-necked stilts (I think):

 

 

Brahman cattle, with little birds that hang out with them to eat the insects exposed by their grazing:

 

 

Tiger heron:

 

 

Another croc:

 

 

(photos by turtles06)

[Kealy]

Great photos! Thanks for sharing!

[easyboy]

Love your photos, especially of the canal.

[KajunCruiser]

Hi Kajun, thanks for the kind words about my review. I'm still working on the rest of the review, covering the remaining ports, some of which overlap with your cruise. But since you asked, I will tell you that in Huatulco, which was the 5th of 5 port days in a row for us, we had decided in advance that we just wanted a quiet beach day, and we had a wonderful one. There's a very nice beach that is just steps away from the pier. In Puntarenas, six of us had a fabulous tour with Gio Tours (their "8-in-1" tour) and I highly recommend them. In Cabo, we had a spectacular morning whale watching with Whale Watch Cabo, but you'll be there too early in the season to see whales.I'll be putting up more info on the ports,with photos, soon.

 

Congratulations on your upcoming retirement; and I hope that your surgery goes well. Your cruise will be a great goal (and reward) for the work you will put into your successful recovery!

 

 

Thanks for the quick reply. I appreciate any pointers y'all may have

[zeen978]

I love following your review Judith. Great pictures, so much better than ours!

 

Sandy

[retiring soon]

Hi all!

 

Turtles06 ~ loving your review, especially the pictures. You're giving me great ideas of which tours to take when I go on my cruise. How far in advance can you book the Gio Tour, for example?

Isn't Cartagena amazing?! We loved that place, so interesting & colourful, such a lovely sail into port too.

Did you see the little zoo at the port?

 

Looking forward to the rest of the review & I guess I will read the "Path" book for a better understanding of the Canal, thanks.;)

 

~ Jo ~ :)

[Turtles06]

I love following your review Judith. Great pictures, so much better than ours!Sandy

Thanks Sandy, happy to share them. Really great meeting you both, you helped make the trip special.

 

Judith

[Turtles06]

Hi all!Turtles06 ~ loving your review, especially the pictures. You're giving me great ideas of which tours to take when I go on my cruise. How far in advance can you book the Gio Tour, for example?

Isn't Cartagena amazing?! We loved that place, so interesting & colourful, such a lovely sail into port too.

Did you see the little zoo at the port?Looking forward to the rest of the review & I guess I will read the "Path" book for a better understanding of the Canal, thanks.;)~ Jo ~ :)

Thanks so much for your kind words; glad you are reading and enjoying!The tour with Gio was booked last July for this January. And our tour with Dora in Cartegena was also booked well in advance. So don't hesitate to email any tour operators you are considering. I suspect nothing is too early, and some of these folks (like Dora) are small operators and book up.

 

Yes, we had some time to walk through that little zoo in Cartagena before getting back on board. Some photos below. (Though I have to say, once we saw that scarlet macaw in the wild in Costa Rica, it topped everything. :)) One of the things that I found fascinating in Cartagena was the incredibly long, two-lane, one-way pier, that required the huge tour buses to come up to the ships to pick up passengers and then back all the way out to the road. Those drivers really needed to be experts driving in reverse!

 

Please do read The Path Between the Seas, you'll be glad you did. :)

 

 

 

(photos by turtles06)

[perfect match]

Great pictures, Turtlles06! I especially loved the canal pics, the scarlet macaw, and the monkeys! <3I'm glad you left me a link to this review over on the HAL board. I had seen this review when you first started it, but I don't spend much time here on the NCL board, so I hadn't checked back in a while. I'm glad you got me back overhere! :D I will continue following along, and yes, I'm taking notes!

[JillL]

Following...

[Turtles06]

Corinto, NIcaragua was the second port in our post-Canal stretch of five ports in a row. I confess that prior to booking this cruise, Nicaragua was not a country that was even on our radar sceen as a place to visit. Once we booked, my pre-cruise research turned up very little on Corinto, except that it did not seem to have much going for it in terms of spending a day there. And cruise ships so rarely visit Nicaragua that Cruise Critic does not even have a Nicaragua forum! After more research, I learned that the city of León was about an hour away, and is home to the architecturally fascinating Cathedral of León, which is a UNESCO World Heritage site. That seemed like a good destination. We contemplated a private tour, but ultimately decided that we'd feel more comfortable in Nicaragua with a ship's tour, and so we decided to book an NCL shore excursion to León that promised an inside visit to the Cathedral, including a visit to the amazing roof (more on that later).

There was just one little wrinkle. The Cathedral's web site said it was closed in the early afternoon, exactly the time it appeared we would be there. So I called the NCL shorex desk to ask about this. I have to give them some real credit here: they said they would call the tour operator in Nicaragua to ask about this and would get back to me. They in fact called me back as promised and said yes, they'd talked to the tour operator and the Cathedral would be closed when we were there, but the tour operator had special permission to take us into the Cathedral during that time. This all turned out to be true, so major props to the NCL shorex folks for following through and getting the right info.

Back to the cruise. Now we are in Corinto at long last.. The few cruise ships calling at Corinto dock in a commercial port, with containers stacked all around. There are no facilities for cruise ship passengers, and we were whisked away in large buses from the side of the dock.

From the bus windows, the Corinto area appeared fairly impoverished, not a place to spend time, but the countryside on the way to León was quite lovely. We even saw volcanoes. Before the Isthmian Canal was built in Panama, Nicaragua was a serious contender as a location for the Canal, with lots of support in the U.S. But a number of factors worked against Nicaragua, particularly including its numerous volcanoes.

 

 

Unfortunately, once we got to León, the tour went downhill fast. With the long ride to León, it had been close to two hours since we'd all gathered in the Jewel's theatre to disembark for the tour, meaning two hours since the last restroom. When our group got off the bus in León at the main square, people asked our guide about using a restroom. He pointed out a bar across the square where we were all going to gather after the visit to the Cathedral, but said he did not have time to wait for anyone, so people had to choose between using the restroom or going on the tour! Yikes! I followed him on the tour of the Cathedral. It turned out to be very rushed, a speed tour, especially on the roof, the main reason we'd picked this tour. Once down from the roof, we had a little free time before meeting up with the group (get to a restroom before the long bus ride back!), but that was it.

I'm not a huge fan of spending my vacation time complaining, but when we returned to the Jewel, I did talk to a rep at the Shore Excursion desk about how this tour was handled. She was appropriately appalled by the "restroom or tour" choice, and said she would discuss this with the tour operator and get back to me. Ultimately, NCL refunded 25% of the price of the shore excursion.

I did enjoy seeing the Cathedral of León, even in the limited time we had. The building, dating from the late 18th Century/early 19th Century, is pure white. It sits on one side of the main square, which has a fountain of lions in the center. (I'll describe the amazing roof in the next post, since there's a limit on the number of photos per post.)

 

(photos by turtles06)

[Turtles06]

The roof of the Cathedral of León, like the rest of the exterior, is pure white. We got to the roof by climbing 64 stone steps in extremely narrow stairwells. Before you are allowed on the roof, you must remove your shoes. Since the white roof is baking in the tropical sun, I'd read the very good advice in advance to be sure to have socks on! Unfortunately, NCL did not provide this advice to folks going on the tour, and some people were just wearing sandals. They were lucky that it had gotten fairly cloudy by the time we were up on the roof, or they would have been walking around in a frying pan with bare feet.

 

The roof was simply fantastic. When I first walked out onto it, the roof of Gaudi's La Pedrera in Barcelona came to mind, and I wondered whether he had ever seen images of the Cathedral of León.

 

As I mentioned in the post above, our guide gave us very little time on the roof; no time to really walk around much, compose photos, or even bracket exposures (it's a challenge to photograph great expanses of white). With those caveats in mind, here are some of my speed photos of the roof:

 

(photos by turtles06)

[Turtles06]

Back at the dock in Corinto, I was able to walk down to the end of the pier to get this photo of the Jewel:

 

 

The sun was setting for our sailaway from Nicaragua.

 

 

(photos by turtles06)

[easyboy]

The sun was setting for our sailaway from Nicaragua.

 

 

(photos by turtles06)

Very good shot! Nice for framing.

[perfect match]

Turtles06, I think you did a great job with the photos on the cathedral roof.

 

If my DH had been faced with the choice of restroom stop or tour he would have been aghast! He would have chosen the restroom over the tour! :eek: Note to self: before booking a bus tour be sure there is a bathroom on the bus! :D

[TeeRick]

Turtles06 - awesome review and photos. We did the same crossing on Infinity last April. Brings back great memories. Did you see any ships going through the new locks? Also - what is your tip for loading/attaching your hi-def photos to your review?

[Turtles06]

Turtles06 - awesome review and photos. We did the same crossing on Infinity last April. Brings back great memories. Did you see any ships going through the new locks? Also - what is your tip for loading/attaching your hi-def photos to your review?

 

Thanks so much, I appreciate your kind words. (We had a wonderful TA on the Infinity several years ago.)

 

There were ships going through the new locks, but you aren't that close to them. We could see one on the Atlantic side as we approached Gatun, and some headed into the locks on the Pacific side as we approached Pedro Miguel. (If you go up to post 17, check the third photo -- the ship on the far right is a neo-Panamax ship that we followed through Gatun Lake; it's headed to the new locks on the Pacific side.)

 

I use Photobucket for sharing my photos here on CC.

[shipshape sam]

Enjoying reading review and pictures! I am ready for our next cruise!

[Turtles06]

Puerto Quetzal, Guatemala was the third port in our stretch of five ports in a row. My pre-cruise research quickly revealed that the most interesting way to spend our day in Guatemala (for us at least) would be to visit Antigua Guatemala, one of the capitals of the Kingdom of Guatemala and later the seat of the Spanish military governor of the colony of Guatemala. It is now a UNESCO world heritage site. Antigua is about a 90-minute drive from Puerto Quetzal, along an often congested two-lane road, and the consensus advice, given the distance and traffic, was to book the ship's transportation to Antigua. And so we did.

 

Cruise ships calling at Puerto Quetzal dock at a very welcoming pier with some facilities for passengers, including a rather large market area with vendors selling all sorts of Guatemalan good and souvenirs.

 

 

The NCL shore excursion that we took was called "Antigua on Your Own." This was round trip transportation in large buses to Antigua, with a guide on the bus who provided information during the drive, and a good map. I'd also found some good walking tour maps here:

 

http://www.gpsmycity.com/gps-tour-guides/antigua-4994.html

 

As in Nicaragua, the drive to our destination was very interesting. We again saw volcanoes, including one that was erupting (this is through the bus window):

 

 

When we arrived in Antigua, we were dropped off at the Jade Museum, also the place where we met the bus for our return to the ship. There were many busloads coming in from our ship, and I thought everything was well-organized. And given the long drive, we were all happy to find that the Jade Museum had very large restrooms. Clearly, the small city of Antigua was quite interested in keeping visitors happy. :)

 

The tourist area of Antigua is very compact, and it was not difficult to find our way around with the maps we were given. This is Santa Catalina Arch, the symbol of Antigua:

 

 

A number of interesting buildings border the Parque Central, a square in the center of Antigua with a most unusual fountain:

 

 

 

 

(photos by turtles06)