Chiriquí Chatter

I am finally getting around to posting about our Royal Caribbean Cruise. This is a new cruise that only started late last year and it has been written up on several other blogs. Since I am late in taking the cruise and not the first to post on the cruise, I will try to cover other things and some will be my observations of the differences I saw in this cruise and others I have taken in the same area.

I think that Royal Caribbean started this cruise as a test to see how much interest there was in a Caribbean cruise departing outside the US. From all that I saw and all that I have heard it has been a tremendous success. From the people I talked to from Mexico, Peru, Argentina, Colombia, Chile Uraguay and other Latin American countries, most were motivated to take this cruise because they didn’t have to obtain a US visa.

We arrived in Colon a little after noon and carefully chose some individuals to ask the correct directions to the dock. It was really uneventful in Colon and what I saw of Colon was a very pretty city. I still would not be caught walking around there, but with the right police enforcement this could be a good tourist destination.

Cruise Check in – The first sign that this was going to be different than any cruise I took leaving out of Florida, the last being about 13 years ago, was the check in process. The first part was to check the bags. This took 10 maybe minutes. This was done outside the embarkation building.

You always wonder when someone in Panama walks off with your bags whether you will ever see them or not, but this is a fenced compound and there are no worries.

Next we entered the building, where I was sure the long lines would begin. To my surprise, there was a short line to fill out a embarkation information form which took about 10 minutes and then the actual boarding check in where we got our computer boarding passes which may have taken another 10 minutes.

The entire check in may have taken 30 minutes and was the least stressful cruise check in I have ever seen. We boarded the ship and spent some time exploring the ship since the rooms would not be available until 1:00 PM

The ship is immense and we tried to take a quick look at the main areas and didn’t get to our room until a little before 2:00PM.

The first required item before the ship left port was the obligatory Muster Station drill. The notice came over the speakers to report to your Muster station. Instructions were in the room when we arrived there. Here is my obligatory Muster Station photo. As you can see we were located at Muster Station 8.

Up until now the most significant difference I noticed between this cruise and others I had taken was the check in simplicity. Starting with the evening meal, I started seeing the other differences.

In the past, I have always chosen to go to the first dinner seating, and that is what we did the first night. Our table companions were a couple from the state of Washington and a couple from Panama City. Both couples spoke English and one of the couples also spoke Spanish. I will let you figure out which was which. This was the last time we saw the couple from Washington, but we saw and visited with the Panamanian couple several more times, just not during dinner for reasons you will learn later.

I really enjoyed the conversation at the dinner tables and I thought the food was outstanding, better than I remembered on any previous cruise. There was at at least 6-7 main dishes and appetizers to chose from and the desserts were to die for.

Following the dinner we went to the pool deck and started getting the flavor of what would come on all the following nights. There was always music by a Panamanian band on the pool deck and entertainment going on in every one of several other areas. To this point the only hint of what I thought was the main difference in this cruise and others was the Latin flavor of the music on the pool deck.

I took this photo as the ship’s entertainment crew had just started gathering people to dance. The lady in the center of this photo in the brown dress amazed me. She was one of the first to join the dance and was still dancing 50 minutes later when the band took a break. She obviously was in better shape than I am in.

When we returned to our room, we were greeted with the first of our always changing towel bed animals.

Also on the bed were information for the following days agenda at Cartagena. Ours was left in Spanish and I asked our room attendant to leave it in English and Spanish for the rest of the cruise. I had requested a balcony room. I have been on cruises where I took only a closed in room and for me, I will not go if I can’t have a balcony. Our room was nice sized with a king sized bed, a sitting area with a couch and a bathroom with a tub and shower. I made no use of the well stocked mini-bar because of the prices.

In general, you can say that all food and drink is included on the cruise with the exception items in your stateroom, sodas, special coffee and ice cream and all liquor. I kept those expenses to a minimum. Mixed drinks went from $5 to $9.

I will mention that the cruise offered a special Chops Grill, which required reservations. Any meal here cost $20 and included special cuts of meat. I felt that the normal meals were fine and didn’t take advantage of the Chops Grill.

So day one comes to an end. A great start with the exception of getting to Colon from Panama City. From here on it was smooth sailing (literally). I realize that all cruises may be smooth or rough depending on the weather conditions. This one was one to remember because, except for a 15 minute period Monday night, it was outstanding. During that 15 minute period, there was noticeable movement, but I doubt if it affected anyone.

When we arose on Monday we were approaching Cartagena. I took this photo from our balcony before heading for breakfast.

We took breakfast in the Windjammer which had the buffet breakfasts, lunches, and dinners. All the food was good, but unless your are with a group, you don’t get the social interaction that you get in the My Fair Lady dining rooms. This was the last day we ate breakfast in the Windjammer.

If you haven’t taken a cruise before, you will soon learn that you need to plan for the port and what is important to you. There are many tours that are offered through your cruise company. They can be purchased on the ship and you will have nothing to do except follow the instructions you will be given. These are usually a little more expensive that those offered on the land, but they are backed by your cruise ship.

Typically, there may be city tours, tours that will take you to beaches for swimming or diving, night life tours when possible and others to local attractions. If you know what you want to do, you may be able to do it cheaper by just using a cab. Out of the 5 ports we visited, we only took one organized tour and I will cover that later. The rest of the time we made use of taxis.

Since I have lived in Panama for the last six years, I have adapted to the Panamanian way of life and some of the contrasts to the ports were interesting to me.

For example Cartagena and Santa Marta in Colombia have the same architecture that you will find in the older part of Panama City. The difference is that the streets are all clean, you don’t walk around looking over your shoulder expecting to see someone getting ready to steal your purse or camera, and when you get ready to cross the street, all the cars stop to allow you to cross. All of these ports make a lot of money off of tourists and the cleanliness and courtesy shows. Some of the Panama leaders need to take this cruise and see what they need to do to improve Panama for tourists.

Here are a few photos I took in Cartagena. If you live in Panama City, see if you can see similarities and differences.

I took these photos in a church that we came upon.

Here are a couple photos taken in one of Cartagena’s parks.

Here are a couple more street photos.

This was a mime that was entertaining. This photo may appear to have caught him in motion, but actually he was stone still.

Here is a photo of a fort that is available on one of the tours. This was as close as I got to it.

After our self guided walking tour through some of old Cartagena, we returned to the ship and did a little more exploring.

If you are up to it, you can try your hand at wall climbing.

On Monday I realized that getting some people ready to eat at 7:00PM is impossible, so we switched to the later dining time at My Fair Lady. We were at the same table and met two new groups of people, one from Panama City (both English and Spanish Speaking) and from Venezuela (speaking only Spanish).

Maybe this is a good time to point out another difference between this cruise and others I have taken. In the cruises I took from the US, I would think that 95% of the guests were English speaking. On this cruise, 95% were listed as Spanish Speaking. Out of the 2,300 travelers, that means that only 115 has English as their native language. If you didn’t speak Spanish and were not traveling in a English speaking group, you would miss out on a lot by potentially not getting to talk to those eating at the same table. For me this was a plus. I got to practice my Spanish and met some wonderful people in the process.

I took a couple photos of the entertainment on Monday night. The performers on this cruise were as good as any entertainers I have ever seen in Las Vegas or on Broadway. They were that good. The Emcee was from the Dominican Republic and was named Rico. I have a photo of him that I will post later. He spoke in both English and Spanish for much of what he had to say. Some of the performers used only Spanish unless the song they were doing was an English song. No mater, if it was done in Spanish and you spoke only English, I think you would have still enjoyed the performance. It would just have been enjoyed more if you understood Spanish.

I will tell you that there is a notice posted before the performance that the taking of photos or video is prohibited, but when I took these photos, I had not seen the notice. That is the reason you won’t see any other photos from the Orpheum theater. I will also say that the posting of the notice to not take photos or videos affected only me and not others in the audience. For that reason, I feel no remorse in posting these photos.

This nights’ show was called, “Can’t Stop The Rock”.

The lady in this photo has one of the best voices I have ever heard. Like I said. The entertainment on this ship was first class. A person could take the cruise and never leave the ship and still have an outstanding time.

Well, that is probably enough for the first post on the cruise. I took between 2 and 300 photos and I will only post a small portion. Stay tuned for Day three in Santa Marta. Day 1 which was the embarking leaving Colon and day 2 at Cartagena have been covered.

Tags: Cruises, Tourist Related