Two Days in Panama

One of the highlights of this cruise, the segment from Miami to Los Angeles, and the reason many people chose it is the transit of the Panama Canal. In operation for over 100 years, it is still an engineering marvel. Even people who have been through the canal numerous times, like 20, were still running around with cameras to watch the process.

We arrived at the entrance to the canal channel on time – before 7 a.m., so we hadn’t gotten up yet – and once the line crew, Atlantic pilot and commentator were on board, began the 8 hour transit. The Panama Canal is the only place in the world where a ship’s captain relinquishes control of his vessel to somebody else; but these pilots are highly trained and highly skilled to be able to guide ships of all sizes through the locks, Gatun Lake and the Gaillard Cut.  That doesn’t mean that a ship doesn’t acquire a few ‘Panama Canal racing stripes’ as Larry describes them…we noticed that Serenity had a few black scuff marks that weren’t there when we left Miami. But then again, she is what is considered Panamax in the original canal – about 965 feet in length and 106 feet wide. The locks are 110 feet wide and 1050 feet long, so we didn’t have much leeway.

Here are some photos of the transit through the 3-level Gatun Lock which takes a ship a total of 87 feet above the level of the Atlantic Ocean/Caribbean Sea.

The pilot boat arriving with our line crew and canal pilot

All ships are accompanied by tugboats

The shoreside lights that were installed in the 1960s to allow 24-hour
operation of the canal are also favourite perches for the pelicans

As are the trees

Arriving at Gatun Lock. The mules are only used to
keep vessels centered in the lock; they don't provide any
power to move them.

The Regent Seven Seas Mariner in Lock 1 as we are in Lock 3; and
a Panamax auto carrier going the other way.

The lighthouse was probably originally used so ships coming from the
lake could find the locks; now they use range markers like the black
and white one further along, and electronic navigation aids.

As the ship rose in Lock #3, our lead photographer, Neil,
who was taking photos of the ship, and all of us, had to get to the
pilot boat that picked up the Atlantic side line crew so he
could reboard the ship.

For the first time, we have a photo of us during the
canal transit.

Mules guiding a bulk carrier into the lock

Once we were through the locks, we were in Gatun Lake, the largest man-made lake in the world. The lake was created by placing a dam on the Chagres River, a few miles upriver from the Caribbean Sea. This is the largest earthen dam in the world. The water from the lake supplies the locks with the water to raise and lower the ships in the Gatun Lock as well as the Pedro Miguel and Miraflores Locks on the Pacific side.

All sorts of cargo comes through the canal. This ship is carrying some
kind of dangerous substance, as it is painted bright orange.

These little islands used to be hills before the Chagres River was
dammed and Gatun Lake created.

Another Panamax ship. The largest ones used to carry about 5,000 containers,
now with the new locks, neo-Panamax ships can carry up
to 15,000 of them.

What a nice way to spend a very hot and humid day.

On the right side you can see the channel running to the new larger
locks.

The special destination lecturer on board for this segment was Dick Morgan, who had been the General Services Director of the Panama Canal Commission for the last years of US administration, up to December 31, 1999, when the canal operations were turned over to Panama. He spoke of the general trepidation about the future of the canal at that point, because of the disasters that happened as other infrastructure, like the railroad and the ports, had transferred to the old political regime. Panama now has much more stable government, but the Panama Canal is run as an autonomous arm, with its own constitution and a board of directors that includes representation from all stakeholders and canal users. Some would suggest that the Chinese are running the Canal, but this is not true. There are Chinese port management companies running the ports at Colon and Balboa, both ends of the Canal, but they are not involved in the Canal operation itself. The Canal Authority keeps the government from trying to meddle by providing the economy with about $1.5 billion US per year, most of which goes to social programs, education and medical care. The canal has been a real success story, as the recent expansion was done entirely under the direction of the Panama Canal Authority and may be one of the few projects of its size in the world that actually was completed with a cost overrun of less than 10%!

Once through Gatun Lake, a ship enters the Gaillard Cut. This was the hardest section of the canal to build, as it goes through the Continental Divide, which is made up of multiple types of rock, all of which was used to build the Chagres River dam.

Approaching the Gaillard Cut

This is the Continental Divide

The 2-stage Miraflores Lock. The last ones before the Pacific. The
big orange building is the Visitor Centre

The lock gates are immense

Our mule guide leading us to the last lock

You don't have to be a big ship to transit the canal.
There have been kayaks, canoes and even a swimmer
many years ago who paid 35 cents to swim
the whole canal.

Birds of all types hang around the canal. This one looks like
a vulture cooling off on the light standard.

The downward leg of the canal into the Pacific Ocean is done in two stages; the Pedro Miguel is a single stage lock and the Miraflores is a two-stage. The reason for this separation is that, as they began excavation for the locks, engineers discovered that there is a fault line running along the divide, just where they were digging. They weren’t sure what the effects of each on the other would be, so they decided to move one of the lockages further along the channel.

We had thought we would be going all the way out into the Pacific and toward Panama City, but we were quite surprised when we suddenly turned sideways to the channel just before we reached the Bridge of the Americas, and started backing up! Where the heck was Captain Vorland taking us???

We were spending the night in the Port of Balboa; not the most exciting spot, but as he explained later, chosen so that we would not have to tender for the Panama City tours the next day. Which was a rather good idea, since the tender ride would otherwise have been quite long. We saw Emerald Princess sitting far offshore as we toured the next day, and were happy to only have a 20 minute bus ride from the port.

Our view of the Bridge of the Americas and the Port of Balboa

Looking back toward the locks

An LNG (liquid natural gas) carrier passes by just as the
sun sinks behind the hills.

In the evening, we had a small dance group come on board for local entertainment. The dances didn’t seem to change much, nor did the music, and there was no explanation of the meaning of the dance, if any. But the ladies’ dresses were very pretty!

We finally left the ship on a tour on Sunday. We were going to see the Colonial heritage of Panama City and also go to the Miraflores Visitor Centre, to watch lock operations from the land side.

Our first stop was the Visitor Centre, just in time to see a couple of tour boats enter the lock. These were very similar to the one we were on when we were last here with Norm and Barb on Princess. The ship only went to Gatun Lake and then back out to the Caribbean, so we did a tour to complete the transit.

A map in the museum showing the area with the new
2016 locks. Gatun Lake was actually made a little deeper, therefore
larger, when the locks were opened.

Our next stop took us all the way back into the early history of the earliest Spanish settlement of Panama in 1519. What is left of it now, ruins of the stone walls of various monasteries and convents and a whole village around them, was originally scheduled to be destroyed to build high rise towers, but UNESCO intervened and has named it a World Heritage Site. This is Panama Viejo, which was ultimately burned down as privateer Captain Henry Morgan (of Captain Morgan Rum fame….or is it the other way around?) looted for all the gold and silver he could find in 1671. The best story we heard about this time was one where a number of priests duped Morgan by covering their prized golden altarpiece with coats of mud because they didn't have time to take it down and hide it. ‘Gold? What gold?’ they asked when he came looking for it. ‘Do you see any gold shining here?’ They must have done a really good job, because he left, and their golden altar was saved. It is now in one of the churches in colonial Panama City.

Walking along the ruins, we could see skyscrapers on both sides. It
looks like there's no water here because the tide was out at the time
and the whole bay was empty.

Ruins of one of the monasteries in the old settlement.

Another of our feathered friends - a green parakeet.

Another monastery ruin

Then we went into the city and walked through some colonial period streets to the Plaza de la Catedral, the place where Panama gained its independence from Spain in 1821.

The ubiquitous Panama Hat, which of course originated in
Ecuador, but got its name because they were worn during
the building of the canal.

Some local crafts made of beads and grasses.

A quilt made of local animal patterns

Whimsical animal carvings

One of the bodegas of bougainvilleas in a plaza.

The Metropolitan Cathedral was consecrated as a Basilica by Pope John Paul II in 2003, 100 years after Panama became independent from Colombia. It is impressive inside, but we didn’t spend much time there as there was a service taking place at the time. The bells in one of the two bell towers came from the original 1519 bell tower at Panama Viejo and the shiny decoration in the towers is all mother-of-pearl. It is a very beautiful building inside and out.

The Central Hotel Panama has a history of being the place where foreign officials would stay when they visited Panama. It's colonial style inside is just gorgeous, but apparently not the way it was supposed to be when the hotel was renovated a few years ago. Unfortunately, during the restoration, somebody pulled a wrong piece out of a floor at the wrong time, and much of the building collapsed around it...But it certainly turned out to be a lovely respite from the heat outside.

As we walked around the area, we also came upon another ruined church, the Church and Convent of Santo Domingo. This was burned in a fire in 1756 and was never rebuilt, but it is a testament to the engineering of the time with its flat arch. Even as a ruin, it had withstood a number of earthquakes over the years, but did fall in 2003. It has been rebuilt, and the ruins are now being used as an event venue.

We sailed at about 6:30, having had to wait for a break in the canal traffic, and finally sailed under the Bridge of the Americas.

An even bigger LNG carrier than the one we'd seen on Saturday. It
looks like it will just fit under the bridge!

The evening show was by a group called Vox Fortura, four opera-trained singers who had wowed the judges on Britain’s Got Talent a few years ago with their mixture of opera, pop and show music. We had seen them on Serenity before, and their show was just as good this time.

Miami and Our First Days on Board

Our flight to Miami was, even for Air Canada Rouge, quite uneventful. We wondered if we would have any problems dealing with 7 suitcases, but everything went smoothly and nothing was missing at the other end.

We stayed at the Hyatt Regency Miami, which is about a 10 minute drive from the Port of Miami. At one time, you could probably see the port from the higher floors of the hotel, but that’s gone by the wayside. Now there are about three condo buildings in the way, and you can only see the tiniest bit of water if you look in the direction of the port area.

 As we had arrived around 5 p.m. and there were NFL football games to be seen that evening, we had a light dinner in the hotel’s restaurant/sports bar. Nonetheless, it was a good meal and the games were entertaining to say the least…too bad the Buffalo Bills lost.

On Sunday we went for a walk, first to locate the Truluck’s Restaurant we would be going to for dinner, and then to wander along the harbour side. The port was rather busy, as we could see six ships in the midst of their turnaround days.

               

Our stroll took us as far as the Harbourside Shops, where shopping is augmented by what seems to be a hundred restaurants and bars and a marina, all within sight of the port. We headed back to the hotel to watch the afternoon football games and then get ready for our dinner at Truluck’s.

We had originally planned to go to Joe’s Stone Crab on South Beach, but when we discovered that they were not open for lunch on Sunday, changed our plans to something a little closer. We had been to the Truluck’s location on Sunrise Ave. in Fort Lauderdale, and knew that we would not go without our stone crab if we had dinner there. It had an extra advantage of being less than ten minutes’ walk away from the hotel.

Dinner was great. Larry had a stone crab platter and Monica, who always goes for more choice when it is offered, had what is usually an appetizer platter for two as her main course. The platter included four pieces of each: fresh oysters, jumbo shrimp, a nice portion of lump crab meat, and four medium sized stone crab claws. She almost finished it!

          

Were we ready to board Crystal Serenity on Monday afternoon???? We were both positively vibrating with anticipation all morning. Our private transfer had been arranged for noon, so we were ready and waiting in the lobby at 11:45, just in case he showed up early. We waited, and waited, and then waited a little longer. Even the bellman who had our luggage on the cart came asking about it. So eventually we called the limo company to see where our car was….and it turned out that the driver had gone to the wrong Hyatt!!! An extra half-hour later, and the replacement van arrived. Traffic in downtown Miami is pretty heavy, so we arrived at Serenity’s terminal about 15 minutes later. We knew the greeting would be somewhat personal, as only 199 guests would be boarding on Monday – the world cruise guests would have some evening festivities before the other guests arrived on Tuesday – but we weren’t expecting to see both Rick Spath, the cruise director and a great friend, and Stacey Huston, the world cruise hostess, waiting at the door to the terminal building.

One of the Welcome Aboard photos

            

After arriving on the ship, and being greeted by a receiving line that included both the Captain and the Hotel Director, we dropped our extra bags off in our suite and headed out to see who was around.

The loading had already been going on for
some time before we took this photo!

In the course of the afternoon, we met up with a whole host of crew members, a few of whom had even put off going for their vacations so they could greet some of the world cruise guests, many of who they have known for quite a long time.

The evening festivities were a little low-key according to some people who have done the world cruise before. This was because there were still another 140 world cruisers who would be joining the ship in Los Angeles, after the Panama Canal cruise. There will be a somewhat bigger splash for that welcome aboard celebration. But nevertheless, we had a great dinner and a welcome aboard show from Bruce Hammond, whose show is a tribute to Frank Sinatra.

Photo from the Welcome Reception. We will be
getting all of the photos that the onboard photographers
take, so you may get tired of these at some point!

Part of the welcome festivities in the Crystal Cove

Bruce Hammond during his Sinatra tribute show

We had made a decision that we would make a real effort to keep up our exercise routine while on the ship, partly by making sure we walk our 10 miles on the Promenade Deck each week, and also by swimming and using the gym – personal training sessions were on the to-do list. On Tuesday we got a start – Monica swam for 30 minutes and we did our first 8 laps of the deck…hope we can keep it up! We also arranged our first training sessions with trainer Dragan for Wednesday.

Tuesday afternoon the rest of the guests started to arrive and we had an almost full ship for our inaugural sailaway from Miami.

Just after we pulled away from the pier.

On our way down the channel

The first sunset

             

Apparently there are some fairly heavy winds that come up in the Caribbean in December and continue through January, called the Christmas winds. We ran into these on Wednesday and Thursday, so it was a bit of a bumpy ride. Not bad enough that things were banging around, but it made walking in a straight line a little difficult. As Larry would say, watching a group of people come out of a lecture or a show was like having a back side view of line dancing at a western bar….shuffle to the left, shuffle to the right, shuffle to the middle!

The Seahorse Wave Pool in action. It made for an interesting swim!

Larry in the calmer water with Jim Brochu

The highlight of Thursday’s lecture program was a talk by NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, who in 2016 spent 340 days on the International Space Station. What a great, and humorous, speaker he is! Only having 45 minutes to talk merely scratched the surface of what he could have told us, but it was a really interesting lecture.

First sushi at Umi Uma

with Scott Kelly

We reached our first port stop of Cartagena, Colombia on Friday. We had been here a few times before and the shore excursions all went to attractions we had seen already, so we did some more laps of the Promenade Deck and spent more time in the pool. We did, however, manage to take a few photos from the ship as we sailed out.

The old city beyond the small boats in the bay

The statue of the Virgin Mary in the harbour. 

Fort of Santa Cruz de la Castillo Grande at the entrance to
Cartagena Bay

 We had just left port at 3:00 as we started writing this post, headed for the star destination of this voyage – the Panama Canal. We’ll be transiting tomorrow between about 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. and we’re sure that there will be a lot of people milling about all around the decks. One of the guest lecturers on board is Dick Morgan, who was involved in the administration of the Canal from the 1970s until it was turned over to the Panamanian government on December 31, 1999. He knows everything there is to know about both the original canal and the new locks that were only completed in 2016. At the beginning of his first lecture he asked how many people had never been through the canal before, and Larry says that more than 80% of the people raised their hands! It is always a very interesting day and we’re looking forward to it.

The 2020 World Cruise is Here...at Last!

We have wanted to do a full world cruise for a number of years, but real life kept changing our plans. Now, after planning this trip for what seems to be forever - what with researching shore excursions , making sure that things are planned for at home, and making sure we don't take too many clothes - we're finally within a few days of leaving for Miami to join Crystal Serenity for Crystal's 25th World Cruise. Funny thing, Monica's parents' first Crystal experience was on the first two segments of the very first World Cruise on Crystal Symphony in 1996. We're sure a lot has changed since then, but some things, like the level of service and the amazing onboard staff and crew, have stayed the same.

The world map showing the cruise itinerary

Thanks to the advice we got from many people who have done more than one world cruise, like our friends Keith and Annemarie, we're pretty sure we haven't packed too much stuff. Fifteen weeks on seven suitcases in total is at least manageable for getting to Miami and home from Rome.

Ready to go for the flight to Miami

We're really looking forward to this experience. Although the regular cruise segments are wonderful, the additional events for the world cruise guests are apparently quite a lot of fun. We'll find out! As you can see from the map, we will be visiting the Caribbean, Mexican Riviera, French Polynesia, New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia and Thailand, Sri Lanka, India, the Arabian Peninsula and the eastern Mediterranean, transiting both of the world's major shipping canals on the way - the Panama Canal and the Suez Canal.

As usual, we hope that you will enjoy following the blog. As the cruise is 105 days long, the Itinerary posted on the sidebar will show the details of the current segment port stops. This will be quite an adventure for us and we'll do our best to pass along the most interesting and memorable parts of it.