Princess Panama Cruise - Jan 30, 2014 to Feb 10, 2014

Corrina/Edward, Sophia/Jerry, June/Ben and Fei/Tony went on a Panama Cruise on Jan 30, 2014.  We spent the Chinese New Year on the Coral Princess with a lot of fun both on board and on excursions.  Corrina/Edward and Fei/Tony flew to Fort Lauderdale and embarked the Coral Princess at Port Everglades of Fort Lauderdale on Jan 30. Sophia/Jerry and June/Ben went to Fort Lauderdale a couple of days earlier and did some pre-cruise touring in Fort Lauderdale and Miami areas.  It was a total of 11 days cruise with embarkation/disembarkation days, 5 “At Sea” days and 5 “Excursion Touring” days.  It was a very enjoyable and relaxing vacation for all of us. 

Itinerary -

Thursday, Jan 30, 2014 - Ft Lauderdale, FL

Friday, Jan 31, 2014 - At Sea

Saturday, Feb 1, 2014 - At Sea

Sunday, Feb 2, 2014 - Aruba, ATV Tour

Monday, Feb 3, 2014 - At Sea

Tuesday, Feb 4, 2014 - Cartagena, Columbia, Self arranged Wall City tour

Wednesday, Feb 5, 2014 - Panama Canal, Princess Excursions (Panama Locks by Boat and Authentic Embera Indian Village)

Thursday, Feb 6, 2014 - Limon, Costa Rica, Greenway Private Tour

Friday, Feb 7, 2014 - At Sea

Saturday, Feb 8, 2014 - Grand Cayman, Self arranged tour

Sunday, Feb 9, 2014 -At Sea

Monday, Feb 10, 2014 - Princess Everglades Excursion

Fort Lauderdale, FL - Jan 30, 2014

This is the traveling and embarkation day.  We got on the Coral Princess in early afternoon and had a wonderful buffet lunch at the Horizon Court and started to reacquaint the Princess ship and found many familiar facilities such as Horizon Court, Wheelhouse Lounge, Explorers Lounge, dinning rooms, Princess Theater, workout rooms, spa, casino, shopping area etc.  Some of us participated the $500 Treasury Hunting program to found out all interesting spots.  Unfortunately, none of us won the $500 reward during the drawing. As usual, we have a wonderful dinner at the dinning room and we treated it as our Chinese New Year Eve dinner. After the dinner, we started our dance activities at both Explorers Lounge and Wheelhouse Lounge.

At Sea Day - Jan 31, 2014

From Fort Lauderdale to our first stop Aruba needs 2 “At Sea” days. We all slept late in this morning and enjoyed a relaxing breakfast.  Some of us participated the Line Dace Mania and Zumba programs.  Some of us went to the afternoon tea at Provence Dinning room enjoying the tea, deserts and chatting with other passengers.  June and Ben found out that Princess ship has free sauna room in the Spa area and some of us did take the opportunity to enjoy the sauna and others went to workout area to practice their ballroom steps and routines.  It was a relaxing afternoon following by a wonderful dinner again.  After the dinner, we enjoyed the Princess Production Show, and did more dancing at Wheelhouse Lounge.

At Sea Dat - Feb 1, 2014

This is the 2nd 'At Sea' day.  June checked a mahjong set from the library and went to game room to play some mahjong with Corrina, Jerry and Fei.  We had relaxing afternoon and did more ballroom practice, sauna, shopping and getting ready for tonight’s formal dinner night.  

With the formal night dressing up, we took the opportunity to take some wonderful photos with Coral Princess’ nice decorations as the background.  More shows and dances after the dinner.  We are pretty much known by other passengers as the dancing group with all the dances we did in different lounges.

Aruba - Feb 2, 2014

Aruba is a small island located about a thousand miles west of the Lesser Antilles in the southern Caribbean Sea, located 17 mi north of the coast of Venezuela. Aruba is one of the four constituent countries that form the Kingdom of the Netherlands, along with Holland, Curaçao and Saint Maarten. This flat island with no rivers is renowned for its white sand beaches and tropical climate moderated by constant trade winds from the Atlantic Ocean. The temperature is almost constant at about 81°F. Aruba is divided into the north east and south west coasts. The south west has the white sand beaches, turquoise seas, and warm waters. The north east coast, exposed to the Atlantic, has a few white sand beaches, cacti, rough seas with treacherous currents, and a rocky coastline. We docked at Aruba capital Oranjestad around 7AM in the morning.  

We booked a ATV tour for Aruba excursion.  We got on the ATV around 9AM for a 4 hours tour.  There is a tour guide leading the way and each couple have a double ATV with guy driving and gal as passenger.  The guide led us going through the Oranjestad first and we got a chance to see the real Aruba communities.  One thing we noticed was that it has a lot of Chinese stores.  Almost all the grocery stores have Chinese names.  

The first stop was the Alto Vista Chapel at the Northwest part of the island.  It is a small Catholic chapel also known as "Pilgrims Church" that stands on the hills above the north shore of the sea and to the northeast of the town of Noord. The church painted on the outside in stark bright yellow colour makes it a conspicuous religious monument for people to visit. The present Chapel of Alto Vista was completed in 1952.

The next stop was Baby Natural Bridge.  The Aruba Natural Bridge was a tourist attraction that was formed naturally out of coral limestone. The landmark collapsed on September 2, 2005.  Therefore, the tour guide took us to see the Baby Nature Bridge.  It is smaller but it is still impressive.  

Then we got to Wish Garden and Bushirbana Ruins.  Wish Garden is just a place where people pile up stones to make small wish towers.  There are a lot of them, however, it is not as impressive as the Bushirbana Ruins.  The Bushiribana Ruins was built in 1825 by the Aruba Island Gold Mining Company to extract gold from the ore that was being mined in the nearby hills of Ceru Plat. It operated for ten years. Today, its remains are a stopping-off point for tourists. One can climbs up to the ruin to view the ocean.  It is definitely a nice photo spot. 

The next stop was the Natural Pool in Arikok National Park. Once we got in Arikok National Park, our ATV were fully functionally over the rocky unpaved road.  The uphill and bumpy road gave us an opportunity of fully experiencing the ATV capability and having fun.  The guide kept telling us to dominate the ATV and don’t let the machine control us.  He was right.  When we were on bumpy road, we did need to firmly steering the wheel to move forward in the direction we want to.  It we let it go, then the road would impact the ATV and it would take up to undesired direction. It took some muscle, however, it was fun! 

Natural Pool is a formation of rocks to which waves hit, filling inside the pool with water. It is unique and probably one of the most hidden gem on the island. We also witnessed the tremendous was near the Natural Pool area.  

The next stop is the Ayo Rock Formations which is a monolithic boulder with tunnels and narrow passage ways weaving through the boulders. There are no steps have been carved into the rocks. So, if you want to stand on top of an Ayo boulder, it is up to you to scramble to the top on your own accord. Several of us did climb up to the top of Ayo boulder and had a nice view of the whole Aruba.  

After the tour, we went back to Coral Princess for a nice lunch and then went to Oranjestad downtown area to do some sightseeing and hopefully some shopping.  There are a lot of nice stores in the area, unfortunately there were all closed on Sunday.

At Sea - Feb 3, 2014

This is another at sea day and we had another Mahjong game.  Sophia was relaxing, shopping and viewing her photos on iPad, Ben was walking around the deck in midship to get more exercise, and Edward was working on his job related stuff on computer as usual. 

In the afternoon, we just rest and take easy.  Again, we had a very nice dinner and more dance after the dinner.

Cartagena, Columbia - Feb 4, 2014

Cartagena, Columbia is on the northern coast of Colombia in the Caribbean Coast Region and it is the fifth-largest city in Colombia. During the colonial period Cartagena served a key role in administration and expansion of the Spanish empire. It was a center of political and economic activity due to the presence of royalty and wealthy viceroys. Cartagena is the city most associated with pirates in the Caribbean, and the world. In 1984 Cartagena's colonial walled city and fortress were designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Since we have only 7 hours in Cartagena, we decided to just wondering around in the walled city by ourselves without any pre-arranged tour.  After we got off the ship, there were many local tour guys tried to provide the tour at pretty low cost.  We got on one for touring the walled city in a private van.  The 1st stop was the San Felipe Barajas Castle (Castillo de San Felipe de Barajas).  As far as we know, it consists of a series of walls, wide at the base and narrow toward the parapet, forming a formidable pattern of bunkers. The batteries and parapets protect one another, so making it practically impossible to take a battery without taking the whole defense system. The stone blocks used to build the castle were said to be splattered with the blood of slaves. Cartagena was a port of the black slave trade. The guns of the castle commanded the whole bay, so that any suspicious vessel attempting to dock could be attacked. The castle is striking for its grand entrance and its complex maze of tunnels. It is the most formidable defensive complex of Spanish military architecture. 

It also requires a $20 entrance fee per person.  With the limited time we had in Cartagena, we decided not to venture into this maze without a proper guide.  We just walked around and took some pictures from the outside.

Then we got to the walled city.  The first scene is Clock Tower which is the entrance point of the walled city.  The unfortunately part is that our guide handed the tour to his brother who does not speak English.  Most of the attractions are in the walled city and in walking distance.  We visited The Cathedral (La Catedral), The Bolivar Park (El Parque de Bolivar), The Inguisition Palace (El Palacio de la Inquisision), San Pedro Claver Church (La Iglesia de San Pedro Claver and The Wall (La Muralla).  It was a little bit disappointed to see all these famous attractions are lacking of maintenance.  However, we could still felt the historical significance of these heritage sites.  

After the tour, the guide took us to do some shopping.  First he took us to local shopping area for tourists and we could not find anything worthy to buy.  Then he took us to buy Columbia coffee in another store which was a better shopping place for most of us. 

Panama Canal - Feb 5, 2014

Starting at 6AM, Coral Princess got ready to enter the Gatun Locks and finaly entered the Gatun Locks at 7:58AM.  Gatun Locks has 3 chambers and our ship has to go through each chamber one at a time.  The Gatun lock systems lifts a ship up to 85 feet to the main elevation of the panama canal, then the other 2 locks (Pedro Miguel Lock and Miraflores Lock) lower it down to sea level again.  Each lock chamber requires 26,700 US Gal of water to fill it from the lowered to the raised position.  The same amount of water must be drained from the chamber to lower it again.  Embedded in the side and central wall are three large water culverts that are used to carry water from the lake into the chambers to raise them, and from each chamber down to the next, or to the sea to lower them.  The water is moved by gravity and is controlled by the huge valves in the culverts.  A lock chamber can be filled in as little as eight minutes.  The gates separating the chambers in each flight of locks must hold back a considerable weight of water, and must be both reliable and strong enough to withstand accidents, as the failure of a gate could unleash a catastrophic flood of water downstream.  

There are two independent transit lanes, since each lock is built double. According to the guide, there are 2 scheduled time slots for ships going from Atlantic side to Pacific side and 2 alternated scheduled time slots for ships going from Pacific side to Atlantic side.  For the ships paying premium, you will be fitted into one of the schedules on the same day.  For a lot of commercial ships who try to save some cost, they may be docked outside the locks waiting for 48 hours or longer to get the passage through the canal.  Fei/Tony did witness a lot of commercial ships are waiting outside the Miraflores Lock.

In order to guide the ship through the lock chamber, electric locomotives known as Mules are used to control the ship proceeding into a lock. For large ship, 8 Mules are used for precise control of the ship.  When our ship got into the chamber, it had less than a feet at each side of the ship to the chamber walls.  It is considered a engineering wonder and we were so lucky by having the opportunity to witness how it works.  

At 9:12AM, we finally exit the Gatun Lock.  

Princess only allows passengers who purchased their excursions to get off the ship for touring Panama.  Therefore we all have to join a Princess excursion.  Some of us want to experience the full transit of the Panama Canal, therefore, Fei and Tony joined the Panama Canal & Locks Transit by Boat excursion to see the other 2 locks. Corrina/Edward, Sophia/Jerry and June/Ben joined the Authentic Embera Indian Village excursion to have a cultural visit to Embera village in the heart of Chagres National Park. They had to take dugout canoe in high speed to reach the Embera village and the canoe ride provided a lot of excitement.  

Fei/Tony went through Prodro Miguel Lock and Miraflores Lock, and finally reach to La Playita in Panama City (at Pacific Ocean side) and took bus ride back to Colon to board the Coral Princess again. 

Fei/Toy boarded a ferry tour boat at Gamboa which is a small village lies in the heart of Panama's 55,000-acre Soberania National Park.  With the smaller size of the ferry tour boat, we had to wait and pass each lock chamber with other 4 ships in difference size to go through the lock.  It is designed to minimize the waste of the 26,700 Gal of fresh water from Gutan Lake.  In addition to see the wonderful lock system, we can also feel the lock system's camber wall by touching it.

By the canal near Gamboa where Fei/Tony boarded a ferry tour boat, the guide spot the house where Noaiga is in prison now.

Our guide also told us that it costs Princess $350,000 each passage of each ship going through the Panama Canal.  A small boat will pay $800+ for each passage.  The only ships do not have to pay are Panama Navy ships.  However, for 2013, there were only 3 Panama Navy ships passed the canal.

Panama used to be a part of Columbia.  When Columbia shown no interest to follow US’ suggestion to build the canal, US persuaded Panama to become independent.   Panama then commissioned US to built the Panama Canal in 1904.  To meet the requirements of letting bigger ships to pass through Panama Canal, there is a undergoing project to build a wider canal.