Lima, Peru

It was almost noon before we docked in Callao which is the port city for Lima and is the largest port in the country.  Since this is a busy port the authorities only allow three buses on the pier at a time so our tour left about an hour late.  Our tour drove us through some of the nicer neighborhoods with beautiful homes and expensive condos.  Our guide said that the condos went for 1 to 1.5 million US and are priced in US dollars. There was a lovely old golf course surrounded by high rise condos but we did not see anyone playing. Most of the foreign embassies are also in this area . We drove by some ruins from about 1000 years ago that are currently being restored. We were scheduled to tour this ruin the next day but luckily we had already turned in those tickets. We visited a private museum, "Pedro De Osma"  that was in a house built in 1910.  It was mostly religious items but they also had a large collection of antique silver pieces.

Front entrance to the Osma Museum

One of the rooms in the museum

One of the items in the silver room

 We also had a short stop at the "Love Park" that is on top of the cliffs in the area called "Miraflores". There was a large sculpture of a couple kissing.  Next to this park was an area where they were taking off and soaring with parachutes.  Below these cliffs was an area with lots of surfers in the water.  Later we drove by some other beaches that were packed with people enjoying a sunny Saturday afternoon. This area of Peru only gets about 4 inches of rain per year and is often overcast and foggy because of the cold Humbolt current.

Parasailing off the cliff

Huge pier with a restaurant at the beach below the cliff

The "Love Park"

Our ship stayed in this port overnight and the second day is the end of our first segment out of four. It is a day that about 400 passengers will be leaving and we get a whole new bunch.  It is always a very busy day for the crew to completely change and prepare the rooms.  They would prefer that we leave the ship and go on tour but since we have been here before and seen all the highlights, we are just going to stay on board and try to stay out of the way.

The first couple of days with a whole new group of passengers is always interesting.  They don't know their way around the ship and you always see them looking at the maps on the wall.  They also do not know the procedures for going out on tour and it takes a few days to get them "trained"!!

Salaverry, Peru

We had an early arrival at 7 am into Salaverry, our first port in Peru.  On our approach to the harbor we encountered a large swell and the ship really rocked from side to side and it caused some dishes to crash to the floor in the La Veranda restaurant where we were eating breakfast.  There are thousands of sea birds everywhere with a huge number of pelicans.  There were hundreds of pelicans sitting on a large pipe from a dredge that was in the lagoon next to where we were docked and when the dredge started operating the pelicans all took off!

Pelicans on the dredge pipe. There are also pelicans on the rocks in the background that line the shore.

Close up of the pelicans

Salaverry serves as the port for Peru's second largeset city, Trujillo.  This was the first city established by the Spanish in the 1600's.  We took a tour that went to the main square where we visited Colonial houses.  At the final home were were given "Pisco Sours" and some snacks.

The main square

Pottery artifacts in one of the colonial houses

Most of this area appears to be very poor with many people living in shacks made of plywood and cardboard or woven plant material.

We had dinner in Signature's restaurant with the other four members of our trivia team.

Our trivia team in action in the Horizon Lounge

Sea Day

On Thursday we had a beautiful sea day.  It was bright sunshine with very smooth water and it was even a bit cooler.  The special lunch on the pool deck was all sorts of seafood.

Part of the lunch display

Great sushi

Crossing the Equator and Guayaquil, Ecuador

We had crossed the equator during the night so the next evening we had the "King Neptune" ceremony.  It is always fun as the members of the performance cast dress us in costume and they have a skit with mermaids, pirates and King Neptune.  The passengers who have never crossed the equator by ship before are told to kiss the "Sacred mermaid"  All the men get excited because they think they will get to kiss one of the pretty girl dancers.  Then they bring out the real sacred mermaid and it one of the male crew members dressed as a mermaid!

Two of the dancers as mermaids

King Neptune

The "Sacred Mermaid"                                                    

We had a nice dinner in the main dining room "Compass Rose"

scored a window table!

 January 27,  Guayaquil is our last stop in Ecuador.  At we had taken a side trip to Quito the last time we were here we did not get to take any tours in this large city of 3.5 million (the largest in the country).  To reach the city we sailed about 4 hours up the Guayas river.

Our tour was of a historical park which does wild animal rescue.  There were a large number of exotic birds, deer, caiman, monkeys, sloths, tapir, ocelot and more. There were also lots of iguanas everywhere, mostly eating all the leftover food that the animals had not finished.  In addition to the animals they had a replica of a farm, their crops, and housing.  They are also in the process of restoring some historic colonial buildings that will become a hotel in the future although our tour guide told us that she sort of doubted that it would happen!

Two-toed sloth enjoying green bean

Colorful Macaws

"Fishing raccoon"

We also drove though the old downtown part of the city and saw the river front area that is called "Malecon"  that has lovely well maintained parks and even a small amusement park.  Part of our drive to the historical park passed the more wealthy residential areas.  There were several miles of gated communities with large beautiful homes.  Most of these communities had electrified fencing on top of very tall walls.  They also had large modern shopping centers in this area.

At the end of our tour we had lunch at a steak house.  It was advertised as a "traditional Ecuadorian meal"  but turned out to be what we would call a normal American type meal, steak or fish, rice and veggies!

Where we had lunch

At sea and Manta, Ecuador

After our transit of the Panama canal we had a nice relaxing day at sea.  We took care of paying some bills on line, sent out the laundry and checked our schedule for the upcoming ports.  Since we made our tour reservations back in October we could not even remember what tours we booked.  Once you learn a bit more about the tours you wonder what you were thinking at the time.  Our dinner was in "Signatures" the specialty French restaurant.

Tom comparing hair styles with our waiter and wine steward.

Our next day was Manta, Ecuador.  We had not seen much of this area as on the previous cruise in 2012 we took an overnight side trip to Quito.  Manta is a huge fishing port with hundreds of large boats that mostly fish for tuna.  There are several canneries here including a large Starkist facility.  We observed several boats off loading their catch.

One of the huge fishing boats

Off loading the tuna

For our tour to the city of Montecristi, we took a local style open air bus called a "Chiva".  These buses are painted with bright colors and are actually old "Bluebird" school buses from the US.  There were several of these buses on our tour and two of them had groups of musicians on the roof  that played loud music while we drove along the roads.  Montecristi is where the "Panama Hats" are made.  We observed a demonstration of how the hats are made and then shopped in a plaza where many vendors were selling the  hats..  It is amazing to see how much work and many hours go into the making of the hats.  The prices were very seasonable when you consider how much time and effort goes into the process. We were told that some of the better hats take several months to make.  Noel bought a very nice hat and was able to bargain for a $20 reduction in the original asking price.  

Woman on the right is boiling the fibers, the one in the center is weaving the crown and the one on the left is weaving the brim.

Weaving the brim

The Chivas buses we rode on

Transit The Panama Canal

Our ship was due to enter the canal early in the morning so after leaving Colon we just sort of floated around during the night.  The pilot came on about 6:15 am and we picked up the crew of workers about a half hour later.  Once the ship enters the canal area it is completely under the control of the canal authority.  The canal workers handle all the aspects of the movement of the ship, mostly handling the cables that tie the ship to the "mules".  This first group of about 20 workers stayed on our ship until we reached the San Miguel lock where we picked up a new group of workers to stay on until we left the canal zone.

The ship had set up rows of chairs on the top deck so people could sit there to watch all the events.  Unfortunately just about the time we began to enter the first lock there was a heavy downpour that drove everyone inside.  We were still eating breakfast and had a window table so were were able to view everything and stay dry!

It turned out to be a smooth transit but we ended up being almost two hours longer than originally scheduled. Since we had been through the canal several times on past cruises we did not need to watch all day and just took it easy (including naps) until we exited to the pacific side.

A small boat brings the canal workers

Our ship is in the first lock with a tug boat in behind us

The visitor center at Gatun lock where we were yesterday

The Centennial Bridge for the Pan Am Highway that crosses the canal at the continental divide.

January 23 Colon, Panama

We arrived in Colon, Panama at lunch time.  This was the first visit to this port for any Regent ship.  They have built a new terminal area with restaurants, shops, and a super market as they are trying to get more ships to visit here.  We had a nice tour that took us to the Gatun Locks visitor center and then a boat ride on Gatun Lake.  While on the way to the locks we passed by the construction area where they are building the new locks. It was interesting to see the locks from visitor center instead of from a ship.  There was a huge container ship in the lock while we were there.

The new shopping area at the Colon port

From our bus we had a quick view of the construction of the new canal, due to open in June (only two years behind schedule!)

The Gatun lock as seen from visitor center

Huge container ship in the Gatun lock

The boat tour started from a resort hotel that had previously been a military barracks.  It seemed to be very nice and had many families staying there as it is school vacation time.  While on the boat tour we saw sloths, howler monkeys, and a cayman.  El Nino has caused dry conditions throughout the area and the lake was very low with many exposed tree stumps.

The "blob" in the tree is a sloth!

Howler monkey

Old military barracks converted to resort hotel

For the evening show we enjoyed a local folk dancing show.  They had beautiful costumes and were very professional.  At the end of the show they came out into the audience and coerced some of the passengers up to the stage, Noel was sitting on the aisle so of course she got picked.

Panama folk dancers

Beautiful handmade costume

Noel on stage with dancers

January 22 Cartegena, Colombia

We arrived in Cartegena around noon time.  This is another city that we have visited several times so we decided to just stay on the ship.  The taxi union is very strong here and the the ship is not allowed to provide a shuttle bus into the city for those passengers that are not on tour.  Another reason to stay on board was that it was 100 degrees, and very humid, with poor air quality!  Our team won trivia, yeah!!.  We went to the production show titled "Dancing in the Streets" that was motown music, great show.

January 21 Aruba

We docked very early at 6:30 am in the commercial shipping part of the harbor and this put us far away from the shopping district.  We had been scheduled to take a snorkel cruise but decided we did not want to get up and ready so early in the day so we turned in our tickets.  The ship provides a shuttle bus to the port entrance so we decided to take that and just walk around.  This our third visit to Aruba so we have done most of the tourist things on the past trips.  There were three other cruise ships in port, including a Royal Caribbean and a Carnival.  These two are huge ships have about 3000 passengers each so the town shopping area was packed.  Every other store seems to be a jewelry store or souvenir shop!

We were invited to dine with the captain and the social hostess.  It was a very pleasant evening, and of course we received the best service possible!

Tom is modeling the t shirt we bought in Bonaire from a booth that was run by the local animal shelter.

Arriving in Aruba

January 19, a sea day and January 20 Bonaire

A beautiful day at sea with very smooth water.  Sea days are always loaded with plenty of activities including games, lectures, things like wine tasting or food demonstrations and special lunches.  Today we had "Tex Mex" served on the pool deck.  In the afternoon there was a special tea time in the Observation Lounge for passengers that are on the full cruise or multi segments.  We learned that there are about 130 passengers doing the full cruise, Miami to Miami.  We really missed having the pre-cruise evening event that was held when we did this same cruise in 2012.  It had given us an opportunity to meet other full cruise passengers.  We watched another movie in the evening "a Bridge of Spies" really enjoyed it.

We arrived at Bonaire at 7 am.  Since our scheduled tour is not until after lunch we decided to just take a quick stroll around the downtown area.  It is very nice and the currency is the US Dollar unlike the other Dutch islands, Aruba and Curacao.

Our tour was a drive around this low lying island that is made of limestone and coral.  The north end of the island is nothing but cactus and other scrub vegetation.  The cactus looks similar to organ pipe cactus and it is used to make liquor and fencing.  The fences are interesting as they are woven through wire fence from both sides.  Our bus driver showed us how they do it with two sticks, one shaped like a "y" and the other like a hook. We were told how they cut a piece from an existing plant with a chainsaw or machete and then grasp it between the two sticks to plant it in the ground.

Very dry scrub and cactus on north end of island

an example of the cactus fencing

The southern end of the island is mostly salt flats and we did see a few flamingos in one of the ponds.  We were told that there used to be thousands of them but they do not come any longer as the brine shrimp population has declined. There are feral donkeys and goats all over the island and we even saw a large number of goats in the parking lot of the airport!

Tom standing next to one of the small buildings where slaves that worked the salt production would spend the night.  We were told that fix or six persons would fit into the small space.

A couple of flamingos feeding in the salt flat

Huge mounds of salt ready for export

Our team finished second in trivia, not bad for only having four members today.

The highlight of the evening was to be the "Barbeque Under the Stars".  The culinary team spent almost four hours setting up the pool deck with different food stations with elaborate decorations.  About 20 minutes before they were to start serving it started to rain.  We had a table under the overhang so we were dry but the crew had to hustle all the food laden tables, barbeques, ice sculptures, plus the musicians had to move their microphones and instruments under cover.  They did an amazing job to reset everything and were ready to start serving only about 20 minutes late.

The pool deck set up for the barbeque.  In about ten minutes after the photo it started to pour rain!

January 18 Grenada

We arrived at the Grenada dock at 8am.  It was a bit rainy and overcast but it gradually cleared and we ended up with a warm, sunny, humid day.  This island is English speaking and clean (at least by Caribbean standards).  It is very lush and people were friendly.  We took a tour of the Grand Etang National Park and we also stopped at a co-op where they prepare nutmeg for export.  They grow many spices here and do produce one third of the world supply of nutmeg.  The roads were extremely narrow and the island is very hilly so the driver was constantly honking the horn as we approached the blind curves.  Unemployment is about 30% so we did see a lot of people just sitting around.

Old plantation building

Demonstration of different spices

Women workers sorting the nutmeg.  They make the equivalent of $14 US per day

Nutmeg tree