Thursday, December 3rd, Friday, December 4th and Saturday, December 6th - At Sea and Arrival in Fort Lauderdale and Summary

Wow, it was just a short time ago I thought wow we still have 10 days of cruising to go!!  Well now only two+ days and 1150 nautical miles until we reach Fort Lauderdale.  Time to make the best of the time we have left before disembark.

We had some very talented staff on board the Infinity.  While we were having our usual morning coffee we watched one of the table staff create this little marvel out of a couple of paper napkins, talented!!

Temperatures were great so we spent both days lazing around the pool deck, walk around and looking out to sea.  The ship had some informational talks about how the ship navigates and what kind of propulsion systems they have to move the ship through the water and into ports etc. Very informative.

As we were getting close to the end of our cruise, everything was on sale in the shops, including alcohol!! Yippee, we picked up large bottles of Crown Royal and Tangeray for very reasonable prices.

The two days at sea went very quickly and it was time to get ready to disembark.  As we were doing a "Walk Off", which means that we would disembark ourselves because we had arranged a car rental to drive back to the trailer in Ocala, about 4 hours away.

We disembarked about 7:30 AM and had cleared customs and we were picking up the car by 9:00 AM after getting a ride to the car rental agency on their shuttle bus.  We are off!!

CRUISE SUMMARY
The cruise itself was excellent, the itinerary was not perfect as there were too many days at sea, but looking at other cruises this was quite normal for a cruise that went all the way through the Panama Canal.  Not many cruises do this.

The service we received was excellent, the embarkation and disembarkation were well organized and moved along quite quickly.  Our food servers were great, our room porters while not perfect did a good job.

Unfortunately the down sides for us were:
1. The condition of the ship itself.  The Infinity looked old, it had supposedly come out of dry dock about a month before our cruise following some minor spruce ups.  The chairs in the breakfast/lunch cafe, the main dining room and the high end Tuscan Grill were stained - what!   The carpets in many areas were old, there were things in our stateroom that did not work, the shower was loose on the wall we could not hear any of the ships announcements in our stateroom.  These are things that should not be seen on a cruise ship in my opinion.
2. The meals, while our service was excellent there was nothing extravagant or special about our meals - they we very bland.  We had lobster one night that was so overcooked it was rubbery.  We had heard that the meals were one thing that Celebrity was known for - sorry not on this cruise.  We have been on two other cruises with another company that had just wonderful meals all of the time.

So,  can I or would I recommend Celebrity as a cruise line? Sorry no.  Our next cruise will not be on Celebrity.

Here are some fun facts supplied by Celebrity for the Infinity.  The following is an average for ONE WEEK!

1,500 pounds of Tenderloin - 1,400 pounds of Chicken Breast, 1,200 pounds of Pork Loin

350 Pounds of Tuna - 3,500 dozen fresh Eggs - 7,000 pounds of Potatoes - 1,500 pounds of Carrots

1, 200 pounds of Cookies - 5,000 pounds of Fresh Fruit - 1,800 pounds of Whole Chicken

2,700 pounds of Rack of Lamb - 700 pounds of Salmon - 2,100 litres of Heavy Cream

2,400 pounds of butter - 2,100 pounds of onions - 6,300 pounds of Romaine Lettuce

450 gallons of Ice Cream 

That is allot of food!!

Thanks for reading my musings of our latest adventure.  We are spending the balance of the winter at the Seasons In The Sun RV Resort near Mims, on the Space Coast of Florida.

This will be the last post for this winter.

Have a great winter!!

Wednesday, December 2nd - Cartagena, Columbia

We arrived at approximately 9:00 AM and proceeded off the ship to meet with our tour guide.

Cartagena also known as Cartagena de Indias (Cartagena of the West Indies) was founded in 1533 by DonPedro de Heredia, and named after the port of Cartagena in Spain's Murcia region. The population is approximately 1.2 million people (I think everyone had a motorcycle).  Driving there was absolutely crazy, motorbikes everywhere and all were weaving in and out of traffic.  We fully expected to see many accidents, luckily there were none during our visit.  Still shaking my head!!

Fuel price was $3.50/U.S. Gallon.


Our tour started at a Monastery called "Convento-De-La-Popa" on the top of a 150m-high hill, the highest point in Cartagena, stands this convent. A beautiful image of La Virgen de la Candelabra, the patroness of the city, is in the convent's chapel, and there's a charming flower-filled patio.  The convent's name literally means the Convent of the Stern, after the hill's apparent similarity to a ship's back end. Founded by the Augustine fathers in 1607, its official name is actually Convento de Nuestra Señora de la Candelaria. Initially it was just a small wooden chapel, which was replaced by a stouter construction when the hill was fortified two centuries later.

La Virgen de la Candelabra patroness of Cartagena

The areas outside the walls of the courtyard gave us great views of the city, it was almost a 360 degree view.

View of Cartagena from the Monastery

It was very hot on the hill top and the parking area was quickly filling up with vehicles - it was crazy!  When it was time to leave we were in a tight grid lock situation with busses and vehicles of all sizes just parked any which way, I could never be as patient as these drivers, even though they did use their horns often, very often!

We finally made it down off the hill and drove by the downtown.  This gave us views of very modern skyscrapers and a booming downtown business area. We were back into the crazy driving scene again.  All of the motorcycles were fairly small, none of them were the large type bikes that we see at home.

Our next stop was the  shopping district where there were many small shops.  We had about ½ hour to look around and purchase some souvenirs if we were so inclined. 

Now back on the bus and off to see the outside of the old fortress named Castillo San Felipe de Barajas.  There was not enough time to tour the fort which was unfortunate as it was huge and looked very interesting.  The castle is located on the Hill of San Lázaro in a strategic location, dominating approaches to the city by land or sea. It was built by the Spanish during the colonial era. Construction began in the year 1536, and it was originally known as the Castillo de San Lázaro, It was expanded in 1657.

The fortification 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 defence system. 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 is 41 meters (135 ft.) above sea level.o

It was then off to a walking tour of an older part of the city showing us many different architectural styles in the buildings.  There were quite a few squares that were developed around churches in the past.  We Found that the areas of Cartagena that we visited were clean and well kept.  Even the market areas that were full of vendors while messy were not full of garbage like Colon or Panama City.

The picture on the right shows a couple of different architectural styles that were present (I'm sorry I don't know what they are called).

Our guide then brought us back to the present with a trip to the 'Hard Rock Cafe' for a beer (on him!!)  Very nice.  As you can see by the picture, unless you knew where it was you could have easily walked past it.

Following a 30 minute stop which allowed for a drink, free WiFi and a pit stop we were off to walk back to meet our tour bus.  We passed many vendors selling their wares that were just laid out on the ground on blankets.  The big surprise came when one of our group saw a vendor selling pot and cocaine right on the street!! Hmm well that is sure not something you see every day back home.

Case of Emeralds "In The Rough"

One of the things that Columbia is noted for is their Emerald Mines.  Evidently they produce some of world high quality Emeralds.  That quality is also dependant on which mine the emeralds come from.  Our next stop was the Joyeria Caribe Museum and Emerald store for a tour and of course we were more than welcome to purchase anything if we wanted.  We looked at a couple of items and the prices were reasonable but no sale for us.  The three major mines in Colombia are Muzo, Coscuez, and Chivor. Muzo and Coscuez are on long-term leases from the government to two Colombian companies, while Chivor is a privately owned mine. Muss remains the most important emerald mine in the world to this date.

Flamingos

Parrots or Maccas - not sure which.

This was to be our final stop of the day and it was time to enjoy the wonderfully crazy traffic of Cartagena once again.  We made it back to the port in good time.  Part of the entrance to the pier was a small zoo with many different birds.  They were not tethered just seemed like they wanted to be there.....The colours were amazing!!

Back on board we changed and relaxed a bit with a drink and readied ourselves for dinner.  Following dinner we were off to the theatre to watch a very good comedian who had us in stitches throughout his performance.  

Tuesday, December 1st - Colon and Panama City, Panama

Welcome to the month of December. We actually had to sail around for the evening before entering  the port of Colon, Panama.

Today when we disembarked we took a tour to the city of Panama of an old Monastery, a Museum that showed some history of the area and an Emerald Jewelry Manufacturing company.   The Jewelry manufacturing company has an arrangement with the local museums that allowed them to borrow old artifacts that had been discovered and to reproduce these elaborate pieces. They kept them for a couple of days for measurements and pictures and usually returned them within about 48 hours.  Keeping history alive!

The monastery (the guide called it a monastery but the nuns ran it? So maybe it was a nunnery?!) was something like 600 years old and had obviously seen better times, but considering there was still much of it in very good shape.  The government was also trying to preserve the structures.






The Jewellery company had a catwalk around the top of the manufacturing floor so we could see them actually produce the jewelry.  At the end of the tour we could look through their company store which had many very nice items and then upon leaving they gave each one of us a little gift bag of local items including coffee, alcohol, and discount coupons.

We finished the tour by driving back to Colon.  We found both cities (Colon and Panama) to be very dirty, there were nice areas but especially near the ports both cities were very run down and not places to go for  a walk about by yourself at any time.

We arrived back on board and thought it was a good time to go back to our new favourite bar for another Gin and Tonic, mmmm tasted great.  While there I observed one of the bartenders making martinis in a very unique way!











Following tonights dinner we went to the after dinner show expecting a 60's show (right up our alley!), only to learn that the performers could not get here due to flight issues.  The ships crew and the cast of actors put together their own show on short notice.  They did a very good job.

Off to bed in preparation for Cartagena, Columbia tomorrow.

Monday, November 30th - Transiting the Panama Canal

The day has arrived, one of the prime reasons for this cruise was to "do the Panama Canal".  The day started by many of the passengers heading up to the forward lounge on Deck 12 to get a ring side seat for the Panama transit.

As we looked around the entrance to the Panama we could see many ships waiting their turn to go through.  The locks start processing ships at 6:00 AM and for 6 hours you can only go in one direction - east.  Starting at noon, the process reverses and it is only west bound traffic that is processed.

The Panama Canal actually runs in a Southeast/Northwest direction so we saw the sun rise in the Pacific Ocean and will see the sun set in the Atlantic Ocean, a little backwards to what you think when travelling from the Pacific to the Atlantic Oceans, but we can handle it - cool.

We will be passing through the Miraflores, Pedro Miguel and Gatun Locks during our transit.  A total distance in the canal is about 48 miles and will take most of the day.   There are currently two lanes with a third lane with its own set of locks scheduled to open in 2016.  We did cruise by the new lane and new locks.  The new locks and associated lanes and infrastructure will actually double the capability of the Panama Canal.

One of the New Locks

The canal pilots boarded around 6:00 AM  - just before sunrise and once the canal opens we pass under the Bridge of the America's.   We then passed by a part of the new lock system that will employ a very different method of moving water around to raise and lower the ships in the locks. The new method uses water saving basins to help raise and lower ships.

Just before we entered the first set of locks I noticed some military vessels at a pier just to the north.  The smaller one was shipped and painted in a very unique manner.  This boat looked very mean just sitting there.

Tight fit and one of the 4 guiding mules

We entered the Miraflores lock with only about 2 feet of space on each side of the ship. We are used to going through locks because we live in Sault Ste. Marie.  However, in the Sault ships use their own power to navigate in and out of the locks.  The Panama Canal uses "mules" located on each side of the ship - two for and two aft that the Canal Pilot communicates with to ensure the vessels stay in the centre of the lock so there is no damage to the walls, doors, etc.

















After exiting from the first set of locks we were going to pass under the Centennial Bridge.  The Centennial Bridge is the second major road crossing of the Panama Canal, the first being the Bridge of the Americas. (Small service bridges are built in the lock structures at Miraflores and Gatún Locks, but these bridges are only usable when the lock gates are closed and have limited capacity.)

The Centennial Bridge is located 15 km (9.3 mi) north of the Bridge of the Americas and crosses the Culebra Cut (Gaillard Cut) close to the Pedro Miguel locks. New freeway sections, connecting Arraign in the west to Cerro Patacon in the east via the bridge, significantly alleviate congestion on the Bridge of the Americas.

It took until after 4:00 PM until we cleared the last (Gatun) lock.  It was time for a little Happy Hour to celebrate the transit.  We met Carole and Marcel at the "Crush Bar" which were making excellent Gin and Tonics :). While we were sitting enjoying our drinks we had one of our bartenders stop and talk to us (Winston from Jamaica).  When asked we told him where we were from and he had a question for us..... Why are Canadians so nice?  He explained that of all the cruises he had been on Canadians had to be the nicest people he has met.  We were always happy and smiling!  Our first response was the excellent gin and tonics :).  That was a very hard thing to explain, we had a great discussion.

This bar had a huge number of different kinds of Vodka all on ice - literally!

After a couple or three, or four or ..... Gins we headed off for dinner (needed something to eat!).  The after dinner show tonight was a pianist and a soprano singer.  We passed on the show and decided to make an early night of it.

Sunday, November 29 - At Sea - Grey Cup Day!

Another sea day today, following our morning coffee ritual we lounged around the ship, all of us doing our individual "stuff".

One thing we noticed that the "sanitation" procedures seem to be stepped up lately.  This was confirmed by the disappearance of all the individual salt and pepper shakers off the tables.  They were replaced by paper packets of salt and pepper.  Staff were stationed by all of the entrances to the common areas with bags full of hand sanitizer that we had to use, they were persistent.

Diane did a watercolour class today (yes another masterpiece) and I went to a talk about the history and future of the Panama Canal - very interesting. We will be transiting the Panama Canal tomorrow starting about 6:00 AM.

We had booked a special dinner with the group at the Tuscan Grille (2 for 1 special) which is a fine dining style of establishment specializing in Italian cuisine.  I decided on the rib eye steak which was done to perfection.  The meal started with the staff bringing out every appetizer available which was shared among our group, it kept coming and coming, the food was the best since the start of the trip - excellent.

The Grey Cup on the Outdoor Big Screen!

A couple of days ago Doug had spoken to the Cruise Director Sara with regards to having the Grey Cup shown on the big screen TV at the back of the ship.  he said that she would look into it and let us know.  Now, lets face it this cruise is just full of Americans and they love their football.  However, we got news that the Grey Cup would be shown, Thank You Doug!!.  So following dinner we all went back to change and up to Deck 12 to watch the game.  We were surprised to see the number of people there, hmmm there are more Canadians on board than we thought!  We had a really good time and did enjoy watching the game - did not hear any complaints :).

Following the game we all turned in, Panama Canal tomorrow!!

Saturday, November 28th - Puntarenas, Costa Rica

Usual coffee meeting started around 5:30 am with breakfast as soon as the cafe was open.

We arrived at Puntarenas at 8:00 AM, we all disembarked shortly thereafter as we had a guided tour of the area booked with (are you ready for this?) "Ricky Ricardo Tours" and evidently we had "Ricky" himself as our tour guide.


The tour bus was fairly new and was in good shape, they had water or beer for our pleasure - no extra charge.






We started off with a stop at an area where small monkeys hang out in their natural habitat.  They actually come when called, but they do know that there is food available (bananas) when they come.  They jumped and swung around the branches during our visit.  Once their curiosity and appetite wore off they went back into the jungle.





We were pretty impressed with the tour guide, as our next stop was at a tourist store which had clean washrooms (very important) and free WiFi (an item that is becoming more important these days).  The store had the usual "local" items including a gentleman artist - good work, very colourful but we did not buy anything.









We were then taken to a small property (it really looked like someone's private home) where we were introduced to many medicinal and edible plants that are native to Costa Rica.  This was not as hokey as it sounds, both "Ricky" and the property owner were extremely knowledgeable and we saw and tasted many different plants.








Our next stop was an area where one could view Macaws (parrots) in their natural habitat.  They were very difficult to see due to the thick tree collage but we managed to get one picture.  Very pretty birds.










Our tour then took us to our next adventure, a ride on one of the local rivers to look for crocodiles!  We boarded our boat and off we went.  The river itself was very muddy from all of the silt it picks up along its meandering route.  It was an interesting boat ride where we saw a couple of crocs sunning themselves on the river banks.   About halfway we saw a very unusual site, it was a horse standing near the bank, our guide believed it had gotten too close to the bank, slipped and fallen in.  The horse did not look stressed out as it was just standing there very quietly. "Ricky" called one of the local farmers to advise him, the horse would have to be removed fairly quickly or it would be soon crocodile food!

We continued along the river for another mile or so and pulled up to the bank close to one very large crocodile.  Our boat driver then got out (he would be about 20 years old - our boat driver, not the croc) and started to feed this monster of an animal (he was probably about 20 feet long and looked to be very well fed).  The banks of the river are very wet and slippery, one false step and we would be looking for a new boat captain.  Not me thank you!!

Following the feeding we headed back down river, past the horse who had not moved and up some small tributaries of the river to look for crocs and view the local flora and fauna.  One of the things that we noticed about this river were the layers of dirt that you could see in the riverbank itself.  These layers included some garbage (plastic bottles, cans ,papers etc.) which was disappointing to see.  The garbage layers were about two feet below the surface, so it is hard to say whether the garbage had been placed there or if it had been carried down from elsewhere by the river waters during the flooding season.  It was time to return to the boat dock.


We were all getting kind of hungry by this time so "Ricky" took us for lunch (included in the price of the tour) at a good size open air restaurant.  I was a little concerned about the insects in this tropical climate and an open air restaurant but that was not an issue at all - no bugs at all!!








Following a very nice lunch of sea bass with rice we started heading back to the ship.  During our return drive we stopped a souvenir shop and a farmers market.  Both were not your typical "tourist traps" and had some very nice items.  We were very impressed with the different areas we visited.  They were not grungy or dirty and there were no vendors or children getting in your face trying to sell you stuff or begging for money!






We were dropped off just outside an outdoor market and made our way back to the ship looking at all the vendors wares.  There were hundred of vendors and we were told that the reason for all the vendors was that Puntarenas was having a celebration and an air show the next day at the waterfront....and we thought it was just for us :).

We changed for dinner (smart casual - meaning shorts and sandals...yea!!).  Following dinner we went to the evening show which was a magician.  His tricks were OK but he needed to work on his stage presence.  We had a great day!!

Friday, November 27 - At Sea

Today was another lazy day around the ship.

Weather was excellent and smooth seas.  Lazed around the pool area, Diane went to be spoiled at the on-board Spa, I went to a Paella cooking demonstration.

"Paella is a Valencian rice dish with ancient roots that originated in its modern form in the mid-19th century near Albufera lagoon on the east coast of Spain adjacent to the city of Valencia."

Lookin' good!!

Tonight is the second of three formal dinner nights on board.  The group decided it would be nice to get our picture taken near the grand staircase.











Following dinner we went to see the evening show which consisted of two Russian Gymnasts (husband and wife - who was a past olympic champion) who showed us the body can bend in ways that we did not think possible and still return to normal!!  Wonderfull show, the pictures do not do them justice.

Ouch!!

Fantastic Show!!