Cartagena, Columbia and Colon, Panama

 

Thursday, December 29, 2022

 

Cartagena, Columbia and Colon, Panama 

Tuesday morning, we arrived in Cartagena, Colombia. This is another continent for us. We will be walking on South America. So, this is the 2^nd Continent of this trip.  We are scheduled for the “included” tour this morning. Today that consists of a 2-hour drive around the city with one photo op stop and another stop for “shopping”. Shopping seems to be pretty much mandatory on these outings. 

Busses lining up for the tours and modern day Cartagena in the background.

Panoramic view of the busses and city in the distance.

The ship provides devices to all passengers that are a listening device for excursions. They refer to them as “QuietVox” (QV). They really work quite well. You are able to hear your guide without having to stand right next to them. 

This morning’s excursion indicated that our QV was not required. It should have been. We could hear very little of the guide’s dissertation. And what we could hear had such a heavy accent, you still couldn’t understand him. You never know from one excursion to the next what the quality of the guide will be. Some are great, some are pretty bad (today’s), and a lot are somewhere in between. 

The fort in old Cartagena. Think of "Romancing the Stone" with Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner.

Just a side street in old Cartagena.

Much of the old Cartagena is surrounded by a wall. This is just a small portion.

But, after the tour, we were dropped off at the entrance of the port. We would have to walk back to the ship. The local taxi unions would not let the busses drive back into the port. A big advantage to this was that we had to walk through a very nice little aviary and had the opportunity to see parrots, peacocks and peahens, flamingos, and some four-legged critters as well. 

And finally,

An early departure from Cartagena would get us into Colon around 8 am.

 

Wednesday morning. As we sailed into port this morning, we were amazed to the see the parking lot of ships all around us. We will be docking at the cruise port, but most ships transiting the Canal simply have to wait their turn by anchoring just off shore or in the harbor behind a breakwater which keeps the currents of the Caribbean from interfering with the Canal traffic. There were too many to count! 

This is a panoramic view.

Today we have signed up for an “optional excursion” which means we paid extra for it. We will be taking an excursion titled “Flora and Fauna of Panama”. We are hopeful to see some wildlife. The excursion left on time; our guide is Mariela. She seemed to be quite knowledgeable about her topic and quite enthusiastic. We took a bus for a bit over an hour. The drive through Colon was interesting as there are no signal lights in Colon. They tried to use them for a while, but the people didn’t like them, so they have reverted to no signals. Just stop signs. Mariela told us that accidents are rare. That may be the case, but we did see a few vehicles with evidence of having been in an accident. 

We drove through Parque Soberania. The largest National Park in Panama out of 7. The Park surrounds the Chagres River watershed. The Chagres River is what feeds the water to the Panama Canal. The River was dammed in 1913 and created Gatun Lake. Along the way to pick up our boat, the bus came to a quick halt. Our guide had spotted a 3-toed sloth in a tree right next to the road. His/her fur looked downright green. 

We stopped at a marina where our group divided into 2 boats. Off we went. As we reached the open water of the Lake, the pace increased so that we were pretty much flying across the surface. Then, we headed into the numerous islands to see what wildlife we could see. Capuchin monkeys were spotted almost immediately. The guides had brought along fruit to entice the monkeys to come down to boat level. They were happy to do this. Obviously, they see lots of tourists. Off again to look for more. All in all, we also saw howler monkeys, tamarind monkeys, another sloth, this one two-toed. A bit of trivia: sloths are related to armadillos and anteaters. 

After our tour on the water, we returned to the marina and spotted a crocodile on the opposite side of the marina. 

This photo is actually of a 2-toed sloth. How anyone spots these, I've no idea as they blend in so well.

Kind of a round blob right in the middle.          >>>>>

Of course, we had hoped to see a little more wildlife, but were entirely satisfied with our excursion. 

We decided to try a different venue for dinner. We had reservations at Manfredi’s. This is an Italian specialty restaurant. We thoroughly enjoyed our meal and look forward to going back. 

Signing off for another day. Tomorrow, we transit the Canal.