Cruise to the Panama Canal-Part One
We flew to Miami from Heathrow but returned into Gatwick. This wasn’t as straightforward as it sounds! At the last minute my husband had to return for an important meeting on the day we landed back into the UK and we needed to be home as soon as possible.
We drove to Gatwick the day before we went away, parked the car there for the duration of the holiday. I had arranged for our car to be brought back to the airport for us, which worked very well.
As we were short of time I arranged for a Private Chauffeur transfer from Gatwick to Heathrow. The owner of the firm collected us from the Gatwick Terminal. He was a really nice and this service offered a lovely and stress free journey. He took us to the hotel we had chosen at Heathrow. The hotel was very comfortable and was in Terminal 5. We ate in a restaurant in Terminal 5, which was a great experience.
In the morning we used the underground from Terminal 5 to Terminal 3. We ere very surprised by how comfortable and clean this it was.
We collected a car from Miami airport, this involved a long wait, as everyone else seemed to hiring cars as well. We then drove up Fort Lauderdale for a couple of nights. We explored the area around Miami and Fort Lauderdale before returning the car.
We used the hotel’s shuttle service to go the Everglades Port for our cruise and settled in for the 10 days in the Caribbean Sea and to see the Panama Canal.
Choosing the Second Sitting for our meals, we were on a table of ten guests. There were several different nationalities, including Canadians and Americans. It was a very noisy group but hilarious. Our waiter was lovely and his assistant Edith had the biggest smile. Nothing was too much trouble for them.
The first port we were to come to was Aruba. We were at sea for two days, so we relaxed completely and roamed the ship to find out where everything was.
The Dutch influence in Aruba is very strong. The buildings are painted in colours such as pink and pale blue with white surrounds. These houses wouldn’t have looked out of place on old fashioned chocolate box, which used to feature such scenes as cottages with gardens filled with flowers or a dramatic coastal view. Coming from the cold weather in the UK, being April, we did become a little sunburnt walking back to the ship.
Our next port of call was Cartagena, Columbia. An old Spanish city, a bit faded but the buildings are still quite grand. We did a tour of the city in a small local mini bus. My husband said he had a really good cup of coffee here, well they are known for their coffee.
The next day we travelled to the Panama Canal, the highlight of our cruise and the reason we were there. The ship which has a large cinema screen had been giving us lots of information about the building of the Canal and the previous try by a Frenchman which had been disastrous. So many people died due to the infections spread by mosquitoes, especially Yellow Fever and also to a lesser extent Malaria. Fortunately someone discovered the causes and went to work to change the situation, so these diseases are no longer a problem. Panama now are building a larger canal as so many ships are so much bigger nowadays and are not able to go through the canal.
We didn’t go all the way through the Canal to the Pacific. Very early in the morning we went through the two canals which take you through to the Gatun Lake. We decided to stay on the ship and watched the people who did leave pile into the tenders and go the short distance to the shore.
We then cruised described as Scenic Cruising around the Lake Gatun area. We saw where the original canal had been started and abandoned. There were many ships waiting on the Lake to either go to the Pacific or into the Caribbean. We sailed to the port of Colon in Panama. Continued