Azamara Journey Cruise and Pacific Costa Rica Trip

The Azamara Journey after spending the day passing through the Panama Canal from the Caribbean/Atlantic to the Pacific

We recently took a cruise on Azamara Journey. Our trip started with a night in South Beach Miami, where we embarked a newly refurbished Azamara Journey on Sunday, February 7 for a cruise to Cartegena, Colombia through the Panama Canal and into Panama City, Panama.

Modern Cartegena Columbia  

Our cruise took us north along the Pacific Coast of Costa Rica. We called on Golfito, a former banana plantation, on the Golfo Dulce, and sailed into Quepos, the jumping off point for Manual Antonio National Park and dozens of deep sea fishing charter boats. We ourselves jumped off Journey a day early in Quepos to travel back to the Osa Peninsula for a 5 night stay at LaPaloma lodge in Drake Bay. We had always wanted to visited the Corcovado National Park, and had been less than thrilled with how habituated the wild animals were in Manual Antonio, so leaving while leaving our new friends on the Journey a day early was sad, we loved the wildness of Corcovado NP and Drake Bay!

Fabulous flora in Costa Rica at the Casa Oraquideas Botanical Gardens in Golfo Dulce

Over the next few weeks, I'll post a variety of trip reports for each port and our time in Costa Rica...will they be interesting? I don't know, not much happened, except marauding monkeys, a little civil unrest, getting invited to salsa with a hot Latin dancer, getting doors repeatedly slammed in our faces- by spiders and, oh yeah, a small earthquake. (But note that we never encountered an actual mosquito, much less one infected with Zika!) I hope you'll enjoy reading our reports, and seeing Jeff's photos.

Azamara Journey Post Dry Dock

Having the opportunity to sail aboard the Azamara Journey on her second run from Miami post Dry Dock. The ship looks lovely...here are some shots Jeff took around the ship! Everything looks fresh and there are still folks on board putting the finishing touches on various venues around the ship. We've also got photos of a regular verandah cabin on deck 7.  

Boarding the Azamara Journey

Azamara Journey docked in Miami  

Welcome aboard champagne

Deck 5 Discoverers  Lounge  

Discoverers lounge

Casino

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Discoverers  lounge

Discoveries dining room

Art work in the guest relations lobby

Stairwell art work (deck 7-8)  

Pool Deck 9

Pool deck 9

Miami from the Azamara

The Drawing Room

Entrance to Aquilina

The Living Room, a beautiful raw wood conference/card table

The Living Room

A typical balcony cabin deck 7

The bath in a balcony cabin

New bedding and headboard

Love seat

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Desk/Vanity area

The verandah  

For  a copy of the Azamara Journey daily schedule Pursuits click here.

To read our review of this trip on Cruise Critic click here.

Looking Forward 2016

Looking Forward 2016

Here's a hint to one of our adventures in late October...and a rare sighting of our photographer!

So what's up for 2016? 

January: Portland ME &  Burlington VT

The Spirit of Ethan Allen rests on Lake Champlain for the winter, but there is plenty going on Burlington VT in the winter!

Sometimes family business takes you places, sometimes business-business takes you places. I think what distinguishes the people I know who seem to always have adventures in travel from people who have to go on business trips,  is that they have the unique ability to see every trip (no matter how mundane it might seem) as an adventure.  We try to travel that way too, and turned two recent trips, one to Portland ME for a wedding and one to Burlington VT for family business into mini adventures.  Some places might not seem very interesting when your boss sends you someplace that doesn't involve swaying palm trees, but really, every place has things that make it interesting!  The key to making a business trip an adventure is trying to find those things that make a place unique and doing the things that locals do and enjoying them! 

February: Azamara Cruise through Panama Canal and Costa Rica

A traditional colorful oxcart in Costa Rica

February's adventure's  will start with an Azamara Journey cruise from Miami through the Panama Canal to Costa Rica.  We are excited to take our first cruise on Azamara, especially since it just launched form a complete refurbishment yesterday!  Azamara recently Facebook posted out several photos of the "re-imagined" ship, and I'm looking forward to our cruise.  (see their post here) With upgraded internet on board, I'm looking forward to exploring the ship myself and to posting and tweeting live!  Our cruise was booked with one of our favorite travel agencies, Travel Beyond, who are unfailingly patient with us and our very specific requests when planning trips in Africa and Latin America.  

Our itinerary starts in Miami, with a weekend in South Beach, and then a few sea days to explore the ship.  We will arrive in Cartegenga, Colombia and have arranged a privately guided group to explore one of South and Latin America's best preserved Spanish colonial cities. After another day at sea, we will approach the Panama Canal from the Caribbean to the Pacific.  Once we arrive in Panama City, we have another private tour guide engaged to take us around the city and travel out to see the new locks. (those new Panamax locks were scheduled to open in 2016, but problems have pushed that back).  After leaving Panama City, our cruise goes to Costa Rica, where we will explore the Golfo Dulce and Golfito with an independent tour arranged through Costa Rica Expeditions.  After disembarking, we will spend 4 days on the Osa Peninsula exploring Corcovado National Park and the beautiful Pacific Ocean. We visited Costa Rica in 2007, but did not get an opportunity to explore this part of the country, and we look forward to sharing a full report when we get back! (2007 Costa Rica Trip Reports here) (and here)

February/March: Florida

Bird life in Southwest Florida is always fascinating!

Family business once again takes me to Florida. I'll find a way to make visits with relatives and friends interesting and hope to share more information about the area, especially the wonderful opportunities to bike, hike, kayak and bird watch!

May: Niagara Falls?

More family business!?  Yup, this time moving a student out of an apartment in upstate New York.  There are plenty of interesting places to explore, but I hope to steal a few days to see Niagara Falls and post a trip report here. 

June: Europe?

Students with time to travel in the summer, might send us to Great Britain. 

With college students free to travel in the summer, I am trying to make some plans to go to Europe, but trying to get college students to plan ahead is like trying to catch smoke!  I'm hopeful I can travel with the young folks, then set them free on the continent to explore while I do some writing about what Europe looks like this summer. Will it be quiet with folks staying home because of terror threats, or will it become a bustling bargain this summer?  I hope to "go see" for myself!

July/August/September:  Maine

Maine blueberry barrens

I always enjoying sharing about the state of Maine!  (despite not being a native, you could say I'm a Maine-iac!) Jeff's photographs only hint at the beauty of this far north state.  In the summer the days are long, and light is perfect...we will post plenty of photos and share some of our favorite people (GoSeeIt People) and places!  

October/November Churchill, Manitoba

Did you guess it?

For his birthday this year,  I surprised Jeff with a bucket list trip to Churchill in Canada to see and photograph the polar bears.  I  worked with Expedition Trips to plan a Natural Habitat Polar Bear Adventure. Expedition Trips is on Wendy Perrins WOW list, (which if you need a specialist travel agent, is a great place to start!) and we are working with ET because we have a couple of polar adventures on our wander list, and we hope to get comfortable with this travel agent before planning much longer trips to the Arctic and Antarctica. It's not often I get to surprise Jeff, and it's even less often I get HIM in front of the camera!  We really look forward to this trip, and hope to share some amazing photos of polar bears, dog sledding and maybe even northern lights!

It's an ambitious plan- and you know what they say about plans- we make them and God laughs! But without plans, it's too easy to forget to make every day an adventure, no matter where we find ourselves! Happy Travels!

In addition to regularly adding Trip Reports and Planning and Packing Tips and opinion (Just Thinking Out Loud) pieces, one big goal for 2016 is to engage more with readers and make content easier to search and access.  It means learning a little better how to organize content and connect with folks on Square Space (our site host)  and testing to make sure it works!! I also plan to continue digging into the archives to post past trip reports. And I plan to increase our GoSeeIt, People! interviews to one per month. (our first one was our friends Lisa's New Years Eve in NYC. Contact us if you've been somewhere neat or done something cool, or live somewhere interesting (And remember, I think ALL places are interesting!) in other words, we would LOVE to interview you!!