A view of modern Cartegena from the sea
When we arrived by ship (Azamara Journey) we noticed one Cartegenga, the new one, a sprawling white city larger than Miami. That afternoon, we explored another Cartegena, with our tour guide Dora, the old walled city which is one of the best preserved and most colorful Spanish colonial cities we've ever visited in Latin America.
The colorful Spanish Colonial old city of Cartegena
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.