We finally reached our first port of call at Santa Marta, Colombia around 8am. Since our HAL tour didn't require us to be at the meeting point until 8:45, we enjoyed a leisurely breakfast before heading for the Showroom at Sea.
Our HAL tour 'Santa Marta Highlights' was excellent. We first visited Simon Bolivar square, the Cathedral, and the museum before driving out to the ranch where Simon Bolivar died in 1830. The trip concluded with a stop at a hotel for a folkloric dance presentation.
After we were dropped off at the ship we immediately caught the shuttle bus from there to the port gate which was no more than a 2 minute drive. At the gate none of the personnel could tell us the time of the last shuttle although we knew the onboard time was 4:30pm. We walked the sidewalk along the beach taking photos and eventually stopped at Ricky's (a Venezuelan restaurant) where we had an excellent shrimp ceviche, fish soup and salad and used their WIFI. We always try to eat off the ship as the food tastes on the ship are for us pretty bland. We then walked around the area surrounding Simon Bolivar square. It was a bustling place, but with lots of construction.
Back at the port we stopped to use their WIFI, but we ended up using ours as it was faster. I carry a portable WIFI device called GlocalMe and data in this part of the world is only 3 cents per megabyte (that's really cheap).
Back on board just before 4:30pm, I headed up to the Crow's Nest to watch the sail away and Angela joined me later. The sail away was quick and pretty and I then went down to dinner in the Lido where I enjoyed dinner with another passenger, Larry, whom we've sailed with previously. I was also able to show him some iPhone camera tricks. Angela wasn't hungry so she didn't join us.
After dinner I went to the EXC chat session hosted by KK Robbins where she talked about the format and timing of the events and took questions. As a guest, I wasn't very satisfied with some of her answers as were a number of other guests. We are definitely guinea pigs for this EXC experiment. A big issue that came up was the lack of credible maps for the independent traveler (many of us have had this complaint for many years) followed by scheduling major talks during times many of us are off the ship. In her answers, she came across as very 'corporate' which was a disappointment.
The main stage entertainment was a very funny comedian, Andrew Kennedy. He poked good fun at KK who had just given a spiel about how everyone did not need to get off the ship at noon tomorrow at what could be a 1 hour visit at the San Blas Islands. Plus he did a routine on how various presidents would sound as 'Captain' of the ship.
We finished up the evening watching two movies on the making of the Panama Canal. If someone 15 years ago would have said to me, ' Tim, in your lifetime you'll cross the Panama Canal 3 times!' I would have thought them to be crazy! But it's about to happen a couple of days. Stay tuned.
No comments:
Post a Comment