A lazy at sea day today. For something different I went to the small cafe near the spa for breakfast & it was much calmer than the buffet. I had a runny Bircher muesli & an 'energiser' smoothie, then Sean joined me at the coffee shop for drinks & muffins. We went to a talk by the 2nd engineer about how the ship moves at 10.30 but he wasn't a very good speaker just reading off the slides & changed them very quickly so we were soon out of there rela...

Our plan for today was to go back to the old city & explore a little more & hopefully buy some nice souvenirs. We walked out through the birds & shop once again then walked right out of the exit as the official taxis at the port were $20USD each way!! At the gate we managed to get one for $10 although as we only had a $20 note & he only had peso change I think it was a little over $11. Dropped at the clock tower entrance to the old city we firstly...

Not arriving into Cartagena until 10am we had a leisurely morning and head off to explore around 11am. We had thought we would do the hop on hop off bus which I had looked at the website for yesterday, they had a port loop on cruise days for $30USD which was supposed to be a 2 day ticket. Today however the ticket was $39USD & was only for 1 day. My bargain radar was not happy so we decided to continue to the terminal, which had a tropical garden & boardwa...

Another shore excursion this morning to see the Panama Canal. Onto the bus around 8.30 we firstly went to see the new canal section which was apparently 97% complete and would take much larger ships. The viewing area was well laid out but it was just like looking at a big concrete hole, although the movie they showed gave a bit of information about the expansion as well as history on the original canal. Upon leaving we had to drive across one of the new lock gate...

We had a fairly early tour organised for this morning so had to be up & in the theatre by 8am. Herded onto buses our first stop after a short drive through the usual rundown, mangy dog, tropical Central American suburbia was a banana plantation. Being on a bus load of oldies it took forever for everyone to get off, then back on the bus. We got the quick explanation about how quickly bananas grow & saw the runner drag in a row of banana bunches along a met...