Puerto Quetzal – Guatemala It was a quiet day here. No tours, no plans, just get off the ship and see what was ashore. I tried for wi-fi at one of the local restaurants just outside the port area, but no luck. Someone could make a real killing here if there could provide good quality wi-fi for the tourists. Everyone is looking for it and gets pretty frustrated in the process. We ended up getting a nice silk table runner for $40US and a magnet as it was ou...

Two ports in two days, it seems we're in full swing. The captain just announced that it’s going to be 36 degrees Celsius so we’re in for a hot one. With our 09:00 a.m. arrival here in Corinto this gives us about 7 ½ hours to explore this small Nicaraguan town of about 24,000. We were here last year in November but we headed directly to the town of Leon, so we decided that we just hang in here particularly because it was going to be hotter inland,...

Costa Rica is a great country. Tourists are their greatest source of income here. Over 2,000,000 tourists visit Costa Rica a year and spend over two (2) BILLION dollars. The tourist trade is still ahead of coffee and pineapples that they export, but they're still not ahead of the dollars generated from high-tech – one example, Intel employs over 2,500 people at just one of their plants here in C.R. The Costa Rican government is on the leading edge in terms...

Deb and I attended a lecture on the Panama Canal that was held by Charles McClelland, a professor of Washington University who had spent his formative years growing up in and around the Panama Canal. He covered a lot of interesting facts that I thought I'd recap here, as there's basically very little else happening on sea days other than my poker tournaments. As a special note to Vince – I’ve competed in two and chopped for the win both times –...

It's Day 5 onboard the Westerdam, Wednesday, April 15th so only 15 days to go until we hit Vancouver. With all the news reports of crime and wide-swept drug issues, our tour of Cartagena was actually a welcome surprise. It’s a city of about 1.4 million people in a country that tops out at about 48 million. We found Cartagena to be very well kept – the streets were clean and smooth (this is important when walking – just one turned ankle today) bu...