Today was another day at sea. The seas had calmed down, so the ship wasn’t rocking much at all. I spent a lot of time playing ping-pong, swimming, and playing chess (sound familiar). I played one guy who was really good (at least compared to me) rated ~1500. I’m doing well to stay above 1100.

I also tried to help Alex and Eric become better at chess. Hopefully I taught them OK.

Today we were at sea. I had a lot of fun, but it isn’t very interesting to write about. I woke up pretty late, but I spent the day swimming and playing ping pong and chess. The waters were a bit rough, but not too bad throughout the day.

This evening was formal night. I dressed up all nice in my suit and tie.

Today we were in Puerto Limon, Costa Rica. We disembarked and met our guide. He took us on a short tour of Puerto Limon by car on the way to the zipline. He talked about some of the interesting sites in Puerto Limon and described some of the culture of the city. One interesting fact is that Puerto Limon is the largest port city on the Atlantic side of Costa Rica.

Today we transited the Panama Canal. I’m going to first describe what we did and then give you some of the interesting facts that we learned about the Panama Canal.

What we did

Our boat arrived at the Atlantic side of the canal at about 07:00. They opened the bow for people to go outside and watch the transit. We got a pretty good place at the front of the boat.

Today we were in Cartegena, Columbia. We only had a couple of hours in the city because tomorrow we are going to the Panama Canal and we need to be “in line” at the canal pretty early in the morning.

Our guide met us at the cruise terminal and took us around the city. Our first stop was at the main fortress: Castillo San Felipe de Barajas.

Today we were at sea. I didn’t wake up until late morning, having been up late the last night being miserable because of New Years celebrations.

I spent the day (or what was left of it) swimming, playing ping-pong, and soccer.

Dinner was as usual and we went to play trivia after the show. The assistant cruise director, Alia, runs the trivia and she makes it really fun. She’s even learned my name from the ping-pong tournaments! We’ve been going to trivia when we can, I normally get one or two of the questions, but most of it is about the Beatles and other things that old people know about.

Today we were in Curacao, and our tour started at 08:00. The tour today was a tour in the back of pickup trucks which they had put seats and a canopy in. We went offroad for most of the day and since it had just rained, we got pretty muddy.

We started by going over the large bridge in Curacao, Queen Juliana Bridge. This bridge goes over the harbour entrance. Curacao is a major port island. It’s harbour is really good and it has an international airport with direct flights to the Netherlands and other countries every day. Curacao and Aruba are actually Dutch islands, an EU island just miles off the coast of South America. Curacao has a large refinery which refines oil coming in from Venezuela and then exports it to the rest of the world.

Today we were in Aruba, but we didn’t arrive until late morning. I woke up late, so by the time I got upstairs, the daily ping pong tournament had begun. I participated, then I ate breakfast with the Normandeau’s, Alex and Eric’s family.

Then I played a bit more ping pong (you’re probably seeing a pattern here) and then ate lunch. At this point we’d arrived in Aruba, and it was time to get off the boat for our tour: an ATV tour of the island.

Since we were at sea today with nothing in particular to do, I slept in quite a bit. I woke up and went upstairs and ate breakfast and then played in the ping pong tournament. I am decent at ping pong, but there are some really good players on this cruise, so I’m happy when I win a game before losing.

This morning we arrived on a private island owned by Holland America Line (HAL) called Half Moon Cay. We arrived at around 8:00, during breakfast.

We disembarked fairly early, so not many people had gotten off the boat yet. We began by walking around on the paths around the island. We came across a garden and the gardener called us in to give us a tour. He was very nice and talkative. He explained all of the various plants and trees that were growing in the garden. One interesting plant was the Seven-Year Apple which produces apples (duh) but it takes seven years per apple! We continued walking and saw some horses and then we went out to the beach.