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.

This morning we woke up and ate at the hotel. We took a shuttle from the hotel to the cruise terminal. Our driver was a New Yorker and was really funny.

Cruise check in was fairly painless, and we got onto the boat at around 12:15. Our ship is the Zuiderdam, a Holland America Line ship. It is the sister ship of the Noordam, the ship we went on on our first cruise in 2012. It was a transatlantic cruise to Europe (see Transatlantic Cruise).

We are going on another trip! Today we left for Ft. Lauderdale, Florida where we will start our 12-day cruise!

Our flight didn’t leave until 4:15, so we were able to finish packing up all of our stuff this morning. Our trip to the airport and flight were uneventful. In Ft. Lauderdale, it took a long time for the shuttle to the hotel to show up, we had to wait for over an hour! We did make it to the hotel though, and we are extremely tired so we are going to bed. Tomorrow should be more interesting.