Category: Central America

The Other Antigua

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When we think of Antigua, we usually think of the Caribbean island, but there are in fact three others. Two of them are small towns, one in Australia and one in the Canary Islands. The subject of today’s tour is the ancient city of Antigua in Guatemala. Founded in 1543 as Santiago de los Caballeros,…

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Birding in a Tainted Paradise

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The next stop in our Panama Canal cruise, after leaving Panama, was Puntarenas, Costa Rica. We had booked something called Tárcoles River: An Eco Adventure, one of eleven different excursions available at this port of call. It is promoted as Jungle Crocodile Safari, which is a bit of a misnomer. But they also promote it…

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Monkey Watch

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Monkey Watch was one of the excursion options on our recent Panama Canal cruise. The tour left from the pier at Panama City, after we had transited the canal itself. Panama has a large harbor but it is not set up to accommodate cruise ships so we took one of the tenders to get to…

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Transiting the Panama Canal

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The Panama Canal was listed as one of the Seven Wonders of the Industrial World in a BBC miniseries produced in 2003. A marvel of engineering, the story behind it is truly incredible. Almost everyone has heard of it, but few know much about it. We had the privilege of taking a cruise from Fort…

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Our Panama Canal Cruise

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One of the things on our bucket list was to take a cruise through the Panama Canal.  On Nov. 15 we did just that. It was a sixteen day cruise that left from Fort Lauderdale, traversed the Panama Canal, and ended up in Los Angeles. There were six ports-of-call along the way. Our ship was…

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