Getting up before 7am on a sea day feels very wrong. It was though the only way to visit the onboard zoo, a temporary early morning exhibit for just one day. The day’s schedule had it listed as Towel Animal Zoo. I went along, expecting a table lined with examples of the towel animals left […]

I saw Cartegena this morning. We were still at sea, 90 minutes from scheduled arrival, probably only an hour out, but the city is tall and obvious even at that sort of distance. It put me off trying to fight through traffic and time constraints to actually see it. Unfair perhaps, the old town area […]

The Panama Canal is terribly named. It’s a big artificial lake with locks at both ends. The lake is full of pretty islands, thick trees on all of them, rare beaches in amongst the banks cleared bear by bow waves. It’s quite pretty. I suspect it’s even prettier if you’re able to get closer in, […]

My final day in the Pacific Ocean was spent mostly hiding from it. The clocks went forward and the only ship activity I wanted to join was at 9am so I headed to the theatre with just four hours sleep, found out that we’re getting just three hours in Cartagena once you allow for rush […]

Guatemala and Nicaragua were outdone by Costa Rica in one aspect. In a tourist town, where nationals of the country holiday, easy access to amenities, likely low unemployment, regular wealthy visitors, everybody lives behind bars. Every single house had bars on the windows, bars on the doors, bars on the patio, bars on the porch. […]

Costa Rica is pretty. That was obvious the moment I stepped off the ship, looked across the bay, saw the clouds on the mountains. That’s a landscape. The ship was scheduled to arrive at 8am but as we left Nicaragua the captain had announced he expected to arrive at 7am. I had a lie-in, only […]

Nicaragua has fewer volcanoes than Guatemala but more of them are active and one of those went pop yesterday. I found this from the guide on the bus, which took us through far more interesting sights than yesterday’s bus. The tour guide kept interrupting himself to look at it through the window, tell us, “That […]

Back at the meeting point, a jade museum, I had a chance to chat with the lady from Bradford. She taught English before moving to Mexico to become a Governess for a former president of Mexico, then moved to Guatemala when she got married. She’s very interested in Mayan history and culture, told me I […]

Coffee, disembarkation, bus. Five minutes later the faint outline of a volcano appears through the dust in the air. An hour after leaving the port we’re still driving towards it. There are several volcanoes visible, out of 38 in Guatemala, four of which are active. This is one of them. Last year it destroyed a […]

Santa Cruz and La Crucesita are both Mexican resort towns, but targeting Mexican holidaymakers not American ones. You can tell the difference: It’s all far more relaxed, the food is better and there aren’t pharmacies every 20 yards selling generics to people living with a broken healthcare system. They also exposed the hidden third side […]