Panama Canal 20-day Cruise 2025
Sunday and Monday, October 26 and 27
This coast has a lot of mountains. When we were leaving Cabo San Lucas Saturday evening, I stood on our balcony and took a video of the lights of all the boats in the bay playing loud music. It sounded like a carnival. There was even a boat playing oom-pah-pah music. That evening,we watched a movie called Last Breath about a deep sea diver.
Sunday, the ship docked in Puerto Vallarta at around noon, backing into our mooring spot for quite a ways. The cruise dock was quite far from the main touristy part of town (except for the Walmart visible from our room), so we didn’t get off the ship. A few years ago, we had spent a week in Puerto Vallarta and had already explored back then. I spent the day on the pool deck and in the pool. I kept seeing a few of these birds flying around our ship so I took a photo of them to try to identify them later. After supper, we saw a very funny New York comedienne, then a show with magic and comedy.
This morning, we docked at 7 am in Manzanillo, where we went walking around and took some photos. The dock is close to the historic part of the city, so it has very small buildings crowded together along narrow, sometimes very steep streets. I melted in the 30 degree heat and 85% humidity. We reboarded the ship where I stayed in the Observation Lounge. Norbert ventured off again to go visit a church that hadn’t been open when we past earlier. Today, I’ll lounge the rest of the day on our balcony since it is not in the sun and the humidity dropped a bit to 75%. Even though it is now 31 degrees outside, and stepping out onto the balcony feels like getting into a sauna, it seems a little more bearable now.
Panama Canal 20-day Cruise 2025
Friday and Saturday, October 24 and 25
Friday was a sea day and I mostly slept. In the evening I watched a movie - Jaws. Maybe that wasn't such a smart choice since the following day I was going to go on a sail boat. The previous day, Thursday, in Los Angeles, Norbert and I just walked around. We could see Los Angeles from our balcony. It was sunny and about 21 degrees. We walked to a marina through a park and took some photos of the marina that had a military museum ship, loading cranes and a huge bridge. Almost every single person we walked passed said hello, not like the previous two cities.
Today, Saturday, we arrived in Cabo San Lucas at about eleven AM. There is no dock so to get ashore we had to board tender boats. I had booked an excursion called luxury day sail. I got to sit in the front -actually ON the front of the 53 ft Beneteau sailboat. There were only about a dozen passengers. We used the motor to get out to the Pacific side of Cabo and then they raised the sails and we were wind powered for over an hour. It was fun. To change directions, the passengers on the top of the boat had to lie down so that the front sail (jib or Spinnaker?) could swing over us to go the the other side. They served us drinks and a lunch. Since Norbert didn’t come with me, I had a double sized snack for myself. It was all my favorite: Caesar salad, pico de gallo crab salad, tortilla chips, guacamole and fruits spears. I ate almost all of it - that was also supper! I tried alcohol, which some of you know I’ve been reacting to in the past few years. I had a small mimosa and one and a half margueritas and felt ok. To protect from sunburn, I had a longsleeved, white sunshirt on and tons of reef friendly sunscreen but it was 28 degrees, no clouds, light winds and 80% humidity, so at the end of the 2 plus hours, I was cooked! Even the wind was hot. Once back on the cruise ship, I had a cooling shower and dessert - ice cream! Tomorrow we reach Puerto Vallarta.
Panama Canal 20-day Cruise 2025
Wednesday and Thursday, October 22 and 23
Wednesday was another sea day as we sailed from San Francisco to Los Angeles. It was about 20 degrees, but the sun was quite warm. I actually had the energy to do a walk/jog around the track on deck 17. It is also the hot tub/sun deck overlooking the pools so there were lots of people wandering around on the ‘track’ area so I had to play dodge the passengers. I lasted about 45 minutes, then I donned my swimsuit, sat in a hot tub and tried to cool off in the pool. I only realized that the main pool had salt water in it when I dunked my head- something I almost never do but I was going to shower afterwards anyway. The pool water temperature was extremely comfortable if not cool enough to be refreshing. Even the pre/post pool and hot tub shower water was warm. The shallowest depth of that pool was barely enough for me to tough the bottom so I found it difficult to keep standing when the ship was moving the pool water so much, especially since one is more buoyant in salt water. (Btw: Sea state was only 3 that day! - see below for explanation)
We began the cruise with about 1300 passengers in Seattle, 800 more boarded in San Francisco and another 1700 are supposed to board today. It was definitely a quieter ship for the first two days, and the past two days have been busier. We’ll see how it is with the ship almost to capacity with passengers.
From what I can see from our balcony, Los Angeles is a huge, busy city.
Impressions of Seattle, Rough Seas and San Francisco
How to chose a hotel in a city. In the case of Seattle, I chose the Belltown Inn because of its location. Yes: Location, Location, Location! It just happens that it’s motto is “Walk to everything”. It was indeed possible to walk to everywhere we needed to go although I don’t think it was a very posh side of the city. There were people sleeping on every street we walked along, but it was an area where the city seemed to encourage walking. Some streets were closed to all motor vehicles, which used to mean bicycles were allowed but nowadays even bicycles have motors and can be quite dangerous as they zip by quietly. Our guide for the Beneath the Streets tour stated that even though there are many street people, “they are only a harm to themselves.” None of them spoke to us, they seemed to be in their own world, speaking only to voices in their heads. I did not feel especially unsafe. Even the huge demonstration we found ourselves in the middle of was very peaceful and I did not feel unsafe.
Sea state 5 - rough seas. We had never experienced that state - I think, except for maybe in the Gulf of Mexico once as we were headed back to New Orleans at the end of a Caribbean cruise, but that was only during an afternoon. During that one, the pool water was sloshing from one end to the other about a metre high. This cruise was different in that the rough seas lasted for two whole days. I had looked it up and it said that the wave heights are between 2.4 and 4 metres, or 7.9 to 13 feet! As we were cruising, in our stateroom, I was hearing a banging in the bathroom wall. When I checked it out, it was the wooden hangers in our closet swinging and hitting the wall and the wooden closet door. The ship was creaking constantly and, in the shower, the water would slosh from one side to the other, only draining when it sloshed towards the wall drain. My pencil rolled from one end of the desk to the other. The ship was rolling, so that when you are in bed, it’s like you are in a hammock swinging slightly. So far, I have never been seasick. I hope that continues.
We had great weather in San Francisco. It was a little foggy in the morning over the bridges but by the time we got docked, it had become a sunny 20 degrees Celsius with a slight wind that got stronger closer to the water. Wherever we walked the streets were very clean and felt very safe. We did not see anyone sleeping on the street although there was one character on a super-blinged-up motorized wheel chair scooting back and forth in front of Fishermans Warf playing a recording of seagull honks and a message saying ‘I am Jesus and no one recognizes me’. I saw the fanciest ceramic chess set in a window and an ingenious idea to paint a stair case like piano keys. In the evening, the city lights made for very pretty photos.
Today, another full day at sea, the seas state is 3 - I don’t have much Internet so I can’t check what that means, but we have a head wind so the apparent wind is 37 knots, very windy. It’s so windy that even with our balcony door closed, the wind whistling sounds like a horror movie or a crazed loon.
Panama Canal 20-day Cruise 2025
Saturday to Tuesday, October 19-21
It was a fairly grey and drizzly afternoon on Saturday. Stepping out of the hotel, we were treated to a marching protest right along Third Avenue. We walked for about 25 minutes to catch a tour of the Seattle underground called Beneath the Streets. It was a super interesting tour. I had no idea that Seattle had been very hilly with First Avenue being about 12 feet lower, low enough that the tide water went up the street. Sometimes in the early 1890’s, they eventually decided to raise the Streets by building big concrete walls on either side of the street in front of all the buildings and their sidewalk areas. They then began to fill in the space between the walls by shooting a water cannon into the hills higher up the slope and letting the water carry the soil and rocks downhill. Once the street was completed, they built a sidewalk above it by putting metal beams from the top of the wall to the buildings. The space between the wall and the building, under the new sidewalk, was then a space owned by the building and sounded like an ideal place for some illegal activities during prohibition.
The tour lasted over an hour and when we headed back to our hotel, we were stopped, like the traffic, by the demonstration that had gotten HUGE. We waited for it to pass so we could cross the street, but there seemed to be no end in sight, so we respectfully walked carefully through. We found out it was a No Kings peaceful demonstration against the Trump administration. The number of people participating was estimated at 90,000. Traffic was stopped for a while and we saw at least an entire block of busses stopped.
Sunday was embarcation day. As we left our hotel, we could see our ship at the pier. All procedures went well and we left the pier at 4 pm. We were sitting in the observation lounge right at the front of the ship watching the ship heading forward, out of Seattle Harbour. Finally.
Monday was a day at sea. The sea state was categorized as 5 or ‘rough seas’ for those two days. I looked it up and found out that it means the wave heights were between, 2.5 to 4 metres. We were rocking and rolling all day and night. I slept very well but it made walking a little difficult. We saw some shows with excellent singers at the theatre. At night, I tried to spot the comet but our ship has so much light and mist and steam that we could barely see any stars at all. Oh well. I left our balcony door open a bit each night. The wind was blowing in the same direction that we were travelling so the apparent wind was just us going faster that the wind a few km per hour.
Tuesday morning at 10:40 we sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco and sailed right past Alcatraz. We were docked by noon. Norbert and I intended to go walking a bit in the city, but had no real plans. We then took out the map and I spotted a really crooked street within walking distance so we went there. Turns out that this was indeed the famous Lombard Street that has a steep one-block section with eight hairpin turns. Our picture doesn’t really show much but we did see it. We walked back via Fisherman’s Warf noticing tall skinny houses all attached together along the super steep streets. One street looked like the one in the movie “Inside Out”.
Panama Canal 20-day Cruise 2025
Saturday, October 18,
We arrived in Seattle yesterday for our understandably obligatory 2-day-prior-to-sailing (without sails) arrival to port. We are retired. Retirement is defined as “having concluded one’s working career.” In my jobs, meetings were a necessary thing to get my other work done. I did a quick inventory of our summer and understood why I was feeling tired. For an introvert, meetings, however productive and enjoyable, do take energy rather than give energy. In the last 20 weeks, I (and Norbert for the most part) had 2.5 full days of meetings, 3 full days of helping to facilitate conferences, 6 trips (3 that required flights, 2 camping trips and 1 road trip), and 6 days of hosting a visitor from Montreal. Not including the conference nor the 2.5 days of meetings, there were 27 other meetings during that time. I also caught colds 4 times and joined the Y and overdid the exercises in the first 2 weeks. Ok, I can be tired. RE - tired. (Tired over again, not the car tire type haha.) This cruise will be a vacation! I will allow myself to sleep all day if I want.
We just happened to be in Seattle for the Toronto Blue Jays’ fifth game in the ALCS (American League Championship Series) against the Seattle Mariners yesterday. The baseball park is visible in the skyline on the right of our selfie below. It was a very pleasant, sunny afternoon so we walked around the waterfront and the pier close to our hotel. The atmosphere was very festive with public markets selling lots of fresh fish and flowers etc. We saw lots of people wearing Blue Jays jerseys. Unfortunately, the Mariners had two home run hitters that scored all their runs, otherwise the Blue Jays would have won. The next game(s) are in Toronto.
Being on the ocean means no internet unless you use the ship’s very expensive service which is calibrated by the minute. I will be writing offline and posting when we get to a port when I can. Tomorrow morning at 9 am-ish we’ll walk out carry-on type luggage the 5 blocks downhill to the pier to begin our boarding. This will be our first time on the Norwegian Encore, a beast of a ship 1094 ft long carrying almost 4000 passengers and 1700+ crew. We leave Seattle at 4 pm tomorrow headed for San Francisco. Our first day will be one entirely at sea. Time for rest…
