Our vacation of a lifetime (minus the sniffles)

Since our last newsletter, we have quintupled the number of foreign countries we have visited and scratched another state off our to-do list of travel plans. That’s what happens when you don’t do a lot of globe hopping and suddenly find yourself on a once-in-a-lifetime trip with multiple ports of call. Our Princess Cruise to Central America and the Panama Canal was an exciting peek at other cultures we rarely think about, let alone have the opportunity to experience in person.

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UR TRIP ABOARD the Coral Princess departed from San Francisco on Sunday, Nov. 17. It was our second cruise together, and at 15 days our first of such duration. We were joined by Glenn’s brother Sean and mother Susan, without whom we likely would not have made this journey, as she invited us along and helped purchase our accommodations — a spacious balcony room on the port side of Deck 10. Our rooms were just a few yards apart in the same corridor, so for the two weeks we were on the waves we were never far from family.

We said our goodbyes to Ben and the cats, then drove to Hayward where we met up with Glenn’s dad, who had come up from Hemet with the minivan to serve as our chauffeur to Pier 27 in San Francisco. Roni had been concerned that all our luggage wouldn’t fit with five people in the van, so we had done our best to compress it into just three suitcases — a larger bag that would have to be checked on the flight home, and two carry-on suitcases we bought from Costco just for the occasion. Somehow it all made it, just barely.

Packing was a challenge because we would be heading to warmer weather than what we are used to this time of year in the Bay Area, which meant carrying sweaters and jackets amid the shorts and T-shirts. Plus the cruise included three formal nights that encourage passengers to dress in suits and evening gowns — items we would not normally bring on a leisurely vacation but now had to find room for in our limited luggage space. We would come to regret this later.

But for now, the excitement of our journey was enough. Rather than the famous fog and Bay chill we expected, San Francisco was a summery 75 degrees as Dad dropped us off at the cruise terminal and the four of us made our way through the security and check-in lines, jackets and sweaters in tow. There was barely time to grab a buffet lunch on the Lido Deck and find our staterooms before we had to check in for the mandatory safety drill and our ship cast off precisely at 5 p.m. for the start of its 11,000-mile voyage.

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HE FIRST TWO days of our trip were spent at sea, giving us lots of time to explore the ship and take in activities. We had our dinner in the Bordeaux dining room on Deck 5 so we could eat with Mom and Sean. This turned out to be a popular option for us, as it was one of the few regular occasions we found to spend time together aside from the several shore excursions we went on together. Every evening offered different selections for a fancy three-course meal, and it was hard to choose just one main course or dessert. Occasionally we didn’t.

We preferred to dine in our own group, but often we wound up eating with other travelers because it was faster than having to wait on a private table. Fortunately, most of the folks we met were friendly and interesting to talk with. We met couples hailing from Vancouver, Canada, as well as from Florida and the Bay Area. The passenger list in general was a mighty diverse group, with what we guessed was at least a third coming from other countries. For example, the couple in the cabin next to ours were from Australia, judging by their accents and choice of slang. And Princess takes great pride in hiring crew members from all over the globe, so we also were introduced to people from Britain, South Africa, Brazil, Serbia, China and Russia, to name but a few.

The one notable demographic missing on our ship was children. Perhaps it was because of the time of year or the duration of the cruise, but we could count on two hands the number of teens or younger we saw while at sea, and we feel just a tad guilty when we say it was refreshing. At one point, Roni looked around at the older crowd lounging near the pool and ambling around the dining rooms and said, “Did we just become people of a certain age?” If so, we were on the younger end of the spectrum. We did see a few couples in their 20s and early 30s, but 60s and 70s was the rule rather than the exception.

Let’s face it, cruising may be a relatively cheap way to travel, but the expenses add up fast when multiplied by two weeks. Drink packages, shore excursions and gratuities (endless gratuities) make it less likely that a young family of four could afford to go, let alone the need to coordinate school schedules with limited vacation time. So we just accepted the lack of children scurrying around the ship and splashing loudly in the pool as one of the perks of our cruise and enjoyed the odd serenity.

As for those drink packages, gratuities and other expenses we mentioned, it was helpful that we came aboard with a $250 credit we received as shareholders of Carnival Cruise Line (CCL) stock. We also got $60 from the cruise company from which Mom booked our room, and an additional $100 each from Princess as part of their standard bonus for coming aboard. You’d think they’d be paying us to come cruise with them, but don’t worry, we gave it all back and then some by the time we returned to shore!

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UR FIRST STOP was at Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. We’d been at sea for two days and were eager to get off the boat, if only for long enough to stretch our legs on land and see the sights. After all, that is what you pay for when you cruise, not just hanging out on the boat while it’s anchored in port, although that prospect seemed a bit tempting since we were still quite exhausted from our home and work routines and were only now starting to fall into vacation mode.

Somewhere during the voyage along Baja California the climate had changed from the cool seas we are used to at home to a humid warmth we had only been familiar with on our rare visits to the eastern United States. It wasn’t oppressive, but it certainly felt odd walking onto the top deck in late November and getting hit with a blast of tropical air.

Mom and Sean had booked a tour to El Arco, which is Cabo’s most noteworthy landmark — literally an arch carved out of the rocks by centuries of wave action along the Pacific Coast that is accessible only by boat. None of the shore excursions had appealed to us, so we decided we’d use this port of call as a free day to do whatever captured our fancy at the moment. We boarded one of the shore tenders and it deposited us at the dock near the city’s marina district, where there was no shortage of shops and restaurants and eager peddlers ready to sell you water taxi services to go see El Arco.

We strolled for a while along the sidewalk that traces the marina’s edge, until the intense heat caught up with us and we decided it was time to seek out something with air conditioning. We wound up at the Cabo San Lucas Dolphins center, where for around $190 you can swim with dolphins and have your photo taken with them, or for four bucks you get a can of soda and are allowed to sit in the stands and observe. Guess which one we did?

With our refreshments in hand, we walked up the concrete stairs to the show arena and grabbed a couple of folding chairs under a shade tent with a bunch of other tourists and tried our best to take pictures through the crowd as the instructors put the dolphins through their paces for the paying customers. It was a way to kill an hour, but it wasn’t anything we hadn’t already seen at somewhere like Six Flags Discovery Kingdom back home, and it certainly didn’t compare with seeing dolphins at play out in the wild — something we actually got to do one afternoon off the coast of Mexico while our cruise ship was in shallow waters, where we not only saw dolphins doing backflips but also spotted sea turtles and a stingray. We have few photos, unfortunately, so you’ll have to trust us!

By the time we’d finished at Cabo Dolphins we were ready for lunch. We checked out a couple of menus near the docks where we’d arrived, then we were literally lured to a table at Señor Frog’s, which is one of those over-the-top restaurants that caters to unsuspecting American tourists and Spring Break college kids looking for free-flowing booze in a party-like atmosphere. We watched one group of twenty-somethings engaged in a drinking game as we awaited our food, our conversation drowned out by the thundering rock music played over the outdoor sound system. A guy with a camera came around with an oversized sombrero, plopped it on our heads, then took our photos that he came back later to see if we’d buy for $24. We declined. The food was pedestrian, the portions tiny, and the bill — conveniently converted for us to U.S. dollars from Mexican pesos — too expensive, especially once we left our tip. At least we were no longer hungry.

We checked out the vendor stalls in one of the huge indoor markets, looking for magnets, T-shirts and other souvenirs. We bought a couple of small items, but eventually we had to give up because of the high pressure sales tactics the sellers used to lure customers; there was no way to window shop in peace. By then it was nearly time to head back to the ship anyway, and we’d done enough to say we’d had our fill of Cabo.

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T WAS A good thing we had taken advantage of our time ashore, because it would be three more days at sea until we reached our second port of call at San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua. This was where all those extra books we’d packed in our luggage and downloaded on our electronic devices back home would come in handy, or so we thought. We had imagined ourselves spending hours sitting on our balcony with nothing to do but surf the internet and relax to the sound of the waves going by while we sipped fruity drinks or a mug of homemade coffee. We’d gone so far as to purchase a Keurig K-mini single cup coffee brewer at Target before the trip, packing it into our suitcase along with four-dozen K-cups so we could have some variety beyond the house blend offered free onboard the ship.

That was the plan, but it didn’t really work out that way.

First of all, we’d opted for just a single internet connection to save money, meaning only one of our devices could be online at a time. This worked well enough on our four-day cruise in 2017, and we managed fine on this cruise too. But it meant less web surfing and more watching TV. The ship offered its own network of channels playing everything from recent box office movie hits to reruns of classic series like “Love Boat,” “Friends” and “Home Improvement.” 

We also discovered that sitting on the balcony could at times be uncomfortable because of the humidity. We enjoyed mixing up a batch of tea or coffee, but by the time we’d finished drinking it we were ready to retreat to the air conditioning of our cabin, only to find that it was no fun lounging on the bed because the humidity released terrible odors from the bedding. After suffering with the stench for a couple of days, we asked our cabin steward to change all the sheets and pillow cases. The problem went away for a day, only to return with a vengeance. We were beginning to worry that it was something about us, until Mom and Sean confirmed they too had experienced the odor issue.

So rather than hang out in the stuffy room, we opted to seek out other activities on the ship. We spent one night watching the movie “Aladdin” on the huge video screen on the pool deck. We took part in a workshop at the portrait studio about lighting effects and how to get the most out of your DSLR camera. There were trivia nights and game shows that we went to at the urging of our mom, as well as a live band and a musical revue with songs themed around New Orleans. Then there were times we spent in the International Lounge with Mom and Sean while they played casino games and we sat and visited.

Roni wanted to attend an art auction, so we did that one afternoon. Much like the one we’d been to on our Carnival cruise two years before, this auction included many of the same artists and starting bids much higher than anything we were likely to ante up. It was fun looking at the works of Thomas Kinkade, Peter Max, Romero Britto and the like, but it will be a long time if ever before any of their paintings grace our living room walls.

In truth, the daily schedule was so exhausting that most of the time we were too tired to do anything more — too tired to socialize, too tired for dance parties or attending more shows. Sometimes we were almost too tired to eat, not wanting to make the trek to the Horizon Court dining hall on the Lido Deck. Most nights we went to bed early, falling asleep as soon as our heads hit the pillow, only to have to wake up early the following day in order to make a scheduled shore excursion or cope with another time change as we crossed time zones and lost an hour. So all those books we brought to to keep us entertained sat mostly unread during our two weeks at sea, and then again once we returned to land.

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HEREAS THE FIRST week at sea offered lots of leisure time that we could have used to relax but didn’t, the second week promised an itinerary packed with activities at multiple ports of call. We knew the time would zoom by, and it did.

Sunday, Nov. 24, we arrived at the port city of San Juan del Sur. If someone had told us years ago that we would get to Nicaragua before we visited Canada, we probably wouldn’t have believed it, yet here we were getting ready to add only our second foreign country to our world travel list. We had booked separate shore excursions for the day because Roni was more interested in attending a cooking demonstration in the colonial city of Granada than climbing up to the mouth of a volcano like the rest of our group. The volcano tour left bright and early, so we met up in the Provence Dining Room on Deck 6 to get our group assignments for the shore tender.

Once on shore, we were quickly escorted to a waiting tour bus and began a nearly two-hour journey through the Nicaragua countryside while Eric, our tour guide, told us about the people and customs in this amazing place. We passed ramshackle houses and fields of coconut palms, bananas and sugarcane. Our bus zoomed past motorcycles and bicycles, porches where people sat and visited in the Sunday morning heat. Eric produced what must have been one of the largest papayas we’d ever seen and passed it down the aisle so everyone could hold it and pose for pictures with the massive fruit.

Our first stop was in the town of Catarina, which overlooks the banks of Laguna de Apoyo — a massive lake formed from the caldera of a long extinct volcano. Nicaragua is located in a region of heavy volcanic activity, so this came as little surprise when we learned of the lake’s origins. The tour bus dropped us off near an overlook so we could get pictures of the lake or stop at the nearby bathrooms, then we were encouraged to venture down Calle hacia El Mirador to check out the vendor stalls along the street offering local souvenirs and crafted items.

Glenn, of course, was instantly drawn to the bags of coffee for sale. He purchased two varieties for about $18, hoping there would be enough room in our luggage to bring them home on the plane. Although the local currency is the cordoba, worth about 3 cents, everyone was happy to accept our dollars — probably because they could charge more for their product once the exchange rate was factored in. Sean was more interested in the rum being sold at one of the stands, and after we all took tastes of the merchandise he bought a big bottle to take back to the ship.

From Catarina it was on to Masaya Volcano National Park, the alleged main attraction of our tour. There are five active volcanoes in the country, of which the Masaya volcano is one, having last erupted less than four years ago. Our bus followed a long, winding road up the mountain past ancient lava flows to reach the observation area at the summit. A walled walkway lets visitors get close to the rim of the Santiago crater, where if one is lucky and conditions allow, you can gaze down and see the lava inside. Having never been near an active volcano before, we were fascinated to see the steaming caldera and the rim of the new crater being formed inside, although it was very difficult to spot the lava through the clouds of sulfuric gas. Sean was the only one of us who was able to get a photo of it, and it wasn’t very easy to see even then.

For lunch we were driven to the nearby town of Granada, a splendid colonial city known for its many churches. Our tour included a free buffet at the Hotel Granada. We sat at huge, round tables in the hotel’s banquet pavilion and feasted on grilled chicken, lamb, steak, rice, salad and plantain chips. It was all delicious. Our tour guide allowed us some time afterward to walk through the downtown business district and observe people in their daily routines. Although one of the best sights to visit would have been Central Park and the Church of the Immaculate Conception, it was a bit too far to walk to in the limited time we had, and our tour guide said he wasn’t allowed to take us there this day, so this was where Roni had a leg up on our tour; she got to see the park and church during her stop in Granada.

It was already getting toward midafternoon by the time we reached our last stop, which had been promised to us earlier in the day — a beach along Lake Nicaragua in the town of El Coco with a spectacular view of two volcanic peaks. Our tour guide cautioned us before we got off the bus about the swarms of flying insects in the area, and while we don’t remember what they were called, they still made an unforgettable impression. The bugs were more of a nuisance than a danger, congregating in dense clouds that made it uncomfortable to breathe without placing a hand over your mouth to avoid accidentally inhaling them. Apparently we had arrived at the height of mating season or some such.

It was along the lake where we encountered Roni, whose culinary tour was also returning to the ship and had made a stop at the lake. There was little opportunity to compare notes, however, as soon we had to return to our bus for the ride back to San Juan del Sur, where there was a few minutes to buy some souvenirs on the dock before we caught our tender back to the Coral Princess.

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UR SHIP WASTED no time making its departure from San Juan del Sur. We had only been aboard less than half an hour when the captain made a U-turn at the edge of the bay and we headed off to sea with the setting sun. We had to make it to Puntarenas, Costa Rica, by morning. Luckily, the two ports weren’t far apart, and we were sitting at the dock by 6 a.m. the next day.

This was an odd day for us because our tour group wasn’t scheduled to depart until almost noon. We had all signed up for the same excursion, which included a train ride through the jungle and a mangrove river cruise at one of the nearby eco parks, so that gave us a rare opportunity to wake up at a normal hour and eat at our leisure rather than rush things because we were on the clock.

While we took our time, Mom and Sean took the opportunity to walk up the wharf to the downtown area of Puntarenas. We hadn’t planned to do that ourselves until Sean gave a glowing report of the souvenir items that awaited — postcards, magnets, shirts and coffee… That was all Glenn needed to hear, and he was sold.

We had a lot less time for our visit, given that we didn’t start it until about an hour before we had to catch the tour bus. Fortunately we were parked along a concrete pier today instead of having to rely on tender shuttles, so we walked down the gangway and onto the pier, which was more than half a mile long with no protection from the heat or sun. We’d neglected to wear our sunscreen, which was probably a mistake even though we didn’t suffer any visible skin damage.

In dock alongside us was the Emerald Princess, the much larger sibling of the Coral Princess. That meant double the usual number of tourists in town at once. We made efficient use of our time, checking out the booths near the pier and buying a handful of magnets and postcards. Glenn was disappointed to have not gotten a shirt from Nicaragua, so he made sure to buy one here along with another bag of coffee — this one a Costa Rica blend that the seller said his own family drinks, so clearly it must be the best. Or else he told that to everyone who came to buy coffee. There were some tasty looking restaurants offering ice cream and frozen drinks that we would have loved to try out, but time was tight and we had to get back to the ship for our tour.

Why they started the tour so late still remains a mystery to us, given the ambitious itinerary. We were to head out of town about 20 miles to a restaurant to watch a dance demonstration by some local high school kids, then take a train ride through the jungle. At the end of the line we would be shuttled to a gift shop for a snack and some shopping, then head to an eco-tourism park for a river boat ride in search of monkeys. All in about four hours. Okay, let’s do this!

Our tour guide was named David (pronounced Dav-eet) who was about 85 percent fluent in English although he still struggled a bit and wasn’t afraid to ask the tourists for help with pronunciations. He pointed out the sights as we drove through Puntarenas and talked a little about the nation’s history, including why it has no military. Considering that the country has no oil reserves, mining operations or other valuables to speak of, no enemy would want it, and so Costa Rica did away with its army in 1948.

This is not to say the nation has no crime, and while its murder rate is low relative to other Central American countries, we were nonetheless made aware by our tour guide that all the buildings we passed had bars on the doors and windows. We never felt unsafe during our visit, but maybe that’s because we were always traveling with organized tours and rarely wandering unfamiliar streets on our own.

Our first stop was at the restaurant where the high school kids were waiting to show us the traditional folk dances of the region. The boys and girls danced barefoot on the concrete floor inside an open-air dining area that was sweltering in the humidity. A few members of our tour group were invited to dance with the kids at the end of the 15-minute show, then there was time for a bathroom break and a bit of bargain hunting at the handful of craft booths that were also inside the restaurant.

When we emerged, the train was just returning from its previous excursion run and those passengers were heading to the restaurant for their turn at the dance recital. Ours was one of four tour groups this day, and because of the tight itinerary we would be the last ones to reach the jungle cruise, our tour guide told us. So we were second in line for the train ride. David had told us to forget everything we thought we knew about luxurious passenger trains, and he was right. This one was a consist of two restored passenger coaches attached to a caboose and pulled by a small diesel locomotive reclaimed from an abandoned freight service. The tracks the train rose on were ancient but still serviceable.

We trundled along into the jungle and passed dozens of homes nestled near the tracks. Children waved and ran out to greet us, many asking for money. David had asked us to ignore their pleas so as not to encourage their behavior and endanger them if they ran onto the tracks. This was an impoverished, rural area with lots of farms growing tropical fruits and people using carts. We noted that there was quite a bit of garbage strewn among the foliage and stuck in the swampy waters along the roadbed.

A few miles later, the train came to a stop in an industrial area and we piled back aboard the tour bus that had come to meet us. It was time for our snack, so the bus took us another 20 minutes or so to El Jardin in Alajuela Province. It was a well-stocked gift shop that included free coffee tasting and plates of fresh fruit that we could eat to tide us over for the remainder of the tour. We bought some souvenirs, including a couple of gifts to stuff in Ben’s stocking once we finally got home to the inevitable Christmas shopping.

Our last stop was at a place called Eco Jungle Cruises for a boat ride among the mangroves. This had the potential to be very interesting, as we were promised the opportunity to see monkeys moving about the trees along the riverbank. The problem was that it was getting late in the afternoon and the sun was low in the sky, resulting in glare and other bad lighting conditions. Now we wished this had been our first stop on the tour instead of the last.

Everyone fit in one boat. Our guides spotted monkeys right away, and although they angled the boat for a better look, the animals were mostly obscured by the shadows and dense leaves. We did our best to take pictures, but quickly became frustrated and resigned ourselves to relying on our eyes for the experience. We saw some bats tucked under a tree branch, a few colorful birds and butterflies. But we were running short on time, so the boat ride didn’t last nearly long enough. We did get to see a few more monkeys in the trees once we were back on land, but that was that.

Our cruise ship was scheduled to leave at 5:15 p.m., but it was clear we wouldn’t be back by then. David reassured us that the tour company had been in touch with the ship and they were waiting for us. As interesting as Costa Rica was, we didn’t relish the idea of having to stay there! Our driver made good time despite the traffic, and we were only about half an hour late getting back to the pier under cover of darkness. The Emerald Princess had already departed by the time we arrived, and our ship headed out almost before we had gone through the metal detector once we were all back onboard.

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E NEEDED A day at sea after the Costa Rica visit, and fortunately we had one before we reached Panama. Tuesday the 26th was the second of three formal days, so we had decided to use the occasion for a Cajun-themed dinner at the Bayou Cafe and Steakhouse on Deck 7. Normally the meals on the ship are included with your fare, but this was considered a special dinner and as such carried a $29 cover charge per guest. We wanted to foot the bill as a thank you to Mom for purchasing our room, plus it was a good way to use up some of the onboard credits we still had available.

We don’t normally get dressed up back home, but we had lugged our formal attire with us specifically for one of these nights and were determined to wear it at least once. The four of us looked good for our meal. Afterward, we made sure to stop by the portrait studio so we could pose for some professional photos of us in our fancy clothes. So many of the photos that get taken during the cruise are cheesy and no different than the selfies we post online, so we were hoping this might be an occasion for a good portrait suitable for framing. 

The next morning we awoke before dawn, stirred by the sounds of boat motors and lights flashing outside our balcony. We had been enjoying sleeping with the curtains open at night, which meant the light of a new day usually woke us up anyway long before would normally have gotten out of bed. But the activity on the water finally made us curious enough to peek outside.

In the twilight we could see that we were parked in the middle of a bay across from a long line of ships, most of them lit up as if they were part of a parade. There were buildings visible on shore, and when we craned our necks to look past the bow of the ship we could see a row of skyscrapers emerging through the fog. We had reached Panama City, the entrance to the Panama Canal.

Basically our cruise ship was in a holding pattern as it awaited its turn in line to make the canal transit, which wouldn’t be until tomorrow morning. So today there was another shore excursion planned at Fuerte Amador, a marina that sits near the southern mouth of the canal. We had been ambivalent about touring here, as it seemed a throwaway stop on the itinerary. In the end, we had gone along with Mom and Sean in electing to take a river cruise that would give us a sneak preview of the canal passage to come.

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E RODE THE tender to the marina and caught a tour bus that took us up the Colombia side of the canal, past the aging military buildings that now lay mostly in ruins or had been repurposed, through the Port of Balboa, and north to the Chagres River in the town of Gamboa. The ride took about an hour and put us midway through the canal zone. We boarded the tour boats with three other groups and headed out into the river where we instantly felt small alongside the huge cargo ships that were making their way through the canal.

Our destination was the Monkey Islands, which true to their name are home to several species of monkey that the tour guides were hopeful we would be able to see. Uh, yeah, hadn’t we heard that in Costa Rica? Well, when you bribe them with food it is much more likely they’ll come out to visit, and so it was that we soon had our first monkey sighting. Coaxed from the treetops by a few grapes, the monkey hopped down onto the roof of our boat and was soon wandering through the tour group. Our guide handed out a few grapes to people who wanted to feed the monkey, so we were able to get some closeup photos of it. Much better than our Costa Rica river experience!

More monkeys followed as we motored from island to island. But the real prize (from our perspective, at least) was getting to see a real live sloth. It wasn’t part of the river tour, per se, but actually a bonus that one of the tour bus drivers saw as we were all heading into the cruise park. We passed their bus parked off the side of the road and saw a dozen or so passengers looking up to the treetops. Our guide said that if it was a sloth, it would likely still be there by the time we returned at the end of the cruise.

Sure enough, the sloth was behaving slothfully and hadn’t moved at all in nearly two hours. Our driver parked by the shoulder and we eagerly got off with several others, cameras in hand, to photograph the odd beast. Our guide used a laser pointer to show us where it was hiding, and for the life of us we can’t guess how anyone saw it in the first place, seeing as it was well disguised amid the leaves. We got to see its face only briefly, but our cameras were able to make out its three toes on each hand, long nails wrapped around the tree trunk. Costa Rica likes to pride itself on its sloth population, but the only one we got to see on our trip was in Panama.

After we returned to Fuerte Amador, there was time to look for souvenirs before we had to head back to the cruise ship. Mom had just about enough of the intense heat, so she and Sean returned ahead of us while we lingered to buy Panama T-shirts and magnets from a store inside the marina terminal. Given the temperature, we decided to check out the Dolce Idea Gelateria ice cream shop around the corner, where they had no shortage of frozen treats including malts served in huge glasses that had been dipped in chocolate. We kept things simple and ordered double scoops in the small waxed paper cups.

We thought we were being smart about getting ice cream while we waited out the crush of people waiting in line for the shuttle tenders, which was the first thing most people wanted to do when they finished their bus tours. Instead, the line was about twice as long by the time we’d finished eating and were ready to depart. It was hot and stuffy inside the marina building. Our cruise attendants came by with moist towels so people could keep cool, and one wiseguy came by with cups of ice water he’d poured at the boarding gate, offering them to thirsty passengers for $10 a cup. He was kidding, of course, but he might have found a few takers, judging by how uncomfortable things were.

We ended up on the top deck of the tender for the 10-minute ride back to the ship, but we had to sit there in the blazing sun for about 20 minutes before the tender cast off from the dock. It was the last time we would have to ride on those wretched craft, as fortunately the remainder of our ports all were large enough to handle a ship of the Coral Princess’s bulk.

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UR TRANSIT THROUGH the Panama Canal coincided with Thanksgiving Day. Instead of watching the Macy’s parade, baking turkey or driving to Hayward to dine with family, we were up bright and early with all the other passengers to watch the Coral Princess sail beneath the Bridge of the Americas and enter the famous passage that connects the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.

Here was where it was great having our own balcony, as we didn’t have to compete for viewing spots along the public rails or in the Horizon Court on the upper decks. We could lean out over the edge of our own stateroom for decent photos of the passing scenery, or if that wasn’t enough, we could watch the whole process narrated by one of the ship’s docents on our in-room monitor. The only reason to go topside at all was for food, and so we decided to grab some breakfast at the buffet before returning to the comfort of our room and the Keurig.

Had we not known it was Thanksgiving, there was little to remind us otherwise. The cruise staff had provided some token acknowledgment in the dining hall and around the fountain in the Deck 5 atrium, in the form of a decorated cake and some signs that had been painted with holiday messages. The menu for that night’s dinner in the Bordeaux included turkey and gravy as one of the mains and pumpkin pie among the desserts, but there were no lavish feasts. Perhaps this makes sense considering the international flavor of the guest list; few countries outside of the United States celebrate Thanksgiving, or if they do it is called something else. In fact we overheard one Canadian couple grumbling about one of the NFL games being played on the pool deck and not some important game from their own country. We only assumed that because our cruise originated from San Francisco that it would follow American customs and celebrations, but we were only half right.

The canal transit itself was fascinating, especially if you enjoy history and feats of engineering. The story goes that the U.S. government was considering two options for building the canal as a speedier way to get its warships from one side of the world to the other. Nicaragua was in the running, but because of its volcanic activity and an untimely eruption prior to the Congressional vote, it was deemed too dangerous and Panama won the canal instead.

A series of locks was constructed across the canal’s 50-mile route in roughly 10 years, opening for business on Aug. 15, 1914. Those original locks remain in use today, and the canal has since been expanded to accommodate the vastly larger cargo ships and supertankers that now routinely use the route. Cost of passage depends on the size and cargo of the vessel, but ranges generally from a few thousand dollars to more than $1 million — even more if there are special circumstances. It generally takes a couple of days or more to reach the head of the line for passage, which is why we saw so many ships anchored off the coast of Panama City.  

Transiting the canal from start to finish is an all-day affair, taking around 10-12 hours. We made decent time because traffic ahead of us was light. Ships are not allowed to use their own captains, but instead are piloted by canal crews and guided by tugboats and mechanical “mules” that ride along rails placed along the edges of each series of locks. The mules operate much like train locomotives, except they are geared so they can climb the steep inclines linking each lock chamber. Cables are attached to the ship from either side which are used to keep the boat in the center of the lock, and the mules use the cables to slowly move the ship along its journey.

Our ship first encountered the Miraflores Locks, a pair of chambers that raise boats from sea level up to the height of Miraflores Lake on the opposite side in about 40 minutes. Once across the lake, the single-chambered Pedro Miguel Locks elevated the boat for the next leg of its journey beneath the Centennial Bridge and north along the canal to where it meets the Chagres River. We had seen this area the previous day during our jungle tour, so at least we knew where we were. Sort of. This was roughly the area of the Monkey Islands, and we could hear the jungle thrumming with activity as our ship sailed on beneath a rapidly darkening sky.

Other boats passed us along the way — enormous container vessels and bulk carriers headed south toward the Pacific Ocean. Glenn took time to photograph several of them and tried to identify their countries of origin and destinations, not always an easy task. Occasionally we passed each other in the locks, and their crews came out on deck to wave at us and photograph us just as we did to them. There’s not much else to do while you are making the canal transit.

That is, unless you happen to be aboard a cruise ship.

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T

HE CRUISE DIRECTOR had a daily itinerary of games, demonstrations and shows to keep guests entertained, and while they purposely did not schedule much on transit day to allow passengers ample time to enjoy the canal, there were still a couple of events on the calendar. One of them Roni wanted to check out was a “speed painting” activity in the atrium.

The idea was for teams of four to start a watercolor drawing of a cruise ship visiting a sunny tropical isle. After two minutes everyone had to stop painting and then the teams moved to the easel adjacent their own, where they would pick up where the previous artists had left off for the succeeding round. After four rounds, everyone had drawn a portion of everyone else’s painting. The audience voted for the creation they liked the best, we all had a good chuckle at the results, and that was that. It was a fun way to kill 45 minutes. When we had finished and ventured back out onto Deck 7 to meet up with Mom and Sean, our ship was navigating its way through Gatun Lake.

The final stage of the transit was navigating the trio of chambers at Gatun Locks, which would lower us back to sea level for our passage beneath the Atlantic Bridge and on into the Caribbean. It took longer than expected because a passenger had taken ill on our ship and had to be transported to the hospital by ambulance. Being that we were on the port side of the ship facing the western shore, we got to watch the whole procedure as they moved a gangway into position, rolled the passenger off on a stretcher, and loaded him into an ambulance that took him presumably to the nearest town, which would have been Colon.

All of this happened while the skies turned gloomier and the sun began to set. There was a massive storm headed our way. We had already experienced some light drizzle, but nothing like the thunder and lightning we would soon receive. It started coming down with a vengeance once we reached the Atlantic side of the passage and night fell. That night we had a terrible sleep as we tried to keep comfortable amid the violent rocking of the boat that kept the hangers in our coat closet clinking together and made us feel dizzy whenever we had to stand up.

What we didn’t realize at the time was that Thanksgiving would be the last truly enjoyable day of our vacation. Our trip was about to go viral.

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R

ONI AWOKE THE next morning feeling not so well. Actually, she had been complaining of aches and pains for a couple of days, but now it was clear she was coming down with some sort of bug. We thought about all the places we had visited in the past several days, and the constant nagging we had received from ship staff about washing hands before meals and using sanitizer everywhere, and we realized there were at least a few thousand ways sickness could be spread on a large ship like this — at least as many ways as there were passengers.

But there was no time to be sick in bed when there was yet another shore excursion planned. Yes, we had arrived at Cartagena, Colombia, for our final port of call before returning to the United States. We had been looking forward to this one, too, because it is a majestic colonial city alive with history and amazing Old World architecture. We had decided against one of the lengthy guided tours in favor of a hop-on, hop-off bus that would enable us to visit any of more than a dozen stops in the sprawling city. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Trouble arrived early when we had to meet in the atrium to be assigned our group number for the bus. Mom and Sean were in the Provence Dining Room waiting for us to meet them, but because there were so many people the ship staff wasn’t letting anyone else into the restaurant. We had to wait in the lobby downstairs and listen for them to call our group number — 22. It was just as we were about to be called that Roni, not feeling at all well, decided to pop off to the restroom for a minute. Our group was announced and everyone else shuffled downstairs to the boarding ramp to go ashore.

We were all on the same bus, but Glenn lingered back at the exit gate while Mom and Sean went ahead to grab their seats. Glenn texted Roni to let her know where he was and urging her to hurry back, as the last of the tour group had already left the ship. After no reply, he finally got off the ship just as the buses were getting ready to depart and looked around frantically for Roni, still unsure even as to which bus was the right one.

Finally he connected with Sean and Mom, who reassured him that Roni was already on the bus and seated upstairs. Now a flustered Glenn was the last one aboard and there were no seats left except one on the aisle next to a gargantuan Texas man who was taking up half of it along with his own. At least we were all on the bus together.

There are roughly 1 million people living in Cartagena, and every one of them was apparently on the road this day. The traffic was ceaseless everywhere we went, and often it seemed there was no order to the chaos at intersections and traffic circles. Taxis darted in and out of lanes, people on bicycles weaved their way among the vehicles, vendors pushing carts commingled with workers grabbing their lunch and beggars searching for money. We thought about Ben’s reticence to driving on the freeway back home and wondered how we would handle this madness. It was enough to make even an experienced motorist tremble.

The first stop on the route was at the “Walled City,” an historic district of Cartagena surrounded by stone walls rimmed with bastions and cannons to guard against ancient invasions from the sea. They did nothing to guard against modern assaults by street vendors, however, as we were immediately accosted from the moment we stepped off the bus — people wielding cases of magnets and cigars and jewelry, selling “authentic” tablecloths, hawking “water-water… water-beer…” A man stepped forward and placed a hat on Glenn’s head as he tried to regroup with the rest of the family. Glenn removed the hat and the vendor again tried to place it on his head, like it was a gift. “He wants you to buy it,” Roni said as she caught up, removing the hat again and giving it back to the man. “He already has a hat,” she told him.

And so it went as we headed across Venezuela Avenue and into the plaza outside the clock tower at the Walled City’s entrance. The vendors followed like locust, waving their goods in front of the tourists and generally spoiling opportunities for good photographs of the colorful churches, monuments and shops. We hadn’t expected a guided tour, but we suddenly became part of one as our narrator from the bus herded us together, passed out radio receivers and earbuds, and led us through the cobblestoned streets to point out the various attractions along the way.

Unfortunately, there were so many people and so much commotion that it was easy to get separated from the tour group, and the radio signal was weak so we frequently missed what was being said. To make matters worse, workers were preparing the downtown area for a giant weekend festival and had blocked off sections of the Walled City with event tents and portable toilets. We admired the metal sculptures in the plaza outside San Pedro Church, climbed a ramp to the top of one of the walls to look at the cannons, then followed our guide a few blocks to the Choco Museo where there were free tastings of hot chocolate and, more importantly, bathrooms.

Because no one knew when the next facilities would be available, many in the group made pit stops and we wound up spending close to half an hour crowded into the little shop as more people from another tour group arrived. The heat was sweltering, easily the warmest day of our trip, and Roni was miserable despite doing her best to be a trooper. Mom, who never likes large crowds, was ready to call it a day early, while Sean attracted the attention of every vendor in the area after he made the mistake of buying Colombian coins from one of them. Glenn gave up trying to take photos and instead resorted to running the video camera as we shuffled along through the streets like prodded cattle, anxious to keep up with the guide and not seeing much of anything.

One of the few highlights was getting to see the inside of the Santo Domingo Church with its cathedral ceilings and ornate tiled floors. In the plaza outside is the famous La Gorda Gertrudis, a bronze sculpture of a reclining naked woman with ample breasts that is probably one of the most photographed (and fondled) landmarks in Colombia. The belief is that rubbing La Gorda’s breasts brings good luck, and it was clear from the discoloration of the metal that many before us had done so. Sean tried his own hand, as it were, at a stroke of good luck. We probably all needed some to make it through the rest of the day.

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A

T THE END of our endurance test that was touring the Walled City, we turned in our radio receivers and went back to the bus stop across from Central Park to await the next available ride, all while brushing off the aggressive vendors who would. not. leave. us. alone! It was like waiting to be evacuated from a war zone, enemy combatants closing in on the drop site. Now we had some idea of what the zombie apocalypse must be like! Some tourists on the top deck of one of the buses finally caved in to the heat and called down to buy a can of soda, and the vendors literally crawled over one another to deliver the goods. We later heard that many of the sellers had arrived in Cartagena from nearby Venezuela, looking for work. We understand the need for people to make a living, but their relentless assault detracted greatly from our visit, and we were all exhausted by the time we returned to the sanctuary of our tour bus.

By now, no one had any stomach for more hop-off visits despite several other locations that looked interesting. We were all ready to go back to the cruise ship, each for his or her own reasons. Unfortunately, the only way to get there was to take the bus on the rest of its loop until it returned to the first stop, where we would have to get off and transfer to another bus that would take us to the cruise terminal. The hop-on buses ran every 20 minutes, but the cruise shuttles only ran once every hour, and of course EVERYONE on our bus who had been at the Walled City now wanted to get back to the ship.

So we sat back in our seats with nothing to do but gaze out the windows at the passing scenery as we looped through downtown with its highrise hotels and luxury apartments, rolled past beaches covered with palm trees, and tried to read the signs written in Spanish in the windows of retail shops. (This being the day after Thanksgiving, there were several Black Friday or “Black’s Day” sales going on.)

At the transfer stop at the end of the loop, we discovered that there were more people than available buses because another cruise ship was also in port. So we missed out on the first bus and had to wait inside a gated area for the next bus to arrive. When it finally did, we wound up near the tail end of the queue because we had been standing in the waiting area while people who showed up after we did were lucky enough to still be standing on the curb as the bus arrived. And this bus turned out to be for the other cruise ship’s passengers, but because there were so many people who needed to transfer, they let all board that could fit. We were thankful to get seats and even more thankful when at last we disembarked at the cruise terminal — conveniently outside a wildlife park with a huge gift shop inside, and the only way to go if you wanted to walk back to the ship. Yes, we spent a lot of money there, so they knew exactly what they were doing!

Alas, we didn’t take home many fond memories of Cartagena. But what we did take with us was a pair of nasty colds. Glenn was now coming down with the sore throat that had preceded Roni’s illness, and by now she was feeling so miserable that she spent most of the next day sleeping while Glenn tried his best to ward off the cold he knew was inescapable. He spent some time having drinks with Mom and going to dinner at the Bordeaux for the third and final formal night.

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F

OLLOWING MORE THAN 11,000 miles and stops in four foreign countries, the Coral Princess slipped into the harbor at Port Everglades, Florida, just before dawn on Monday, Dec. 2. We had arranged to disembark by 8 a.m., which meant that we had to drag our sickly bodies out of bed by 5:45 in order to get showered and eat breakfast before reporting to the Explorers Lounge on Deck 6 to await the OK to leave. Mom and Sean were scheduled to disembark after we were, so we texted our farewells and thanked them for getting to spend time together during our two weeks at sea.

We boarded a shuttle bus that took us to Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, where we picked up our Alamo rental car and headed off for Miami, Glenn behind the wheel. This was Glenn’s first visit to the Sunshine State, and as such he wanted to see as much of it as time allowed. We deliberately booked our return flight for Friday morning, giving us most of the next four days to explore. But we hadn’t counted on not feeling well when we made those arrangements, and now it seemed a questionable plan at best.

We followed I-95 south and exited near downtown Miami, where we had booked a room at the Doubletree by Hilton Grand Hotel Biscayne Bay. First we did some sightseeing, driving out to the cruise terminal where rows of massive ships were ported for upcoming excursions far abroad. We tried to find a spot to eat in the tony South Beach district, but it was close to noon and there was nowhere to park that wasn’t run by the valet, plus we weren’t feeling well enough to justify spending too much on a meal we couldn’t fully enjoy, so ultimately we just waited until we got to our hotel.

The place Roni picked out for us along Biscayne Bay was gorgeous. Well, the view from our fifth-floor room was anyway. We had a corner suite from where we could look out across the bay and down on the tennis courts at Margaret Pace Park. We could watch the passenger jets come in behind the luxury apartment towers that all looked so beautiful lit up at night. The hotel was connected to the Grand Retail Plaza, a mini mall where we grabbed a late lunch from a restaurant and bar.

We had been grappling with how we were going to transport home all our luggage on the plane, given that we only brought three suitcases that were now overstuffed. We decided that rather than purchase another piece of luggage that we would also have to pay to check in, it would be simpler to mail some of our stuff back. So that’s what we did. There happened to be a package store in the mall, so we purchased an 18-cubic-inch box, filled it with about 30 pounds of our unneeded formal wear, shoes, books and coffee, and shipped it off via FedEx with a promised delivery date of Dec. 9. We still don’t know that it was worth the $90, but that was how we lightened our load and made enough room (we hoped!) for more souvenirs from Florida.

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T

HE NEXT MORNING, before heading out of town for a long drive down through the Florida Keys, we stopped to check out the Wynwood Walls a few blocks from our hotel. This was something we had actually planned to do when we booked our travel plans, and while a bunch of graffiti-covered buildings might not seem like a typical vacation destination, these works were special.

Wynwood is a former industrial area that was once home to many Puerto Rican immigrants before gentrification took hold and the neighborhood underwent a renaissance, becoming an upscale hub for artists, boutiques and a thriving street scene. Almost every building is plastered in colorful murals, as are the fences, sidewalks, lamp posts and even the trees.

In the old days, we would have considered this graffiti; now we think of it as street art — hip, politically and culturally savvy, and just plain fun. We parked at a public lot and spent a couple of hours strolling the streets to admire and photograph some of the hundreds of creations. We easily could have spent an entire day there and not seen it all.

Once back on the road, we drove 170 miles to get to Key West, our real destination, stopping along the way at a visitor center in Florida City and later for lunch at a place called Robbie’s in Islamorada. They serve some of the best lobster bisque we’ve ever tasted, and we also enjoyed browsing their collection of outdoor shops. We paid a few dollars for a bucket of bait so we could go feed the tarpon that hang out around the docks in the marina. You’ve got to be quick about it, because the pelicans also congregate there and aren’t shy about pilfering what they can. The tarpon we saw here were on the order of Moby Dick size, and while we got some cheap thrills letting them snatch fish from our outstretched hand, we imagined it wouldn’t be fun to have one latch onto you.

As we were leaving, we noted a sign that said not to feed the manatees. As we hadn’t seen any, we asked the attendant if there actually were any manatees here and he obliging summoned one for us. He turned on a hose and ran a stream of fresh water into the mud surrounding the dock. Within seconds, a bulky gray form surfaced and swam over to fetch a drink. Apparently manatees love fresh water, although the attendant said they aren’t allowed to give them any, so he quickly shut off the hose with an apology to the creature. We were just excited for the chance to see one in the wild.

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W

E GOT IN to Key West a little after sunset, and not a moment too soon for Glenn who had gone through every last tissue in the car. His cold had reached its peak, and while Roni was feeling a bit better despite a persistent cough, he was going through the worst stages. Tired, feverish and hungry, he got us to our hotel at the Silver Palms Inn on Truman Avenue. We sandwiched the rental car into one of the last available parking spots, coaxed our bags out through the hatchback, and vowed not to move it until we checked out because of the difficulty we had maneuvering in.

We were close enough to the downtown commercial district that we could easily walk to a place to grab dinner, and Key West offers a free hop-on, hop-off bus service that will get you just about anywhere you want to be. We ate at a place called Sinz Burritos, mainly because it was cheap and quick, since we didn’t feel like sitting through a long meal.

A good night’s sleep can do wonders for a cold, and although he didn’t really get one at the Silver Palms Inn, Glenn nonetheless woke up on Wednesday morning having turned a corner. The runny nose was now down to just stuffy, and after a continental breakfast in the hotel lobby Glenn felt ready to take on the world again — at least this tiny corner of it we had yet to explore.

We hopped aboard the free shuttle bus and made our way around the loop to the marina at the north end of town, where we walked along the waterfront and enjoyed the nautical ambience. On the breakwater we spotted a pair of iguanas sunning themselves, and it was while we were photographing them that we realized the whole area was teeming with iguanas. They were coming up onto the rocky bank just a few feet from where we were standing, and slinking about the bushes next to the walking path. This was something we’d never seen before, used to the much smaller western fence lizards we have back home.

We visited the gift shops around Mallory Square, stopping at the Conch Tour Train Depot for a couple of key lime smoothies to chill us in the heat. Glenn had his heart set of getting a slice of key lime pie, and with lots of options to choose from it seemed he wouldn’t have any trouble finding some. But which one was best?

Our search brought us to Sloppy Joe’s Bar at the corner of Greene and Duval streets, where we decided to have lunch. The restaurant is not the same as the original one on the other side of the street where Ernest Hemingway was once its most famous guest. It does, however, boast $28 T-shirts with Papa’s likeness, and serves up a pretty tasty sloppy joe sandwich, which is what we had for lunch while listening to a guitar player perform a decent rendition of “Hotel California.”

Still in the mood for dessert, we found Glenn’s pie at a place called Key Lime Pie Bakery, just up the street from the bar. Here you can get pie by the slice for $4.50, as well as candy and souvenir items. Roni isn’t a fan of key lime pie or anything that resembles cheesecake, so Glenn was on his own for this tasty treat.

We hopped back aboard the bus to take us to the corner of Whitehead and South streets, where you can find a large concrete buoy marking the “Southernmost Point” of the continental United States. While this is great for marketing to tourists, it is not entirely accurate considering that there are points farther south, just not generally accessible to the public. Still, the colorful marker is one of the most photographed attractions in Key West, and for this reason there is almost always a line of people waiting to shoot it. We were fortunate to arrive on a weekday afternoon at a time where there were just a few people in line. We wound up swapping cell phones with another couple so we could take their picture and they could take ours. It was just bad luck that the sun was low in the sky behind us, so the ones our Samaritan photographer took didn’t come out well. We managed to salvage a couple for use in this month’s newsletter.

Just a couple of blocks away from the marker we found the Key West Butterfly and Nature Conservatory. It was part gift shop, zoo and nature center, with the emphasis being on a breeding center for exotic butterflies that are set free to roam about a spacious, tropical garden. For a reasonable fee, visitors are allowed to visit the garden and get up close to the butterflies as well as several species of birds. We saw flamingos, rock doves, and of course hundreds of butterflies. Maybe they were used to visitors or there just wasn’t enough space for all of them, but they would practically land on your hand as they flew by, and would hold perfectly still as you placed a camera inches away to take their picture.

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W

E AREN'T THE spring chickens we once were, so an all-day excursion like the one we had in Key West can easily leave us in want of a nap. Or maybe it was that we had yet to fully recover from our colds. Whatever, we decided to stay out for the duration rather than return to our hotel to rest, seeing as this would be our only full day in town.

We stayed at the butterfly conservatory until closing time and they politely had to kick us out. Then we walked back to the beach so we could be there in time to watch the sunset. Dozens of people grabbed spots along the boat dock and waited for Mother Nature to do her thing. It struck us as odd that the sun sets in the west — something we take for granted in California — yet that shouldn’t have been the case in Florida, which faces the eastern seaboard. Or does it? The Keys are so long and narrow, surrounded on both sides by water, that you can watch the sunrise over the Atlantic and the sunset over the Gulf in just a matter of hours. It’s beautiful no matter which body of water you happen to be facing.

As darkness fell and our hunger rose, we set out on foot for downtown in search of dinner, by now tired of all buses whether free or not. Roni’s knee continues to bother her, but she was doing OK without her cane. We enjoyed strolling up Duvall Street and admiring the Christmas light displays on most of the businesses. We eventually found the restaurant Roni was looking for — a place called Onlywood Pizzeria, where they have a vast menu of offerings prepared in a brick oven. Our appetites weren’t large enough, and while we texted Ben that he was welcome to our leftovers, none of us thought they would travel well on the plane.

As we prepared to call it a night and walked back to the hotel, we were forced to stop at Simonton Street by the arrival of police cars with their lights flashing. Cops got out and approached people who were lingering on the street corner. Oh no, we thought, had we walked in on a crime in progress? It was nothing so sinister, fortunately; just a bit of traffic control ahead of one of the largest lighted bicycle parades we had ever seen. Every year, the city holds a bike parade to collect toy donations for charity. Everyone who signs up to ride in the event contributes an unwrapped toy.

We had timed our arrival perfectly and caught the start of the parade. For more than half an hour, riders streamed by on bikes of all sizes and configurations, some dressed in Santa hats, coats or elf costumes. A few brought their own music that blasted as they cycled along the parade route, strings of lights wrapped around their necks or wheel spokes. Onlookers cheered them on, yelling “Thank you for doing this!” We soon forgot about how tired we were or being ready to hit the sack. This was easily the best part of our visit to Key West, and the perfect way to end the day.

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E

VEN THE VACATION of a lifetime has to end eventually, and so ours was concluding just as we were both starting to feel well enough to enjoy it again. You can’t always count on the weather or your health, so you just have to grin and bear it at times. Which is what we did. And on Thursday, Dec. 5, it was time to start the drive back to Fort Lauderdale.

We would have loved to linger in the Keys another day and drop in at some of the spots we’d made mental notes about during our trip south. But we also wanted to check out the Everglades for a bit, and we didn’t have time to do everything else and that too. We stopped at a local chain T-shirt shop to check out the merchandise, purchased gas to top off our econo car’s puny 11-gallon tank, then ate lunch at The Fish House restaurant in Key Largo — a place recommended by Guy Fieri on his cable TV show “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives.” We enjoyed the nautical decor, but the food was just so-so.

It was getting late in the afternoon by the time we reached Everglades National Park, a few miles southwest of Homestead. Much like our visit earlier this year to Joshua Tree National Park, we had only a couple of hours to sample a vast wilderness area that most couldn’t exhaust the possibilities of in a week. We stopped in at the visitor center and asked one of the rangers what they would recommend for someone who had limited time to see it all. His answer: the Anhinga Trail.

Anhingas are a type of bird that can be found in abundance in the Everglades, and on the trail that bears their name we saw dozens. It was conveniently close to the park entrance, so we had time to walk all the way to its end and loop back to the beginning via a boardwalk through swamps filled with water plants concealing turtles, fish and even a few alligators — two of which we saw lounging on a bank near the trail and lurking in the marsh.

We were greeted by an odd sight when we arrived at the trail’s parking lot — most of the cars in the lot were covered with tarps. A man with a European accent was just removing the tarp from his vehicle and asked us if we wanted it. Glenn asked him what we would need it for, and he explained that some large birds we’d seen loitering in the parking lot — not the anhingas — had a penchant for chewing the rubber parts on cars. Had this not been a rental car we might have cared, but we played along anyway and threw the tarp over the windshield before we left. It promptly blew off in the light breeze, but we decided what the heck and left it. When we returned from the trail and received the same question about the tarps from a newcomer, he declined our offer to leave the tarp with him. Hey, don’t say you weren’t warned. Those birds looked guilty!

We drove a little farther into the park before deciding the sun would be down soon and there was little else we would be able to see that didn’t require miles more of driving. We reluctantly headed back to the Florida Turnpike and continued on to our hotel about two miles away from the Fort Lauderdale airport. We spent several hours that night rearranging suitcases to make sure everything would fit for the journey home. Somehow it did.

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W

E WERE BOOKED on United Airlines Flight 922 at 8 a.m. Friday morning. Glenn had assumed it had a stopover in Atlanta, so we were pleasantly surprised to learn that it would be a nonstop to San Francisco, arriving a few minutes before noon PST. There had been wind advisories for the Bay Area, and Roni was worried we might not be able to land at SFO. She said that perhaps it would be better to delay our flight a day, as the airline had suggested its passengers do if they had concerns. We’d had our tickets booked since February, so the heck we were going to alter the flight plans now! We elected to take our chances on the weather gods.

That turned out to be the right call. The flight conditions were nearly perfect, with no turbulence at all. About the only glitch to speak of was the landing at SFO, which seemed a little rougher than it could have been. We were safely down from the clouds, back from three weeks abroad, and well ready to go home to Ben and the cats. Mom had agreed to pick us up at the airport, and she met us at the terminal with Glenn’s sister Jennifer as her co-pilot.

We arrived home just before Ben got off from work, happy to see that the house was still in one piece and the cats hadn’t destroyed each other in our absence. Ben had even tried to put the house in a festive mood, adding a string of lighted garland to the living room wall until we could properly decorate with the tree and ornaments Roni had brought back from all the places we visited. We took care of that detail two days later, hauling the tree out of the garage and hanging large ornaments from the living room ceiling as we like to do each Christmas season.

It’s now early the morning of New Year’s Eve as we put the finishing touches on this month’s edition. There is so much more we could have shared about our travel adventures these past few weeks, but we would probably still be writing at the end of January. We hope you at least caught some of the flavor of the trip and would encourage you to do the Panama cruise yourself if the opportunity presents itself.

Meanwhile, welcome to a brand new decade and have a pleasant and successful 2020!

Glenn, Roni and Ben