Cruise number three for the year is complete. There’s so much I want to say about the trip, and I don’t know where to start, so this will be somewhat of a jumbled mess of a post.

I flew to Phoenix to start the trip to fly to the starting port of San Diego with my mom (and it was closer to San Diego anyway), and had some plane shenanigans in the air. The (direct flight) plane diverted to Denver and we had to switch airplanes before finishing the trip, getting me in a couple hours late. Not a huge deal, but it’s the first diversion I’ve had in my life. (Equally noteworthy is the San Francisco to home flight that hit a flock of birds on ascent and had to return to SFO, where I had to wait until the next day to fly out again. This wasn’t nearly as bad as that.)

We also had a day in San Diego before boarding the ship, and we managed to hang out with Alex, who took us to lunch at a New Zealand restaurant and then the gorgeous Balboa Park (and also picked us up from the airport and dropped us off at our hotel, which was greatly appreciated).

We also met up with Ryan for dinner at a great vegetarian Thai restaurant.

The hotel we stayed in was full of great staff, but the building itself was pretty run down, with decorative parts of the elevators missing, random pipes and cables in the hallways where ice machines used to be, a sliding bathroom door that didn’t really slide anymore, and a shower that looked fairly gross. But it was located right across the street from the port, making embarkation the following morning a breeze, so… it was sufficient for our single night.

So… the cruise itself. It was amazing. I didn’t want it to end. I’ve really, really enjoyed the past few weeks, beyond just the usual “it’s nice to be on a hotel on wheels and not have to think about food or activities” vibe.

I’ve been describing this as a once-in-a-lifetime trip, but maybe not for the usual reasons. Neither the Panama Canal nor the countries we stopped in (Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Columbia, and HAL’s private island in the Bahamas) have never been on a “bucket list” of travel for me, and I’ve never really had any particular urge to visit these places. My only previous trip to anywhere in central or southern America was Costa Rica, for a wedding.

We picked the itinerary based primarily on the length (we wanted a ~2 week cruise), the dates (we were wanting a trip later in the year), and the distribution of sea days (we’d looked a a Hawaii cruise, which has 5 sea days in a row, making this trip’s multiple 2 consecutive sea day periods tame by comparison).

And now, having done the trip, I can say I don’t have any particular desire to go to any of these places again. They’re gorgeous, but they’re not cities (or countries) that I’d want to go explore on my own (with the exception of the private island, which is not for me because I don’t really like beaches)… they’re very much destinations where you want to take shore excursions with a guide, and that gets expensive.

Also, the 16 day cruise was the longest I’ve taken yet (beating out Australia and New Zealand’s 14 days), but the 8 sea days (in one and two day chunks) were too many sea days… but also not for the usual reasons. Sea days ended up being less relaxing for me than port days, because the ship schedule had so much that we wanted to do, and we were booked every hour basically from waking up at 7 AM until 3 PM before we could relax. In contrast, port days gave us much more flexibility in the schedule (around our excursions), and let us sleep in later. I want more port days just so I feel less obligated to do things (like watercoloring, attending lectures, and going to interview talks with the crew).

I also really liked the “guests vs officers” events, like cornhole and paper airplane building.

(Oh yeah. We also built a ship with some friends we made onboard.)

The weather surprisingly cooperated with us. We missed a hurricane hitting Mexico by a few days (Puerto Vallarta had just finished cleaning up the damage in its historic area a couple days before our visit), we missed the Panama earthquake by a couple days, and the forecast called for rain almost all of our port days but we got basically zero rain in any of the ports (and the canal), including the disembarkation day in Fort Lauderdale.

The crew though… this was the most fantastic crew I’ve had on any ship ever (although this was only my fifth cruise, so “ever” is maybe a relative thing). The cruise director was the most engaged one we’ve ever had. The captain made multiple appearances throughout the voyage and seemed much more accessible than any other captain we’ve had. Even the hotel general manager seemed to always be around every event (big or small) or just checking up on the lido and restaurants, in contrast to other ships where we basically never saw the manager. All of the servers and waiters were exceedingly friendly, and we had fantastic waiters at our (fixed dining) dinner table, and very proactive room stewards. 11/10 crew.

Anyway… the ports! Let’s talk about (some of) the ports!

The highlight of the trip for me was (appropriately) the Panama Canal itself. We passed through three sets of locks (each having two or three locks each) providing ample time and opportunity to run around the ship for photos and video, ranging from the 5th to 7th floor bow (as we entered a lock), the 9th and 10th floor stern (as we exited a lock), the 3rd floor promenade deck (for a lower view of the proceedings), and our 1st floor stateroom (where we got an interesting experience through our window as the locks filled up and the ship rose up). I’ve never been through a lock before, and passing through this one in particular (which is so *tight* for ships, with ~2 feet of clearance on each side) was an amazing experience. (Also apparently it cost the ship $440,000 for the transit, so it was also certainly the most expensive “port” for the ship on the trip.)

From a port standpoint, Cartagena in Colombia was probably the highlight. Our excursion took us to a drum school in La Boquilla as well as the old walled city, giving us a pretty good mix of both the super touristy and less-well-beaten paths.

But the port itself was the best port, because it was basically an aviary full of flamingos and parrots and tons of other birds around the usual shops and restaurants. (As opposed to the other ports, which were mostly just huge indoor shopping malls.)

It also gave us the prettiest sunset of the trip.

I also liked Puerto Vallarta. Apparently the water is usually pretty calm there, but with our post-hurricane timing, the town had closed off the beaches, and a lot of the waterfront was cordoned off.

We also had a nice excursion in Puerto Chiapas which gave us a Tapachula tour and then took us to some ruins.

I was also impressed by Half Moon Cay. This was my first visit to any private island, and apparently it’s a super award winning one… and it shows. I’m very much not a beach person, but this beach was utterly gorgeous. The food was delicious, and in general everything was very clean and walkable and pleasant. (I guess this is unsurprising given how clean the ship itself is, so the line’s maintenance standards probably carry to their island as well.)

(We were apparently the first Holland America ship of the season in both Half Moon Cay and Fort Lauderdale, which was a fun tidbit I learned from those two ports. I guess the Caribbean gets much busier later in the year.)

The other ports were all fine. Nothing else was particularly memorable (although we did not pay for an excursion to go to Antigua from our Puerto Quetzal port in Guatemala, and I hear that city is pretty), maybe because many of the ports were really about the beaches, and I’m not a beach person. But the trip for me was much more about the experience (and the ship, and spending time with my mom, and seeing this new part of the world) than specific ports.

Of course we came back with chocolate and coffee and tequila (and tons of great memories).

Overall, it was a fantastic experience. I really recommend everyone sails on Holland America.

I haven’t finished going through the 15,000+ (!!) raw photos from the trip, but they may show up on my photos site at some point. Or maybe not, since I’m neglecting that website.

Anyway. Life is amazing.