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Costa Rica Panama Canal


grammi
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Will you share your experiences good and bad with shore excursions for the Costa Rica/Windstar sailings. Not seeing a lot of information on these. Is there usually something to do at the ports if we don't sign up for a shore excursion. We are spending a couple weeks post cruise exploring inland Costa Rica post cruise. We love the animal life but not really into birds or insects. Also, it seems there is a lot of hiking on the shore excursions and wondering how that goes with the extreme humidity and heat. Sailing Jan 12th, 2019 on the Star Breeze but don't seem to find a roll call for that sailing. Thanks everyone!

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In Quepos we hired a private guide for hiking in Manuel Antonio. It is one of the easier ports to do a private excursion, I think. You can also just tender into the village to walk around and shop, but it isn't very large. We went in March and it was very hot for hiking. The humidity is very very high. I can't comment on the WS excursions.

 

Golfo Dulce is remote and I couldn't really find a way to do a private tour there, so we did the dolphin watch and beach visit. We saw tons of dolphins right near the boat and the beach swim was lovely. We were only in port for a half day so I think our excursion offerings were a bit different than yours. We heard from others who enjoyed the chocolate farm tour. We didn't get into Puerto Jimenez at all. The water sports platform was open that day too.

 

Is Isla Parida your Windstar Signature Island Experience day? We had ours at Isla de Coiba. There was a guided hike offered that day for us too that we didn't take, we just enjoyed the beach toys and barbeque.

 

For Balboa, you can read lots of reviews of the monkey watch boat ride. They vary widely. We did not have a good experience because we were last on the boat and had to sit by the loud motor in full sun. We only saw one monkey up close and one at a distance, and we had already seen TONS of monkeys at Manuel Antonio. YMMV. Some people love it.

 

If you take one of the locks tours, keep in mind that if you want to see ships going through them you have to choose the one that does the locks first. We took the PC and Miraflores locks tour which went into Panama City first, and by the time we got to the locks there were no more ships until the afternoon. However, the visitors center museum is excellent if you are interested in that kind of thing. Lots of models of the different machines that were needed etc. The ship will tender you in to the yacht club, so if you want to arrange a private tour, they must pick you up there.

 

From Puerto Caldera, the coffee plantation/oxcart village tour is a standard tourist offering in CR.

 

Our roll call only had a handful.

 

Our itinerary was in the other order (we ended in Colon), and the ports were slightly different, but I hope this is helpful.

 

We loved the Breeze and the crew was exceptional.

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Thank you so much. We signed up for the Dolphin tour. We are staying at Amador Causeway pre-cruise and didn't realize we would be staying right across from the Yacht club til recently. Which is kind of funny. I wasn't going to sign up for anything in Balboa but my DH saw the monkey tour and wanted to do it so, we will try to make sure to not be last on the boat. Thanks for the confirmation on the heat and humidity, I think we will skip any hiking.

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If you sit at the front of the boat for the dolphin tour, they will be very close, swimming right in front of you. We could see them turn their heads to look at us. It is a good vantage point for picture taking as well. We also saw them jumping in the air in the distance, and moms swimming with babies. A treat.

 

For the monkey boat ride, when the bus gets to the boats, go right to the boats and get a spot in the front. Don't go to the bathroom, go right to the boat. In the front you can hear the guide and the monkeys will be closer. Bring some water and a snack. Between the bus ride, the boat ride, and the bus ride back, you will be gone for several hours and be happy to have something. I always travel with packaged granola bars or power bars for such activities and carry water with me everywhere. Because it's Windstar I assumed they would provide such things, but they didn't.

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smallmonkey.jpg.f31c51171cdd72a24d7aebdb2ba13c39.jpg

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Thank you! I took the dolphin picture with no zoom. DH took the monkey photo. He is tall with long arms so he was able to stick his arms up over everyone's heads and zoom in to get that one. We weren't nearly that close.

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Yes, it is the beach from the dolphin tour. I have a Canon D10 underwater camera that I used throughout the trip. It takes pretty good regular snapshots in addition to the underwater mode. It is several years old now, though, and has been superseded by a new model with a different number. DH has a Canon SX30 digital camera that is our "good" camera with a decent zoom. We don't ever take that to the beach. He took all the good pictures we have of Panama City and the canal, animals high up in trees, night scenes, etc. Between the two cameras we manage to cover all the bases. :)

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