LIVE *** Coral Princess Panama Canal Westbound 3/22/10 to 4/6/10

[bconley351]

Thanks for the info. 10 should work fine for her...3 kids - 2 schools, and some traffic getting to the port.

[heisnuts]

Day 10 – Huatulco, Mexico

Actually pronounced wa-tul-co, Mexico, we pulled in a little early at noon instead of 1pm. It was nice to be able to sleep in this morning and slowly wake up and eat before pulling into port.

To answer a few questions from previous posts 1) I will look out for Sue and Gus and say hello if we run into them. 2) There are 3 formal nights on this cruise. The first one was our first sea day (day after leaving Florida), the second one was the day after Puerto Amador (also a day at sea) and our final one will be the day we leave Cabo San Lucas (we leave Cabo at 2pm). I did see a few tuxes at dinner, but the majority wore suits and women had nice dresses or pants. 3) You can elect to have Express Walk Off where you leave the ship in Los Angeles as soon as they are cleared by the port to disembark passengers (usually happens around 7:30 to 8am). If you don’t pick Express, you will go into a lottery as to what time your group will be called to disembark. It could be anywhere from 8am to 10:30am. If you have specific flight requirements there is a place on the form to list those and I am sure they will try to accommodate your time frame. It’s funny you mention it because we just received our form last night and it has to be turned in by tomorrow at 6pm.

I found another tip towards the start of the trip that I wanted to pass along. The internet log on screen has a “free zone” listed to the right side of the screen. This is where you can look at the princess.com web site and other links. One link is called Princess ecards where you can send an electronic post card at no charge and without logging onto the system. There are 6 different cards to pick from and you can type up to 250 characters and send them out to any email address you supply. We have sent several of these from our laptop that we brought with us, but I am sure the same applies to the computers in the internet café. Since we have had no problems using the wireless connection from our room on Dolphin deck forward, we have never actually used the internet café.

Today we signed up for the two bay snorkel tour. The tour boat is right next to the ship so you just walk right over to it and it takes you to two bays where you get about 40 minutes at each bay to see the marine life and fish. We saw a lot in both bays and it was pretty nice to be floating along in 80 degree water when it is a lot hotter outside. The tour was a lot of fun and lasted just under 4 hours.

Today’s afternoon movie is Up In The Air and MUTS will be showing Mamma Mia tonight.

[billet]

Thank you for the post card tip. I have seen it and never used it - now I will. I also much appreciate the help on pronouncing Huatulco, I can now sound as if I know what I am talking about on the next cruise!

[heisnuts]

Day 11 – Acapulco

We arrived at 9am to a sunny Acapulco. Today DW wanted to see the cliff divers and since I really had no desire, I stayed on board. Being the first time I have stayed on board in port, I must say it’s kinda nice to have the boat to yourself with everyone ashore. Although I was not the only passenger onboard, you could certainly tell that there were a lot of people missing.

DW really liked the cliff divers. It starts with a little bus tour of the city, then some shopping, and finally the cliff divers. The tour lasts about 4 hours and you are back onboard around 3pm with the ship sailing at 4:30.

Now that we are heading north the ship has a little more movement. It’s nothing bad or violent, but you can tell you are not on land. Tomorrow will be a full day at sea and then we will be making our final stop in Cabo San Lucas on Sunday, where we will be anchoring and then using the tenders to get ashore.

[UT-Volsfan]

We've really enjoyed the live posts. We're sailing on Sea Princess through the Canal in May, and are really looking forward to this trip! Your posts have us wishing we were sailing now instead of in 33 days.

[Bowie MeMe]

Good to follow you live. We got off March 21 and surely do miss the Coral life style. Enjoy.

 

In Cabo, look off the back balcony with binoculars and if you are lucky you might see the whales there. I took the whale watching tour and was so annoyed by a very agressive and reckless yellow water taxi . When back on boat all I had to do was look for the bright yellow boat and the whales were there!! It was also interesting to watch the hang gliders over the arch.

[heisnuts]

Day 12 – Day at Sea

What a relaxing day at sea today. The temperature has become noticeably cooler and is now really the perfect temp. I didn’t look at the readings, but I would guess it is in the mid to upper 70’s and the humidity has dropped as well making it not too hot or too cold.

Even with everyone onboard, the ship really does not seem crowded. We were able to use the hot tub, walk on deck, have breakfast in the Horzion Court, and dinner in the MDR all with no problems. The crew has done a great job in keeping the ship in great shape, and you almost always see one of the crew on deck doing something in that regard.

While we were sitting on our balcony today we saw baby dolphins swimming alongside the ship. They would occasionally jump out of the water and then disappear into the sea. We even saw a baby turtle in the afternoon swimming just to the side of the ship close to where the dolphins were. One thing we have noticed is that where the dolphins are swimming there is usually a flock of birds hovering just over the water where they are swimming. So if you see a flock of birds hovering just above the water, you may have dolphins just below them. We have also seen a lot of flying fish over the last few days that will jump out of the water right next to the boat and fly across the water several yards or more before diving back into the water. It’s been a lot of fun just sitting on the balcony watching the water for the different types of marine life around.

Tonight was lobster night again, even though it was not a formal night. As always, the food has been excellent. By the end of the day we are usually stuffed and can’t believe all of the food we have consumed throughout the day. Service in the anytime dining room has also been excellent the entire trip. Both the headwaiters up front and wait staff have been very pleasant and accommodating.

There was not a movie in the theater this afternoon, and MUTS had Michael Jackson – This Is It showing in the evening. The staterooms had The Proposal showing in the evening that keeps repeating for those who were at dinner when the first showing started.

[Socal404]

Hey Heisnuts,

 

Did you feel the earthquake on Sunday? 7.2 in the north part of Baja.

[heisnuts]

Hey Heisnuts,

 

Did you feel the earthquake on Sunday? 7.2 in the north part of Baja.

 

It's funny you bring it up. We did hear about this on the television news in our stateroom, but we did not feel or hear about it when we were in Cabo.

[heisnuts]

Day 13 – Cabo San Lucas

It is now a lot cooler, waking up to 65 degrees this morning. It did warm up to 80 in mid day but then cooled off again in the evening.

Today we took the costal cruise around the rock formation and it also turned out to be a wale watching cruise since there were several hump back wales that had not left the area yet on their migration back up to Alaska. The tour lasted 2 hours and drinks and snacks are served throughout the cruise. The cruise was ok, but I would certainly not rate it among the best we have taken with Princess.

After they dropped us off at the pier, we had a little time to walk around the shops before boarding the tenders back to the ship. There is some free wireless internet spots around the shops that my Iphone picked up while walking around and a few of the shops had different kinds of sodas and energy drinks if you did not like the Coke products offered onboard. Like all cruise ships, we had to tender into Cabo. However, in Cabo they have their own fleet of tenders that are used in addition to the 4 ship tenders used to bring passengers ashore. The process goes really fast since there are so many tenders available, and both going and coming went really smoothly.

We were only in Cabo for a little over 6 hours since we had to leave a little after 1pm in order to arrive back in Los Angeles at 7am on Tuesday. Tomorrow will be a full day at sea and then we will pull into Los Angeles at 7am on Tuesday morning. We cannot believe how fast the cruise has gone by. It really doesn’t seem like it was two weeks ago that we were boarding in Florida for our journey through the Canal.

On all of our cruises we usually stop by the front desk towards the end of the cruise to get a copy of our onboard account. In all of our 8 cruises now this was the first time there was an erroneous charge on the account. It turned out that the cabin number on one of the dinner slips at one of the specialty restaurants was transposed and then billed to the wrong cabin number. It was very easy to fix and they took care of it right on the spot, but I bring it up because it is very easy to fix this type of error a day or so before the end of the cruise when there is no line at the front desk, rather than wait to the very last day where there may be a big line of passengers waiting to talk to the front desk.

There was not an afternoon movie in the theature today and MUTS showed My Life In Ruins both at 8pm and 10pm.

[Amphitrite]

Thank you so much for your interesting posts on this journey. We are boarding the Coral tomorrow eastbound back to FLL. It was a pleasure reading your experiences on this cruise! Safe travels home from LA.

[heisnuts]

Day 14 – Day at Sea

It is now getting cold in the mornings. We are in the 60’s and even in the afternoon, we are stretching to reach 70 degrees. The wind has also picked up so the sea is a little rougher than before. It’s not like you are holding onto the rails when walking around, but you can sure tell that the ship is moving. It has been a very relaxing day onboard, but you can tell there is a little sadness in the fellow passengers who know it will be back to reality tomorrow.

It’s hard to believe the journey is almost over. The two weeks have gone by very fast and we had an excellent time seeing several different countries and the Panama Canal in operation. We have had such a good time onboard, and once again come away with a very favorable view of Princess.

We chose express walk-off for tomorrow, which means we will keep our suitcase in the room with us tonight and be the first off the ship tomorrow, taking all of our luggage with us as we disembark. This option gets you off the ship around 8am. The rest of the passengers have been divided up into groups that start leaving the ship at 8am and then continues in 15 minute increments until 10:45am when the last group is set to disembark.