Panama Cruise 2005 Day 9 & 10 November 5 & 6 Puntarenas Costa Rica & Sea Day

So today we docked in on a peninsula in Costa Rica, the name Puntarenas comes from a combination of punta and arenas, which means "point" and "sands", respectively. In English this would translate roughly to "Sand Point".  We were able to walk down the dock right into town.  We didn’t book any excursions in this area as most of the excursions involved going to see monkeys, crocodiles or sloths.  There were also a bunch of zipline excursions but we just decided to explore the little town. 

Walkway to town

One of the first things we found was little church unfortunately we were unable to go inside as they have recently locked it up because of vandalism.  Since the town is located on a very long peninsula we were able to walk from one side to the other in about 20 minutes.  We did find a downtown shopping area though most of the stores seemed to be shoe stores.  If you were looking for running shoes or leather sandals this was the place to shop.

We did find the aquarium that rescues turtles and other sea life in the area, unfortunately it wasn’t open. They had a very nice market area that had some very nice vendors. I found a lady who was actually making little key chains, so I picked one up that had a little sloth on it.  It was nice to find someone who was actually making their own items.  We found the local sign that each port seems to have, so we tried to get a picture in front of it but the sun was going the wrong direction so you couldn’t actually see us, so we had to settle for a selfie.  It was so hot and humid that we decided to have a chocolate milkshake at a little café and then we headed back to the ship. I did manage to get a great picture of a pelican as he was taking off.

We got back to the ship in time to have a shower and get dressed for dinner.  Supper was great as usual. We had two shows tonight, the first was in the theatre, a fellow named Ric Steele.  He sang a bunch of old school country music, Johnny Cash, George Jones and Willie Nelson.  He was very good and is the quintessential cruise ship performer. After his show we rushed to the Universal Lounge to watch a Magician from Canada Neil Crosswell, he was very entertaining and very good, he combined magic with mentalism. After both shows it was time for bed.

Sea Day

Today we are at sea heading to Fuerte Amador and Panama City.  Only three days till the Panama Canal.  We started off with a smaller breakfast because they had a spicy curry as one of the lunch options and I wanted to try it out.  More enrichment talks this morning and then up to the pool deck to watch F1 a movie about Formula 1 race cars.  The pool had finally warmed up, it was actually very warm and as I was treading water a lady beside me commented on what a great day it was, swimming in the sun and watching Brad Pitt on the big screen. 

After the movie we went to a talk on the Panama Canal. The historian that was going to narrate our passage through the canal in a couple of days gave us a brief history on the canal and tips on what to look for and where to get the best views.  

You can see from the picture how much higher the lake is than the locks on the Atlantic side. 

The show in the theatre was a singer names Yaniv Zarif, he is a singer/actor who speaks and sings in over 32 languages. An example of what he did, he sang a song from Fiddler on The Roof and sang it in both English and Yiddish. He also did an amazing performance of My Heart Will Go On by Celine Dion singing and using American Sign Language. He actually won a Sign language competition with this song.