Panama Canal to Manta, Ecuador

Clear of the Panama Canal we have returned to the Pacific Ocean for the final leg of this World Cruise back to Sydney. Although we won’t actually cross the Equator until the very early hours of tomorrow morning, they will hold the “Crossing the Line” ceremony today. This is also the start of an exciting week for both of us, as neither of us has visited any of the next 3 ports down the west coast of South America.

Temperature: High 29C/84F, Low 27C/81F

Wind/Weather: NE’ly winds at 20 knots. Long low swell. Partly cloudy

Sunrise/Sunset: 06:16/18:32

Clox: Z-5 (no change)

Navigation

Throughout the day Sea Princess maintained S’ly courses at about 16 kts through the Pacific Ocean. We made landfall off the Ecuador coast about 22:00 and will cross the equator in the early hours of tomorrow morning.

Activities

After the early start yesterday and a long tiring day in the heat and humidity of the Panama Canal, I actually slept in until 07:00, at which time I commenced work on the canal photographs until Judi awoke. We had breakfast with 3 other couples, two of who knew us from the blog. One couple followed it daily before joining in Southampton and the other couple’s daughter follows the posts and reports to her parents on what is happening aboard. Yet again, some excellent conversation, but again the porridge got returned, as it was cold.

According to our interests, the Cruise Director couldn’t have created a worse schedule, with the 3 activities of interest almost scheduled at the same time:

• 11:30 Crossing the Line Ceremony, which I figured would last at least an hour
• 12:00 Pub lunch, which also included the Cruise Critic group lunch
• 12:30 Lecture

We planned to attend the Crossing the Line Ceremony and if pub lunch was still on when it finished, we would head down at that time. The lecture, well hopefully I’ll catch it on the telly later. The Crossing the Line Ceremony was a joke and is covered in a separate post. Basically it was a poor scripted production that lasted less than 20 minutes, so on a positive note, we did make the pub lunch. Great lunch with 3 other couples, one which we have enjoyed meals with many times since Sydney and 2 other couples that joined in Southampton. Again we spent well over an hour enjoying pub fare and great conversation.

After lunch I spent the afternoon working on Panama photographs and blog posts, as the schedule had nothing of interest.

Dinner was again a bust for the galley. The lobster bisque was at best luke warm and the pork was so tough it could have been used to sole your shoe. Yet again, another example of the reduction in the quality of meats served aboard this ship.

As another day closes, we bid you farewell, till tomorrow and hope for fair skies and following seas.