If we pay attention to Seabourn’s marketing bla bla, the company highlights the quality of the ports visited by its ships, supposedly off the beaten track and where the giants of the seas, which dump their thousands of passengers, cannot go. Well that was not totally true for this cruise! Many of the ports chosen by Seabourn are the same as those surveyed by Carnival or Royal Caribbean. The relatively small Seabourn Ovation regularly found itself stuck between several of these behemoths, such as in Cozumel or Belize.
The excursions offered by Seabourn are quite expensive, but rather well selected. For example, visiting a swamp on an airboat in Belize or an animal reserve by boat in Puerto Limón, Costa Rica. It was a great experience to see sloths up close in their natural environment. The fauna and flora in the “rain forests” are always fascinating to observe.
For me, the most beautiful excursion of the cruise was to Santo Tomás de Castilla, Guatemala. In a reserve, the ascent of a river, the observation of waterfalls and the possibility of swimming in incredibly pure water.
But the highlight of this cruise was the Panama Canal. This was the 2nd time I had the luck to pass through these legendary locks, after my 2018 cruise on Norwegian Bliss from Miami to Los Angeles. The Bliss was one of the first cruise ships of this size to use the new channel, which opened in 2016. As the Seabourn Ovation is a much smaller boat, the passage was through the old channel, which is much more interesting in terms of process. The mules, a sort of small locomotive, are connected to the ship by cables as it progresses, in order to maintain its trajectory in the axis of the locks and to prevent it from touching the edges. Their ballet is definitely worth seeing.
The passage through the locks was done in both directions on the same day: entrance in the morning, a short break on Lake Gatún then exit in the afternoon, to end the day in Colón, Panama.
Next pages : restaurants !
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