2011 Carnival Freedom Cruise to Colon, Panama. After a bus ride from Colon, Panama on the Caribbean Coast to Panama City on the Pacific Coast we took the Panama Canal Excursion from Panama City through the Miraflores and the Pedro Miguel Locks, the Gailard Cut, the Centenary Bridge to Gamboa for our bus ride back to Colon.
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Pictures and video from our shore excursion in Limon, Costa Rica. White Water Rafting [Class III] on the Rio Pacuare River. After a bus ride inland we set-off near the site for a new dam that would end this stretch of the river’s whitewater days.
Unfortunately, even with an underwater camera we were so busy paddling during the rough stretches we seldom got off a good picture of the more intense sections of the river. Usually having to settle for photo’s of other rafts coming through the end of those sections.
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Spent a day living a dream aboard the vessel Miguelito in the turquoise water off of the western side of the island.
The 3-Reef trip was relaxing as we would plunge into the waters with our snorkel guide and instead of swimming around you let the currents move you along above the reefs as our guide would swim down to the reef to point out the fish and sometimes ‘scoot’ them out from their hidden spots for us to see them.
Afterwards the Miquelito dropped us off at a great beach clubs for lunch [included in fee] where we had an awesome beef burrito that was a struggle to finish…big, meaty, fresh cut vegetables.
http://www.eagleraydivers.com/Snorkel.htm
We booked this tour ourselves before boarding our cruise ship, well worth the price. We caught a short [$8] cab ride to the marina and found the Miquelito easily.
2011 cruise aboard the Carnival Freedom. This was our second cruise on the freedom, the first being 2009 [my favorite] to the Grand Cayman and Jamaica. We got an ocean view room this time and took the behind the scenes tour: below decks, crew areas, galley, steak house, the bridge, laundry, food prep, marshaling area, etc.
As usual had lots of fun and 'decompressed' completely.
On our first day at sea we had too course changes. The first turned out to be a bunch of red balloons floating on the water but the second was a Cuban refugee in a small blue raft with homemade oars. We picked him up and then turned around and took him back to Key West where he was turned over to the US Coastguard .
I'll never understand the logic of a policy that encourages Cubans to flee an oppressive regime, but we will only accept them if they actually set foot on dry land, sometimes actually stopping and arresting them in the shallows of a beach, mere feet from dry land. At which point we return them to the oppressive regime we encouraged them to flee from. Which is what will happen to this refugee.
%5B4%5D.jpg "Carnival Freedom 2011 (5)")
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