The sail into Puerto Quetzal this morning was lovely, especially the places along the coast. We were flanked by dolphins for a good part of the way… wonderful! Docking was a huge surprise…. Instead of being at the regular cruise ship terminal we were moved to the container port. The Star Princess was given our dock….. grrrrrrr! There was mass confusion as we got off since there was no transportation to get independent travelers out of the port area. Peter & I almost made it out of the port by foot, about ½ mile but were finally turned back by some security guy. Didn’t make much sense to me since the shortest way out of the port area was through the exit… Oh well! Long story short, buses were eventually provided but it took a while. At first I was quite upset with HAL for the chaos and mass confusion but after I talked to Captain Eversen I had a better understanding of how the port authorities really screwed this up. At first I decided to just take the day off and spend the whole day poolside but about 12:30, Peter & I decided to make our escape. We took the shuttle out of the port and hooked a taxi to take us to the village of Iztapa… Why? Why not…. It was just a point on the map so we could get out and see some of the day to day life in Guatemala up close. It was a great trip….. We saw lots of sights and people along the way. I even got to the market to buy chili’s for my Indonesian friends. This evening the sunset was magnificent….
Starting with Flipper and his friend and ending with an amazing sunset. It was a nice day indeed!
ReplyDeletesame thing happened to us early last year on the Statendam roundtrip Canal Cruise.. Princess got the cruise dock ..we got the limestone pit and container dock..
ReplyDeletein case you weren't aware.. Puerto Quetzel is one of the premiere Sailfishing locations in the world... it sure doesn't look it but it is.. (sure isn't the safest country around).. better Sailfishing there than Costa Rica and Panama.. HAL used to have an Charter tour bookable thru the ship's Excursion desk back in 2008 when we were on the Maasdam roundtrip canal cruise.. five of us out from one of the three boats that went out raised 27 Sailfish .. caught 15 .. all catch and release..in a 4 1/2 hour period... I've fished in a lot of places and PQ is the best of the best for Sails .. the fleet is right next to the regular cruise dock.. HAL doesn't run that Charter anymore... guess it was too good :)
here it is from 2008 from our Maasdam cruise
http://stakeout.smugmug.com/SportFishing-3/Sailfishing-Puerto-Quetzel/10109131_rd7b9t
just got off the 42 day Maasdam Europe cruise- with Moon..did same cruise last year also.. we'll be heading out on a 56 day Ft Laud-Canal-SD-Hawaii-Tahiti-and Canal back to Ft Laud in mid-Jan on the Statendam