Colon, the departure port for our ship, is on the Atlantic side of Panama, a distance of about 70km, which takes about 1 hour by car. Cruise people normally stay in Panama City as that is where the major airport is located and Colon is an industrial city with not much to offer. A $60 cab ride delivered us to the cruise port in Colon, where “chaos” seemed to prevail. Even though we had a scheduled boarding window of 12:30-1:00PM there was a long line of people dragging their luggage through the port area. Luckily I had grabbed a porter to take our luggage from the cab and lead us to where we had to go.  We bypassed that long line and were quickly deposited near the check-in table. It was the best $10 I spent that day! It was hot and humid in the port area (with no AC) and we were relieved to finally be able to board the ship fairly quickly.

An aside:  After booking and paying for the cruise we later learned that it catered to the Spanish speaking clientele who lived in this area. In fact, it would be likely that over 90% of the passengers on this cruise would be Spanish speaking. It should be an interesting adventure for us, gringos, who can only order margaritas in Spanish!

The ship was one of the older RCCL ships; it was built in 1997, but refurbished in 2022. It turned out it was in very good shape. After dropping off our hand luggage in our room we had a quick lunch and proceeded to do our usual tour of the ship to get a feel of its layout.  I had chosen an aft facing balcony room to experience what it was like. The advantage of these rooms is you get an enormous outdoor balcony compared to normal balcony rooms. It was so big it had two chaise lounges, two chairs and a table. The possible negatives are it is a long way to anywhere else on the ship (the positive is you get more steps); there is the possibility of more engine noise and it might be more bouncy in rough seas. As it turned out only the first negative came into play; we walked a lot the week we were on board!

Dinner was in the main dining room. We were slated for the 6:30 seating which was fine with us as the 2nd seating was not until 8:45PM, way too late for us.  As it turned out the Spanish people do like to eat late! Probably because the ship knew we were English speaking they did not attempt to put us at a larger table; we had a nice table for two. The staff mostly spoke English but I did notice there were many staff members who were obviously bi-lingual. Because this particulr cruise runs at least 6 months my guess is RCCL specifically hired bilingual speakers to be part of the staff for this series of cruises. Menus were in both languages as was major signage. Food was OK, but RCCL has obviously downgraded the quality and selection since we last traveled with them in 2004. Yvonne did remind me we have become spoiled by our trips on Regent 7 Seas ships.

End of day 1: Walked 6718 steps today, not bad for having done nothing!