17 April 2007, Cartagena Colombia.

Today we were in Cartagena, for a half day stop, on our way to the Panama Canal. The town with its main port is located at the end of a shallow bay, not unlike Tampa in Florida. Thus it took us about 45 minutes to get to the dock and then another 30 minutes to dock. We have to inch the ship all the way forward until we are about 10 to 15 feet from the harbor wall to get the ships position right and that takes some time. We were blessed with beautiful weather but here there is always the issue of the humidity and thus the 87oF in the sunshine felt as 102oF. Thus it was a very warm day.

Cartagena bay is approached from the West through a very shallow and narrow channel marked by rows of buoys that are sometimes in position but also sometimes completely off location. Similar to other places in the world the local fishermen are absolutely convinced that the best fishing is right in the middle of the channel and are very reluctant to move. If the channel was very wide I could understand that but with a width of only 180 feet, it must not make that much of a difference, unless the crabs and fish here are so intelligent that they seek shelter in the fairway while the ships thunder over their heads and so keep the fishermen from catching them.

We picked up the pilot at 06.00 hrs. just at sunrise. Any earlier has not much use as the buoys are quite often unlit and I do not like to go in there by just totally relying on the local pilot. In this port I like to see what I am doing. Just ahead of us was the Celebration Infinity and 30 minutes behind us the Norwegian Pearl. After picking up the pilot we sailed with about 12 knots of speed into the bay, hugging the western shore on a north Easterly course. I came to Cartagena for the first time in 1982 when it was an old fashioned cargo port, with rickety sheds, giant rats and very friendly ladies all eager to show you the sights. (Mainly their own…….) Since then the port has revamped itself as the main container port of Colombia with new docks, an excellent port organization and very good infrastructure.

There is no Cruise terminal as such. When cruise ships are calling; they clear one or more cargo docks and the tour and shuttle buses pull right up to the gangway. Most of the shuttle buses are rather small as they have to negotiate narrow streets but they have loads of them. Today they needed them all as with three ships, read 6000 guests, it was a busy morning. For those guests not going ashore, there was the excellent opportunity to see a container port in full action as we were docked right opposite the CGM Maya, a container feeder ship. Feeder means that it is a smaller ship that brings –feeds- containers to a bigger port where they are picked up by the large around the world container ships that sometimes carry over 12000 containers each.

The return of the tours is always just before the departure and it is a challenge to quickly process 700 or more cruise guests returning all at the same time. As it was good weather we could solve that this time by having our security scanning machines on the dockside, in the open air. With two lanes going, there was no waiting for the guests and as a result we pulled away from the dock only 15 minutes behind schedule.

Getting out of port is going the opposite way through the bay again. What still baffles everybody who sails into Cartagena is that there is the option to cut a short channel from the docks directly to the open sea, just south of the New city. It would reduce the transit time from 45 minutes to approximately 15 minutes. However there seems to be no interest at all in doing this. Thus we have to go the long way around.

The Celebration Infinity will be with us tomorrow in the Panama Canal but she sailed an hour later. With her gas turbines she goes much faster so she can make up the hour. We put the pedal to the metal as soon as we disembarked the pilot and are aiming for a 5 am. pilot station at Cristobal. It is going to be an early morning and a long day tomorrow. But the weather looks great so the guests should have a beautiful day.