Cruise 2025 - The Rock and Roll Cruise - Part 3 - Cartagena Revisited

 

The deep blue color of the ocean hasn’t changed since our first cruise, nor has the smell of fresh salt air. The satisfaction of seeing the unique color of the deep ocean and breathing in the crisp, clean air is just as intense as thirty years ago. Sitting on the balcony at sea was high on our list back then and it still is. We don’t get to do it often, so when we get the opportunity to enjoy these things, we don’t waste a single moment.

 A day at sea is also a great opportunity to catch up on reading about our strange, convoluted world, such as the just announced sales analysis for new cars and small trucks in 2025. The biggest surprise isn’t the total number of cars and pickup trucks or even who sold them. The biggest surprise is there were more cars sold for over $75,000 than those that cost less than $30,000! My surprise is partly based on the archaic fact I paid $19,200 for my first house, a brand new townhouse in Miami. As of January 5, 2026, the cheapest new car sold in the United States is the 2026 Kia K4, which has a base starting price of $23,385. Inflation has clobbered us so badly, that according to Cox Automotive, “The number of new vehicle models priced under $25,000 has dropped from thirty-six in 2017 to just five in 2026.” The vehicles are basically the same, electronics and AI notwithstanding, the prices are simply up, way, way up. A quick glance at the room menu reminds me parts of cruising have also changed drastically. A glass of Cabernet or Chardonnay is now $18. A beer is now $9. This new world is very expensive by my upbringing, but we have resigned ourselves to enjoying what we like by simply being selective.  

The Main Dining Room - The Rotterdam

We eventually get dressed after sunset and head toward the dining room. Coughing and sneezing are already on the increase, so we ask to be seated by ourselves and notice many of the other diners are doing the same thing. One group that has consistently been seated together has a middle-aged male member who has worn bib overalls and a denim ball cap every single day of the cruise so far. He wears the same attire in the dining room. The maître d' politely reminded a passenger standing in line in front of us on our second day that shorts were inappropriate. The passenger profusely apologized and immediately left to change. Apparently, bib overalls are not as offensive as shorts. Another white, male passenger in his late 60s or early 70s has worn a ball cap in the dining room with his political American idol boldly emblazoned on it. It isn’t red, but wearing a hat, especially a ball or golf cap, in the dining room is in poor taste. Holland America Lines may be somewhat off base with their new marketing targets.

The housekeeping staff on the Rotterdam changes the floor mats in every elevator to match the day of the week. A subtle yet effective way to keep us all from losing all track of sensibilities and schedules. Surprise! It’s Friday already! Five days into the cruise and we still have seven to go. We’ll arrive at Cartagena early tomorrow under cloudy skies. It looks like our bright sunshine will elude us for the next several days, but we haven’t scheduled any port activities so we aren’t worried about weather.

Once again, we end up in the Rolling Stones Lounge listening to the really great band that has caught our ear. Thomaso, from Rome, Flor from Buenos Aires, Steven from St. Louis, Shannon from San Diego, and a young man whose name I never mastered from Tokyo, made up a band that meshed as if they had been playing together for years. They play our style of popular rock music, even briefly touching on R&B. We thought the BB King blues club would be our “hangout,” but they play solid Motown with some soul music tossed in, and they do it very loudly. Just not our style. We tried the main theater in the round and were not impressed with the shows.  

The Virgen del Carmen, patron saint of mariners, stands a foggy vigil at Cartagena 

Slowly, quietly entering the harbor at Cartagena is just as intriguing as the first time we visited here. We are sailing slowly due north, this time shrouded by early morning fog and heavy overcast. The high rises soon appear and within minutes we are secured at the pier.  

I’m fascinated by the order and control Cartagena Port Authority uses to fill the pier with huge tour buses so efficiently. The pier was empty when the first mooring lines were thrown ashore, and filled with buses by the time people started walking toward the welcome garden. We aren’t alone here, either, as the new gleaming Virgin Cruises ship, Brilliant Lady, docks alongside us. Not long after her arrival, a former Holland America ship, the old MS Statendam, now sailing as the Vasco da Gama for the German company, Nicko Cruises, docks on the other side of Brilliant lady. There will be almost 7000 passengers descending on Cartagena, no problem as long as we don’t all stay in the really nice little welcome garden at the end of the dock area.

The State of the Art in cruising: 1993 vs 2025 - The former MS Statendam, now the Vasco Da Gama,
launched in 1993, and the Brilliant Lady, launched in 2025.

Within minutes of mooring, the tour buses have loaded their passengers and have departed the dock

We decided not to go into town for several reasons, one of them is the early 1:30pm All Aboard. We enjoyed the welcome garden at the port entrance the first time we visited Cartagena, so we decided to once again see the colorful birds and perhaps once again feed the monkeys. Unfortunately, it looked like all 7000 visitors were there at once, so after a short, crowded stroll through the pretty center, we headed back to the ship. My blog and photos about our first visit to Cartagena is at: https://piddlepaddler.blogspot.com/2024/11/the-panama-canal-cruise-part-2-cartegena.html

The Guinea hens are still here.

The early departure from Cartagena means we will awaken tomorrow morning at the Caribbean entrance to the Panama Canal. This time we will go through the new locks, then turn around on Lake Gatun and sail back out the same day, waiting for the passengers who take local tours to rejoin the Rotterdam in Colon, Panama.

Time to head back to the ship and relax.

The Original Canal Cruise 2025 - The Rock and Roll Cruise - The Original Panama Canal 

Next: The Other Panama Canal

Previous:  Curacao

Cruise 2025 - The Rock and Roll Cruise - Part 2 - Curacao Revisited

Hiding from over two thousand, four hundred and four other passengers on a ship less than a thousand feet long is really very easy, just stay in your room and order everything from room service. We don’t use room service except for the daily bottles of drinking water, but we do love being on the balcony during sea days. We aren’t hermits, but we love what can only be done while cruising on the open sea and the best place we’ve found to enjoy it is on our balcony. This trip is no exception. 

With Cuba in the background, we enter the tranquil Windward Passage toward Curacao

We head into the appropriately named Windward Passage early on the morning of our second day with a brilliant sunrise to the east just as Cuba comes into sight on the horizon to our west. Ilse and I go up to the open top deck and watch the awakening pool activity two decks below. The Windward Passage, the channel from the Atlantic Ocean to the Caribbean Sea between Cuba and Hispaniola, has always intrigued me. We’ve sailed it four times now, and while we’re certainly not maritime experts, we’ve come to expect a different type of cruising here from anything else we have experienced. The appropriately named passage is always an interesting part of any cruise headed toward South America or the Panama Canal from the northern hemisphere. While it’s called the Windward Passage for good reason, the introduction, the first section has always been calm for us, almost a cunning lie to seduce unaware sailors. 

The subtle change in the sea as we pass Haiti

Breaking into the open Caribbean south of Haiti several hours later has always been enough to make whichever ship we’ve been on shudder and shake and the Rotterdam is no different. The wooden coat hangers in the closet even rattle. This is as pleasant as any other trip through here, and far from the worst when we had gale-force winds at 54 knots across our bow and fifteen to twenty foot seas while on the Crown Princess. The staircases on the Crown Princess squealed and banged in warped protest and water in the closed off pool deck sloshed higher than than the hand rail on the deck above. This passage was sedate by comparison, but still with enough personality to remind everyone why it is so named. We won’t be coming back this way as we will swing around the other side of Cuba for our return trip.

We are headed toward Curacao, then Cartagena, and a quick stop at Gatun Lake, part of the Panama Canal, then we will visit Georgetown in Grand Cayman, a repeat of our 1993 visit way back in the last century, before heading back to Ft. Lauderdale by way of the Yucatan Channel between Cuba and Mexico.

We had two full sea days – and one time change, ahead one hour – and we are anxiously awaiting our approach to Curacao, a port we really liked visiting way back in 2012. We are soon tied up, and after a nice relaxed breakfast, we head toward town.

Arriving at Willemstad, Curacao

MS Rotterdam, Willemstad, Curacao Dec 2025

The first thing that strikes me as I look across the rolling hills around Willemstadt is the numerous chimneys and smokestakes from the many petroleum processing plants are gone. The facilities are still there, but modernized and no longer conspicuous.

The floating Queen Emma Bridge in the foreground, and the soaring Queen Juliana Bridge in the background, Willemstad, Curacao

The Queen Emma bridge is cool, even if it is over 137 years old. The famous pedestrian bridge started swinging open while we were walking on it and drew oohs and aahs along with probably several thousand cell-phone photos from the pleased, conscripted “passengers.”

The pedestrian only Queen Emma bridge in Willemstad

 

A bridge unexpectedly swinging open is a thought that would normally instill visions of chaos and panic, not the pleasant giggles and laughter that enveloped the bridge. The “Old Swinging Lady” is world famous, and famously slow. It doesn’t raise up like a draw bridge or swing on a pivot like some of the old railroad bridges. Instead, it floats open on a hinge. The pontoon bridge that lifts and falls with the tides has an operator’s shack on the picturesque Punda side of Saint Anna Bay. 

The operator remotely closes the pedestrian gates on either end and starts the diesel motors that slowly propel the bridge away from from the abutment and the bridge “sails” open. Those on the bridge laugh and ride as if at an amusement park, it had enough undulation to make us hold the handrails, but the veterans of Old Swinging Lady didn’t even bother to look up. One woman hopped over the small gap between the bridge and the abutment as the bridge swung closed as she looked at her phone.

The oldest synagogue in the Americas

The famous floating market of Willemstad - Home of the famous three dollar banana

Being the good Samaritan that I try to be, I walked over to a couple sitting in what appeared to be a parked, brand new, locomotive pulling several open, surry-type sightseeing cars. Obviously a tourist tram waiting on passengers. Only this one was the little engine that couldn’t. The middle-aged driver was grinding the starter over and over again, but the shiny new engine only ground away mercilessly. It simply would not start. His wife, I assumed, sitting next to him was obviously getting desperate. They were both well dressed, obviously waiting on ship passengers for a local tour of Punda, on the other side of St. Anne’s from Otrabanda, which incidentally means “the other side.” He stepped down from the driver’s seat as I approached and I asked if I could possibly be of assistance.

“I don’t know,” he answered, “We just got it, it is brand new! It started fine when we drove it here!”

“Probably the choke valve is stuck open,” I answered, based on being from Miami and growing up putting my hand over carburetor throats to start cars and jeeps. I’ve done this many times before. “Well, open the engine cover and let’s see if we can fix this,” I answered.

Surprise, surprise! The fuel injected engine is part of a dedicated towing vehicle, not simply a converted jeep or truck chassis. It is state of the art and beautifully laid out, meticulously painted and labeled. It is spotlessly clean. Every label or tag, however, is written in Chinese. Well, basics still apply, I told myself and began following tubing and air ducts until the intake went out of sight behind the engine.

The woman had called an associate who arrived just as I reached the upper level of my expertise, I believe it’s still called the Peter Principle. I explained my actions to him as he stood quietly, his hands behind his back. He looked at me and said ‘Hmmm,” then reached behind the engine somehow and within a minute or so, said, “Try it now.” After several half-hearted coughs, it started just as a bus showed up and people began climbing into to the waiting tram. The woman came over to me and thanked me profusely, even though I hadn’t fixed it. “He did something inside the air cleaner, so, yes, you did.” By the time she picked up her microphone, they had a full tour loaded and ready to go. I got another big smile and a wave.

"Toto, we're not in Iowa anymore..."

We return to the ship to find another behemoth docked behind us, the Carnival Horizon, a cousin to our Holland America Rotterdam, which adds another 4000 visitors to the port. The third and fourth piers, smaller than the open sea piers, are in town, and are both occupied as well. Moored alongside St. Annabaai is the Crystal Serenity, famous for having been taken by Bahamian authorities several years ago for owing well over four million dollars in outstanding fuel bills, and another, unnamed boutique cruiser docked in front of her. The completely refurbished Crystal Serenity, carrying just over a thousand passengers, is now under new ownership and is operated by Crystal Cruises.

We have dinner and head for the top deck to catch the Thursday evening fireworks. Another great visit to one of our favorite ports.

Next –  Cartagena Revisited

Previous: - Back Again

Cruise 2025 - The Rock and Roll Cruise - Part 1 - Another look at Cruising

The Rock and Roll Cruise – 2025 - Part 1 - Another look at Cruising

I'm writing this sitting on our wind-blown balcony six stories above the ragged Caribbean Sea, watching flying fish sporadically erupt from the white caps below to escape our nine hundred and ninety ton behemoth as it plows toward Cartagena. This is the prime reason we cruise. To us, there is nothing else like it. On our first cruise back in the last century we had to go on deck to experience this as the best cabin back then had only a small, round porthole. It didn't open and we could hardly see out of it, but we were thrilled to have a view of the open sea. The majority of the other two thousand, four hundred and twenty two passengers on board the M/S Rotterdam are either immersed in their cellphones as they lounge throughout the observation lounge, busy playing bingo, dozing around the pool, or symbolically pulling the magic silver arm of the ever present one arm bandit. The mechanical arms have long disappeared, though, now players simply hit the big, lighted "repeat bet" button to spin the animated characters that mesmerize them into pumping continuous, uninterrupted sums of money into the machines for the enjoyment of doing it again, and again and again. The new machines even have WiFi built in so you can swipe your room card or even a credit card which your room key is already linked to before you sail, and continue spending money without interruption. These cruisers don't even know there are flying fish or endless stretches of Sargasso seaweed that stretch to the horizon. 

We enter the Windward Passage headed to Curacao with Cuba in the distance 

We stopped cruising altogether for ten or so years in protest of the drastic drop in quality of the dining experience when the cruise industry decided to force customers into the added expense of "specialty" dining at an additional charge to the passage. That was our last cruise with our once favorite line, the one we first cruised with and had previously cruised with three times, but no more. We have since sailed with Princess, Celebrity and now with Holland America, all of which are similar in services and costs. The itineraries are even similar, but the corporate philosophies are different enough to distinguish them from each other. Unfortunately, paying exorbitant prices, even for common beer, has became the de facto standard now across the entire cruise industry, and what an industry it is.

We departed Port Everglades in Ft Lauderdale and were the fourth of seven cruise ships awaiting our turn to head to sea. These are not little ships. Almost all of them carry over two thousand passengers and many carry as many as five thousand paying customers. As soon as we cleared the breakwater, we could see three more behemoths south of us from the port of Miami also headed toward open water. Many are most likely toodling to the nearby Bahamas as the private island gig has become another source of cruise revenue subtly included in the itinerary. Our first stop is one of these islands as this corporate controlled type of "destination" has become a standard among the traditional basin cruisers. Keeping the revenue stream in house, so to speak.

An opinion is worth exactly what it cost to hear. It doesn't take long to evaluate the unsolicited linguistic barrage to determine its value to a listener who has knowledge, but may unfortunately be misconstrued as fact by an avid, naïve, trusting listener. The main difference between opinions and knowledge? Opinions are free. You hear them all the time. They may be entertaining, but usually not worth repeating. I cautiously listen to opinions because every once in a while a great story emerges from the vast self-indulgent wilderness of ignorance. Such as one we heard recently from a woman who advised a potential cruiser that food on Holland America's ships was heavily geared to the Dutch palate. In her case, that’s not even an opinion, simply an assumption, but most certainly not knowledge.

But then, maybe it simply doesn't matter. People are going to enjoy whatever they've spent their money on regardless of how much pain, agony and disappointment a little research may save them. We watched in awe this morning at the street market in Curacao as a bewildered vendor had a middle aged American tourist, obviously from one of the four cruise ships crammed into one of our favorite port cities, ask him if three US dollars was enough for a banana. Not even the entire bunch he had offered her, just one, single banana. He slowly shook his head up and down and said, "Yes, that is enough." Obviously she has never before in her life purchased a banana. The old, bedraggled vendor avoided looking at us as I think he was as embarrassed as he was surprised. But let's face it, nobody turns down free money. 

My wife and I started cruising way back when weekend trips to the Bahamas were introduced to compete with Miami Beach hotels which could offer Frank Sinatra or Sammy Davis, Jr, but not gambling. The cost of getting passengers on the ship was basically the break-even point. The covers came off the one arm bandits and the poker tables as soon as the ships crossed the US territorial limit of twelve miles. All passenger spending from that point on was profit. Kind of the Black Friday of cruising, just on a per-cruise basis.

While that basic philosophy still holds, is cruising far more costly now than when we first started? Not really, if all you consider is base passage. The formula is unbelievably complicated and convoluted, but the base fact is larger ships and more passengers per cruise have kept the costs per hour of operation low so the occupancy recovery rates have not soared with the inflation index in general. The difference, however, is in the total cruise cost to the passenger. Aye, matey, and there's the rub! Today’s pirates of the Caribbean are all MBA’s.

We are the only people we can see sitting on any of the balconies. Watching the azure seas topped with wind blown white caps is as captivating as watching the graceful seabirds soar wistfully alongside our balcony as if to study us as well. We even know where we are by the types of seabirds that accompany us, or leave us as the case may be. They occasionally plunge headlong into the sea, usually chasing a flying fish startled into flight by our bow wake. We are easily pleased. All we need with our priceless serenity is good service, good food and good evening entertainment. This cruise we might opt for a warm, cackling fireplace, which might be nice too, since the ship’s temperatures are kept quite chilly. We could adjust the room temperature or even turn off the air conditioning, which we could not do on a previous Princess cruise ship.

The main dining was cold enough for most women to carry sweaters or at have least covered arms. The low temperature may be to help control the insidious norovirus, the most common cause of gastroenteritis that stows away on today's cruise ships. In the old days they used rat collars on the mooring lines to keep unwanted pests off the ships, today it is soap and water placed outside the communal food areas. That analogy would get me a question mark in English class but the effects of both are the same: protection from something that would spoil the cruise.

One thing that did not make this cruise pleasant was the foul-smelling casino on deck three, the same deck as the shopping area. Oddly, the casino was jammed, even during the morning hours. So was the overflow area on the deck below, temporarily filled with arcade style slot machines that had many of the same players sitting for hours on end as if rooted to their chairs. At least the area on the deck two is a non-smoking area. All of the players are "older" than the average age of the sister line Carnival's passengers, and we simply did not find this market on the last four cruises we did on previous Princess Cruises or Celebrity Cruises. The casinos on the Millennium, the Eclipse, The Island Princess, the Crown Princess and even the old whichever Princess we started with were barren by comparison. The Eclipse had far more employees and staff in the casino than players the entire ten day cruise to Barbados.

When we booked our current twelve day cruise through the Caribbean on Holland America Line we were told the entertainment on the ship would be more sedate than we had experienced with other cruise lines. Princess and Celebrity both had on-board bands for live music with their evening theater shows, which we both really enjoy to cap off our day of sailing. Holland America has elected to go with prerecorded soundtracks for their stage productions. The singers are singing to backing music, which while flawless, still feels like karaoke. The other ships also had continuous music in various locales around the ships during the day, from small popular music groups to single entertainers playing piano or guitars. Holland America, we were told, had classical music ensembles for daytime enjoyment, but we've found on this cruise there is only one string trio that has played regularly, and we’ve only come across them in the evening once. They later had a single steel-drum, or pan, player, who was very good, if not oddly out of place.

The daytime activities, other than the Crow's Nest game room seem to be dominated by fee based activities such as bingo that has a card fee. The entire pulse of the ship appears to be broken into forty-five minute segments and oddly many seem as afterthoughts. Almost like musical chairs. Time's up! Time to run to something else to get a good seat for something that will last for exactly the next forty-five minutes. It tends to be exhausting. The pool area and the casino seem to be the only activities that even resemble cruising from the bygone eras, but they also have a different flavor. The only activity that seems to stay packed is the casino. There are many activities to keep many cruisers occupied, but for the first time ever on a cruise, we surprisingly found by the second afternoon we were bored. We are obviously not gamblers and we don’t cruise to play bingo. Time for the balcony and a good book.

The on-board music channels are not even on the level of decent elevator music. The five onboard channels all sound like the AM radio on my fathers old 1957 Ford and at times the music even sounds familiar. We use a small blue-tooth speaker – Holland America allows small speakers for in-room use – to listen to our own music because the ship’s fare is just plain terrible. By contrast are the live bands and their consistently great performances, especially the outstanding performances by the Rotterdam’s house band, the Rolling Stone's Lounge Band. They play three, forty-five minute sets each night, and they stagger their start times with the other two music venues so as to create a continuous availability of entertainment, but moving room to room to stay entertained can be aggravating. I think it has to do with beverage sales, but I'm not sure how. Again, life in segments.

Here's another opinion, one that seems to have taken a foothold in the cruising industry itself which is surprising with the unabated, ingrained numbers crunching associated with cruising operations: Old people only like classical music. The fact that all of the Rolling Stones, the iconic rock group whose name dominates the entertainment motif of Holland America Lines are all over eighty years old. So are many of their fans, and that is not an opinion, that is a fact. I don't know how long the current band members will be on board the ship, but the group we saw were on par with any professional band we've seen. Definitely the entertainment highlight of the cruise. 

Thinking we belong on the younger "party" ships? I'm eighty-three, but remember, most of the real Rolling Stones are older than I am. Swifties would be disappointed, but not my crowd. Rock on! They even packed the dance floor. Not much past 11:00 PM, but the jubilant fans were there in strength until the age appropriate sandman entered the room. We found the great group in the BB King Blues Club to be a bit too brassy for us, and definitely tuned solidly to soul music, not rhythm and blues. If you’re expecting rhythm and blues in the vein of Keb ‘Mo, BB King, or any of the great R&B artists, you’ll be disappointed. On the other hand, if Mo-Town is your sound, while they may a bit loud for most, they are perfect for that genre. They are really talented musicians and entertainers.

The food in the main dining room is very good, as opposed to the cruise line we abandoned for trying to force us into the specialty dining venues. Holland America would prefer that here as well, but they have only reduced the availability and selections here, not the quality of the food itself. The added costs to the base passage are the biggest changes in cruising. One of our fellow cruisers just paid an additional $65 dollars to dine in the Pinnacle Grill and then paid an additional $12 dollar surcharge because he ordered a certain cut of steak, and it wasn’t even Chateaubriand. He could have dined in the main dining room as part of his passage, so in effect, he paid three charges to have his steak. That's not an opinion, that is a fact. Whether it was worth it or not is an opinion.

So, if you pay a couple of thousand dollars for a cruise using today's business model, plan on paying half of that amount in addition to your cost before you disembark if you plan to replicate our memories of hedonistic indulgence of days gone by. One new cost is Internet, something we don't miss like the media-addicted traveling companions we share deck space with. Cell phones are everywhere on the cruise ship, from the always fully occupied Observation lounge to the pool areas. When Wi-Fi was first introduced on cruise ships, it was an added value, now it is simply another lucrative revenue stream. A rather large one if you plan on cruising with your teen age children or football addicted spouse.

New cruisers don't know there was a better way, so they pay outlandishly for the once-included services that attracted us to cruising in the first place. Even on higher end cruise lines such as the three I've mentioned, the facial tissues now are so poor you have to blow your nose with great caution. Bet you never read that admonition before, but it is symbolic of everything from the odd paper towels to even the basic dining selections that cautiously skirts passenger rejection. Even the famous drink packages, where you supposedly prepay the costs of drinks, all drinks, not just alcohol, actually only cover a portion of each drink. On Holland America, the difference of cost of any drink over $11 on our ship during this trip will be charged to your account. House brand red wine, either Cabernet or blend is $18 a glass, so you will be charged $7 a glass even if you bought the drink package ahead of time. Read the fine print and budget accordingly, unless of course, money is no object.

Some of the former services are no longer available at any cost. But then again, it all depends on your own opinions. Kind of like happily paying three dollars for a banana.

Next - Part 2 - Revisiting Curacao