Travels in the 2nd half

Cruising along the Pacific coast of South America is a very different experience than cruising through the Caribbean. Most ports get only fifteen to twenty ships per year, so they have not developed the support structures that Caribbean ports have. They also have not developed the ubiquitous cookie-cutter shopping areas near the more heavily trafficked ports. One aspect of many of the stops in South America is that our ship docked in several commercial ports, that is, ports usually servicing commercial ships. This was true when we boarded the Norwegian Sun in Valparaíso, Chile. Valparaíso is the second busiest port in Chile, and the active waterfront stretches for over mile. The passenger terminal is at the north end, and after checking in we had to take a bus through the containers and cranes to the southern end where our ship awaited us. This gave us an up close look at the workings of the port. Buses approaching the Sun at Valparaíso Our docking neighbor ...

The Norwegian Sun Docked in Trujillo ,Peru Last month The Amazing Ms D. and I took a three week cruise on the Norwegian Sun from Valparaíso Chile to San Francisco. While we have taken several cruises but this was by far the longest cruise we have ever taken. There were many good points to this cruise and several issues that took away from our enjoyment. I will be blogging about the places we visited, but here are my thoughts on the cruise itself.   The Norwegian Sun Rating  ⬧⬧⬧♢♢ The Norwegian Sun is one of the smaller boats in the Norwegian fleet. Built in 2001, it holds about 2000 passengers. Along with the Norwegian Star it was Norwegian’s first “Freestyle Cruising” ship. While it is still a big ship, everything was much more convenient than on some of the larger boats. The staff on the Sun was excellent. Friendly and helpful, they worked hard to meet our needs, even giving me scores on European soccer matches that were not co...