A surprise was waiting for us when our full day’s cruise excursion in Cartagena, Colombia came to an end and the bus returned us to the port. Of course, it’s not much of a surprise if you’ve read the title of this post and comprehended the words within it but I’ll carry on regardless.
We stepped through the security checkpoint at the exterior of the port and found ourselves face-to-face (well, if we crouched) with a peacock. You could see everyone from our tour group immediately whipping out phones and cameras for this because generally speaking you don’t often find peacocks inside cruise port security zones.
The single peacock, though, was nothing compared to what we saw when we rounded the corner and found ourselves in what we later learned was called the Port Oasis Eco Park. I’ve described it as an aviary in the title of this post but it actually contains more than just birds; it’s simply that we didn’t see anything else during our short but very pleasant walk through the grounds. The park was part of the land given over to the port authority when they were tasked with building cruise ship infrastructure, using this buffer zone for security but also as a wildlife habitat. Falling within the security zone of the port it’s a place that’s therefore only accessible to cruise visitors to Cartagena. In addition to more-than-seventy different species of animals there, you will also find a gift shop, somewhere to eat, and toilets.
A lovely surprising end to our time in Colombia but it really was approaching all-aboard time about now so we didn’t dawdle long and headed through to where Ruby Princess was tied up.
Our usual routine when we get back on board a Princess Cruises ship, thanks to the Ocean Medallion system, is to head to our room then order some drinks and maybe snacks to be delivered so that we can cool off, freshen up, and take advantage of our balcony for some last views of wherever we happen to be or to see the sail away. This was no exception.
The sun, getting lower on the horizon, was both producing some lovely colour changes in the sky and bringing with it a drop in overall temperature, and you could see heavy clouds starting to form in the distance as that humidity in the atmosphere started to to condense. We had a feeling that Cartagena might be in for another night of rain and flooding such as that we’d been told had preceded our visit earlier in the day at the start of our tour.
The skyline of the Bocagrande area of Cartagena looked absolutely stunning in silhouette against the darkening sky. As Ruby Princess slowly made her way out and away from the final port of call on our cruise the quiet of the late evening was occasionally punctuated by small party boats heading out on sunset cruises, music thumping across the still water. We couldn’t complain: the ship’s daily activities had us down to do something similar a little later in the day.
But first, dinner, and a drink or several. The Ruby Princess main dining room menu and the food we selected for the evening are below for your perusal if that’s the sort of thing you’re interested in.
The Ruby Princess equivalent of a sunset party boat cruise was an 80s Deck Party, quite some time after the sun had actually set. Not the first deck party we’d had on this cruise, and only really differentiated from the others by the selection of music performed by the house band and the neon outfits worn by the entertainments crew, but still enjoyable to get out, get some air, and think how much more preferable all of this was to being at home.
The next post in this Ruby Princess 2023 cruise travelogues series will be the penultimate one and the last spent aboard the ship herself as we relax for two sea days on the way to the departure point at Fort Lauderdale, Florida.