Only a handful of passengers are awake as our big three-masted crusing ship, Sea Cloud Spirit, chases the dawn into Costa Rica’s distant Golfo Dulce — one of the eco-diverse bays on the planet. However for these early risers, it is a deal with.
From the hovering, 136-passenger vessel’s teak-lined high deck, we watch because the rising solar lights up the fjord-like bay’s pristine and primeval shoreline — a verdant patchwork of palm-lined seashores, dense mangroves and twisty rivers.
It’s a prelude to a day of journey. After the ship anchors early off the tiny coastal city of Puerto Jimenez, we’re quickly zipping to shore in a young boat to unfold out seeking wildlife.
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A few of us head off on a nature stroll to a crocodile-filled lagoon. Others board a catamaran trying to find dolphins. Nonetheless others, like me, journey a van into the rainforest on the lookout for the elusive sloths that decision this area house.
On the just lately opened La Perica Sloth Backyard, we discover them in droves, together with capuchin monkeys, scarlet macaws and different iconic denizens of the Costa Rica jungle.
It’s, in brief, a basic day of exploring the Golfo Dulce area and the wildlife-rich Osa Peninsula that makes up its north shore.
It is also splendidly totally different from the outdoorsy experiences we had simply the day earlier than in and round Costa Rica’s extra northerly Manuel Antonio Nationwide Park and what we’ll see tomorrow as we head south to the 39 islands and islets that make up Panama’s Coiba Nationwide Park.
On this 11-night Sea Cloud Spirit crusing down the coasts of Costa Rica and Panama, nearly every single day brings a brand new journey, together with — on many days — the expertise of touring underneath the facility of nothing however the wind.
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A information at Costa Rica’s La Perica Sloth Backyard presents an introduction to the slow-moving animals. GENE SLOAN/THE POINTS GUY
Along with wildlife and nature experiences, there’s additionally a daylight crossing of the Panama Canal — an opportunity to see one of many nice marvels of human engineering up shut.
The ultimate day of the journey features a go to with the indigenous Kuna individuals dwelling within the distant San Blas Islands simply off the coast of Panama.
It is the type of variety of experiences that’s arduous to rearrange throughout a land-based journey to Costa Rica and Panama except you’ve got way more time than 11 days.
Propelled by the facility of the wind
Sea Cloud Spirit, which Germany-based Sea Cloud Cruises unveiled in 2021, is not the primary cruise vessel to supply voyages centered on the coasts of Costa Rica and Panama. Small vessels operated by Windstar Cruises, Lindblad Expeditions, Ponant and Aurora Expeditions additionally provide such journeys.
Nonetheless, Sea Cloud Spirit stands out as the most intriguing ship to ply the route. 5 decks excessive and practically 500 ft lengthy, it’s a full-rigged, three-masted crusing vessel of the type that hasn’t been widespread on the world’s oceans for greater than a century.
As giant crusing ships go, it is also notably genuine in the way it operates.
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Sea Cloud Spirit is, notably, propelled by a large, old-style array of 28 sails which can be unfurled by hand by an infinite workforce of 19 deckhands — one thing you do not see on nearly every other giant crusing ship on the earth.
Most different giant crusing ships providing multiday cruises, corresponding to the 2 crusing vessels Windstar Cruises typically deploys to Costa Rica and Panama (Wind Star and Wind Spirit), have automated sails that unfurl on the push of a button.
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Sea Cloud Spirit anchored in Costa Rica’s Golfo Dulce. GENE SLOAN/THE POINTS GUY
The result’s a a lot totally different expertise of coastal journey on Sea Cloud Spirit from the one you will get from every other ship.
Along with being sailed by hand, one other differentiator for Sea Cloud Spirit when crusing the Costa Rica and Panama coasts is that it presents a extra expansive exploration of the area than you will usually get with different ships. A lot of the small-ship cruise itineraries within the area are seven nights in size. Sea Cloud Cruises, against this, usually budgets 10 to 11 nights for Sea Cloud Spirit to cowl the identical territory.
Even underneath full sails, the vessel typically solely meanders down the coast at simply three to 5 knots.
Name it the “sluggish journey” option to do the Costa Rica and Panama coasts.
Exploring the Pacific aspect of Costa Rica
Our crusing down the coasts of Costa Rica and Panama begins within the sleepy Costa Rica port city of Puntarenas, on the Pacific aspect of the nation. However we do not keep there lengthy.
Simply hours after passengers arrive on the ship, which is tied up on their own at an in any other case empty dock, Sea Cloud Spirit units off on a six-day exploration of Costa Rica’s Pacific coast — a area recognized for ecotourism of all kinds, from recognizing monkeys and colourful birds in nationwide parks to zip lining by lush rainforests and horseback using alongside unspoiled seashores.
After rounding Costa Rica’s famous-for-its-surfing Nicoya Peninsula, Sea Cloud Spirit factors northward towards the northwesternmost nook of the nation close to the border with Nicaragua.
It’s right here, after a day of cruising underneath full sails, pushed by the facility of the wind alone, that we land at Playa Panama — a secluded and quiet crescent of darkish sand seashore that serves as a gateway to close by Palo Verde Nationwide Park.
After motoring to shore in Zodiac boats, most of the ship’s passengers head to the nationwide park for a ship journey by its marshlands seeking monkeys and crocodiles, in addition to the various colourful birds for which it’s recognized. Others go to a hacienda for horseback using with the native cowboys and zip lining by the encompassing forests.
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A handful of us, together with me, signal on for a catamaran journey alongside the rocky shoreline to a reef for snorkeling with colourful fish, margaritas on deck and spectacular sundown views over the ocean on the way in which again.
It’s the type of numerous outdoorsy pursuits {that a} vacationer might expertise whereas staying at one of many space’s resorts, such because the 4 Seasons we handed on our option to our snorkeling website.
However in contrast to these land-based guests, we might see a a lot wider array of Costa Rica’s allures over the approaching days.
Heading south from Playa Panama, we spend one other full day cruising alongside the Costa Rica coast underneath full sails earlier than reaching Quepos, the gateway to a different of Costa Rica’s iconic eco-destinations: Manuel Antonio Nationwide Park.
Outings to the nationwide park and different personal reserves within the space are the order of the day right here after we land by tender boat on the small dock in Quepos.
Not eager to rise on the morning time, as is required for the Manuel Antonio Nationwide Park tour, I as an alternative select a day hike over swinging bridges and previous tumbling waterfalls at a small rainforest protect referred to as Rainmaker Conservation Park.
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Sea Cloud Spirit passengers cross swinging bridges on the Rainmaker Conservation Park in Costa Rica. GENE SLOAN/THE POINTS GUY
It turns into an ideal day, partly as a result of I sneak away from the tour group with one different tour member (with the information’s permission) to climb a too-steep-for-most path to a spectacular sequence of hanging bridges. We have now all of it to ourselves.
The subsequent day Sea Cloud Spirit brings us to Costa Rica’s Golfo Dolce, talked about above.
With the stops at Playa Panama, Quepos and the Golfo Dulce’s Puerto Jimenez, now we have visited all three main segments of the Pacific coast of Costa Rica — the north, center and south — in just some days.
Whereas we solely make brief day stops in every space, it is a style of the nation that is not out there to the standard customer who involves Costa Rica for every week and stays in a single location.
Off-the-beaten-path Panama
After six days alongside Costa Rica’s Pacific coast, Sea Cloud Spirit drives southward into the waters off Panama, the place our first cease is the cluster of 39 islands and islets that make up Panama’s Coiba Nationwide Park.
Designated a UNESCO World Heritage Website, the largely uninhabited island group is understood for its untouched rainforests and wildlife that exists nowhere else, such because the Coiba Island howler monkey. However for our functions, it serves largely as a spot to cease for a seashore day as we land by Zodiac at one in every of its many sandy seashores for snorkeling and sunning.
Not like a lot of my Sea Cloud Spirit compatriots, I skip the snorkeling, scared away by a warning within the ship’s each day planner in regards to the occasional presence of plankton and jellyfish within the water that ship out “stinging microscopic harpoons.” However I discover diversion in a small one-room nationwide park guests middle simply off the seashore that goes into nice depth on its natural world.
It’s right here that I realized that the actual island the place we landed, the island cluster’s primary island of Coiba, as soon as served as a penal colony recognized for brutal situations and the disappearance of political prisoners throughout the dictatorships of Panamanian strongmen Omar Torrijos and Manuel Noriega.
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Sea Cloud Spirit passengers spend a day snorkeling and sunning at Coiba Island, a part of Panama’s Coiba Nationwide Park. GENE SLOAN/THE POINTS GUY
Two days later, after one other full day of crusing down the coast, we get a second seashore day with snorkeling at Mogo Mogo Island, a part of one other cluster of islands and islets off the Panama coast referred to as the Pearl Islands.
Right here, I courageous the plankton and jellyfish stings to wade out previous the rocky shallows to snorkel the sting of a coral reef teeming with foureye butterflyfish and honeycomb trunkfish.
Not solely is the water crystal clear and the fish beautiful, however it’s an outing that I survive and not using a single strike from a stinging harpoon (a number of of my snorkeling companions, alas, do report such strikes, although they are saying it isn’t terribly painful).
The marvel of the Panama Canal
The subsequent day of the journey brings an journey of a special kind as Sea Cloud Spirit transits by the Panama Canal.
Passengers line the teak walkway in entrance of Sea Cloud Spirit’s bridge early within the morning to observe because the vessel glides by Balboa Harbor close to Panama Metropolis to the beginning of the canal on the Miraflores Locks.
It’s the first of three units of big rectangular chambers that may carry the 4,228-gross-ton vessel up and over the Continental Divide to the Caribbean, and it’s a sight to behold.
After we enter the primary of the chambers, seven-story-high metal gates slowly swing shut behind us, and the basin begins filling with tens of millions of gallons of water. At 1,050 ft lengthy, the lock is roughly the dimensions of three soccer fields — so lengthy {that a} second cruise vessel, the 100-passenger Emerald Azzurra, suits into the chamber behind us.
Greater than 100 years after its building by the US, the 48-mile-long Panama Canal stays a marvel of contemporary engineering — and an alluring attraction for cruisers on journeys to the area.
As passengers be taught throughout an onboard lecture the day earlier than our transit, 1000’s of staff toiled for a decade to carve the passageway out of the dense Panamanian jungle. Along with constructing big locks at either side of the canal (close to each the Pacific and Atlantic entrances), its builders needed to assemble what on the time was the world’s largest dam alongside the Chagres River, which in flip created one of many world’s largest man-made lakes.
Dubbed Gatun Lake, the 21-mile-long physique of water makes up a big a part of the waterway vessels use to cross the nation.
Sea Cloud Spirit spends a lot of the day crossing the canal from the Pacific to the Atlantic because the ship’s onboard lecturer, Stephen Weston, presents a operating narrative from the highest deck.
The complete strategy of shifting between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans takes simply seven hours.
The indigenous individuals of San Blas
The ultimate cease on this journey is the San Blas Islands, a sprinkling of a number of hundred largely uninhabited spits of white sand and palm timber that relaxation off Panama’s Caribbean coast.
Managed by the Kuna, an indigenous individuals unfold throughout three politically autonomous reservations in Panama and Colombia, the islands are largely off-limits to vacationers and undeveloped for mass tourism, because the Kuna prefer it. However the Kuna enable small teams of tourists, corresponding to these aboard Sea Cloud Spirit, to go to sometimes.
Anchoring off the Kuna-inhabited island of Wichub Wala, we tender to a small dock to wander the sandy paths between the Kuna’s bamboo and palm leaf huts, previous the dugout canoes they use for fishing.
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Sea Cloud Spirit naturalist Stephen Weston discusses the regionally made molas with a resident of the Kuna island of Wichub Wala. GENE SLOAN/THE POINTS GUY
It’s, for a lot of passengers, a possibility to buy a memento from the journey that’s hand-made and native, as the ladies of the village line the pathways hawking the colourful needlework panels referred to as molas that they make each for their very own use (historically, they sew them onto the fronts of their blouses) and for vacationers.
Molas that we’re instructed take weeks to make promote for about $15 to $20.
The temporary go to to Wichub Wala additionally features a brief dance efficiency by the Kuna of their primary sq. earlier than we’re again on the tender to the ship. It’s a morning cease paired with a day name at one other sandy island for extra snorkeling and swimming.
The journey ends the subsequent morning in Colon on Panama’s Caribbean coast.
Backside line
A voyage alongside the Pacific coast of Costa Rica and Panama on Sea Cloud Spirit is an intriguing option to see the highlights of each nations in a single journey.
One of many greatest passenger crusing ships ever constructed, Sea Cloud Spirit takes a go-slow method to journey down the coast from Puntarenas, Costa Rica, to the Pearl Islands of Panama, adopted by a daylight crossing of the Panama Canal to the Caribbean aspect of Panama. Alongside the way in which, it visits a number of of the most well-liked vacationer areas within the two nations and presents passengers a comparatively uncommon alternative to expertise the fun of crusing the area on a tall ship.
One caveat in regards to the journeys: Sea Cloud Cruises, which relies in Hamburg, Germany, has a giant following in Germany, and its Sea Cloud Spirit sailings typically are heavy with German audio system. That mentioned, the vessel’s onboard program is bilingual (the comparatively uncommon variety of bulletins on board are made in German and English, and a lot of the employees speaks each languages). You will possible discover not less than some English audio system amongst your fellow passengers.
For extra particulars on what it is like on board, see TPG’s first-look information to Sea Cloud Spirit.
Ten-night Sea Cloud Spirit sailings to Costa Rica and Panama begin at $9,530 per particular person, based mostly on double occupancy. For extra info, name 888-732-2568 or go to seacloud.com.
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