How I Planned A Birding Cruise

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The cruise I will be blogging about in this series took place in 2011 on the beautiful Coral Princess by Princess Cruises.  It remains to this day as the best cruise we have ever taken out of about 6 so far.  It was the perfect itinerary – birding at almost every port and not too many sea days.  Unfortunately Princess no longer does this itinerary, probably due to American passengers being afraid to travel to Acapulco and the cruise was only just over half full.  Good for us, not so good for Princess!

GETTING THERE

This cruise was done during what I call the Golden Age of Miles & Points – when there were lucrative promos and fewer people who had the expertise to exploit them.  I did the US Airways Grand Slam promo on both mine and my husband’s accounts to get over 120k miles in each our accounts.  The whole itinerary was in business class!

SINGAPORE AIRLINES:  BNE-SIN

ASIANA:  SIN-ICN-LAX

US AIRWAYS:  LAX-PHX-MEX

Open jaw for cruise, then drive to Orlando to see friend.  Fly to LAX and drive to see family using separate ticket on AA.

ASIANA:  LAX-ICN-SIN

SINGAPORE AIRLINES:  SIN-BNE

As I stated in the previous post, we arrived in Mexico 3 days prior to the cruise and spent 1 day in Mexico City at the Hampton Inn Centro Historico, saw the pyramids, took a bus to Acapulco and spent 2 nights at the Crowne Plaza on points and were upgraded to a corner suite.  We had a great view and even saw our ship the Coral Princess come in!

THE CRUISE ITINERARY

This map shows the ground transport (red) and cruise (blue).

Cruise & Flights

Here we have the cruise itinerary with timings.  Timings are always important as you see way more birds in the early morning.  We were really good about being downstairs ready to dis-embark the minute they started allowing people off.

Cruise ItineraryOUR SPECIFIC PLANS FOR EACH PORT

Huatulco – Princess actually had a bird-watching shore excursion so we did that.

San Juan del Sur – I couldn’t find anything for birding at the time so we did a Masaya Volcano/Granada shore excursion hoping to see birds incidentally.

Puntarenas – I booked a private day trip to visit Carara National Park and a bird sanctuary

Panama Canal – The ship provided commentary throughout the transit of the canal.  When we reached Colon, they only gave us a few hours to see the shopping centre at the port.

Ocho Rios – I booked a private birding tour.

FUN FACT:  I got to watch the Royal Wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton on the big screen at the swimming pool during the cruise even though I had to get up at 4am to do it!