All the cruise travelogues relating to our March 2019 cruise on Star Princess are now published on the website. As with all the travel diary portfolio posts covering any trip we do this doesn’t necessarily mean there won’t be more to come in the future, covering different aspects of the trip for instance, but the daily activities experienced aboard and in all the ports are now complete.
If we’d not had such a fabulous cruise aboard Diamond Princess towards the end of last year then Star Princess would be cemented at the top of our favourite cruise ship list thanks to two staggeringly good trips on her in the South American region of the world. As it is, she’s just pipped for second but it’s a marginal call.
This cruise took us from Chile, more-or-less where we’d got off the same ship three years prior, across the equator to the final destination of Los Angeles. Everywhere we visited was a new place and we tried to pack as many different types of excursion in as we could. The full list of posts can be found on the cruise tag – Star Princess Cruise: South/Central America 2019 – but a quick summary of the cruise with links to the individual port posts now follows:
Chile
Our arrival in Chile sans luggage and following flight delays wasn’t the best of starts to the cruise but it fortunately got a lot better from then on. The following day we satisifed our nerd leanings in the mountains with a visit to the Cerro-Tololo Inter American Observatory.
Peru
We had two days in Peru. Our first stop allowed us to visit an Inca administrative complex at Tambo Colorado and see some prehistoric petroglyphs during the cruise away from the Paracas region. Our second day involved the crazily traffic-ridden capital of Lima. The morning saw us explore the Miraflores district on our own while an organised excursion in the evening allowed us to see the famous light show on the largest fountain complex in the world.
Costa Rica
We had an unexpected stop on our way to our excursion in Costa Rica as we came across families of capuchin monkeys. The excursion itself was to visit the National Theatre and the Gold Museum in the country’s capital, San José.
Nicaragua
We’re not what you might call fit and active people but the lure of a hike up Mombacho volcano in Nicaragua was something we couldn’t resist. After that gruelling excursion we stopped for lunch in the attractive city of Granada.
Mexico
Our highlights tour of Puerto Vallarta packed a lot in with the tequila-tasting being particularly memorable.
America
Our final port of call was Los Angeles which turned out to be surprisingly fabulous. We had arranged a debark tour so got to visit the Venice Canals and Santa Monica areas of the city before flying home.
That’s all the post relating to ports on this cruise but you’ll be able to find accounts of sea days, speciality dining aboard Star Princess, and the events of the Crossing the Equator ceremony if you follow the links elsewhere on this site or just hit the search.
This was a great cruise with a highly-recommended itinerary. Staff members were fabulous and the captain was incredibly entertaining. If you like the idea of seeing wildlife then this is a fantastic cruise to try. We saw from our balcony, the promenade deck, or on excursions seals, sea lions, caracaras, red-headed vultures, turtles, dolphins, rays, sea snakes, hummingbirds, bats, iguanas, capuchins, and probably a load I’m forgetting, and that’s all without doing any specialist nature trips, of which there were plenty available.