Cartagena Gold & the Turquoise Reef II, 7 November 2030

Cruise overview

A roundtrip from Palm Beach, where Henry Flagler’s marble-columned Whitehall recalls Gilded Age Florida, sets out for Key West’s shuttered Hemingway villa and its six-toed cats, then turns south for Cayman Brac, a speck of some two thousand souls where a forty-metre limestone bluff hides caves once used as hurricane shelter, a call few other ships make. San Andrés answers with the Seaflower UNESCO Biosphere Reserve’s sea of seven colours, Johnny Cay’s coco loco beneath the palms, and the lilt of Raizal creole English four hundred miles from the Colombian mainland. Cartagena de Indias opens its UNESCO-listed walled city, Getsemaní’s street art and ramparts leading to dinner in a colonial courtyard. The Holandés Cays of San Blas follow, more than 350 palm-dotted islets where the Guna alone hold sway, dugout canoes pulling alongside with hand-stitched molas, reached only by a ship this size. Rise through the Gatun locks and glide across rainforest-fringed Gatun Lake transiting the Panama Canal, then wander Panama City’s UNESCO-listed Panama Viejo ruins and feast on ceviche at the Mercado de Mariscos. Kayak to Red Frog Beach and snorkel the Zapatilla Cays off Bocas del Toro, wander Carambola’s gardens at Roatán’s Coxen Hole, home to a UNESCO-recognized Garifuna community, and walk the stilt-built, car-free lanes of Guanaja above the Mesoamerican reef, the world’s second largest. Placencia’s UNESCO-listed Belize Barrier Reef unfolds through Silk Cayes and Laughing Bird Caye, before Puerto Morelos, its reef just off the beach and a leaning lighthouse in the square, returns you to Palm Beach.