Definitely a Real Place

Monday – 9 December 2013 – Santo Tomas de Castilla, Guatemala

The furthest southern extent of this cruise segment was the busy commercial port of Santo Tomas. Located in thick jungle, a real town provides services to a Guatemalan Navy base as well as housing the port workers. The primary reason for this port stop was to provide the opportunity for Silver Spirit's passengers to take the 9 hour excursion by air to the spectacular Tikal Mayan Ruins or to the Copan Mayan ruins in neighboring Honduras. Both involve more than hour long flights each way and were priced at $700 per person.  

After reading the tourist literature Barbara appeared not to be too impressed by the local excursions offered by the ship. So we opted to walk into town on our own instead. Actually Santo Tomas was charming. Unlike the non-existent place of "Costa Maya" we stopped at yesterday, Santo Tomas was a hard working town with a nice mixture of well-dressed young people and Garifuna, the descendants of Carib, Arawak, and West African people. We took a long walk observing the local scene before returning to the ship for lunch.

We spent the afternoon sitting behind the Panorama Bar at the stern of Silver Spirit watching the ballet of the port operations as big movable cranes loaded and unloaded container ships. A Planters Punch (or two) helped to make this a most enjoyable day and helped me forget the dreadful experience of Costa Maya as well as, frankly, everything else. When we returned to the suite we discovered that the butler had drawn a bubble bath in our Jacuzzi.  (Perhaps the chef in Suishin Restaurant had passed on a request.) From our veranda we observed most of the town's children were marshaling to watch us leave for Belize. Make of that what you will.