{"id":19628,"date":"2013-12-16T01:00:03","date_gmt":"2013-12-16T09:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cruisingdoneright.com\/?p=19628"},"modified":"2013-12-16T01:00:03","modified_gmt":"2013-12-16T09:00:03","slug":"monday-56","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/?p=19628","title":{"rendered":"When in Cartagena, just find Sandy!"},"content":{"rendered":"

The cruise business is up in <\/span>Cartagena<\/a> this year, which means the shore excursion business is up, and we think it's all because of Sandy Cuadrado, who three years ago was decorated by <\/span>Princess Cruises<\/a> as "tour guide of the season."<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Friends of ours just returned from the Colombian city on the Caribbean Sea. On <\/span>\"Sandy<\/a>our recommendation, they tracked down Cartagena's friendliest tour guide, whom we'd met on a cruise we took through the Panama Canal<\/a> (Cartagena is often one of the stops en route to or after traversing the canal). We were on a Celebrity<\/a> ship, by the way, not Princess.<\/span><\/p>\n

This was a part of last week's email from our friends:<\/span><\/p>\n

"We had a great time with Sandy, including many jokes."<\/span><\/p>\n

In the big picture, Colombia's most popular city for tourists (tourists tend to avoid the drug cartels in the jungle and even the capital, Bogota) is expecting 400,000 cruise passengers in 2014. That's an estimated $45 million revenue hit. That's no joke although Sandy can turn anything into one.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the last two years, cruise-ship activity is up 13 per cent and, according to statistics compiled by the Florida Caribbean Cruise Association<\/a>. This weekend alone, there were six cruise ships in Cartagena…and almost 16,000 more tourists. Estimates are that each tourist spends $98 in the port.<\/span><\/p>\n

And Colombia is ambitious. The country's president, Juan Manuel Santos, hopes 32 cruise lines will visit the country by 2017…more than a million tourists.<\/span><\/p>\n

And in our world, it all starts with Sandy Cuadrado.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Holland America Eurodam<\/a>
\n\t7 nights<\/span>
\n\tFebruary 16, 2014<\/span>
\n\tFort Lauderdale<\/a> (return): <\/span>Half Moon Cay<\/a>, <\/span>Ocho Rios<\/a>, <\/span>Grand Cayman<\/a>, <\/span>Key West<\/a>
\n\tInside: $599<\/span>
\n\tCost per day: $85<\/strong><\/span>
\n\twww.hollandamerica.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The cruise business is up in Cartagena this year, which means the shore excursion business is up, and we think it's all because of Sandy Cuadrado, who three years ago was decorated by Princess Cruises as "tour guide of the season." Friends of ours just returned from the Colombian city on the Caribbean Sea. On… Continue reading When in Cartagena, just find Sandy!<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,32,25,31,15],"tags":[137,902,353,912,72,1492,819,35,23,1165,903,93,904],"class_list":["post-19628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cruise-industry-news","category-deals","category-people","category-ports","category-stories","tag-caribbean-cruises","tag-cartagena","tag-colombia","tag-cruise-bargains","tag-cruise-deals","tag-cruise-figures","tag-cruise-news","tag-cruises","tag-holland-america","tag-holland-america-eurodam","tag-sandy-cuadrado","tag-shore-excursions","tag-tour-guides","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19628"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19628\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}