I chose the itinerary so that we could go to Machu Picchu post cruise. The itinerary was a bit shorter than we would normally cruise. The embarkation in San Diego was great and uneventful. The disembarkation in Lima was another story, which was bad due to the Callao Port. It was a freight port without passenger terminal facilities at all. Port authority supposed to provide shuttle services to the port gate as well as to San Miguel Mall. But the small vans used for the gate shuttle were obviously not adequate and late to move passengers who had independent arrangements for both days (March 8th and March 9th).

This was the first HA cruise where we found the service and on board activities were bad or non-existent. There were not enough people in the front office resulting in long line ups. In the dining room two servers had to service 30 passengers resulting in 2.5 hours dinner time. The traditional on board activities like dance instructions, taichi classes, golf putting and chipping contests, ring toss and sand bag toss games were all but disappeared. They cut the librarian position as well. For some reason the cruise director or captain did not announce whether the ship was cleared to disembark in any of ports we visited.

To add insult to the already bad situation we encountered a bad sewer back up in cabin 562 and it was a mess, not to mention that they ruined our luggage. It is being pursued now with HA for our damage. Read more