2025-10-31 West Africa Cruise: 2025

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This blog is about our cruise on Regent Seven Seas from Barcelona, Spain down the west coast of Africa and ending in Cape Town, South Africa. We hit several very small countries that are seldom visited by cruise ships...Gambia, Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, Togo and Sao Tome and Principe.

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Oct 31 (Friday) – Boarding the Regent Seven Seas Navigator

We didn’t have breakfast this morning. We slept in a bit, dressed, and finished packing. We met Tara and Clause down in the lobby. We all seemed to be well rested. Our large taxi van arrive at noon to load all our luggage and take us to the port.

It took about a half hour to arrive at the port. We were dropped off right at the terminal entrance where we were met by staff who wrestled our luggage onto a cart, and we headed to the check-in counter. The line wasn’t too long to check in for the cruise. Then we went through passport control, handed in our passports and visas to the cruise company and headed to the ship.

It is Halloween so the ship was decorated accordingly.

Our rooms weren’t quite ready yet, so we headed to La Veranda for lunch. The dining room was packed. We had to split up into two groups and sit at tables with other travelers. We sat with Erin and Venicia, from Las Vegas like us. We had a nice visit.

During lunch they announced that all the rooms were ready, so we headed to ours. Only one piece of luggage had been delivered. It took about a half hour for all of the luggage to arrive. We unpacked and Paul headed down to deal with a cancelled shore excursion in Gambia. Eventually we were all set.

Around 4:30 we finally caught up with Jim and Phyllis. We sat in a lounge and had a great time catching up. Then it was back to the rooms to get ready for dinner. We met Jim and Phyllis, Tara and Claus and we all had dinner together in the Compass Rose, the main dining room on the Regent ships. A wonderful evening visiting.

At the end of the evening, we met Albert, Caroline, Florence and Dirk, all also sort of on the tour. They were generally doing things together with plans to occasionally join some of Tara’s private shore excursions. We had traveled with all of them except Dirk on the trip to Cuba. We opted to skip the evening’s entertainment and headed back to our room and to bed.

Nov 01 (Saturday) – Day at Sea

First thing this morning Paul headed up to breakfast and to the lectures. Mary headed to the salon for a haircut and a pedicure.

We met up at lunch where we visited with Rick and Chris from Hercules, CA, not far from where we used to live.

Then it was to the room where we spent most of the afternoon working on blogs, photos and movies. At 4:30 we headed to the lounge where we met Jim and Phyllis and teamed up for the trivia competition. We didn’t do very well.

That evening we went to the Sette Mari for dinner where we met up with Jim and Phyllis and Tara and Claus. They started us of with a lot of little appetizers.

In the evening, the La Veranda (where there are breakfast and lunch buffets) is transformed into Sette Mari, an Italian restaurant. Good food and good company.

Nov 02 (Sunday) – Cadiz and the White Villages of Andalusia

Our port of call today is Cadiz in Southern Spain. The city looked beautiful from the ship.

We boarded buses for a ride through the countryside.

There were a lot of wind turbines and solar fields along the way.

We had a short stop to visit the Monasterio de Jesus Maria Y Jose Agustinas Recoletas. The stop was only for some quick photos. The name is bigger than the village.

Then it was back on the bus for the drive to one of the White Villages of Andalusia, Arcos de La Fontera. We had some views of it from a distance as we drove through the countryside.

The bus let us off at the bottom of a long hill and it was quite a hike up into the town.

There were a lot of very narrow streets.

And there were plenty of souvenir shops along the streets.

Other photos from our walk. It's a very pretty town.

Then it was a further hike up to the cathedral square. On one side of the square was the fort of the town.

Taken from a distance

From the Square

We took a few photos of the cathedral.

And we stopped to visit a small museum.

Then it was a visit to the nearby parador, Palacio de Mayoragza, for rest, drinks and snacks.

The parador had a great terrace with great views of the countryside…

and along the cliffs to the church that was farther along the hilltop. Great views of the church. And the church has great views of the countryside.

Some nearby gardens.

There were a few Christmas decorations hung between buildings along some of the streets.

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More Arcos de la Frontera
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We were back on the ship around 2:00. We dumped our stuff in our cabin and headed up to the pool grill for some lunch. The regular restaurants were closed. It was pretty crowded as there were several buses that got back about the same time and only the grill was serving.

We opted for a late dinner