This 1998-built cruise ship is a sleek-looking, yacht-like French-registered ship with stabilizers and an ice-strengthened hull. Measuring 330 ft, the 3,500-ton vessel sails with 90 passengers and 50 French officers and a French and Filipino crew. The staff speaks French and English and is eager to please.
Compagnie des Isles du Ponant was formed in 1988 by French merchant marine officers. The fleet now numbers three with two larger ships under construction. CMA/CGM, the Marseille-based container company, now owns Ponant Cruises.
Cruises sold through Ponant Cruises attract French and other Europeans, while the charters will attract the nationality of the charterer. Often it is U.S.-based Tauck Tours or Zegrahm Expeditions.
Le Levant's interesting itineraries span the Caribbean, the Amazon and Orinoco rivers, Canadian Arctic, occasionally the Great Lakes and throughout the Mediterranean and Black seas. Alumni and other special-interest groups predominate on many of her cruises, while others are geared toward individuals. Pets are often included.
The interiors are elegant and sophticated. The Grand Salon hosts movies, meetings, private parties, and lectures by well-known academics. Other entertainment is found by the grand piano, two video screens and bar. Passengers can borrow movies or travel videos from the mahogany-paneled library, which also has tomes to please cruising literati. Paintings decorate public rooms and cabins.
The Veranda serves breakfast and lunch outdoors and in the panoramic dining room. At night, the elegant room offers French food with complimentary wines at one sitting. Apart from strolling the promenade on Bougainville Deck and relaxing in wooden deck chairs, passengers exercise in the tiny gym, relax in the Turkish bath and heated pool, and swim, snorkel, dive, water-ski, sailboard and kayak from the stern marina. All but diving are complimentary.
Two landing craft ferry passengers ashore for informative, well-run excursions. Rounding off the amenities are a beauty salon, boutique, medical room, and laundry.
Most staterooms measure 195 sq ft and offer phones, TVs, VCRs, radios, minibars, safes, twin or queen beds, ample stowage, dressing areas or vanity space, and circular marble baths with teak floors and hair dryers. Eight larger cabins command the highest accommodations deck.
Le Levant is a first-rate way to experience Ponant’s unique brand of intellectually stimulating French-flavored cruising. Her sibling, Le Ponant, is a smaller three-masted motor sail ship and more informal. Le Diamant, a cruise ship with a capacity for 198, is larger and also often chartered.
