Please remeber when reading this journal that anything in italics should be read at your own risk. These are non-travel related comments and are sometimes less than politically correct, as am I.
Jan 2 – 4 Texas to Fort Lauderdale, Florida – We drove from Home to Pensacola, Florida on the second, a very uneventful drive with nice weather and moderate traffic. It did take 11 hours. I discovered that Hertz has stopped giving weekly rates on one-way rentals so I was shopping around for another agency. I had two happy surprises. Budget, who didn’t used to make one-way rentals, now does and there’s a Budget agency in Burleson, much closer than the Hertz in south Fort Worth. The best thing was that they are less expensive also. Previously when I tried Budget they had no weekly rate and a fairly large drop off charge on one-way rentals. On the 3rd we finished the trip to Pensacola and spent the 4th there looking around and some last minute shopping. I forgot to pack sun block and most of them make me very hot. Seems like they cut off the skin’s ability to breathe. I couldn’t find the one I like best so I bought a new type from Neutrogena. Hope it’s ok. Find out on the 6th when we hit our first port.
Jan 5 – Fort Lauderdale, Florida – Today we got up early, had breakfast at the HI Express and caught the hotel’s shuttle to the port. We arrived fairly early but something (I heard it was a security matter) held up check in so all the people who arrived before we did were still waiting to check in. The lines were unusually long but the wait was not too bad. When we walked off the gangway it was like coming home. We’ve been on the Prinsendam more than any other ship. It’s small by modern standards, only 700 passengers, up to 790 if all the triples and quads are full. But mostly those rooms only have two people in them. On the right is a model of the ship when it was the Royal Viking Sun.
We ran into several people that we have cruised with before. It’s funny how you remember people that you’ve spent so little time with. I guess it’s the shared adventure. I remember the faces and, when I explain who they are, Diana remembers the names. Between the two of us we do ok.
After we got on the ship we went to the lido for lunch, as the rooms were not ready. In about 20 minutes the announcement was made that it was ok to go to the rooms. We are in the same room that we had on the Amazon cruise in 2005. It’s located just where we like to be, one deck above the water line, aft of the last bank of elevators. It’s room 385, an outside double on the starboard side.
Because we are going all the way around South America and to the Antarctic we had to pack for every conceivable kind of weather, from hot and steamy to very cold. Consequently we had 5 fairly large suitcases. Three of them left Texas just before Christmas and two we brought with us. When we got to our room I expected to find one or two of them already there. There were none. In fact, the ship left port about an hour late because the longshoremen were still loading luggage. Guess they don’t want to work too hard.
While we were waiting for luggage I took my laptop up and established my connection with the ship’s wireless network. Everything worked fine on the Internet and receiving mail but I was not able to send any. Some problem with the SMTP. To prevent spammers from hijacking their network the security system prevents redirecting email. Since my SMTP belongs to Charter in Texas, the satellite network was not willing to accept mail from me and redirect it on their network to you. The Internet Café tech has emailed the home office to get me that ability.
I almost had to go to dinner in shorts but just before it was time to go up a suitcase arrived that one pair of slacks in it. They were the slacks I was wearing on the drive to Florida but at least they were long pants. After dinner two more showed up and when we got back from the show we had our complete set. It’s 10PM now and we just finished unpacking. Thankfully we won’t have to repack for 66 days.
Tomorrow we will have a day at sea while we loop around the western end of Cuba and then head southeast to the Georgetown in the Cayman Islands. I have a tradition that, while we are in sight of Cuba I peer over and look for Fidel’s cigar smoke rising from the island. Haven’t seen him yet but I’m optimistic this trip!
Jan 6 – Got up pretty early and had my usual breakfast, ham, cheese and onion omelet with one sausage patty. (For those of you having concern for my cholesterol and triglycerides, rest easy, my lipid blood levels have always been and remain very low. There’s no explanation but genetics.) The server is still rejecting my outgoing email relays so I can’t send the initial report. Michael says the HQ is working on it. I may have to resort to sending them by AOL or Charter’s web page. I hate to use AOL because it’s very slow and the web page won’t permit me to do everything offline so it can get expensive. We’ll have to see what Michael comes up with. It has always worked before.
This afternoon’s lecturer is Dr. Jeffery Quiller from Harvard University. He’s also Curator of Intermediate Archaeology at Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology. He has excavated at a number of sites in South America and currently has field research projects at El Brujo, a ceremonial complex in Peru that we will visit. He has also written several books on the pre-Colombian cultures of South America so he should know his stuff. That’s one of the things I enjoy about HAL cruises. They often have very knowledgeable people lecturing on places you are going and things you will see. It helps you to appreciate and understand more of what you visit.
(Authors note: I know this is all pretty boring but I write this for myself. Unfortunately, I also send it to you. I guess I could cut out most of the non-travel related comments but you never know what will interest people. For example, some of you have asked me, “What’s with all the food pictures?” while others have said, “I love the food pictures; can you send more.” So I just do what I like and the reader is stuck. Now that I think about it I guess most writing is that way.)
Our entertainers for the evening did a concert in character as Barbara Streisand and Frank Sinatra. They didn’t even have their real names in the program, just ‘The Concert that Never Was, Barbara and Frank. They were actually very good. The guy doing Frank was a little too wobbly with his head but otherwise they were both right on. They even had little spats with each other in character. Their voices were very like the originals.
Jan 7 – Georgetown, Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands. Today we are in the Cayman Islands at Georgetown, Grand Cayman. The other two islands in the country, Cayman Brac and Little Cayman, are very small and while there’s fishing, not much for tourism. Little Cayman only has 124 residents. They remain a Crown Colony of Great Brittan but are politically independent. It’s one of the major offshore banking centers. The island has 14,000 residents and 500 banks. Not branches but 500 different banks. Yikes!! The last two times we came here we spent the day in the water diving. This time we decided to see some of the island.
Our tour started with a ride in a semi-sub to see the reef and watch some sea life. The water was exceptionally clear. Visibility was several hundred feet, but at any distance past 20-30 feet all the colors are filtered out and everything looks greenish blue. We saw lots of parrotfish, triggerfish, tarpon, boxfish, angelfish, and tons of other fish I couldn’t identify.
We reboarded our little van and headed to the turtle farm. Here they breed three types of green turtles to release into the wild and also for eating. Turtle is a common food on the island as is conch, a large mollusk with that tan and pink shell you see in souvenir stores the world over. Conch chowder is very good, but I’m not very fond of turtle soup. They gave us a chance to hold a small one. They have to be a certain size before release to make them fairly predator proof.
Next stop was the city of Hell. There are limestone formations that look a lot like the salt formations in Devil’s Golf course in Death Valley. There’s no volcanic activity in this area. The formations are due to the native limestone’s construction. It varies in hardness in very small distances because it is limestone intermixed with dolomite. The rain melts the softer limestone leaving the dolomite parts behind as very twisted sharp edged spires. The actual rock is white in color but a type of small algae feeds on it and turns the outside black. They have a small post office there and they postmark the correspondence “Hell”. Cute little tourist idea.
After returning to Georgetown we looked around some and Diana did some shopping. We caught the tender back to the ship about 3PM. All the restaurants were closed by then but the pizza bar, the deli, the Terrace Grill were going strong so I had a hamburger (no bun), a bratwurst (again no bun) both with onions and mustard and a salad with a scoop of tuna.
I know you probably aren’t interested but the amazing thing is I’m already down two holes in my belt. That’s in about 6 weeks. Even my shoes are looser. I had to relace my deck shoes to keep them from flopping around when I walk. Amazing!! The variety of protein available on the ship is fantastic. For example, for dinner the first three nights I’ve had duck, lamb and pheasant. One of the odd things about my appetite is that if I have a variety of tastes I don’t eat as much. If I’m pretty bored with the food I pack it in. Weird.
This evening’s performer was Gary Arbuthnot, a flautist from Northern Ireland. He studied at the Royal Conservancy in England and with James Galway in Ireland. He was outstanding. The best show so far.
Jan 8 – Another day at sea heading for Costa Rica. It was very relaxing and I wish there were more of them. This evening we had the first production show by the Prinsendam Cast, “Jazzamatazz”, mainly blues and jazz songs from movies and musicals. They are a very talented group. Often the group has two good singers, two good dancers and the rest are a chorus. This group has at least 4 good singers and 4 good dancers, two of each being in both groups. Among these six people two are exceptional at singing and two others exceptional at dancing. The remaining two are very good at both. There are four more members and they are good as well. All together, the best cast I think we’ve ever seen, top to bottom.
Jan 9 – Puerto Limon, Costa Rica. Our tour is heading out to the Sarapiqui River for a jungle cruise. We had about a two-hour bus ride through the Costa Rican countryside. Everything is very green because they get lots of rain. Needless to say it was warm and humid, but not as bad as I suspected it would be. They have done a good job of protecting the rain forest and the Caribbean side of the country is very ecologically sound. Across the mountains of the Pacific side they have large high-rise buildings, casinos and resorts. Much more developed. Our guide told us that this side gets more rain and is naturally lusher, but that the best vacations and fishing are on the Pacific side.
She said that there are only two seasons here, rainy and a little less rainy. They do not have the traditional South American style dry season. Her name was Empri, short for Empress. She thinks her family had great expectations for her. She was very knowledgeable about the flora and fauna of the country, as well as its history and geography. She was great at spotting wildlife.
She also told us that the Caribbean side has more of an Afro-Caribbean influence and the Pacific side is more typically Central American.
When we arrived at the Sarapiqui River we boarded a small, covered, outboard motorboat for out trip down the river. Along the way we saw Howler monkeys (three groups), Ibis, Heron, Kingfisher, Cayman, Alligator, turtles (two kinds), Bats, Iguanas and several more bird species that I do not remember,
After about an hour and a half of animal spotting we arrived at a very rustic riverside restaurant. Right inside, not really inside but in a large thatched roofed patio, there was a lady making corn tortillas about 4 inches across. She was working with dough balls that she flattened between two banana leaves and then fried for a short time on a grill. Right next to her was a platter of goat cheese rectangles that you were supposed to eat in the tortillas. I stopped to chat with her and in my halting Spanish managed to find out that the tortillas were, in fact, corn (Maize) and what the cheese was.
Across the room was a buffet with salsa, pasta salad, chicken, beans, some very yellow, diced vegetable they identified as a type of potato, a salad of diced cherimoya (sp?) and the local staple, black beans and rice (there’s that Afro-Caribbean influence). I collected some of most of these things and then went back for more tortillas. I sliced the meat and cheese and made little tacos with the salsas, salads, meat and cheese. They had a hot sauce on the table that was not blazing hot and was thicker than I’ve seen before. It was red and delicious. I didn’t see any of the other touristas eating taco style. The locals were giving me the thumbs up. I guess I was doing ok.
They had a small botanical garden around the place where we ate. They also have large hammocks to rest in. The gardens had the typical Caribbean flowers, red and pink ginger, heliconia, and hibiscus, among others. They also had a raised wooden path that lead into the rainforest. We walked some way back there and managed to see two varieties of very small but very poisonous frogs, one was black with green stripes, the other had a red head and body but very deep blue hind legs. The legs were so dark that in the very shady rainforest you didn’t see them right away and the frog looked like a little red slug.
After lunch it was back aboard the boat for the trip back up river to the bus. The river was mostly only about 20-30 yards wide and was not fast flowing in the area we saw. Once on the bus our wild life hunt was not over. On the way back to Puerto Limon Empri told the driver to stop and back up. After he backed up about a quarter of a mile she pointed out a Toucan in one of the trees. She had spotted him out of a bus moving about 50 miles an hour. Did I mention she had good eyes? Further down the road she had the bus stop again. She knew where a group of three-toed sloth hangs out. Sure enough, there they were. Moving slowly around their tree looking for tender new leaves to eat. The sloths were the same color grey as the bark of the tree they were in. I guess if you move that slowly you better have good camouflage.
We were about an hour late getting to the ship and they departed port just after we were safely back aboard. One advantage of taking the ship’s tours, they won’t leave without you.
Fortunately the dress code for dinner was casual. I threw on some long pants and Diana put on some slacks and a different top and we were just in time for dinner.
The evening entertainer was Stu Moss. He’s a comedian from New Jersey and has the accent to prove it. He was very funny and had the audience laughing most of the time. He’s been in show business for a long time but was previously a hockey player. He was on the USA Olympic team in 1980 that beat the USSR for the Gold Medal.
All in all a very good day.
Jan 10 – San Blas Islands, Panama. Another day in port today, if you can call it that. We are anchored off the San Blas Islands. They number over 350 islands (50 of which are inhabited), belong to Panama and have no insects or snakes. The inhabitants are the Kuna Indians (sometimes spelled Cuna but they use the K form in their small cultural museum, a small thatched hut in the village). The women still dress in traditional garb but the men and most of the children have more western attire. They are famous for their Molas. Mola in Kuna means blouse and that’s where they wear them in San Blas. All the women wear blouses decorated with this reverse appliqué process. They are very colorful and have intricate geometric or animal designs on them. The molas they sell are in the raw state. The mola is complete but it is not attached to any item of clothing. I think most purchases are displayed as wall art as ours are, but some creative types surely sew something to wear that uses them when they get home.
When we were here in 1986 it was very primitive indeed. No organized shops or areas, each woman displayed her work right outside her thatched hut on a clothesline. This time the main pathways of the village are lined with items for sale. They seemed to have an organized shopping area that allowed you to stay on one of three paths and see all the goods. There were many more items for sale than last time as well. The men have gotten busy and are carving sailing ships and other boats for sale. They also had a representation of seashells, a particular area of interest to Diana.
One of the locals, he said to call him Al, worked in the Canal Zone for the US military as a cook. His English was pretty good and he was anxious to converse with anyone to use it. It was interesting to get his view on the US and the canal. He said he was sad to see the US leave. Lots of jobs were lost when the military and civilians pulled out. Fortunately, he was able to retire and returned to Carti, the island of his birth, to live.
The Kuna have a unique language and it does not sound like anything I’m familiar with. They also speak Spanish, so I was able to get along pretty well. They are very dark and short in stature. The women wear gold nose rings to ward off evil spirits. They wrap their legs in beaded bands of various colors.
A great day of mixing it up with the locals, something I love to do.
Our entertainer for the evening was Melanie Spanswick, a concert pianist. She played mostly classical pieces and is very talented.
Jan 11 – Panama Canal – Today we transit the Panama Canal. A lot has changed since we came through in 1986. They have widened the cut so two ships can pass each other. The Gillard cut, a channel through solid rock to take the ships across the Continental Divide, was very narrow. Now two Panamax ships, the largest allowed in the canal, can pass side by side, eliminating the one-way bottleneck that used to exist there. It was much cooler this time through the canal and the only real difference I noticed in the canal equipment was that the ‘mules’, the locomotives that guide the ships into and out of the locks are new and upgraded to include air conditioning.
The weird thing is that Central America makes a turn northeastward in the area of Panama. So when you enter from the Atlantic side to go to the Pacific you are actually traveling East by Southeast. Panama has the only coastline in the Western Hemisphere where the sun rises over the Pacific and sets over the Atlantic.
To get through the canal you pass through 3 sets of locks. Starting from the Atlantic you pass through the Gatún Locks first. This lock consists of three chambers that raise the ship a total of 85 feet to the level of Gatún Lake. The rest of the voyage across the continent is made at this level. For part of the trip you are in a channel cut from solid rock and across the continental divide. At the divide a cut had to be made through a mountain. The mountain on the north shore is about 600’ high and on the south shore it is about 250’ high. A pretty impressive slice through solid rock in the early 1900s, especially when you consider that the bottom of the trench is about 50’ lower than that.
When you approach the Pacific Ocean you come to the Pedro Miguel Locks, a one chamber affair that lowers you about 30 feet. One mile after exiting the Pedro Miguel Locks you come to the Miraflores Locks. These
locks have two chambers that lower you the remaining 58 feet to the Pacific. Of course these heights vary slightly depending on the state of the tides in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans when you enter and leave the canal.
The entire trip takes between 9 and 11 hours on average. When we first entered the Gatún Locks I noticed some unusual activity on the port side of the lock. There was a group of canal workers there along with an ambulance, two fire trucks and a paramedic truck. I changed my position to that side of the ship because I thought there might be a medical evacuation coming. Sure enough, as soon as we stopped the workers put a gangway on one of our ship’s lower doors and the ship’s doctor and one of the nurses wheeled a lady off. She was transferred to the ambulance’s gurney and after some paperwork was signed they were off to the hospital. I’m pretty sure that they don’t expect her back after treatment because all of her luggage was carried off with her. Luckily Panama has some excellent hospitals including one affiliated with Johns Hopkins in the US.
This evening they had an outdoor BBQ for dinner as an alternative to the dining room. I love these things if the weather is not too hot and humid. The evening was warm and not too humid with a slight swirling breeze. They had sausages, steaks, chicken, salmon, ka-bobs and ribs in addition to salads and veggies. Yum!!
After getting through the locks we anchored off Amador, Panama at about 9PM. We’ll be staying here tomorrow as well.
Our entertainment was a local folkloric show, a small band and dancers. They were very energetic and the dancing was good.
Jan 12 – Amador, Panama. Amador is just across a small bay from Panama City. We can see it from our ship. It looks like a smaller version of Hong Kong, skyscrapers next to each other for blocks and blocks, a very modern city indeed. Today we are taking a tour provided by our travel agent, Cruise Specialists of Seattle. It’s a city tour of Amador and Panama City.
We started out by visiting the place where the original colonial settlement was situated. The buildings are mostly in ruins, but some walls and the cathedral tower are still standing. It consisted mainly of a church and mission buildings as well as garrisons for the soldiers and storage for the treasures of South America that were collected here before being transported over the isthmus to ships in the Atlantic for passage to Spain. Pirates often raided this city and finally in the 1600s it was sacked and burned for the last time by Captain Henry Morgan.
The reason this place was such a prize for raiders was that the Spanish would ship their gold from all over South and Central America to Panama City where they would carry it across the isthmus on mules and load it on Europe bound ships on the Atlantic side. After quite a few ships were attacked on the way to Europe the commander decided that all the loot would be kept in Panama City until a large armada of ships that could defend themselves could set out. Unfortunately the raiders discovered this and attacked the city itself to grab all the gold and silver at one time.
In 1670 the city was moved to the other side of the bay. A wall, parts of which can still be seen, enclosed the original town. A new cathedral was built that is still in use today. This is the ‘old town’ district of Panama City and also contains the Presidential Palace, the Canal Museum and the National Theater.
The cathedral from the 1670s is quite impressive from the outside. Its towers are painted pure white and the façade in between is built with 4 colors of green stone, very striking. The inside was not ornate but very pretty.
One of the most historic artifacts still in existence from the Spanish Colonial period is the Altar de Oro, Altar of Gold. When pirates (from the Spanish point of view) were active trying to steal the gold the Spanish had stolen from the Indians, Panama City was sacked and anything made of gold or silver was stolen. The monks, aware of what was happening, painted the entire altar black and the raiders overlooked it. Today it is in the Church of San José. This church, unlike the cathedral, is very plain on the outside and very beautiful inside.
Our driver took us on a tour of the old city area where we stopped at the square that has the Panama Canal Museum on one side and the 1670s Cathedral on the other. I like museums a little but the Panama Canal has been a favorite subject of mine since grade school. After looking around the Panama Canal Museum for a few minutes I lost interest. So I went out to look around the square area for a while. I walked down one street that I thought would lead to the waterfront and I came upon some soldiers guarding a building that was right at the water’s edge. A large SUV was waiting at the door and a motorcycle escort was also waiting to take off. When I was back on the bus I asked the guide what was down that street and he said it was the President’s Palace. Nice to know that the President of Panama also lives in a White House.
There were several vendors on the square, not tourist types but services for the locals. One was a shoeshine man. He was singing and laughing while he worked. He even said ‘hola’ to me as I went by. The other vendor had a hot dog cart. The dogs were large and looked delicious. The price was 50 cents. One amazing thing about Panama, they have their own coins, exactly the same size and color as our coins but with their own symbols, but they don’t print paper money. All their paper money is US dollars. Sure made the exchange easy to figure. When the sign said that the hot dog was 50 cents it really meant half a US dollar. With the coins being exactly the same size their coins will work in US vending machines but since the P$ is equal to the US$ there’s no advantage in having them.
We went to a local restaurant for lunch. Diana had Sea Bass that she said was better than any she’d ever had in the States. I had something called a Southern Sampler. It had beef, chicken, pork and sausage in addition to a salad. The meats were grilled Panama style and were very good. The sausage was quite spicy. A very hearty lunch for sure.
After leaving the restaurant our guide took us through the affluent section of the city. There were some very impressive homes. We stopped at the former home of Manual Noriega the president of Panama who is currently serving time in Miami Federal Prison for drug trafficking. The locals looted it after his arrest before the police could get there so all the gold faucets, etc, are gone and the house looks pretty bad. A very young policeman was there on guard. He said we could come in to look if we could climb the wall. No one seemed very interested in his invitation.
After we toured the ‘Beverly Hills’ of Panama City we returned to the ship. There was a small shopping center right next to the pier and while Diana shopped I watched a local dance company perform some local folkloric dances. We were anchored out in the harbor. The ride was pretty rough, swells of about 8 or 9 feet with some white caps. A real boat ride. Yahoooooooo!!
Our entertainment was three of the previous performers in a variety review. Melanie Spanswick the pianist, this time performing some more modern music, Stu Moss, the comic, and Gary Arbuthnot, the flautist. They will be leaving the ship in Lima, Peru.
Jan 13 – Another wonderful day at sea. Today we are crossing the Equator and that will occasion a Neptune Ceremony. As usual, members of the crew who have never crossed the Equator were made to kiss the fish and then after being covered in various brightly colored liquids, foods and misc. kitchen leftovers, dunked in the pool. Loads of fun, at least for the passengers who get to watch! They set the props up at the Lido Pool.
King Neptune and his Queen were on a platform on the hot tub. Jen Richards was the queen, Mark was King Neptune and Peter Daems played the part of the judge. The jail for the Pollywogs was built around the small pool and the large pool was used for dunking. In between the two pools they set up the tables for the ‘doctors’ and ‘nurses’ to operate on the Pollywogs, a process that transforms them into ‘Trusty Shellbacks’. The lucky ones are dunked in the pool. The unlucky ones have to sit on the edge of the pool until the ceremony is over, baking in the hot Equatorial sun until the mess applied forms somewhat of a crust on them.
I caught up on some of my photos and writing between lectures. Diana convinced me to attend the Bridge lecture. I really don’t care that much for Bridge and consequently don’t work at all to learn the bidding conventions.
Today’s topic was transfer bids. If your partner opens with 1 No Trump he’s telling you that he has an evenly distributed hand with 15-17 points. He wants you to tell him what suit to play without actually naming the suit so you bid 2 diamonds if you want him to play in hearts, 2 hearts if you want him to play in 2 spades, 2 spades if you want him to bid 3 clubs and so on. If you respond with 2 clubs you are asking him to bid a 4-card major if he has one, this is a special case called a Stayman bid. The others are true ‘transfer bids’. That’s just the introduction to the topic. From this point there are more special cases that require different bids. All to get around the prohibition against ‘table talk’. Any game in which you can bid 2 diamonds, whether or not you have any diamonds in your hand is just too wacky for me. I don’t think I’ll go back. I get it; I just don’t want to get it.
Dr Quiller gave a lecture on the Desert Kingdoms of Peru, Temples, Tombs and Treasure. It was very good as usual. He has done several projects in this area and has one currently under way at ‘El Bruja’. One of the ship’s tours goes there.
Our entertainer for the evening was David Pengelly. He plays the ukulele and also sings. He did songs from the 30s and 40s, country western, classical and rock and roll. In between the songs he told stories about his family, all of which were gags. It was very enjoyable.
Jan 14 – Manta, Ecuador. Today Diana and I are going our separate ways. She’s flying up to Quito and I’m staying in the lowlands near the sea. Diana had to be in the Queen’s Lounge at 6:45AM to check in for her tour so I got up early as well. After a leisurely breakfast I got my gear and checked in for my tour. The Manta area is not yet on the tourist hot list. All the guides and busses had to come down from Quito. That’s the sort of place I like to mix it up with the locals.
Our first stop was at a button factory where they carve a nut into buttons. The nut comes from a palm tree and is sort of like a rounder version of a Brazil nut, the Taquga. Everyone in the world calls it that but in the US it’s known as ‘Ivory Nut”. It starts out soft enough to eat but after three months ageing it becomes hard as a rock although still edible if boiled long enough. It has a rough brown hull with a cream to white inside. Much like the Brazil nut. First they slice the nut into wafers about a quarter of an inch thick. These are put on a machine that bores into them with a hollow bit forming a slug from the wafer of the nut that looks like a small poker chip. The next machine is an automated lathe like machine that carves the shape of the button and drills the holes. It is then put in a cement mixer like barrel that tumbles them in water to begin smoothing them out. A rock type tumbler follows this process. Here they are tumbled with various grits of polishing material to make them very smooth indeed. They demonstrated each of these steps with a machine that had been set up on the patio. There were also some artists carving the nuts into various shapes. They gave us a sample bag of buttons and I bought a carving of a turtle made from the same nut. The nut takes dye very well and there were some very pretty necklaces and other jewelry for sale.
After this we drove to the city of El Chorill where a family still weaves sisal fibers into mats and bags. The fibers come from the agave plant. The first step is to dry the plants and beat it to free the fibers. From that point on it is like processing cotton or wool. First the fibers are carded to separate and straighten them. These are made into bundles and then processed on a spinning machine to make the sisal cord. This is then woven into flat sheets on a very old style hand operated loom, much like the ones you see the Navajo use to make their rugs. These flat pieces can then be sewn into bags or any other use you could make of flat cloth.
This was a big industry in this area for making coffee sacks and mats for floors and hammocks. Recently these items have been replaced by modern machine made products using plastics and nylon. These new materials last longer in the humid climate and are less expensive to buy. This double whammy has hit the sisal cloth industry very hard and only one family continues to make the product. Our guide says that in a very short time they will also stop production. The tour was interesting as they demonstrated each process for us.
It’s Sunday and the little church on the square was just starting services. It was a Protestant church in this mainly Catholic country. I stopped in to visit. They had 1 Timothy 2:5 inscribed on the front wall of the church, in Spanish of course. “5For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” “Porque hay un solo Dios, y un solo Mediator entre Dios y los Hombres, Jesuchristo Hombre.” I chatted a little with the greeter at the door, reciting the verse in English. He grinned from ear to ear when I said it and added an ‘Amen’ at the end as we shook hands. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to ‘Jesuchristo Hombre’ but I said that in Spanish so I’d be sure he knew what I quoting the verse on the wall. Not many people speak any English at all in this part of Ecuador.
Then it was up the mountain a little to the village of Monticristi. Being a Sunday people were out in force. This village is much larger than El Chorill and much more prosperous. It has a large central square with the cathedral on the uphill side looking down over the city. Services were in progress so I didn’t go in.
Around the square some local vendors had set up and were open for business. There was a man grilling some meats and plantains, another selling very colorful cookies, others selling freshly squeezed juice and lots of people talking in small groups, walking the square as a family and lots of young couples talking to each other with subtle overtones of flirting. Since this is not a very popular or common tourist area I was greeted with interest and smiles. Not the bored, indifferent attitude you often find in large, popular tourist areas. The people selling tourist goods will pester you to death in those places but the regular locals act as though you’re not there. Here you are a bit of a curiosity.
The one exception to this is the Tijua Indians. The Tijuas come into Monticristi on Sundays to sell their products to the local people. They are usually around the town square in little family groups. They are smaller than the mixed-race Ecuadorians, much darker and a very attractive group on the whole. However, their children are extraordinarily pretty. Their dark skin, large dark eyes, shiny black hair, round faces and wonderful smiles make them irresistible as vendors. The fact is it lowers my sales resistance immensely when a little Indian child asks me if I want to buy something.
Case in point. I had been approached by a few of adults asking if I was interested in buying a painting. I had easily refused them all. Then a little girl of about 6 or 7 came over a looked up at me with that cute little face and asked me, in Spanish, if I wanted a painting. Since they usually sell to the locals I guess she didn’t know any English. I asked her, ‘¿Quanta Questa? She held up 4 fingers. I said, ‘Si.’ and her smile got even bigger. When I got back to the bus my guide commented on my good taste in buying the painting. I discovered that I had accidentally made a great purchase.
The Tijuas have music that uses various sizes and types of drums. In the old days they used to paint the drumheads in the same style as the painting I bought. This art form had almost died out when someone decided that you could stretch sheepskin (used in the drumheads) across a frame and do the painting on that to sell to outsiders. There’s always a volcano in the middle of the picture surrounded by llamas, sheep, huts and various local plants. It includes depictions of the Tijuas in their traditional hats, white straw with a broad black band, very colorful in a primitive style reminiscent of Grandma Moses. I hadn’t even notice that the painting was on sheepskin until the guide pointed it out to me.
It’s easy to tell when you’re outside the normal range of the tourist by watching the children. Do they look at you as though you dropped in off the moon? Do they smile broadly while they stare? Do they adopt an apparent approach-avoidance attitude when you come near? If the answer to these questions in ‘Yes’ you are not in a hot tourist zone and need to act accordingly. I noticed that people did not generally speak to each other as they passed they nodded and smiled. I had been saying ‘Hola’ or ‘Buenos Dias’ and people were not reacting as much as I thought they would so I started nodding and smiling with a little tip of the brim of my hat when a woman was in the group. This went over great! I found that if you nodded and smiled as you approached a group they seemed to expect you to stop and greet them in some way, inquire after their health or comment on something. The state of my Spanish was a great handicap in this process but they didn’t seem to mind.
I finally realized that my mistake was in reacting to them as though they were Mexicans. Mexico’s outgoing, open manner is totally strange to Ecuadorians and not at all their style. They have a much different culture and, for that matter, look very different. Most everyone has a much more apparent Indian background. They are small people with very dark skin and sharp features. Their smiles are wonderful and the ladies have a very exotic look that is quite appealing.
Here’s a little bit of information that I had heard before in the context of trivia but had totally forgotten. Panama Hats are not made in Panama; they are made in Ecuador. In fact many are made in the mountains around Monticristi. Several vendors had them for sale at prices from $15 to $60. Even the lowest priced hat is a work of art. So light and smooth it almost feels like silk. I bought one because I like to wear a brimmed straw hat but find them to be hot and inconvenient when you go inside or are in the shade. You pretty much have to carry them. A Panama hat can be rolled up and put in your pocket. When you need it again just unroll it and it snaps back into shape.
I was looking at them in Panama and the prices were really high. The $15 hat in Monticristi sold for about $50 in Panama and the $60 hat here sold for almost $600 there. The best of the hats, a ‘superfino’ costs from $2,000 to $3,000 but are rarely made anymore except to special order. My ‘fino’ hat is just fine as far as I’m concerned. The main difference is the width of the fibers used to weave the hat. The thinner the fiber to more flexible the hat and the more time it takes to make and therefore the more it costs. My hat’s fibers are about 1.25mm (about 1/25 of an inch) across. I’m told the superfino’s fibers are almost as thin as a human hair, less than 1mm. I can’t wait to try mine out in the Brazilian sun.
It’s been much cooler than I expected, temps in the high 70s low 80s but very humid. All my experience has been in Northern and Eastern South America. On the west coast the Humboldt Current coming up from Antarctica keeps things much cooler. I love it but some of our Florida passengers, without adequate cardiac capacity are constantly wining about how cold it is. Oh well, if I live long enough I guess I’ll be joining them but right now 78 degrees with 75% humidity is pretty nice.
Then it was back to the ship for lunch. When I arrived back shipside I noticed that the Ecuadorian bus drivers and tour guides were taking their lunch break between morning and afternoon tours. They were sitting in the shade by the busses eating box lunches from, Ta-Da, KFC. That’s right, the Colonel’s chicken is everywhere.
I spent the afternoon processing my pictures, reading and writing in my journal. I didn’t go to dinner because Diana was not back from her trip to Quito. They were supposed to be back at 6:30PM but didn’t arrive until 7:30. They kept the Lido Restaurant open for them to get something to eat so we had our first Lido dinner.
The entertainment was Ken Lucas billed as ‘A Man and His Duck’. He’s a ventriloquist and his dummy is a duck named Casey. It was a very funny show. The duck is yellow and has a very strong resemblance to Big Bird. He has a phony hand around his belly to make it look like both of Ken’s hands are visible and the illusion is very good so unlike most dummies it does not appear that the human member of the team is one handed.
Tomorrow is another day at sea, yahoo!
Jan 15 – Great, restful day at sea. The Pacific has been very smooth so far. The captain says it may roll a little tonight. Makes for good sleeping.
Dr. Jeffrey Quilter gave his last lecture today, “The Incas: Lords of the Four Quarters”. The title references the fact that the Inca divided the world into sections with lines running to infinity that crossed in Quito thus dividing the world into 4 quarters.
Our entertainment was Daniel Bouchet a singer and guitarist from Buenos Aires, Argentina. He was very good indeed. Sang some tango songs, some samba songs and played some Antonio Carlos Jobin songs. Jobin was a hot in the ‘60s. He had several big selling albums in the US. He or his father wrote “The girl from Ipanema” that Stan Getz and Astrid Gilberto made famous. Sergio Mendes was also big at the time. Bet you didn’t know that he wrote the theme for the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. His band ‘Brazil 66’ was big in the States as well.
Dress code is formal tonight for the Black and White Ball. This is only the second formal night on this cruise. Not bad. Diana and I ran into Adam, Jen and the First Officer’s girlfriend in the lobby outside our room and had our cabin steward, Ahmad, take our picture.
Jan 16 – Salaverry/Trujillo, Peru. We have a long excursion today. We are going to visit three ancient sights one from the Moche culture (100 BC to 750AD) and two from the Chimu (850AD to 1470). These two cultures preceded the Incas and are not that well known because they had no alphabet and were gone when the Spanish arrived to start recording the history of South America. The Moche and Chimu were essentially the same ethnic race but when the Moche culture collapsed they eventually reformed themselves as the Chimu after a couple of a hundred years. The Inca’s came from the Cusco area and conquered the Chimu but respected them. The Inca king arranged a marriage between his daughter and the Chimu king’s son thus uniting the two people groups under the Inca culture. The Inca were in charge when the Spanish arrived in 1532.
Our first stop was at the Huacas del Sol y de la Luna, Temples of the Sun and Moon. These temples are built from adobe bricks, with occasional bamboo or wooden supports in the adobe. They are not hollow like Egyptian pyramids but are solid structures to create a raised courtyard for ceremonial purposes. The Temple of the Sun is the larger of the two. It was created using 140 million adobe bricks. What remains today is over 130 feet high with a base measuring 1,120 by 527 feet. A massive structure by any measurement. The Temple of the Moon is about 1/3 this size using approximately 50 million adobe bricks. The city was located on the plain between the two temples.
We visited the Huaca del La Luna. It has three levels and four ceremonial squares. They are built with large ramps going up to each level. In excavating the temple they have discovered that there are 5 other temples built under this one for a total of six. These successive temples were constructed over a period of 600 years. Each new temple completely enclosed the previous one and that’s a break for the archeologists because the adobe bricks and decorations of the last temple have been completely destroyed by moisture over the years but the temples underneath are still preserved. The colors are still vivid and the designs are perfectly preserved in most places. Depicted on the70-foot walls are soldiers with their weapons leading prisoners tied with ropes, dancers, priests wearing red tunics, large spiders, soldiers carrying fish, cats with reptile bodies who carry human heads in their paws and a huge boa constrictor. The god Ai-Apaec (The Decapitator) is represented holding a knife in his left hand and the head of a prisoner in his right hand. The condition of these frescos is amazing considering how old they are. These are Moche temples and were built about 1,600 years ago. The Huaca del Sol is not yet being excavated so we could only see it in the distance.
We climbed to the top of La Luna. Did I mention that coastal Peru is a desert? It’s just like southwestern Africa. The desert runs right down to the ocean. It was pretty hot and several members of our tour had to turn back before they got to the top. There were plenty of helpers stationed along the way and I noticed at the top that they had oxygen bottles available. Peru has three areas, desert, mountains and jungle and we are definitely in the desert here. At places the sand made the going a little tougher than it could have been otherwise.
Next we stopped on the main square of the city of Trujillo. Here we had some time to wonder around the square for pictures. There’s a monument to freedom in the middle by the German sculptor Edmundo Moeller erected in 1929. On the northeast side is the Basilica Menor, painted in ochre with white trim. If you tell anyone that my color palette is sophisticated enough to know the color ochre, I will deny it completely. After snooping around the plaza we toured a colonial era home, Casa Urquiana. The family that founded the Bank of Trujillo, since gone out of business, built it. It was very large, containing three interior patios with rooms on two sides of each. It has a fine collection of pre-Columbian art. Trujillo’s main claim to fame is that it was the first city to declare independence from Spain.
Our next stop was at the Chimu culture’s Huaca Arco Iris or El Dragon. It’s known by two names, Temple of the Rainbow or Temple of the Dragon. It’s right on the Pan-American Highway. A wall surrounds the entire temple and the only entry is from the west. It is decorated with a series of squares that all have the same figures in them. Under a rainbow are two snakes; one has two heads and the other ends in a fish tail. The snake with two heads is shown holding a Tumi, a ceremonial knife. Across the top of the wall there are figures dancing toward the entrance. Again after ascending a series of ramps you wind up in a large raised ceremonial plaza. Around the plaza, between it and the outer wall, are a series of storerooms where offerings and wooden sculptures were discovered.
Then it was off to the town of Huanchaco for lunch. It is on the site of an ancient fishing village and is still engaged in that activity today. We ate on the second floor of the building on a patio overlooking the beach. The lunch was great!! The appetizer place was as colorful as it was delicious. Each of us got three breaded and fried shrimp, a scallop broiled in the shell with cheese and bacon, crab salad between two cakes molded from golden potatoes and, last but not least, barbecued octopus tentacles. Most people did a pretty good job of eating what they got with the exception of the octopus. I benefited greatly from this lack of gustatory adventurism as everyone gave me the unwanted gastropod delight. I’ve always thought that stomach-walker is such a creative term. The main course was sea bass accompanied by mixed vegetables, fried yucca chunks and seafood paella. I don’t know what type of sea bass it was but it was the best I’ve ever had by a good margin. Diana agrees with this assessment.
After lunch we walked along the beach looking at the families playing in the water and on the sand. School is on holiday here for the next 2 weeks so lots of kids were enjoying their time off. The fishermen here build very strange boats from reeds. They look like a genie’s slipper, long, with pointed curved up toes and a flat part at the back that looks like where you’d put your foot in. The boats are about 10 feel long. Turns out they ride astride them like a horse and the flat part at the back is an area for keeping their nets and other equipment. When one wears out they just build another. Our guide said it only takes them an hour or so.
After lunch we headed to Chan Chan. This huge structure was also built by the Chimu culture. It is a series of nine palaces used in succession by the rulers of the Chimu. Each king, when he died, was still considered to be the head of that palace so the new king had to have a new palace. I guess that’s why the site covers 24 square kilometers making it one of the world’s largest adobe structures, if not the largest. The Chimu were essentially farmers and very peaceful people. This facilitated the easy integration into the Inca culture that absorbed them.
After a long day of trekking up and down ancient temples it was back to the ship for a much-needed shower and then dinner. For the evening show the last three performers gave a variety show and all were good again.
Jan 17 – Lima/Callao, Peru. Our first of two days in Lima. We were hoping to get together with Ruth Cowan here but Wycliffe business has taken her out of town. We are disappointed, but we are well aware of the demands and priorities involved in her important work here. She wrote an email with lots of very good suggestions for things to do as well as some help with a problem we discovered with Diana’s medication.
Our tour today is into downtown Lima; about 30 minutes drive from the port of Callao. Our first stop was at the Plaza de Armas (Plaza of the Military). This has been the central square of Lima 1535. This is where huge fires were used to burn victims of the Spanish Inquisition. The oldest artifact surviving inside the plaza itself is the bronze fountain in the center that was erected in 1651. It was at the foot of this fountain that José de San Martin declared Peru’s independence from Spain in 1821.
We tromped off the bus in front of the Cathedral on the southeast side of the Plaza. This colonial building was dedicated by Francisco Pizarro himself, but has seen major repairs after earthquakes in 1746 and 1940. The altar was replaced around 1800 with one in the neoclassical style. The main attraction inside is the chapel where Pizarro is interred.
Across the square on the northwest side is the City Hall of Lima, built in 1944 but in the style of a colonial structure. On the northeast side is the Palace of the Governor. It’s built on the site where Francisco Pizarro was murdered in 1541. The building, in the neo-Baroque style, was finished in 1938. It’s the official residence of the President of Peru.
We walked two blocks north and three blocks east to the Church of San Francisco. This is the most visited church in Lima and I understand why. The 1674 building is the best example of what has become to be known as ‘Lima Baroque’. The carved portico would become a model for many other churches. The towers of the front façade are a pale yellow and the contrast with the dusty rose color of the portico is striking. It is ornately carved with the three figures arrayed over the doors. The center on appears to be Mary in her role as Queen of Heaven in the Roman Catholic Church. I assume that one of the flanking men is San Francisco but I have no clue about the other one.
The central nave has beautiful paintings in the Mudejar (a blend of Moorish and Spanish) style. The first courtyard is surrounded by paintings of early colonial events. Unfortunately, the paintings are on canvas and although they are hung under the ceiling of the colonnade they have been subjected to extremes of heat and humidity and are in great need of restoration and conservation. Most are still in pretty good shape but will not be for much longer.
The highlight, or lowlight, of the visit was a trip down to the catacombs. This was the city’s first cemetery and contains the bones of approximately 75,000 people. The bones of an individual are not stored in the same bin but are sorted according to type. The first set of bins we came to appeared to be mostly femur and humorous, next were tibia and fibula, next came some pelvic bones followed by radius and ulnae. Skulls were kept in a large pile. I guess all the vertebrae had sifted to the bottom because I didn’t see any at all. Maybe we just didn’t tour that section. It’s a huge place and I’d guess we only covered about half. Every now and then there would be a special space set aside for mixed bones arranged into bizarre geometric displays. Unfortunately, no pictures were allowed anywhere inside the church so I can’t show you any of this.
When I returned to the church’s courtyard I was there ahead of the ‘shopping’ contingent so I had some time to look around. There were a lot of people milling about and I saw a stack of bamboo poles in the area with some banners attached. Apparently the people who were gathering there were unemployed as the result of the recent, a few days ago, change in presidents. They were supporters of the last president and have been replaced by appointees of the new one. Also in attendance on the square were lots of feathered rats, you probably call them pigeons. I’m not a big fan of them but a man was scattering seeds for them and behind him was a little girl who was picking up some of the seeds to redistribute them in a pattern more pleasing to her. It was a cute scene.
When our bus returned the driver said he had a hard time getting to us as the Plaza de Armas had been completely closed off to traffic and people. It seems that the police had gotten wind of the protest planned by the people gathering in San Francisco’s courtyard and were trying to prevent the protesters from getting to the Presidential Palace. It’s good we went there early.
Once we were on the bus we departed the old city and headed for the Miraflores District. This is the new part of town on the ocean. All the modern hotels are here as well as the upscale shops and restaurants. Our stop was at Parque del Amor (Lover’s Park). It is right along the palisades overlooking the Pacific. The palisades here are impressive. If you’ve ever been to the Pacific Palisades in Southern California it has much the same setting but these are taller. The Pan-American Highway runs along the base of the palisades and across the highway is the beach. It’s a very nice view, but the moisture in the air made it very hazy. Lima doesn’t get that much rain, most of their moisture comes in the form of thick ocean fogs, apparently much moister and more persistent than the June Gloom fogs of SoCal.
This is an attractive park with lots of flowers and benches that have mosaics with romantic sayings like ‘Amor es como luz’ (Love is like a light). They are brightly colored, as is the wall that keeps you from going over the cliff. In the center is a controversial statue of two lovers, fully clothed, but in an amorous embrace. I can tell you it would not be very controversial in CA or even TX.
Diana and I decided to leave the tour here as it was heading back to the ship. We wanted to visit the local shops and get some lunch. The bus dropped us off across the street from the Marriott hotel where Diana had stayed on her previous trip to Peru with Verdie Gilman and Marina Ball. I’m pretty jealous as they got to see Ruth while they were here. There’s a little park there and stairs at either end of the park lead down to a cliffside shopping plaza. There were several restaurants there and we chose the Vista al Mar. Diana had corvina (a wonderful sea bass) and I had Lomo a lo Pobre (Poor Man’s Steak). I’ve had this dish before in SoCal Peruvian restaurants and wanted to see if the real thing is similar. I am happy to report that it is and both versions are delicious.
Diana’s corvina was prepared in a medium spicy red aji that included tomatoes, olives and spices. Aji is a pepper sauce they use like we use ketchup, mustard or salsa, sometimes it’s in the sauces sometimes you add it yourself as a condiment. It comes in a wide variety of forms from yellow to red and cool to very spicy. The yellow is reminiscent of mustard but with a very different flavor. Ruth made us some Peruvian dishes while she was in the US and had a bottle of yellow aji for me to spice it up. I really liked it and she thoughtfully left the bottle in the fridge when she returned to Peru. It’s now in Texas, as I love to put it on sandwiches instead of mustard.
My Lomo a lo Pobre is a combination dish. It has a steak, slice of ham, bacon, sausage, a fried egg, rice, french fries and fried bananas. Yahoo!! It’s delicious!! Whoever decided to combine an egg with a steak is a genius. It sounds weird but the taste is great. (I had a hamburger in Brazil that had a fried egg on it, another brilliant idea.)
After we finished lunch we had to stop at the gelato counter just down from the restaurant and have some Italian ice cream. It was great also. I had Lucima flavor. It’s a fruit they have in Peru that’s orange in color but is not citrus. It’s more like a mango. Very tasty indeed. We walked across to the Marriott and Diana did some shopping. The H. Stern jewelers in the Marriott was sponsoring a shuttle bus back to the ship so we hopped on board just in time to get back to the ship and clean up for dinner. The Lido usually has a poolside BBQ on nights we leave late or are staying over in a port and they had one this evening. The food was good but unremarkable except for two things, the huge shrimp they grilled in the shells and the freshly sliced mangos.
The shrimp were more like small lobster tails. They were grilled to perfection. The mango was deep orange, almost red, in the middle and was the best I have ever eaten. Diana made the same assessment. After a leisurely dinner we went down to the Queen’s Lounge where a local folkloric show ‘Magic Peru’ was the evenings entertainment. They were very good indeed. They did dances representing the various ethnic and cultural groups from around Peru, from the Indians and Spanish to the Afro-Caribbean slaves who lived here, very lively and exciting. The most impressive dance was the ‘Scissor Dance’.
In this dance involves two men, both with scissors, who try to outdo each other with very acrobatic maneuvers. It’s kind of tumbling meets break dancing. They flip, hop, jump, lie on the stage and hop around using only their back muscles to bounce across the floor all the time clacking the scissors they have in their hand. I think you have to see it to believe it. I needed a good massage and visit to the chiropractor from just watching it. In Peru they apparently haven’t heard that you shouldn’t run with scissors much less perform difficult and complex dance steps.
Another day in Lima/Callao tomorrow. We’ve booked an all day tour to some Inca ruins with lunch at a horse ranch where they raise and show Paso horses.
Jan 18 – Lima/Callao, Peru. – Our second day in Lima and we are headed out of town to check out the Incas. We began with a stop at the National Anthropology and Archeology Museum. They have a great collection of pottery and textiles from all the periods of development in the country up to the Spanish colonial period.
You could compare Moche, Chimu and Inca pottery in the same room. They had large cases with displays of pottery. The Moche and Chimu were hard to differentiate. Chimu pottery was somewhat more complex and finely crafted in some cases but both were very good indeed. They made a lot of stirrup spouts on jugs. They have two separate exits for liquids from the jug but these two spouts meet as two sides of an arch and have one spout that continues upward, sort of a combination spout and handle.
One of the stirrup spouted jugs was in the shape of a guinea pig. The guinea pig was held in high esteem in the cuisine of the Moche culture. It was the main dish choice to show the respect and honor you held for your guest. This attitude was still strongly held when the Spanish arrived in the early 1500s. The proof of this is that the large painting of the last supper in the Church of San Francisco yesterday, completed in 1674, depicted a guinea pig on the plate at the center of the table directly in front of Jesus. Among the indigenous people here it still occupies that place to this day.
Another interesting thing about the Moche is that they valued the Spondylus shell so highly that it served as money. Spondylus is the spiny scallop. They had to travel quite a distance to gather the shells because they are not found locally. I guess that’s why they were so valuable. Today they still use the shell to make jewelry. As you probably know Diana collects seashells and we have one of these shells in CA. I bought a small piece that had been polished and set in silver as a pendant with a small piece of green turquoise.
They had an interesting time line on the wall. It compared what was going on in South America with what was happening in other parts of the world. It was interesting to see what compared to the Greek and Roman eras. They had several models of temples of the various cultures including the Inca’s most famous, Machu Pichu. I’m not a big fan of museum tours because they seem to spend a lot of time with things I could care less about and skip over the interesting things. So on a museum tour I stick with the guide until I figure out his plan. If he moves along I stay, if he gets bogged down I move on by myself. This guide did a great job on a good museum. I only had to let things clear out so I could get the pictures I wanted. Flash was not allowed inside and the ambient light reflection on the glass caused no end of problems. I managed to get a few good pictures.
We departed Lima to head south to the large Inca complex of Pachacamac. Started in about 700AD this pre-Inca shrine was later used by the Incas. It has several temples the largest, the Temple of the Sun, is on top of the highest hill and overlooks the ocean. The most significant find was the House of the Chosen Women. Here Mamacunas (‘one who serves as mother’), older women some of whom were abbesses others instructresses, taught the chosen young women the worship rituals of the Temple of the Sun. Some were doorkeepers, some stewardesses, and others served the priests as assistants. The life here was well documented by Garcalizo de la Vega, a Spanish explorer in 1605. He wrote a series of books while accompanying the expeditions into Peru.
Right across the highway east of this site was a city of sorts on a hillside that ran right up to the desert. In fact, were it not for the wall around the city it would have been taken over by the desert. The houses were very small and did not appear to be in good repair, mostly just concrete walls with a roof of some sort. But then most of Peru looks that way, a ramshackle, unfinished, kind of uncared for look. It was so uniform that I’m pretty sure that’s the way it’s intended to be. Only in the Miraflores section of Lima was there anything even closely resembling the order and maintenance we take for granted. It’s just their way and after you adjust to it, it doesn’t seem so strange anymore.
The Lurin River runs on the north side of the complex and the difference is dramatic. On the east and south you have desert as dry looking as any I’ve ever seen. On the west you have a small plain and the Pacific Ocean but to the north where the river is it’s as green as any central California farmer’s field. If you’ve been to Israel you’ve seen the same thing at Jericho, a vast desert with one of the greenest spots you’ll ever see right in the middle. On the ocean side there was a small bullring that the guide said dated from the 1700’s. Smallest one I’ve ever seen.
After tromping up and down the Temple of the Sun we headed out to a Peruvian style rancho for lunch and a Paso horse show. The name of the ranch was El Estribo. There were a series of ranches in the area all surrounded by at least a 10-foot wall and gated with solid doors. No way to see in at all.
Once inside there was a large area for the horses to run in, a big field for training, a huge hacienda and further back stables. It looked like the walled area could be as much as 10 acres maybe a bit more.
First we had lunch. The appetizer was deep-fried, battered cheese rolls about the size of a pizza roll with a light version of smooth guacamole. I prefer the lumpy kind, but the taste was good. The first course was the largest tamale I’ve ever seen. It was burrito size and filled with sauce, chicken and cheese. It was served with chopped onions and red peppers. I asked our guide and he said they are called ‘Tamals’. So our Mexican tamale must be a small form of a tamal because it was all wrapped in corn meal dough and then leaves and steamed. The second course was chicken saldano. I’m not sure I spelled it right but it’s the same dish Ruth Cowan made for Diana and me while she was home. The only difference is that Ruth gave me the yellow aji on the side; here it was mixed right in to a moderately spicy level. It was good, but Ruth’s was better.
Next came the horse show. Our host, narrated while his brother rode the horses and demonstrated training techniques. The gate of these houses is a lively walk that is very smooth indeed. The rider is almost stationary while the horse moves at a pretty fair clip. To demonstrate that the gate was natural to the breed, the owner brought a mare and her colt onto the field. The mare was on a lead but the cold was running free. He moved in exactly the same way as his mother, baring a few exhibitions of youthful enthusiasm. He’d hop and skip but then go right back to the paso gate. He was only about 5 months old and had not had any training.
The horses were beautiful, very sleek and had a variety of colors from dark chestnut to buckskin, with long tails and manes. After the saddle is put on they have a large, very wooly covering they put over the saddle. Called a ‘pellon’, it’s actually a blanket with long braided wool cords hanging down from the leather center. These braids can move around to fit the rider’s thighs and provide a uniquely soft seat for a saddle. The owner said that this covering makes the saddle feel like an easy chair. After the show it was back on the bus for the trip back to the ship.
Our entertainment for the evening was an act called ‘Your Three Tenors’ obviously capitalizing on the popularity of ‘The Three Tenors’. They were good but only one of them had a quality operatic tenor voice and he was the eldest of the three. The other two would have given Dennis Day a run for his money, but then Dennis didn’t do serious opera. It was an enjoyable show.
Tomorrow is a day at Sea.
Jan 19 – A day at sea is a true joy! No tour schedules to worry about, get up when you want, eat when you want, it’s just a truly fine experience. It should be noted that Diana does not concur with this view. She sees them as sort of a waste of time, or at least that what she says. I think she enjoys a break from the hectic days in port almost as much as I do.
The evening’s entertainment was a magician. The first on this cruise. Because they have to travel light and fly from ship to ship they are definitely limited on how many props they can lug around. Most of the tricks tend to be of the rope cutting, hankie waving, playing card manipulation, little balls appearing and disappearing. What changes is their patter. Most have gone from being serious sorcerers to stand up comedy. This is actually a good thing because if they are funny enough you don’t mind that you’ve seen the trick a few hundred times. This guy was funny enough but not hilarious.
Jan 20 – Arica, Chile. Oh, oh!! I didn’t sleep at all last night and was very hot all night even though the room was cool enough. Took my temperature when I got up and, yikes, 101.4. This is not an extremely high temp but my AM temp is almost always exactly 96.8, almost two full degrees below normal. That makes 101 in the AM a pretty impressive temp for me. The only reason I took it was because I already knew I was sick, I just want to see how sick. Sometimes this is how my sinus infections start but not usually this high on day 1. I was fine yesterday. We are scheduled for a long shore excursion this morning that I have been looking forward to and I’m going to have to cancel.
This is one of the great things about cruising and taking shore excursions. If we were in a foreign country on our own Diana wouldn’t go off without me but here she has 40 other shipmates plus the HAL tour rep and a guide to go with her so no problem.
The Doc has sick call at 8AM and we discussed my situation. He said my sinuses did look inflamed, but I told him they always do. He said it could be sinuses or some other infection, no lung involvement so that’s not an issue. Actually, no cough either, just a scratchy throat.
I went back to bed and slept the day, intermittently waking up to watch some TV and fall asleep again.
If you are going to get any info on this port it will have to be from Diana.
Jan 21 – Antofagasta, Chile. I’m not much better today, so we cancelled my tour again but Diana was able to go.
I spent the day much like yesterday. Diana brought me some beef bouillon to eat but that was all I was up for. I think I feel a little better. Fever is a little lower.
Once again, check with Diana for the travel info.
Jan 22 – A day at sea. At least I’m not missing another port. I feel some better but the combination of the antibiotics and lack of food has messed up my digestive system. Add that to my list of shortcomings and you get a pretty impressive package.
Diana brought me tea, beef broth, and sugar free Jell-O two times and that was all I wanted. I am starting to get a little more energy and the temp is really down now. Recovery seems to be just around the corner. I’ve revised my opinion about what’s wrong. I don’t think it was my sinuses at all but probably a virus of some sort, maybe Norwalk. My symptoms ran in that pattern. Well. I’ve got antibodies now so I should be over it for the duration.
When we boarded the ship we found a basket of bulbs that had not yet bloomed. When they came up they were tiny but pretty daffodils. The blooms are only two inches across but the yellow petals and orange trumpet made the flowers a cheerful sight while I wasn’t feeling well.
Jan 23 – Coquimbo, Chile. I feel pretty good this AM but still weak. The tour we booked here is over 8 hours long and I don’t want to chance it so I cancelled out. When Diana got back she said that the bus wasn’t air-conditioned and I would have been miserable even if I were feeling good so there’s no doubt I made the right decision.
The city of Coquimbo is not in either of our travel guides. This area saw its first Europeans in 1535 but the region seemed so desolate that they quickly diverted south. As I’ve mentioned before, the big shock of touring Northwest South America was encountering the vast coastal desert. A few years later Pedro de Valdivia established the city of La Serena and shortly thereafter Coquimbo (a word in the local Indian group’s language. the Diaguita, meaning ‘place of calm waters’. One interesting thing about the Diaguita, who came across the Andes from Argentina, is that they were the first civilization to domesticate the llama, the workhorse of South America. Once an area booming with over 10,000 mines it still has important copper and iron mines, but only has a small remnant of the once prolific silver mines.
Chile’s Nobel Prize winning poet Gabriela Mistral was born in this region, on a ranch in the Elqui Valley, now an active wine-producing region.
Chilean wines are excellent and down here very cheep indeed. The average price of a pretty good bottle of wine is 1,500 Pesos, about $3. If you want a really great wine it will set you back almost $17. This area has been protected from many of the insects and diseases that plague vintners elsewhere in the world. They don’t have to treat the vines for anything and that saves them bunches of money, no pun intended. Well, maybe a little intended! The weather is so consistent that there is no need to blend vintages to get a consistent body, aroma and flavor, saving vats more money. There are wineries all over southern Chile and they are making great strides in learning the industry. Between California, Australia and Chile I’ll bet the French are quaking in their tasseled loafers.
We are in Valparaiso tomorrow and I wanted to see how I would hold up to some activity, so after eating a very small breakfast I headed off the ship for a walk around town.
Part of the city is on a small plane next to the ocean but quickly rises in the surrounding hills. These hills are steep and craggy and the city’s development suffers from this. There are few streets going up the hill they just run horizontally along ridges. There are long chains of stairs that you have to negotiate to go up or down.
As I stepped out on deck, I saw a tall square column atop a hill in the distance and since I could get pretty close to it sticking near the beach, read as walking on flat ground, so I headed that way.
I left the ship at about 9AM and since most markets and shops don’t open until 10AM I was walking the streets with the commuters heading to work. No traffic jam here, it’s sidewalk jams. It seems that I’m not a curiosity here or even an item of interest. People just walk by and treat me like I’m just another person strolling to work. Of course, I’m the only pale skinned, chubby, bald person currently walking the streets of Coquimbo in shorts and a Panama hat, but that’s no reason to take notice.
Directly to the North of the ship was a facility of the Armada de Chile. Fishing is a very important resource down here and the navy looks as though they are very ready to defend it. The ships look very up to date and extremely well maintained. I’ve never seen military vessels in a cleaner, more polished state of repair. Very impressive indeed.
Continuing along the ocean front I came to a large plaza lined with palm trees along the street, with some playground features like sliding boards and stairs leading down to the ocean. There’s no beach here, just concrete stairs leading directly into the water.
As I continued something started smelling definitely fishy. Sure enough, right next to the plaza is a large and smelly fish market. On the ocean side a large and colorful fishing fleet was docked. All throughout the market were small stalls with men hard a work getting the nights catch ready to sell. Fish were everywhere. It was the least organized market situation I’ve ever seen. Individually everyone was busy and seemed to have a definite work routine, but taken as a whole the situation appeared to be much like a ‘demented ants nest’. I borrowed that phrase from a port lecturer on the world cruise. He used it to describe Madras, India and I thought it was great! I guess the analogy is good also. The ants, while seeming to scurry to and fro at random, are actually very organized once you understand the structure. There were about 7 rows of stalls between the sidewalk and the ocean and the market extended about 200 yards along the street, a pretty large area of very smelly fish processing.
Most of the stalls were fish vendors but scattered throughout were cloth goods, straw products, shells and small gift shops. If I were any of them I think I’d look for more commodious surroundings but I’m pretty sure that the high traffic generated by the fish makes the odorific ambiance an insignificant detraction.
On the other side of the market was a nicely developed wharf area with a restaurant and some small shops. On the ocean side there were a few piers that serve as pick up and drop off places for small boats and water taxis. The upscale part of town is cattycorner across the bay and I’m sure rather than take the long drive around to get here the people take water taxis. There was not very much activity at 9:30AM but later in the day I was observing this area from the top deck of the ship and the area was covered over with people and a small armada of boats were lined up to drop off passengers.
On the land side of the street next to the wharf area is the Parque O’Higgins de Coquimbo. We don’t hear much about him in the US version of South American history but down here you can’t swing a dead cat without knocking over something named or mentioning O’Higgins. Apparently the Generalissimo was instrumental in securing the independence of Chile and several other South American countries. His statue in the park depicts him astride a horse that has both fore hooves off the ground. Sometime ago a guide in the US told me that if the horse a rider is seated on has all four hooves on the ground he died a natural death not related to the military. If one fore hoof is off the ground he was wounded in battle but died a natural death. If both fore hooves are off the ground he died as a result of his wounds. That would mean that O’Higgins died of war wounds. Since I know he died in Exile in Lima, Peru this information is not so valid at least in South America.
It’s amazing to see a list of war heroes on a monument down here. Goes something like this, Bolivar, DeVega, Gutierrez and O’Higgins. Apparently the Irish are everywhere!! Haven’t found anything Perkins yet but it’s inevitable.
Next to O’Higgins Park is a large area where fruit and vegetable vendors set up. As I arrived they were still unloading produce and stretching the tarps that cover their stalls. The individual spaces are marked on the blacktop like parking spaces and are numbered. I’m guessing that they rent the spaces from the city or someone. The produce looked wonderful, grapes, apples, plums, grapefruit, potatoes, corn, mango, papaya, bananas, peaches, nectarines, carrots, lemons and tomatoes. I’m pretty sure I’ve left something out. But, there were absolutely no pears, pineapples or anything green and leafy, lettuce, etc. Maybe there’s a market across town that covers the leafy vegetables.
The street curves around the bay and if I go much further I’m headed away from the tall building on the hill (below, left) from which I hope to get a nice view. So, I turned off the ocean side boulevard and started up towards the hill. For two blocks the going was on the level but then I encountered a pair of staircases, both leading up to the same platform on the street above. The entire staircase and walls were whitewashed and had large concrete vases on the pilasters. The vases had been painted a golden tan. This must be a surviving indicator that at some point in the city’s history this was an important neighborhood. Now its once proud demeanor just serves to make the area look even more humble that it really is.
Once I was up the stairs and on the street above it became apparent that there was no easy way to keep going up. I faced a jumble of houses and no apparent way to get through. I walked a little way to the right and left and the picture did not improve. I’m still a little off from being sick and I didn’t know if I had the energy to make a mistake because I might only get one shot at ascending to the top. I decided to continue around to the right to see what might develop. I finally came to a cross street that went up the hill but seemed to curve in the wrong direction. Not wanting to make a mistake I decided to sit on the little cement base and consider my options. Just then an empty cab came by, the first I’d seen all morning. He stopped to ask me if I needed a ride. I walked over and asked if he could take me to the top of the hill and then back to the ship after a stop for some pictures. The bad news was that he spoke no English except the word ‘dollars’. So I employed the minuscule vestiges of my Speed Spanish classes. I wish someone were around to video these moments. I’m sure that I’m an absolute riot. Anyway with hand motions and a smattering of Spanish like barque (sp?), vista, momento and arriba we finally agreed that he would take me up to the top of the hill, wait while I looked around and then take me back to the port. All for the princely sum of $5.
This turned out to be one of the best travel deals I will ever make. There was no direct way up the hill. In fact, he had to drive almost all the way around the hill twice to finally arrive at the bottom of a narrow staircase leading up to the top. On the way he told me that it was not a church but a mosque. He didn’t look too happy about it being there. I asked him how old it was. He held up two fingers and said ‘dos’ and shook his head. Still clearly not pleased. We finally arrived at the stairs to the top. It wound up being a route through houses whose front doors were right on the narrow walkway. When I emerged at the edge of the ridge the view was great. I could see the fruit market, the fish market, O’Higgins Park, the Prinsendam and the entire bay. (It’s the picture at the bottom of page 27) It was a clear day and the view was great. During the drive back to the ship the driver told me that Morocco had paid for the mosque. I was quite puzzled about this situation until much later when I was talking to one of the guides at the ship. Only 2% of the people here are Muslim but unfortunately the mayor of the city is one of them. He convinced the Moroccans to pay for the mosque and hopes to make converts, but all it has done is insult the locals who don’t like the look of it or the location of it or anything much about it.
Back on board I ate lunch and took some photos from the top deck. Right across from the ship at the top of the hill is a large concrete structure in the shape of a cross. It was built for the millennium. It’s an observation point; you can ascend the center shaft all the way to the top or go out on the wings. I had neither the inclination nor energy to do it, but you could if the mood struck you.
Diana returned from the tour I cancelled. She had a great time and brought back a couple of bottles of Pisco, the signature drink of both Peru and Chile. It’s essentially unaged brandy that they drink mixed with lemon juice, sugar and a little egg froth called a Pisco Sour. The bottles are small and I think it was the price that got her, $1 a bottle. Apparently they toured the distillery on the trip. Native hooch, now this is touring!!
Our entertainment for the evening was mixed. The magician was back as well as the banjo player. I like the style of the banjo player but the magician was not different or funny enough for a second run. Yikes, I hope I’m not becoming a bit to jaded for my own good. Better loosen up.
Jan 24 – Valparaiso, Chile. Today I’m feeling good enough to go on the 8-hour tour we booked to Santiago, Chile’s capital city. I’ve got most of my strength back but I’m still using the head more than I should be so it could get exciting before the day is over.
We boarded the best bus we’ve ever had on a HAL shore excursion. Wide leather seats, all the air vents were in operation, the speaker system was very clear for Diana and the engine and A/C noise was very low. After leaving the pier area and winding our way through Valparaiso we entered the best highway system we’ve seen in a long time. A four-lane elevated, limited access, freeway like highway goes all the way from Valparaiso to Santiago. One unusual thing, Santiago is pronounced just like you’d expect in Spanish but the pronunciation of Valparaiso was a surprise.
Now that I think about it, it should not have been. My speed Spanish pronunciation rules should have told me that it was not “Val-pa-riso'” as everyone I know pronounces it, but “Val-para-eeso'“ instead, like our guide pronounced it. Every vowel gets pronounced in Spanish and ‘i’ is a long ‘e’ sound in the normal course of things. I guess 15,000,000 Chileans can’t be wrong!
The road led us from the coastal plane over a set of mountains to a valley that has perfect weather for grapes and let me tell you the valley was full of vineyards. It stretched for miles. A very pretty sight. We went over another set of mountains and entered a valley that was all fruit and nut orchards. Our guide said that the climates were so different in those two valleys that if the crops were planted the other way around they would all fail.
It was apparent from the moment we entered Santiago that this was unlike any South American city we’ve seen so far. Very cosmopolitan, almost European is how I would describe it. It is a mixture of the old colonial with ultra modern glass skyscrapers, somewhat misleading term as the tallest building allowed is 35 stories due to the frequency and severity of earthquakes here. Makes an ex-Californian feel right at home. Our guide told us that in the 1800s all the wealthy Santiagans went to Paris for vacations. Travel being what it was they didn’t go for just a week or two they went for months. When they came back they brought French architects and landscapers with them. Most of the city is designed on their concepts, small parks dotted around, wide streets.
We entered the city from the north and on the way in drove through older, but nice, residential areas. Right in the middle of this area was the Club Hipico, an old, very well manicured racetrack that is still in use. A bit later we passed, that’s right folks, Parque O’Higgins. Man they love that guy down here. I’m amazed that I’ve never heard of him in the US. I’ve got to do some research on him when I get home. Just across from the park was the Cusiño Palace the home of the Cusiño family in 1878. Most of the homes in the more upscale neighborhoods regardless of age had very European architecture, mostly French but some German.
There’s a huge German contingent in the mountains and fjords further south most of whom came when the German Republic was formed in the late 1800s. That’s right, the USA is older than Germany. Anyway, when Bavaria, Prussia, and the 37 other entities confederated and became Germany many old grudges were held among the combining states and lots of people said adios to the Fatherland and came to South America. Many also came to the US at that time. I’m very proud of the fact that my ancestors saw the wisdom of this move 200 years earlier and left as the result of Protestant persecutions in Bavaria to land in the Penn’s Quaker controlled Pennsylvania Colony.
Biographical Note: This leads me to a little aside of a personal nature. Diana’s ancestors came to the Dutch Colony of New Amsterdam about the same time my relatives came to PA from Germany. Some of her family has done extensive research on their migration to Texas. Each successive generation moved about 70 to 100 miles from the previous one for a long time. At one point her relatives were living on the eastern bank of the Delaware River about 35 miles from my relatives farm in Salisbury Township. That was in the early 1700s. Amazing!! Diana’s ancestors were explorer/adventurers. Each generation had the itch to see what was over the next hill. Mine wanted to see how many crops could grow on the hill they had, at least on my mom’s side. On dad’s side they were mining coal in the earliest reports.
Anyway, back to Chile. We arrived at the Plaza de Armas, the central plaza of Santiago. We debarked from the bus and had some time to wonder around. The trip had taken only 1.5 hours and covered 85 miles. We’ve taken a lot longer to cover half that distance on some of our tours.
The Cathedral de Santiago is on the west side of the plaza and has an attached monastery. It’s a relatively simple grey stone building, two towers of course. It’s neoclassical in style and was completed in 1789 and designed by an Italian architect. The interior was much more impressive, with a series of gilded arches topped by stained glass windows going down each side. The altar had a statue of Mary holding Jesus both very ornately dressed. Both Jesus and Mary have golden crowns on their heads and Mary is wearing a white lace shawl that covers her head and drapes all the way to her feet. My poor little Nikon’s flash will not carry anywhere near that far and I hate to use it in a church anyway so I handheld a 1 second shot that’s pretty fuzzy. I may try to clean it up in Photoshop and send you a small copy. It was gorgeous. The post office on the plaza was one of the most beautiful I’ve ever seen. It’s in a 1715 building that was formerly the Palacio de los Gobernadores; I guess that was the HQ for the Governors.
Leaving the plaza we drove on the Almeda, Santiago’s colorful main avenue crossing the Mapacho River into the Bohemian District of the city. Here you find small coffee shops and boutiques in what used to be the free thinking, sort of left bank, kind of people that preceded beatniks. It’s pretty upscale now and leads to a very posh, if older, residential area called Bella Vista. We’re headed to the Parque Metropolitano. The park is a hill that overlooks the city. Our bus got us quite a way to the top but we had to continue on foot for about 500 yards uphill. Not bad for me but some of the oldsters with us were puffing pretty good or as my dad would say, “Like an old steam engine.”
The views were great. It was a bit hazy but not too bad. Santiago is surrounded by hills and like LA, Denver and other such places often has pretty bad smog. Not today!! On the drive up large portions of the trees on the hillside were supporting huge growths of morning glories. They were all blue and greeting the sun. Did I mention that we started early today? It was a splendid sight.
There were some small shops at the top and I found a very appropriate frigie for my collection. It’s a copper rectangle cast with some of the famous old petroglyphs of lizards found here in Chile. The copper is appropriate as it’s their number one export and they have a very large mine, second biggest in the world, in northern Chile.
After that we rode down the hill into a very posh residential neighborhood. The houses would all have been very at home in Bavaria, Switzerland, the Netherlands or almost any northern European city. I have to say, I like the styles.
We had lunch at a large restaurant that has a folkloric show. They demonstrated several dances from Central Chile, including the national dance the Cua’cao, pronounced Quake'-o. This dance has very rhythmic sections and very animated sections where the man stomps the ground flamenco style. The lunch was very good, a salad, salmon with potatoes and green beans and a large plate of fruit with very smooth, Italian style, ice cream. Mine was butterscotch. The MC was dressed as a Chilean cowboy. He had a good voice and excellent English. Good food and a good show.
After that we made a stop at a handicraft market laid out as a small town. Each ‘house’ had a different artist. Some were working in copper, stone, lapis lazuli, wood, paintings and others. The work was good and the prices were very reasonable, but I’m just not a shopper so I participated in my favorite pastime, people watching. Unfortunately, most of the people available for watching were other tourists. Not that they’re not a hoot, but when I’m in a foreign country I’d really rather watch the locals.
For entertainment tonight we had the Big Screen (Main Showroom) movie, ‘The Queen’. If you haven’t seen it please do. It’s the best movie since ‘As Good as it Gets’. Diana and I saw it in Grapevine, Texas. We had to drive up there to see it when it was first released. I know Helen Mirren from the BBC show ‘Prime Suspect’ where she did 7 seasons as police officer Jane Tennison slowly working her way up the ranks. She was excellent in that and is even better in Queen. When Diana and I walked out after the show I said that both she and the movie would get Academy Award nominations if there were any justice in the world and they have. I haven’t heard about the smaller categories so I don’t know, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there are several technical nominations like cinematography and the like. The movie is excellent on every level.
Truly great films are rare. I think they should only have the Oscars in years where at least one film is truly great. We’d only have to put up with the self-aggrandizing ninnies from Hollywood about once every five years. I guess you can tell that I think most movies, while they may be entertaining, are not really good in the sense of artistic merit. Actually, most of them really aren’t that entertaining either.
Jan 25 – A day at sea, how I love them. We are celebrating my birthday today as we will be in port all day tomorrow and have an 8-hour tour. I spent a relaxing day marshalling my forces and it seems to be working. I’m feeling much better.
For dinner we went to the Pinnacle Grill, the fancy restaurant on the ship. There is a small cover charge but the food is outstanding. I had fillet mignon and Diana had lamb chops. They were truly great! They have a crab cake appetizer that is also outstanding and the chocolate volcano cake for desert is enough to keep you awake all night but it’s worth it.
Our entertainer was Mac Frampton a pianist. He was also outstanding. He played several different types of music and then for his finale he took song names from the audience, about 30 of them and played them as a medley. There were only about 3 songs that were requested that I didn’t hear. That’s truly amazing!!
Jan 26 – Puerto Montt, Chile. Welcome to Southern Chile. The flat parts look a lot more like Pennsylvania, the mountainous parts look like Colorado or maybe Alaska, high granite mountains with lush green fields below and lots of lakes. We are headed out of town again to the lake country, another eight-hour tour.
Many of the people here are of German descent and in fact it looks a little like Germany as well. Apparently the German immigration in the 1800s was even stronger here than in Santiago. Our guide, whose name in Ingrid Rommel (not very German!), is a round faced, chubby cheeked, blond woman of about 40. She came here 20 years ago after marrying a Chilean man of German ancestry home to visit relatives. She is the happiest, most effervescent German I’ve ever met, maybe a tie with Detlef (A German friend of ours from our church in CA) but she might just edge him out by a smidge. She’s originally from Hamburg.
We drove north out of the Puerto Montt toward Lake Llanquihue (pronounced Yan-kwe'-way by the locals). It’s a local Indian name for which the translation has been lost.). It’s a large lake, almost 70,000 hectares (about 270 US statute square miles). The lakes provide the highways here in the mountains. We turned west at this lake to drive around its southern edge to Lake Todos los Santos (Lake of All Saints) where we will take a catamaran cruise.
This is a gorgeous area. If you like the Rockies or the Alps you’ll love it here. The area is volcanic and has frequent earthquakes. Most are just small shakers like the ones we get in CA that no one else ever hears about, but in 1960 the city of Puerto Montt was completely wiped out. Our guide told us that very few buildings exist anywhere in the area that date earlier than that. Two peaks dominate the view here and they are two different types of volcanoes. Mt. Orsono is a perfect cinder cone volcano. It has mild eruptions with orderly and slow lava flows. Where lava goes of course everything is wiped out but there’s not much other damage. Unfortunately, the snowcapped peak of Orsono was shrouded in clouds all day. Mt. Calbuco, on the other hand is an explosive volcano like Mount St. Helens. A dome of hardened lava plugs its system and the pressure builds up until it blows violently. Consequently it has a very different appearance that Orsono. I guess anyone would look different if their top blew off every hundred years or so. Both have snow on them and unfortunately were up into the cloud cover for most of the day. Mt. Orsono’s perfect conical top came out of the clouds as we were leaving. I think I got a pretty good picture. The base is clear, then there’s a layer of clouds with the snow-covered peak sticking up. It’s difficult to distinguish the clouds from the snow. I’ll probably have to do some darkroom work on the pic to get it to show.
Driving by was beautiful. With Mt. Orsono in the background it was a perfect Alpine setting. After passing through the village of Ensenada we arrived at Petrohue the city at the east end of Lake Todos los Santos. It’s a picturesque little place with a very European style hotel. The boat is a 2-deck catamaran. The top deck has an open area aft that was perfect for viewing and taking pictures. It also wasn’t very crowded as there were no seats and the weather was cool. Perfect for me, not so good for the Floridians I’m traveling with. They’re freezing if the show room gets below 85.
We sailed east on the lake, which is long and narrow, toward Argentina. In fact, this boat will make a trip to the other end of the lake later today carrying Argentinean tourists to the east end of the lake where they will board busses to continue home. They will board two more boats and two more busses to make the trip. Where a lake exists in this high area they do not build roads except to and from ends of the lakes. Pretty practical system actually.
From the lake we have good views of four volcanoes, the previously mention Orsono and Calbuco, plus Mts. Puntiagudo and Tronador. Mt. Puntiagudo is the next mountain east of Orsono so they are side by side on the north side of Lago Todos los Santos. Mt. Tronador is on the southeast end of the lake and Orsono is near the southwest end of the lake. It’s a quite active area for volcanism and earthquakes.
Our next stop was the Petrohue Rapids. Here they’ve built a series of boardwalks and small span bridges to allow the tourists to get a great view of the rapids on one area of the Petrohue River. After a short walk through very dense forest you arrive at the boardwalks. At this point the river has cut several channels through the dark gray granite. The channel on the south side is the widest and carries the most water. It has a small waterfall rapid near the top of the section that has a standing rock in the center of the channel. It creates a two-sided waterfall about 7 feet high and a total of 50 feet across. The water is churning so much it’s hard to see through the mist it generates.
The central channel has cut a narrow ravine through the granite outcropping that’s about 40 feet deep but only 6 feet wide. It has a pool of water eddying just above before it rushes with great speed and turbulence through the cut. The northernmost cut is the calmest. It takes the water that is almost as high as the granite outcropping but only about the first foot deep. In dry periods this channel probably stops running, as the water will not be high enough upstream to push water into it. The water flows slowly and calmly through a series of pools before rejoining the torrent about 50 yards downstream.
The whole system creates lots of noise and lots of spray but is entirely impossible to adequately capture on film except for video. That’s why I carry both of my cameras. Some things are just too big and you’re too close to take them in with a photo.
After looking at the rapids Diana and I decided we had the energy for a forest trail loop of a little over a mile. It cuts across the area in a bend of the river and descends to the riverbank on the other side. It was a cool day and the forest was pretty so we walked it. It was worth it as there were several good overlooks on the way. When you got down to the riverbank you were beside another much less spectacular but still interesting rapid set. These you could probably run in a canoe without getting killed. Not possible at the previous set.
On the way down the hill we stopped at a German restaurant, The Aleman Waterwheel. They had a group of young people, ages 12 and down performing the national dance of Chile. After that we had lunch, salad, salmon, potatoes, peas with apple kuchen for desert. I know the desert was the only German thing about the lunch, well the potatoes too, but it was very good.
After that we drove to the city of Puerto Varas on the shore of Lake Llanquihue. This is a very German looking town. Buildings with shingled and rough sawn timber sides were the norm. The church, painted red and white with black trim could have been in any of the alpine areas of Europe.
We got off the bus in the town square right next to a casino where we could use the WCs. I knew something was up immediately after getting off the bus. I could hear someone playing flute music in the square, that’s not remarkable in Chile. The fact that I could also hear loud, very modern, upbeat almost disco like music playing at the same time seemed out of place. When I got to the other side of the square I discovered that a temporary elevated runway had been erected and there was a rehearsal underway for a fashion show. You women will have to help me here, is Verano a well-known name in women’s fashion? Anyway the title of the show on the banner behind the runway backdrop said, “Verano in Puerto Varas”. The girls were very casually dressed for the walk through, jeans and simple tops but they were pretty nevertheless. Being the frustrated professional photographer I am I had to try to capture one of them on film. I did pretty well.
Linguistic Note: Well I was incorrect. I needed the services of a translator, not a fashionista. Much to my surprise the aforementioned “Verano”, as those of you with a small knowledge of Spanish know, means summer. ‘Summer in Puerto Varas’, a very good name for a fashion show.
I walked around town looking for pictures and found some buildings and flowers that I liked. The city has roses planted in the sidewalk borders all over town. I wanted to mail a postcard from there so I waited for the Post Office to open at 3PM. They are very big into siesta here. Everything closes from 11 to 3. I found a restaurant that proudly announced that it serves “Tex-Mex” cuisine. Much of what was listed on the sign would not be recognizable in Texas as any sort of Mexican food, Tex or otherwise. For example, they had Carpaccio of Salmon, a marinated fish dish with no relationship at all to Tex-Mex, not to mention Cesar Salad. They did have tacos, nachos and quesadillas but none of the mainstays of Tex-Mex like fajitas. I guess every culture adapts a cuisine to make it their own.
The symbol of the city is the Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ Church. It looks as though it was transported here straight from the Black Forrest of Germany. In fact, I think it’s a pretty close copy of the Marienkircke (St. Mary’s Church) in Büdingen, about 30 miles east of Frankfurt. The church is atop a hill and visible from all over the area. Just downhill from the church is a small rose garden with a grotto at one end dedicated to Mary.
I went into the casino to use the facilities. They had signs all over advertising the fact that they play Texas Hold ‘Em every night. As I came out and went down the stairs I noticed a young man getting ready to take a picture of a girl under the casino’s sign. One way I get to talk to other tourists is to offer to take a picture that includes them both. She could see me so I pointed to the guy and then her and made a picture taking gesture. She nodded yes and waived at the guy and pointed to me. He looked over and I pantomimed taking his picture with her, he nodded yes. See if you want to communicate with others you will find a way. As he handed me the camera I smiled and nodded and pointed at the shutter button, he said, ‘Yes.” and I said, ‘OK.’ We looked at each other and said, ‘Hi’. Turns out he was born in New York, grew up in this area of Chile, went back to the States for college and had just gotten married 7 months ago. He and his new wife were visiting Chile to see his Chilean relatives and then they’re going back to Arizona where he’s landed a job. You never know who you’re going to talk to anywhere in the world. We each thought the other was from somewhere not the US. There were people on the bus this morning that live near in South Lake, TX up by DFW airport, nearly our neighbors.
We reboarded the bus for the trip back to Puerto Montt. It was a great day! Ingrid was the happiest, most outgoing guide we’ve ever had, German or not. A German guide in the German area of Chile, perfect symmetry.
Our entertainer was Robin Fellows. She’s done a lot of work in commercials and her voice sounds familiar. She sang some Broadway and Big Band songs. Her hero growing up was Dusty Springfield, so she sang several of Dusty’s hits from the ‘60s.
Another port tomorrow but we don’t arrive there until 10AM. Not quite as good as a sea day, but very close as you can have a leisurely morning. Our tour today departed at 7:15AM and that makes for an early up to breakfast for sure.
Jan 27 – Puerto Chacabuco/Coihaique, Chile. We are not due to arrive in Chacabuco until 10AM but I woke up early and went to breakfast. We are cruising inland up the Aisen Fjord. The city is about 50 miles up the fjord. We’re sailing along through scenery much like the Inland Passage in Alaska when we round a little bend and I see a quaint little village that looks like it might be a fishing center. Much to my surprise the engines slow and we stop. This is it. Easily the smallest port in which we’ve ever stopped. The city can’t be more than a few thousand people. There is a strangely large hotel here; I’ll have to find out what that’s about. The setting is beautiful. There are low, cloud shrouded mountains on both sides of the city’s valley.
Our trip today is inland up the Simpson River to the City of Coihaique through Northern Patagonia. Our guide is an Italian man, Aldo, who lived in Edinburgh, Scotland for 10 years. His accent is quite unique. Most words he pronounces with an Italian accent but some have a definite Scot’s brogue, especially out (oot) and about (aboot). He’s lived here for 10 years also.
He says they get 9 feet of rain here at the port but only 36 inches of rain in Coihaique. When he was asked where he lived he laughed and said, ‘Coihaique, much better weather!’ He says that the local Chileans have much more in common with the Argentineans just across the border because they are all Patagonians and until very recently it was very hard to get to Santiago but easy to get to Argentina. Many Argentinean tourists come here on vacation. The Patagonians share many cultural similarities that don’t exist in the rest of Chile. We are riding on the Carretera Austral road, built in 1976 to connect Puerto Montt with Puerto Yungay. Prior to that there was no way to easily get across the area. Yesterday when we were on Lake Todos los Santos we were about 15 miles from the border with Argentina. At that point Chile is only about 150 miles wide.
Our first stop was at the Simpson River Reserve. We took a little hike down to the river and then on a loop path through the forest along the river. It was a nice walk. They have a multitude of wildflowers here. Many look like they are of the foxglove variety, some look more like fireweed but are a blue very tall and slender series of individual flowers. There was Scotch Broom and Queen Ann’s Lace and others that I couldn’t identify all along the roads. We drove past fields of little yellow flowers that looked like buttercups. The path through the forest had many fairly large fuchsia trees. The fuchsias were very small red and purple flowers but the trees were full of them. Along the path I was photographing some foxglove when I notice a tiny yellow/green spider on one of the blooms. I took a picture of him but I’m not sure how it will look, the light was very tough.
After the hike it was back on the bus for a very pretty drive up the Simpson River Valley and on to the city of Coyhaique, the capital of the region. It was founded in 1929 and is largely a governmental and military area. It’s built with a city square at the center and most of the action in town is there. There’s a small artisans area with open air booths just to the west of the square and on the northwestern corner is a street with a couple of restaurants, drug store, bank and some shops.
Diana browsed the market and found a tea straw. It’s a device they use to drink their local tea made from a sort of grass. I think it’s called Matte. They have elaborate social customs built around drinking this tea. You brew it in a gourd like container by adding hot water to the grass. Apparently you have to use a lot of the grass and the resulting mixture is sort of thick. Here’s where the tea straw comes in. There are several forms but all are metal. Some are one piece with a hollow spoon like end that has small holes in it; this type is usually curved like a calabash pipe. Some are two-piece with a straight straw part that has a device like a small metal tea-steeping ball for loose tea which screws on the end. Only in this case the tea remains on the outside and it’s used as a sieve to let only the liquid pass up the straw.
Regardless of which type you have you use the end with the holes in it to press down on the mixture and then drink. It’s a communal cup so you pass it around. Everyone uses the same straw so I guess it’s a blood brother like ritual. They get together for this just like we get together for a small informal social gathering. Not an activity you’d do much with strangers.
Lunch was in a private room on the second floor of one of the two restaurants. It was a light lunch that consisted of half of a ham and cheese sandwich, two cookies and tea or coffee. It was very rustic bread and the sandwich was very tasty. I was wishing I could have had the other half. The slices of bread were large so it was really about ¾ of a normal sandwich.
We drove back down to the port area on the same road we took up. The scenery was just as impressive in reverse. On the way down we stopped at the Virgin Mary Falls. It was a nice double cascade with a shrine to the side. Each cascade was probably about 40 feet high. They had a poster showing the same statue I sent a picture of from the Santiago Cathedral. Must be a famous one. They have a prayer on a sign there, it starts out, 'Thank you for coming here, Virgin and Mother Saint Maria' in Spanish of course. It was amazing how much of it I could read.
Then it was back to the port and tender back to the ship. The entertainer was Ken Groves a ventriloquist. His dummy was George and he played him with a southern country type accent. They were funny. He was very good at his craft as well. Very little of the facial expression changes, like smiles etc., that most of his fellow practitioners use to hide the movement of their lips. A pretty good demonstration of the art form. As you know mimes, jugglers, magicians and ventriloquists are low on my list of preferred acts. Not that there aren’t some great ones. Except for mimes, all mimes are irritating. It’s just that being on a ship limits jugglers and magicians to certain types of tricks and they all are pretty much the same. An inventive ventriloquist’s act is great, but so many of them do the same shtick. Ked did not and was very good.
I was out on deck last night at 10PM taking sunset pictures. The days are getting really long down here. Tomorrow sunrise is 6:50AM and sunset is 9:55PM. That means it will be light until about 11PM. Very cool!!
Jan 28 – Today we are doing some scenic cruising. Scenic cruising differs from a day at sea in that you are close to land and there’s something important to see usually accompanied by narration on the outside decks by some expert or another. That’s today. We are cruising the Darwin Channel, the Messier Channel to enter Iceberg Fjord to see Iceberg Glacier at its terminal end.
We were supposed to enter the Messier Channel at 8AM but clearly we were going slowly when I got up in the morning. The captain announced that we had apparently run through a school of shrimp during the night and it had clogged the seawater intakes that cool the engines. Until the filters could be cleaned we would have to proceed slowly so as not to overheat the engine.
Did I mention that yesterday leaving port the ship shuddered quite a bit? It felt like the props were not synchronized properly for about 20 seconds. The captain came on a minute later to tell us that there had been an earthquake and what we felt were the p waves moving through the water. Earthquake, shrimp attack, what next?
About 8:30, while I was eating breakfast, the captain announced that we were going to pass very close to the Queen Mary 2 in a couple of minutes. When you’re in Alaska or the Caribbean it’s not uncommon to see other ships. Further from land in active shipping lanes you might see a ship once or twice a day, but out of those lanes sightings of other ships are pretty rare, especially other cruise ships. Spotting the QM2 way down here is roughly the equivalent of a UFO sighting. Lots of my camera toting fellow passengers accompanied me out on deck to celebrate the event. At this point the QM2 is the second largest cruise ship afloat. The largest is Royal Caribbean’s Freedom of the Seas, launched in June 2006.
We finally got the filters cleaned and were back up to full speed about 10:30AM and arrived at Messier at Noon. Thereafter everything ran smoothly. We approached the Iceberg Glacier at about 3PM. It’s a tidewater glacier that means it comes all the way down to the water. It looked to be about 150 feet high and probably a mile across. Several pieces have broken off the face recently as the blue glacier ice color was showing very darkly. It will quickly oxidize to the white color we usually see. We spent about half an hour there observing the glacier before spinning about and heading back down Iceberg Fjord to the Adalberto Channel and Canal Fallos and into the Gulf of Ladrilero.
Tomorrow at 6:30am we are supposed to be at the Pius X Glacier, which is in the Seno Eyre Fjord.
Our entertainer for the evening was Jim Curry. Accompanied by his wife he played and sang John Denver songs. He actually sounded like him as well. It was a very good show.
Jan 29 – Today we were supposed to do some scenic cruising of some glaciers and fjords. Unfortunately a medical emergency has forced the captain to alter the plan. We are cruising at top speed on the Pacific Ocean heading for the western end of the Strait of Magellan. We will enter the Strait about mid-morning and sail as fast as possible to our next port Punta Arenas, Chile that is on the Strait of Magellan. We should be there about 7PM today a full 12 hours early. We’ll probably be docked so if we wanted to go downtown for the evening we could. First thing they will do is off load the patient and his wife and all their luggage. US law does not allow unaccompanied luggage into the country so they have to take everything with him. I understand that he is in critical condition and that’s why we had to hurry here.
On the plus side we will be transiting the Strait of Magellan in daylight. Ordinarily, after the scenic cruising, you go this part after dark. It was beautiful, lots of mountains, ice fields, glaciers and birds. I was on deck for about 4 hours hoping to see some mammals in the water but there were none at all. There were 6 of us dedicated explorers on the bow of the ship keeping watch including two very dedicated bird photographers and we didn’t see any sea life. I’m pretty sure none slipped by us. There were birds galore, Arctic Terns, two types of Albatross, Kestrels and lots of them. We even saw two other boats, one sailboat and one that looked like a New England Crabbing boat. It had a winch mounted forward and a davit. Looked like it is used to pull up crab, lobster or some other sort of traps.
At times it was so warm I took off my jacket. Then the sun would go behind the clouds and it would be pretty cold. I was just happy that the heavy rain we had on the Pacific didn’t follow us into the Straits.
It was Latin American Formal Night this evening. The staff was all dressed up in their various SA outfits. It was pretty cool. Our entertainers were the pianist and the ventriloquist from a few nights ago. They will be getting off tomorrow and they did a combined show this evening. Both were great again.
Editorial Comment: As I have mentioned, Peter Daems, our Cruise Director is the best we have ever sailed with. He maintains a great attitude on the cruise staff and has an outgoing, warm relationship with the passengers. He clearly cares about people and loves contact with the public. He participates in various activities like ‘Swimming through the Panama Canal’ and other similar weird events. His staff runs them but he participates right along with the passengers. He seems to love it. Tonight is an example. Most Cruise Directors would dress up a little for Latin Night; wear a sombrero or a serape, something simple. Not Pete!! He wore an outrageous flamenco shirt right along with the rest of his staff. He’s getting married later this year and taking a break from cruising and it will be a great loss for HAL and me. That’s him on the left with Diana and Adam of his staff.
Jan 30 – Punta Arenas, Chile. Today we are already in port as we rushed here yesterday for the medial emergency. Diana is taking a flying trip to Torres del Paiñe, a large national park in Patagonia just north of here.
I’m taking a CSI tour around the local area that includes a trip south to Fort Bulnes, but our first stop was at an overlook to see Punta Arenas and across the Magellan Strait to the island of Tierra del Fuego. It’s called the Land of Fire because when the explorers first saw it the local Indians had the practice of building large smoky fires to cure and preserve fish. These fires dotted the island and thus the name. There were several vendors selling various tourist items, such as sweaters, caps, carvings and jewelry. A mother and father were running one family booth. They had a 1.5-2 year old little boy with them. The mother had him strapped to her with a scarf like cloth that was knotted to act like a baby sling, papoose style on her back. It was a very efficient method of childcare. He had on a little knit cap and parka, very colorful.
The trip down to the fort was very pretty in a stark sort of way. The wind blown trees all point the same direction. The rocky shoreline reminds me of parts of the Washington or Maine coasts. The weather is variable to say the least. In the same day we had clouds, rain, sun, wind, calm, cold and warm. The weather here truly changes by the minute.
Fort Bulnes was established in 1843 as an attempt to settle the area and named for the concurrent president of Chile. Earlier that year Captain Juan Williams of the Goleta Ancud had claimed the area for Chile. It went well until they discovered that the soil was not suitable for crops and the area was too hostile for domestic animals. It was built of timber and mud brick with straw. It is a soft material compared to adobe and can be pressed close together to seal out the wind. The fort was soon abandoned. Everyone moved further north and established what is now Punta Arenas, which was the first permanent Chilean settlement in Patagonia. Its initial function was to tighten the Chilean claim on the area.
We had some free time at the fort and I went exploring out the back gate. I found a lighthouse back there and a bronze plate on it proclaimed proudly that it is the ‘Faro Bernardo O’Higgins’. All the way here and we cannot escape our old friend O’Higgins. He has dogged us all the way down the western coast of South America.
Before the Panama Canal was completed Punta Arenas was a very important port on the trip “Around the Horn” and one of the wealthiest cities in Chile. Some families became very rich here. Sara Braun built a large home with European materials here in 1895. A French architect designed it and she brought over craftsman from Europe for the 4 years it took to build the home. Very soon the main plaza was established next to the house and the town developed around it. Her husband, Jośe Nogueira, made a lot of money in shipping. There are 3 other prominent homes in the city all now museums.
The Museo Regional de Magallanes is in the former home of the powerful Braun-Menéndez family. Many of the rooms have been preserved in their original state. The living room, dining room, sitting room and billiard room are all as they were when the house was last occupied. Interestingly there was a set of mah jong tiles in the billiard room as well as a poker table complete with chips, a billiard table and other game areas for chess, etc. They were a devout Russian Orthodox family and had busts of the Czar and Czarina in the sitting room. Other rooms have exhibits interpreting the development of the area and documenting the original inhabitants, among them the Ono.
One of the exhibit rooms still has the original lamps on the wall. They are a most unusual design. It’s like a C from the Colorado Flag open end down, hanging from an 18-inch ornate metal bar attached to the wall about 7 feet up from the floor. On the outside of the C shape there are four bulbs, two on each side of where the metal bar attaches. If it were a clock face the bulbs would be at 9:30, 11, 1 and 2:30, a very odd placement. Suspended from the middle of the open C shape is a large snowflake looking object and a small 6-pointed star hangs from each end of the C shape. The small stars and the large snowflake have their centers in the same plane. I took a picture to show all this.
One block inland from the Museum is the Sara Braun house. It is on the northwest corner of the city’s main square. The very exclusive Club de la Union now occupies part of the home and the remainder is leased to a hotel. We had lunch in the Winter Patio, a glass enclosed iron framed conservatory type room in the front of the building. It was a very nice place to eat.
We had salmon ceviche (raw fish marinated in lemon juice, cilantro and onion, much like the Mexican version), steak with vegetables and for desert an apple pancake with syrup and ice cream. It was great!! I haven’t been eating deserts on the ship but I made an exception for this one and it was worth it. Very German in motif actually. The apples in the center of the pancake were actually ‘affle schnitz’ (that’s dried apples in Pa Dutch). My Grandmother, on my Mother’s side, used to make a very similar dish called ‘schnitz cake’, also very good.
After that it was out to the park to take some pictures of the Magellan statue and some of the buildings. One of the statues on the monument is of an Ono Indian with his bow. His one leg is dangling down and there’s a folk tale that if you rub his big toe you will come back to Punta Arenas. Nancy (our CSI escort) and I had our picture taken touching the toe. After that, back to the bus and back to the ship.
The wind has really picked up and the captain has started the engines to help keep us against the dock. I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t have to have some tugs come to push us against the dock as well. They had to do that once when we were leaving Fort Lauderdale. The wind was so bad they had to suspend luggage loading until it calmed down. At one point there were two tugs both pushing like crazy to keep us at the dock.
Diana’s tour didn’t get back until 7:40PM, pretty close to on time. She decided to eat some fruit and a bar and go to the show instead of dinner. The entertainers were Robin Fellows and Jim and Anne Curry, the John Denver singers. They were both very good in their repeat performances.
We will be cruising the Beagle Channel tomorrow up to Ushuaia, Argentina. We will exit the Magellan Strait tonight and cruise south on the Atlantic Ocean to enter the Beagle Channel. If the weather is ok we will do some scenic cruising of glaciers before docking in Ushuaia at 1PM. Diana and I have booked a cruise further up the Beagle Channel on a small boat for some more up close viewing of the wildlife.
It was very windy as we left Punta Arenas. I’d guess 40-50 mph wind with gusts up to 70 or more. The wind was blowing us away from the dock so strongly that they finally had to bring some tugs to push against the side to keep us there. When Diana’s tour returned they would only let one person at a time go up the gangway, very unusual. Made walking very difficult for some. Fortunately old Terra Firma really has a good hold on me. Wasn't really cold though, maybe 52 or so. After all it's their summer!!
Jan 31 – Ushuaia, Argentina Today we are arriving in Ushuaia, Argentina. We sailed down the Beagle Channel and saw some fantastic glaciers, the Romanche, Alamania, Italia, Holandia (Romania, Germany, Italy, Holland).
Of the four, the Romanche Glacier was the most impressive. It has a huge amount of melt water cascading down the mountainside from under the glacier, across the naked granite wall. While we were there two avalanches broke away from the glacier’s face just to the right of the water cascade. I heard them before I saw any movement, a cracking noise and then wham; tons of ice came crashing down through the falling water. A few minutes after the first one occurred, a second even larger one started. I got some video of them because that’s the camera I had in my hand. I got some great pictures of the glacier.
The Alamania Glacier was next. It has retreated up the valley a bit and is no longer in contact with the water. It has a large bare rock in the center of the final turn and it divides it nicely in two before the halves rejoin to continue their trip to the water. It’s pretty flat and not very picturesque.
The next glacier, Italia, is a tidewater glacier. It still has contact with the water so no cascade of melt water was visible. It rose to an impressive height and had several changes of pitch on the face. It’s a very steep glacier and lots of it is visible with that pretty shade of blue the ice can exhibit. The expert on board that is providing some narration says that this glacier has not changed much in the 20 years he has been viewing it. In fact, he has some old photographs from expeditions in the 1910s that don’t look much different from those you would take today. For some reason this glacier is not retreating like Alamania.
The last glacier, Holandia, is a flatter glacier and further up the valley in retreat. Since we are on a Dutch ship and today is Queen Beatrix’s birthday, the captain gave the glacier a three-horn salute to honor the queen. I’m sure she was impressed all the way back in the Netherlands.
That was the last glacier before our arrival in Ushuaia. When we got to the port a container ship was in our berth so we had to wait to get to the dock. We finally arrived about an hour late, well I guess we arrived on time, we just docked late.
We had a great ornithologist, Frank Todd; give a presentation on penguins this morning. He had marvelous slides and talked about the three long-tailed penguins, the Adelie, Chinstrap, Gentoo and the Emperor Penguins. He has written a guidebook to Birds and Mammals of the Antarctic, Subantarctic and Falkland Islands. It’s in the shop on board and is really nice. I bought one. He also has a coffee table book ‘Antarctic Splendor’ which is not as informative but absolutely gorgeous. I bought one of those too and he autographed it for me. I’m not going to miss any of his lectures.
In the afternoon we boarded a catamaran for a trip down the other end of the Beagle Channel to see some penguins and sea lions. It was a nice trip and we saw some South American Fur Seals and some Magellanic Penguins, a rather large colony actually. We got in close for some very good pictures. The young ones were still in their grey fur looking feathers but many were partially molted into the adult black and white. It was still very easy to identify the young ones.
Then it was back to the ship for a late dinner and the show. Our entertainer was a Polish violinist named Izabella Zembrowska. She was excellent. She played some classical, folk, Broadway and country tunes. A very good show!!
We’re supposed to pass Cape Horn tomorrow early so I want to get up to see it.
Feb 1 – What a difference a day makes. We left Ushuaia last night at about 7:45PM. I got up at 7:30 this morning to see Cape Horn. Well, you could see it but it kept disappearing behind a cloud of mist. It’s very windy this morning and there are whitecaps everywhere. The captain says that after we clear the Drake Passage things will calm down. That should be sometime this evening.
Not so fast, Lone Ranger. I went up to breakfast about 8AM and things were a little rocky but not all that bad. However as the morning wore on the winds picked up and the waves started to grow.
They eventually became 90 mph winds and 45’ waves, some occasionally 60’. I was up at breakfast when it started to get bad. I had just finished eating when we listed so badly that people started sliding across the deck in their chairs. Dishes and glassware slid from the tables and crashed on the floor. The trays slid off the counters, flowerpots slid from the tables, an urn of oatmeal tipped over behind the counter and chaos in general was the order of the day. We all gripped the tables to keep from sliding around the lido dining area. The staff was doing the best they could to keep everything from crashing to the floor, the passengers included. When it calmed down a little I decided that it was time to head to my room to see what damage had been done.
That wound up being a good idea as things were thrown everywhere. It kept getting worse, both wind and waves. At one point my room got dark and I looked up and water was running off my window in sheets. I thought a wave broke over it but was skeptical as we’re on deck 6. My suspicions were confirmed when another one hit us a few seconds later that completely covered my window. We found out later that we were hit by two 75-foot plus waves in short succession. The ship had no chance to recover from the first one when the second one hit listing us to about 25 degrees. That’s when all the injuries occurred.
I guess weather forecasting down here is not as good as most places or maybe this was a popup storm that caught us by surprise. Soon the captain was making announcements over the PA system. It appears that there are a lot of injuries on the ship as they announced that anyone who needed medical assistances should go to the Explorer’s Lounge if possible. They had staff going from room to room to check on people to see if they needed any help. I discovered later that the triage was being done in the lounge because the dispensary had been totally trashed. The x-ray machine on board, a portable type, had been damaged.
Eventually the captain asked everyone to stay where they were and a complete head count was taken on both the passengers and crew. All the afternoon activities were cancelled; I thought they would be. It’s one thing for me to get around the ship but there are a lot of mobility challenged people on the ship and it’s better if they stay put.
At lunch time the only things available were sandwiches, fruit and cookies. They were served on paper plates and drinks were in paper cups. During lunch the lido restaurant sustained more damage as some of the tabletops gave way. I think they lost a lot of china and glasses.
They announced that a modified dinner would be served in the dining room but that the lido would not be open at all. Drinks were served in paper cups but the food was on china. (I found out later that almost all the glassware was smashed.) The tables in the dining room have tablecloths and that makes it harder for things to slide off the table. There were no flowers or other decorations on the tables.
During dinner the captain announced that we were turning around to head back to Ushuaia to get the injured to medical care. He’s not sure what changes will be made to the itinerary but he will keep us posted. He says that the storm has stalled between Ushuaia and us so we will have to go back through it to get there. Looks like it will be a rough night and day tomorrow. All shows are cancelled but they are putting 4 extra movies on the in room TV.
Feb 2 – Well we are still slogging through the storm this AM. Pete came on the PA to announce that continental breakfast would be served in the dining room and lido. I went up to see what was there and it was really only a continental breakfast, bread, fruit, cereal, yogurt, etc. Not too bad really but I’m trying to avoid carbohydrates and that’s all there was. I went back to the room and ate an Atkin’s Bar. We’ll have to see what lunch will be.
Lunch was served in the dining room and on the lido. They had a pretty much regular lunch but still on paper plates.
About noon we got back to the Beagle Channel but the winds were still 80 mph and the water is still moving around pretty good. Not as bad as the open sea but still hazardous for the mobility challenged. We arrived in Ushuaia about 5:30pm and we were allowed to dock at the pier to off load the injured but since we were not expected back we’ll be anchored out in the harbor until we leave tomorrow night. At about 10pm we left the dock and moved to our anchorage.
The staff is busy putting the shops onboard back in order. Shelving and cabinets were knocked over. The kiosk lost almost all the alcohol it had on the shelves. You had to walk by quickly or risk getting a little buzz. Clothing and souvenir items were scattered all over the floors but the jewelry and watch cases seem to have held up nicely. The merchandise in them is a little disorganized but at least they are still standing upright.
Dinner was pretty much the usual process; we are docked in a sheltered cove and not moving a bit.
The show for the evening was cancelled and they screened a movie in the Queen’s Lounge. Diana and I decided to catch up on some writing and picture titling.
Feb 3 – Ushuaia, Argentina, Unplanned – Today is pretty much normal. We had breakfast on the lido, which was completely in operation. After lunch we rode the tender into Ushuaia. Since we had taken a tour last time we were here we never really saw the city.
It’s a nice town; things are in good repair and very clean. It seems to me that colder climates produce neater more organized cultures. Maybe it’s a coincidence, but I don’t think so. To survive in a cold climate you have to be organized and keep your house in fair repair or you become uncomfortable and freeze to death. As we entered the port there was a light rainbow over the city. It goes downward from left to right in center of the photo to the left. Best place to see it is against the mountains. I know how Noah must have felt after his rough ride.
We did some shopping and took pictures. They had a very plain Catholic church on the main drag. The inside was very nice indeed. Not extra fancy or ornate but very tasteful and beautifully executed.
We had lunch off the ship in the Marcopolo Café (yes I know it’s two words and a man’s name but that’s how the restaurant wrote it and that’s how I’m going to type it!) We’ve been hearing a lot about Yerba Matte, a type of tea made from some grass that they brew down here and the café had it. After we sat down we decided to have a snack as well. Diana had a cooked ham and cheese croissant and I had a cooked ham and cheese with lettuce and tomato on crumb bread with bran. The menu listed ‘raw ham’ as a choice in sandwich filling and the raw version was always an Argentinean peso more than the cooked (there are about 3.15 A pesos to the US $ so it’s 30 cents more for the raw version).
Winds up that ‘cooked ham’ is like boiled ham lunchmeat that Oscar Mayer makes. You know the almost square sliced ham with the rounded corners. ‘Raw ham’ is a real ham that has only been sliced; it’s smoked and cured but not processed like the lunchmeat version. Crumb bread with bran is whole wheat bread in the US. I thought that’s what it would be but you never know and I never ask. That’s half the fun of eating in foreign restaurants. You order what you think you want and see what you get. Sometimes you are very wrong in your guess but what you get winds up being absolutely delicious. Of course, it helps if you’ll eat about anything to use this technique.
After lunch we continued to walk around town. They have an old London style double-decked bus that does city tours. It’s painted a very light blue and has lots of graphics on the sides. A great picture.
On one of the side streets there was a bookstore with a unique storefront. The second floor façade was a huge bookshelf with some books on it. Not just a painted on likeness but an actual one-shelf bookcase with 9-foot tall books stacked in it. Very unique.
We returned to the ship about 4:30pm and got ready for dinner. Dinner was absolutely back to normal, regular glasses, plates and silverware. I had a goat cheese and dried tomato layered in a light dough for my appetizer. Yikes that was good!! For dinner I had a broiled shrimp with broccoli and fettuccini in a mild cream sauce. Great as well!!
I did talk to Mike from the cruise staff and got a damage report. One broken knee, 2 broken wrists, several shoulder problems, dislocations, etc., and lots of bumps, bruises, cuts and scrapes. We lost the x-ray machine, the grand piano in the Queen’s Lounge, the very large and fancy Bingo machine, many TVs, glass tabletops, most of our glassware and a large quantity of dishes, plates and other tableware. Diana and I were totally unscathed as were most people. Divine intervention for sure. The amazing thing was that, even though Diana gets motion sick on cars and trains, she was not at all bothered by any of our experience. I am generally unaffected by motion, but I was a little surprised by Diana’s aplomb during the adventure. She’s a trooper for sure.
All over Ushuaia there were things for tourists to pose with for pictures. Diana posed with a grog drinking sailor with a peg leg and I chose an adult Emperor penguin with a chick nestled between its legs in the standard pose they use to keep the chicks from freezing.
While we were in Ushuaia the second time for medical and repairs, Holland America ships from all over the hemisphere sent replacements for our supplies and kitchen items from their reserve supplies. The larger items will have to wait until we get back to civilization. They have moved the grand piano from the Explorer’s Lounge to the Queen’s Lounge to support the evening shows. The trio in the Explorer’s will have to settle for an electronic keyboard. They won’t be replacing the piano or the Bingo machine until we return to Fort Lauderdale.
Our entertainer was an Irish comic, Mike Newman. Not particularly and Irish name but he was very funny. Some accents make jokes funnier and Irish brogue is one of them.
They’ve revised our itinerary to make up for the lost days. They are cutting one of the three days we were to be in Rio de Janeiro, one of the two days in Manaus, St. Lucia and Grand Turk. They added a stay at Half Moon Cay, HAL’s private island in the Bahamas. We’ve never been to St. Lucia and Grand Turk but they are pretty easy to get to as they’re in the Caribbean and two days in Rio is enough for me. We’ve been to Manaus so we won’t miss the extra day there although we do love the Amazon. I’m still a few ports behind in labeling all my pictures, so that’s on for this evening.
We’ve started our second run to Antarctica. Let’s see what happens this time. Super Bowl Sunday tomorrow and Peter says we will have the game on the big screen in the Queen’s Lounge if the satellite signal holds up. We just don’t know how far south it will go.
Feb 4 – Today started out well and continued to get better. During the night the ship was moving about pretty well. I woke up once at about 4am and Diana was awakened too. This is a pretty rare occasion so something must have roused us but I don’t know what. I made a drunkenly (from the ship’s movement not actual alcohol) trip to the head and went back to sleep.
By the time we got up at 8am things were fairly calm but still moving a bit. We had breakfast in the Lido and then Diana went to a bridge lesson and I went to chat time with the CSI crowd. We compared experiences on the ill-fated first trip south. People in different areas of the ship had different experiences but none were as good as the Lido deck happenings. The Lido is on deck 11, the highest enclosed deck on the ship and, as you probably know, the further you are from the waterline the more the ship moves. The lido was swinging very far and very fast. It was also exciting as the people, furniture, tableware, kitchen utensils, serving trays, glasses, and at least two tabletops were going back and forth like the water in the movie Fantasia. It was all quite exciting.
The shops on board suffered serious damage, losing most of the alcohol and glassware that was on the shelves as well as many of the shelves themselves. I found out today that the bingo machine, the grand piano in the main showroom as well as the bandstand front were all destroyed. So the bandleader is now playing a keyboard and we can see all the band members’ shoes, as they are no longer behind the wave front bandbox. As we returned to Ushuaia, HAL ships from all over responded by sending us their reserves of dinnerware and other items. In all we received 200 crates of supplies just before we left port yesterday. Most of the people were injured in the incident when we were hit by the two 60+ foot waves in rapid succession. They have been evacuated to Ushuaia and are being treated there or flown off to bigger medical facilities.
The last injury to be storm related is the Cruise Director, Peter. He has a large, old-fashioned TV in his office that sets on the desk. It had fallen off the desk and he allowed it to remain on the floor until we were safely in port. He then decided to pick it up and put it on the desk himself. He dropped it on his big toe and broke it, the toe that is, not the TV. So now he’s walking, or more correctly limping, around in sandals regardless of what the uniform of the day is. As far as I know, this is the last injury that can be blamed on the storm.
Tonight is the Super Bowl and we are going to try to pick it up on satellite. The reception on the channel has been good all day but we could loose it at any moment. Hopefully it will hold up until the 8pm start time and for 3 hours more for the game.
Well the reception held out and we saw the entire game. The only clue that we were watching the South American feed was the occasional Spanish word like the “2 Recepciones” shown for Muhammad on the screen at the right. I don’t really have any feelings one way or the other for either team. If I like one team, like the Dolphins, I’ll cheer for them, if I don’t like one team, like the Rams, I’ll cheer for the opponents. If, like now, I don’t really care much about either team one way or the other, I can just enjoy the game. This game was much more entertaining than the majority of Super Bowl games. There was a lot of action, fumbles, interceptions, kicks run back, and also lots of good plays and best of all scoring. Hezie and I watched the game together. He loves football and has a good grasp of the game. It’s fun to talk over various happenings with him.
Even though we just had dinner they had a buffet set up at the Queen’s Lounge for the game. Hotdogs, hamburgers, ham or beef sandwiches, coleslaw, potato salad sauerkraut and all the fixin’s. I had a dog with mustard and kraut just because it’s a sports event. The main attraction at the buffet was the carved watermelons. They had carved one for each side with the Super Bowl Logo and one as a football helmet complete with the C for Chicago at one entrance and a horseshoe for the Colts at the other.
Looking back through my journal I can’t believe I haven’t mentioned Sarah and Hezie before now. They are a great couple and very sociable. They’re from PA but they live in Florida now. He was in the Marine Corps and Sarah was a special Ed teacher. She has the perfect personality for it, easy going and sweet but brooks no nonsense. When we were up on the lido in the storm, when the dishes and chairs started sliding about she slid half way across the lido. When she got back she looped one arm over the rail along the windows and sat there peacefully
knitting, and occasionally looking up at the chaos going on all over. She, Hezie, Diana and I were at the same table. We were keen observers of all the action, getting involved only when someone needed help or was in trouble. Otherwise, we were Heckel and Jeckel sitting on the wire, never quite sure when people would get a clue and secure themselves to something. It was amazing how many trips across the lido it took some people to get the idea to hang on to something or go somewhere else.
The game didn’t end until midnight in this time zone. We are currently on Atlantic Time, one hour ahead of Eastern Time, not that it matters this far south. Diana was sleeping when I got back to the room so I donned my LED headlamp and got ready for bed myself. It’s a HeadsUP light by Pelican, the same company that makes the great protective cases. It has two modes, 3 LEDs or a flashlight like beam. In the 3 LED mode it gives off a soft blue-white light that is very defused and does not extend very far. You can change the angle of the light to shine down or out. It’s perfect for when I want to keep reading and Diana wants to sleep. It will run for thousands of hours in LED mode on 2 AA batteries and the headband and forehead piece are very comfortable. It’s also great for working at my computer with the lights out. When I have to go use the head the LED mode pointed up lights up the whole room. This is important as the light switch is outside the head and the light shines directly in Diana’s eyes before I can close the door if I use it.
Feb 5 – Antarctica, Day 1 – Our first day of cruising in the Antarctic. We will not make it to the Antarctic Circle at 66° 30 minutes South latitude. I think we will make it to 65 however. Today when I looked at the locator we were at 64° 43 minutes and still heading south. Our area of cruising will be in the Antarctic Peninsula, that long appendage that protrudes in a Northeasterly direction from the continent. We will go a little south of Anvers Island into Lemaire Channel, but from then on we will be further north.
At 6:30am we were approaching Anvers Island via the Bismarck Strait. We’re here to get some researchers from Palmer Station aboard for lectures. We are approaching the island slowly as there is some ice in the water. At about 8:30am I spotted two Zodiacs coming out of the station toward us. Each had a pilot and line handler and about 6 scientists and other staff of the station. They boarded the ship on Deck 4 through a door we use when we tender in a port.
The pilot and the line handler stayed with the Zodiac and went back to the station. The rest got out of their gear, cold water survival suits, flotation devices and heavy outer clothing and came up the Queens Lounge go give us a presentation on the work at Palmer Station. The station manager came along with an ornithologist, ichthyologist (specializing in krill), marine biologist, station technician, geologist, glaciologist, climatologist and his second in command who will be taking over for him in about 2 months. The oddest member of the group was the bug man. Yes, surprisingly enough, there are bugs in Antarctica. In fact the largest land animal in the Antarctic is a flightless midge. Weird!
The manager and technicians are employees of Raytheon Corp. The US Navy used to manage the stations but it became too expensive and used too much of their resources so it was contracted out. The scientist/researchers are from all over. They have to apply for a grant to work down here and the best of the proposals, at least in theory, are selected and funded to come down.
The presentation was excellent and informative. They stayed for a question and answer period but then had to depart for Palmer Station. I was told they rotate turns coming out to the ships because they seldom get off the station for their entire tour, as much as 7 months. When the Zodiacs came back to pick them up I positioned my self on deck 7 directly over the hatch. When they came back each had the same two people on it but they had switched jobs. When they arrived the first Zodiac was pulled alongside and several large boxes were transferred. I was able to see oranges, beer, wine, apples and fresh vegetables, a crate of each. There was one crate I couldn’t see into but neither could they so they opened it. Wow, you would have thought they’d struck gold; grapes, strawberries, raspberries, and all sorts of fresh fruit in large zip lock bags. That was too much for the woman in each Zodiac. One asked for some grapes and the other ate a couple of strawberries. The men seemed to be admiring the 2 cases of Heineken. I heard one say, ‘Hey, we got some beer!’ to which the other replied, ‘Not beer, Heineken!!’ Obviously one of his favorites. After their colleagues were back aboard they headed off back to the station, smiles and waves all around.
While they were aboard we cruised in an oval pattern up and down the Bismarck Strait. The surroundings are beautiful, craggy granite mountains with glaciers, snow capped peaks and generally a coating of white with large grey granite patches showing. Over 90% of Antarctica is covered with ice and snow but most of the part that is ice-free is along the coast. We’re seeing a lot of that today.
After the Palmer Station people left the ship we turned south and cruised back down Bismarck Strait to Petermann Island and turned into Lemaire Channel, a very narrow body of water between Petermann Island and Booth Island. This passage is known locally as Kodak Alley for the impressive scenery. We got about half way through the Channel when be encountered heavy winds, around 50mph and lots of ice. We had to turn around and sail back out, but it was a beautiful spot for sure.
After that we turned north and crossed the Bismarck Strait to enter the Neumayer Channel. Another narrow, but a bit wider, channel between Anvers Island and Wiencke Island. We sailed all the way through the Neumayer Channel, past Lion Island to the Gerlache Strait. We were still sailing here when I had to go to our room to get ready for dinner. The sun came up this morning at 4am and won’t be down until 10pm so we’ll have scenic cruising all during dinner. We have a table right by a starboard window so we can see everything that passes on that side. In a narrow part of the channel we came upon a very white iceberg. Our ice pilot said it had become grounded and was unable to turn over as it melted, leaving the white top in place until it shrinks enough to move again. Most icebergs that have been floating for a while turn over as the lower portion of the berg melts and it becomes top heavy. We encountered two of those a little while later.
Just before I had to leave the deck to get ready for dinner we saw our first mammalian life of the day, some Antarctic Fur Seals lounging on a small iceberg. I’m hoping that we see more of them tomorrow.
I think I have a bit of a windburn. I was on deck at 8am and except for the Palmer briefing and 20 minutes for lunch I stayed there until 4:30pm. The day was cloudy, then sunny, then cloudy again with calm and windy periods. At one point it was raining ice pellets and then later it was snowing. Too cold to rain I guess. When it was calm and sunny I estimated that the temperature was close to 55 degrees. Warm enough for me to have to open my coat and take off my watch cap. When it was cloudy and windy I think the apparent temperature was close to 0. At one point I licked my finger to get a good grip a lens I was removing and the finger stuck to the metal. It wasn’t glued fast but when I tried to put the lens in my backpack it felt a little like Velcro when it pulled away from my finger.
I have a crude method to estimate wind speed. If I can lean back into it with my toes up and stay that way it’s between 40-50 mph. If it blows me back upright it’s 50-60 mph. The winds today could support me completely but not blow me back up. When you are trying this test you hope the wind does not stop suddenly. You look awfully silly flopping over backward for no apparent reason. Not much chance of that because only one other guy was up forward on deck 10 with me most of the time today, although we did have frequent visits from one of the ship’s photographers. She was from Norway so the cold didn’t bother her much.
Before I went down to get ready for dinner I hadn’t felt my toes for about 45 minutes so it was time to go in. I hate wearing gloves to operate my cameras so I had to stop filming and put my hands in my pockets every 10-15 minutes because they’d stiffen up so I couldn’t use them. Gosh, I’d forgotten how much it hurts when the feeling returns. When I was a kid, winter was my favorite season. I love the cold and getting bundled up to go out in it. That’s why I’ve always liked skiing and ice-skating.
Our entertainment this evening was the movie ‘The March of the Penguins’. Everyone I know has told me what a good movie they thought it was and they were right.
Feb 6 – Antarctica, Day 2 – Editor’s Note: This day was a fantastic day for both scenery and wildlife. It is entirely possible that I will have a page or two of just pictures and captions. We’ll have to see how it goes. Also, my friend, Henry Lindauer, took some of the pictures here. He has an excellent eye and fantastic equipment. There’s no way I could have gotten some of the images he has shared with me. I’ll try to be careful to label his shots (HL) so you can appreciate his work as much as I do.
Sometime during the night the captain decided to turn around and go back to the Bismarck Straits and try the Neumayer Channel again. I’m glad he did. When we were here yesterday we didn’t see anything but birds, today it’s like wildlife central. We saw Adélie, Gentoo, Chinstrap and Emperor penguins; Antarctic Fur, Crabeater and Leopard seals as well as Antarctic Menke whales. We saw them swimming, perched on icebergs and ice floes and standing on dry land, the penguins and seals that is, not the whales. It was wild.
Penguins swim like porpoises they alternately dive and then break entirely out of the water to splash down again in another dive. The Menke whales do the same thing, just like Orcas but don’t leave the water entirely. Seals do come up every now and then but don’t often jump like the other two. Most of the seals we saw were just lying about on the ice except for the Leopard seal which was always in the water. Three times we encountered penguins on icebergs, the most picturesque type of sighting. On the first one they just ran to the far end of the iceberg and looked back at us. On the second one three penguins were trying to climb the steep side of an iceberg and one by one they fell and slid down the slope to splash into the water. A pretty funny sight as they really flopped, as they went, not the usual graceful penguin water entry. On the third there were about 50 or so Gentoos that decided to run down the glacier and dive in the water to spoil our view. I just happened to have my video camera in operation at the time and caught them diving gracefully into the water.
We went all the way through Neumayer Channel and the across the Gerlache Strait to Paradise Harbor, another totally spectacular place but is really a bay not a harbor. There are two research stations there, one Argentinean the other Chilean. They don’t like each other much and the map I have is printed in Argentina and does not show the location of the Chilean base. Only Almirante Brown Antarctic Base, Argentina, is on the map even though the Chilean base is much bigger and occupied all year round. Brown Station is only occupied during the summer.
The Chilean González Videla Antarctic Base is on a rocky area free of snow and is entirely covered by a Gentoo penguin colony. This is not bad except that the smell must drive the scientists crazy. There was a distinctly fishy smell even though we were hundreds of yards away. A scientist opened the door of the largest building and came out to wave and take pictures of us. I’m glad we could provide him with a little diversion. At the northern end of the base is a site commemorating two British men, the smallest ever wintering over party, who spent a year and a day (1921-1922) here camped under an overturned lifeboat studying the penguin colony. The base wasn’t established until 1940 and is named for a president of Chile and the first chief of any state to visit Antarctica.
Then it was into the Herrera Channel. The Herrera Channel is a narrow, right-angled pass between the Antarctic mainland and Ronge Island. It was full of ice and icebergs but the captain said that he was going to try to go all the way through. It was spectacular!! He wove his way between the islands and icebergs all the way to the end. It was a very impressive place. Loads of glaciers and wildlife to be seen and enjoyed.
I was up on deck from 8am to 2pm, standing all the time. I have to admit, after standing on deck for 8 hours yesterday and the 6 hours so far today my dogs are really barking. Here are the animal pictures I promised.
There is no formal entertainment this evening as we are supposed to be at Deception Island around 9pm. You may have heard about this place recently in the news. A Norwegian cruise ship ran aground there and all the passengers had to be rescued and were taken to another ship. I understand the ship is still there so maybe we’ll see it. Deception Island is a sunken caldera and has a small opening into the caldera itself. Years ago whaling vessels used to take shelter there to process their catch. I think the Norwegian ship was trying to get inside and that’s how they got stuck.
At 10:15pm we are having the Filipino Crew Show. They are always fun. The Filipino members of the crew dance and sing. They do a lot of modern music, some Filipino folk songs, a few comedy skits, one of which is always men dressed as women to do a traditional dance but they have coconut bras filled with grapefruits that always seem to get away. The sight of a Filipino man chasing a grapefruit around the stage while holding on to his coconut bra is actually very funny. They always close the show with the bamboo dance. You’ve probably seen it. Two people hold opposite ends of long bamboo sticks that they tap on the floor twice and then clack together. The dancers have to hop in and out in rhythm with the bamboo sticks or get a nasty rap on the ankle. It’s more or less like jumping rope except that a miss is much more painful. I’m looking forward to it.
When we got to Deception Island it was fogged in. We’re going to loiter in the area and try to see it in the morning.
Feb 7 Antarctica, Day 3 – This morning we still at Deception Island. The clouds are pretty low so we can’t see the tallest peaks and they are only a little over 1,500 feet. The island is the submerged caldera of an extinct volcano. A portion of the rim has collapsed and the island is like the letter C with a very small path into the center. The orientation of the opening is such that the winds whip through the opening that has been named Neptune’s Bellows. The bay in the center of the island is called Port Foster and it has 4 main bays around the inner rim, Whaler’s Bay, Fumarole Bay, Telefon Bay, and Pendulum Cove. In the days when whaling ships came to Antarctica to hunt they used Port Foster as a calm refuge to head to when they wanted to butcher their catch. Whaler’s Bay is the largest most sheltered bay in the caldera and I’m sure that was prime real estate in those days.
We did a lap around the island. On the leeward side there were lots of ice fields, glaciers and snow. On the windward side mostly bare rock. Because the island is volcanic in nature there are several layers of rock visible here in reds, tans, greens and grays; a nice change from the granite outcroppings of the last two days. Between Macaroni Point (named for the colony of Macaroni Penguins that used to nest there) and Baily Head the island shoreline is almost a perfect straight line. Our naturalist on board says it’s the result of a fault line where one plate has dropped away leaving a cliff along the fault line. After the irregular shape of the rest of the island it was weird to see such a long straight stretch or shoreline.
We saw several colonies of Gentoo Penguins and some seal groups but we didn’t get close enough to identify the species. The naturalist thought they were probably Antarctic Fur Seals. One colony of Gentoos near Baily Head has between 150.000 and 200,000 nesting pairs. The shoreline and ridges in the area looked like they were snow covered but when you looked through your binoculars it was penguins, the white ones were facing the ship and the black ones were facing the island.
After I had a quick lunch in the lido I headed down to the room to clean up my cameras. We’ve had several sleet storms this morning. It comes down as little ice crystals but it melts immediately upon touching anything metal or glass like cameras and lenses. I keep drying them with a soft cotton cloth I carry but they need some special attention so all three cameras and my binoculars got a good going over.
I went back up on deck about 1pm. We were cruising by some islands, one of which was Nelson Island on our way to King George Island for some more scenic cruising if the weather cooperates. I went to my favorite place, forward on deck 10. You can see forward and both port and starboard without having to move more than 20 feet. Problem is it’s an exposed deck subject to wind, rain and any other weather related item. The air temp is about 35°F but the wind comes up and the chill factor has it down about 0°F. There are only about 4 of us that are there consistently. Another 10 or so show up when our naturalist announces something to see. Problem is that by the time he announces it the four of us have been taking pictures of it for about 15 minutes. By the time people get up on deck it’s usually gone or almost gone, especially in the case of wildlife. Whales, seals and penguins in the water go away from the ship pretty quickly. I guess they don’t see that many.
On the way north we are passing some huge tabular icebergs. Essentially they are huge chunks of an ice shelf that break off. They are flat on top like a table hence the name. I took a picture of one that was probably a mile or two long and about 900 feet tall. It was a long way off but the 10-foot waves lapping against it looked like they were about an inch tall. I was up on deck 10 by myself at about 2pm when I spotted what I thought was a pretty heavy rainstorm coming at us. I decided to go up to the lido and get a cup of tea until it past. The lido is enclosed at the bow end of the ship and there are some suites up there. The aft end is enclosed and that’s the Lido Restaurant. In the middle is the lido pool and it’s an open deck. There are windows all around it but the top is completely open. On some newer ships they have a retractable roof here but not on the Prinsendam. I’m glad they don’t because they always keep it closed when moving and it’s much too hot in there. I like the open deck myself. Most people prefer the movable roof.
Anyway, as I was crossing the open area by the pool to get to the lido for tea it started snowing. It was great skier’s snow, big fluffy flakes that floated down in the wind. Lots of the Filipino and Indonesian crew has never seen snow falling so they started running out to have someone take their picture with their camera. I had my video camera handy so I took some video of the snow and the crew coming out for pictures. They loved it. They were doing all the things I did when I was young, like trying to catch a flake in your hand to look at it, sticking out their tongues to see if they could taste it, etc. They are such spontaneous, happy, open people. I envy that a little.
The weather has finally caught up with us. King George Island is fogged in and rainy so we’re heading straight past it to Elephant Island, our last Antarctic stop. We won’t be there until 7:30pm or so. I’ll go out on deck after dinner. The days are getting shorter again. Sunrise used to be at 4:12am and sunset at 10:57pm but it never really got dark. It was twilight until 1 or 2am and then predawn at 3:30pm, this makes for a long day. Now the sunrise is at 5am and sunset about 10pm. By the time we get to the Equator the days and nights will be equal because they are always 12 and 12 hours there.
We’re back out in the open ocean and a gentle roll has replaced the complete smoothness of the last two days. Swell looks like about 6 feet or so and it’s coming in on the forward starboard quarter so it’s quite comfortable.
Our travel agent, CSI, is hosting a pre-dinner party tonight so I have to get ready a little earlier than usual. The party was nice; it’s a chance to get to know some of our fellow travelers. There are several couples and singles that we have sailed with before.
After dinner we sailed up to Elephant Island. If this island sounds familiar to you it’s probably from seeing a documentary or reading about Shackleton’s Antarctic Adventure. In 1914 Sir Ernest Shakleton set off on the British Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. The goal of the expedition was to be the first men to travel across the Antarctic. Twenty-eight men set out from South Georgia Island on the ship Endurance. They became icebound before reaching Antarctica and had to winter over living on the ship. When the ice started to thaw the shifting plates started slowly but surely crushing the ship.
The men abandoned the ship and lived in tents on the ice sheet. This went on for over a year. When the ice sheet started to break up they took the lifeboats (essentially longboats) and set out on the water hoping to reach supplies that had been stored at a small island near the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula by whaling crews for emergency use. If they couldn’t make it there the last hope was Elephant Island at the very tip of the Antarctic Archipelago.
The ice was difficult to navigate in the small boats and they were almost crushed several times by shifting blocks of ice. The three lifeboats made it to Elephant Island but were so battered in the process that they were not seaworthy. At this point Shakleton made a bold decision. They would fix up one of the boats, adding a partial deck for shelter and masts for small sails and he and 5 other men would try to sail the small boat to South Georgia Island to get help.
It was much farther to South Georgia than to Argentina but the prevailing winds and currents would not allow the small boat to sail northwest. They set out with just a sextant for navigation. The cloudy weather made sightings few and far between. It they were off course by more than one degree they would miss South Georgia complete and be lost in the South Atlantic. After 17 days in an open boat, surviving several gales, they finally sighted South Georgia, but the tidal surge prevented them from reaching land. In a cruel twist of fate that night they were engulfed by a full hurricane. They managed to survive the night but the boat was too badly damaged to continue to sail any closer to the whaling station, which they figured was on the exact opposite shore from where they managed to land.
They had no choice but to trek across the uncharted island. They were wearing leather boots which would never make the trip so they took some screws out of the boats timbers and screwed them through the soles of their boots from the inside. They sawed off some oars for walking sticks and had one carpenter’s adz for an ice axe. With this meager equipment they managed to get across the island, glaciers, ice fields, mountains, crevasses and valleys to the whaling station in 36 hours. When they arrived a worker took them to the manager’s office. The manager asked who they were and the reply was simply, ‘Shakleton.’ The manager turned away and cried. The expedition had not been heard from in almost 2 years and was considered to be lost forever.
Shakleton led two attempts to rescue the 22 men on Elephant Island but they were blocked by ice. On the third attempt they made it and Shakleton was very pleased to find that all 22 men were still alive and doing as well as could be expected. The most serious casualty was one man who lost some toes to frostbite.
The story of Shakleton’s adventure is considered by many to be the ‘greatest survival story in the history of mankind.’ The sail from Elephant Island to South Georgia across 800 miles of some of the most violent ocean in the world is probably the greatest feat of sailing ever in an open boat. Just seeing Elephant Island I can tell you it is a cold and forbidding place. Fortunately, there is plenty of ice for drinking water and seals and penguins to eat because that’s what the 22 men survived on waiting for Shakleton’s return.
In his diary the captain of the Endurance wrote that his favorite item was penguin liver, without onions yet!! Actually I love all sorts of liver but it has to be prepared correctly or it’s awful. Most people don’t like liver because they’ve never had it cooked properly. I usually won’t eat liver in restaurants because preparing it correctly is too much trouble for most places. Chicken livers are the exception. They are easy to cook and can be safely ordered in omelets or deep-fried. I haven’t seen liver on the ship’s menus yet. I’m not sure I’d try it if I did.
Tomorrow is another day at sea crossing the Drake Passage to get to the Falkland Islands.
Feb 8 – Today it’s back across the Drake Passage. The weather reports are very favorable, winds not much over 50 mph and seas not much over 18 feet. Not bad for this inhospitable place. The problem is that there are no landmasses around Antarctica and in the summer down here the continent is under the control of a centrally located high-pressure system. This creates a circulation of low-pressure areas that just go round and round Antarctica. The ice pilot says there are about 8 low-pressure systems that just circulate around the continent strengthening and weakening as they go.
The only narrow spot is the Drake Passage between southern South America and Antarctica. Unfortunately this has a wind tunnel effect and as the various low-pressure systems approach the narrow spot they grow in strength, whip through the Drake and then slowly weaken as they head across the South Atlantic. The best you can hope for is to pass through between low-pressure systems. The water is still bumpy but not like the hurricane we ran into.
John, our naturalist onboard, is a geologist and has done extensive field work in Antarctica and the Islands near southern South America. His lecture today was on the Falkland Islands and surroundings. He knows a lot about the wildlife even though that’s not his profession; it’s his hobby.
This afternoon we had the desert show buffet. They usually have a cake with a welcome sign on the icing and a loaf of bread with the cruise logo and this
time is no exception. I love to photograph these displays although (and I know you’ll never believe this but you can ask Diana) I never eat anything from them. They give you time before they open them up for eating to take pictures, but I like the swarm of hungry locusts, I mean tourists, in the picture after the eating begins. They almost always take on the theme of the cruise and this one was no exception. There were penguins in ice, chocolate, marzipan, hard-boiled egg and a few I can’t remember. There were iceberg cakes and decorations. All in all it was a lot of fun. It’s a good chance to get pictures of the kitchen and dining room staff also. I got Diana’s picture with the Cruise Director, Peter Daums and the Executive Chef as well as photos of my favorite lido server, Salvatore (he makes my omelet almost every morning) and the ship’s hostess, Jacky.
The performer this evening was Salima Wazir and yes, she is as exotically beautiful as her name implies she could be. She’s one quarter Swiss, one quarter English and one half Afghani. She has the black hair; dark eyes and olive skin all working for her. She plays the oboe and the English horn (cor anglais), (why is it that only France and England call it that? Everywhere else in the world it’s the English horn (Yes I know that cor anglais is French for English horn (I love nested parenthesis. Used them a lot in computer programming. You just have to make sure they are balanced (It’s often easy to overlook one. (And I just checked the MS Word grammar checker does not catch it if they are not. (Are these?)))))) (Wasn’t that fun?), which is just a larger form of the oboe like the baritone saxophone is to the alto saxophone. You hardly ever hear the solo oboe much less the English horn. She was truly outstanding. Her English is English accented and she sounds as good as she looks. She had a CD on board and I had to have one.
I fell in love with the sound of the oboe when I heard Mitch Miller play an oboe solo on his TV show ‘Sing Along with Mitch’. Anybody beside me remember Mitch’s show? I loved it. His band played while he faced away from them toward the TV camera moving his bent-at-the-elbow arms up and down in time with the music like some weird bird trying to fly. All the time the lyrics scrolled across the bottom of the picture so you could sing along. It was really big for a while. It was also one of the first regular roles on a TV show for a black person, Leslie Uggams, one g or two, I’m not sure. Man, could that lady sing and was she ever pretty!! The show was on from 1961-64. What people don’t know about Mitch is that while he was the A & R man at Colombia records he signed Ray Conniff, Percy Faith, Johnny Mathis and Tony Bennett. Not a bad lineup when you add Doris Day, Dinah Shore and Jo Stafford, whose careers he directed while in the same job.
Tomorrow the Falkland Islands. They don’t have a pier that can handle us and the odds are only 50/50 that the water will be smooth enough to tender in so we may not get to stop. Hope we do because there are a lot of King, Gentoo and Magellanic penguins there and there’s a chance to get up close to them on shore. We’ll just have to wait and see.
Feb 9 – Stanley, Falkland Islands, Great Britain. The Falkland Islands group has two main islands, East and West Falkland covering an area a little smaller than Connecticut. Stanley is on East Falkland. We arrived on station on time and the weather seems good for going ashore. Looks like we’re going to be on the positive side of the odds this time. After breakfast we headed down to the Queen’s Lounge to get a tender ticket. When they are expecting a lot of people to want to disembark the ship they have you get tender tickets and then wait in the lounge for your number to be called before going down to deck 4 and the waiting tender. When we got there they gave us a number and said head down the tender was ready.
There’s an inner and outer harbor at Stanley. The inner harbor is not very deep and even a ship of modest size like ours can’t go in. We anchored in the outer harbor and took a 20-minute ride to the pier. The 15-minute portion that was in the outer harbor was bumpy but the inner harbor was pretty calm. The weather is very cloudy this morning and the temp is about 41°F and it’s windy. As with most small outposts with inhospitable weather the Kelpers paint their houses in a jumble of very bright colors.
The population of the Falklands is about 3,100 of which 2,000 live in the capital city, Stanley. The islanders are called ‘Kelpers’ because harvesting kelp in the surrounding seas was once the main industry on the island. The more than 500,000 sheep in the islands outnumber the Kelpers about 160 to 1. There’s a garrison of British Marines out at the airport that has about 2,000 troops ever since Argentina invaded the Falklands in April of 1982. This has greatly improved the state of the local economy as the troops spend money all over town
That in itself is an interesting story. Apparently when Spain controlled Argentina as a colony they had a war with the British. After Admiral Lord Nelson defeated the Spanish Armada at Trafalgar in 1805, Spain eventually threw in the towel and Britain got the Falkland Islands as part of the fallout. In 1886, when Argentina became independent of Spain, they felt that the Falklands should be returned to them. This is a lot like saying, ‘My father sold some land to you before he died, but now that he’s passed away you should give me the land back.’ The idea is so stupid as to be ridiculous but I guess in your more emotional, less rational, mind it might make a weird sort of sense. Anyway the British, being sane and understanding that there was a great possibility that mineral deposits in the area might be valuable, said, ‘Get a clue!’
In 1982 Argentinean dictator Leopoldo Galtieri sent troops to invade and occupy the islands. This worked out for him for 10 whole weeks. That’s how long it took Maggie Thatcher’s British Navy and Marines to come south and do the same thing to Argentina that they did to Spain, kick them in the keister and send them scurrying home. It was a sad affair, no winners really. The Falklands were back where they belonged and lots of men and a few women died to make that happen. It’s probably not a coincidence that just prior to the invasion various oil exploration companies leased areas in the sea surrounding the islands to look for oil. Galtieri underestimated Thatcher, something dictators will do now and again. I guess they become so powerful in their little world that they begin to believe their own rhetoric and that leads them to make serious mistakes.
Back to the present. When we landed in Stanley we were right downtown. The main street along the waterfront is Ross St. and walking down that street and John Street one block inland will cover the town pretty well. The commercial and governmental part of town is about 5 blocks long, so everything is in a 5 square block area.
Just after you leave the Public Jetty there is a row of typical British 19th century brick terraced town houses named Jubilee Villas. The Dean family built them in 1887 to commemorate the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria. The only thing that kept you from thinking you’d been transported to London is the fact that they have Falkland style corrugated iron roofs rather than the traditional slate. There were several shops along the street and because Diana wanted to look in them I continued on my way down Ross St. My first stop was Christ Church Cathedral. This is not a Catholic church but Anglican and it is also built in the late Victorian British style again with the iron roof. The most unique feature of the church is the Whalebone Arch that stands in the churchyard. It made of 4 blue whale jawbones standing on end to create two interlocked arches at right angles to each other. The center peak where all four come together is about 14 feet high. It makes a great picture with the church in the background. The church has needlepoint kneeling pillows that were done for the celebration of the church's bicentennial. Each has a custom top of the maker’s design. Some were native animals or local scenes. Some bore biblical figures and liturgical symbols. They were very pretty.
Another unique thing about the church are the stained glass windows. They are very pretty and for the most part show typical church window themes. One window was very different. At the top the scene is normal enough, it appears to be an angel watching over a fisherman about to clean his catch but the bottom quarter of the window is unique in my experience. It shows a woman, dressed entirely in blue, standing beside a bicycle on a rural road with a cottage nearby and a farm in the background. The woman is Mary Eleanor Watson, born 1904, died 1958. She was the first public health nurse on the island and she made her rounds on a bicycle. She was the only source of medical care on the island and was very dedicated and capable in her job. She was so well loved by the locals that they commissioned the window in her memory after her death. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a bicycle in a church’s stained glass window before.
A man was inside the church giving spontaneous tours. When we got back to the ship and I was reading the welcome magazine published by the local newspaper the 'Penguin News'. I discovered that our tour guide was the island's governor!! Yikes.
Right behind the Whalebone Arch is the Church House. It was built just after the turn of the last century and during WW I it was requisitioned by the Royal Navy and became the communications center for the entire South Atlantic.
On the water side of Ross St. there’s a little park called Victory Green with a large wooden mast section as its major feature. It’s the mizzenmast from the SS Great Britain. What you say, a mast on a steam ship? Yes the first steam ships were still equipped with sails to save on fuel when the winds were favorable. In fact the SS Great Britain was the first screw-propelled, iron ship ever built. Launched in 1843 it was badly damaged by a Cape Horn gale in 1886 and lay in Sparrow Cove just outside Stanley harbor before being towed back to the UK in 1969 for restoration. The mast is 3.5 feet in diameter and is made of wood and steel.
Across the street from Victory Green is the Upland Goose Hotel. It was built in 1854 as a small hotel and 5 cottages and it is the oldest hotel in Stanley. In the beginning it catered mainly to sailors and had a dormitory fitted out like a ship’s fo’castle (pronounced folk’ sil). It’s the little house type structure you see at the forward end of larger sailing vessels and is traditionally where the sailors had their quarters. The officers lived aft in the larger windowed cabins. Now it caters to tourists and visiting scientists and researchers.
Next up was the police station. It was built by the Royal Marines in the 1870s and looks like any other Victorian police station that might still be standing in England. They had a curious display out front. The centerpiece is a pneumatic harpoon gun from a whaling ship flanked by four 5-inch gun projectiles, two at the front and two abeam. It made a very nice display but a very tenuous connection to police work. The harpoon gun would have been more at home at the whaling museum and the projectiles at the war memorial.
Next to the police station is St. Mary’s Catholic Church. It was built in 1899 with weatherboard cladding and, of course, a corrugated iron roof. It is a great example of rural churches that can be found throughout the old British Empire. They were ‘kit’ buildings much like the houses you used to be able to order from Sears, Roebuck and Co. A good example of a Sears ‘kit’ building is the Richard Nixon birthplace in Whittier, CA. I have cousins who live in one almost exactly like Nixon’s in Waxahachie, TX. Theirs has had additions, but they are restoring the remaining original part to its initial look. At one time you could find Sears houses all over the country in rural areas. Apparently the British used this same system for colonial structures like churches, barracks, etc. On the rear wall of the church was a triptych showing Stanley scenes from the late 1800s.
One interesting building is the Marine Barracks. It was built in the 1840s to house the pensioners from Chelsea and Greenwich while their houses were being built in town. Later it became the barracks for the Royal Marine detachment that policed the colony. It has also been a school, public library and Stanley’s first museum. Today it has been divided into three private homes.
Another interesting building is Government House. It’s a large, rambling structure with a huge conservatory greenhouse attached. Ernest Shackleton stayed here in 1916 while he was planning the rescue of his men from Elephant Island. He complained that he ‘was colder in Government House than what he would have been in Antarctica.’ The gardens were very colorful and made use of local wildflowers like the lupine.
Soon shopping and looking were over and it was back to the ship for lunch because we are booked on a Sparrow Cove penguin tour this afternoon.
At 2pm we assembled in the Queen’s Lounge to wait for the tour tender to pick us up. The tender ride to Sparrow Cove was a bit bumpy, as we had to leave the outer harbor to go around the point to get to the cove. The cove and the land between it and the penguins are private and are used for sheep ranching. The owner makes some extra money by allowing tours across his property.
After disembarking from the tender we all boarded Land Rovers for the 3-mile trip across the peninsula to Kidney Cove where the penguins are. The reason we landed at Sparrow Cove and not Kidney Cove is that the entire area next to the water and back about 0.5 to 1 mile inland is a giant minefield. The minefield extends from the northern end of Sparrow Cove past Kidney Cove for about a mile making about 10 miles of the shoreline unapproachable by humans. This works out well as it helps protect the penguins. They’re not heavy enough to set off the mines so they have free access to the sea from the colony all along the coast.
The drive to the colony in 4x4 Land Rovers was fun. They’ve had some rain lately so the low-lying areas are very muddy. We went in convoy; it actually bore a strong resemblance to a British military convoy, except that our Rover was purple rather than the usual green. The owner/driver was a woman, her full time job is pension coordinator for the islands, and she is proud of the fact that she had the only purple Rover in the islands.
The great part about this colony is that it is actually three colonies very close to each other. There are Gentoo, Magellanic, and King penguins all nesting near each other and in the case of the Gentoos and Kings, intermixed with each other. Apparently these two species get along very well and pretty much just ignore each other’s existence.
The Magellanic penguins weigh about 5-17lbs., are black and white with a black bill and double bands of white around their breasts (in the bird sense meaning their abdomens from neck to feet). They sound like a jackass when they call. It’s weird. We saw the South African version of this penguin outside Cape Town, South Africa. They’re a bit smaller and only have a single breast band.
The Gentoo penguins are about 10-19lbs. They have a white patch over their eyes and an orange bill. The bill of the juveniles is yellow and grows darker as they age. The type we are seeing here is the Northern Gentoo. They are very friendly and not at all intimidated by humans. Some of them walk right up to you and seem to want to hold a conversation but no amount of flipper waving or squawking seems to help communications. Our guide says that there are two types of Gentoos, black and white. He says it’s odd but the black ones always seem to be facing away from him and the white one seem to be facing towards him. I guess that’s what passes for British humor in the Falklands!
King penguins are larger birds at 21-38lbs. but not quite as big as the Emperors which can get up to 90lbs. They have bright orange ear patches with some orange on their necks and bills. Their upper bill is unfeathered and longer than the Emperors. They are the second largest penguins.
On the trip while in Antarctica we also saw Adélie and Chinstrap penguins. The Adélie range from 8-15lbs. with a conspicuous white eye ring, pointed crest on their head and mostly feathered upper and lower bill. The Chinstraps range from 7-12lbs., have an unfeathered black bill and a black stripe across their white throat, hence the name Chinstrap. All in all 5 penguin types on this trip, not bad.
When we arrived at Kidney Cove it was about 3pm and the Gentoo adults, who had been out to sea feeding were returning to the colony to feed their chicks. Chicks might not be a good word for the offspring at the moment because they are almost as big, and sometimes bigger then their parents. Once they loose their baby feathers the only way to tell them apart is that the juveniles have a yellow bill and paler yellow feet than the adults.
The feeding scramble is a little bit of a riot. Apparently a juvenile will accept food from any adult but the adult will only feed its own child. Consequently when an adult returns calling its child several will respond. The adult can identify the child by its call and will snap at any interloper. Sometimes this is not enough to discourage the really aggressive juvenile and the race is on. They can run surprisingly fast for the short-legged feather balls that they are. The mother will take off across the colony with 2 or 3 chicks in chase. Eventually the ones that are not hers lag behind and the chick remaining in pursuit is hers and they stop and feed. Penguins eat mainly krill and what the mother does is regurgitate the krill into the juvenile’s mouth. Fairly disgusting to us but the kids don’t seem to mind at all. In fact, they feed so greedily that they eventually drop over in what is apparently like ‘Thanksgiving Day Coma’ among humans. The only difference is they have no belt to loosen.
They lay on the ground in a stuporous state with their eyes half closed looking for all the world like drunks on skid row. They don’t move for long periods of time and at first Diana thought they were dead. Then an eye would twitch or a flipper would flap a bit. When they start to come out of it they spread their flippers like they are trying to catch the wind and take off. Pretty soon they are flopping around and trying to get up. It’s a very funny sight.
The Gentoo colony has two general locations; one is a little closer to the sea than the other one. When the adults come back from feeding the lines between the two get blurred because when the juveniles hear the adults calling a general rush toward the sea results and waddling juveniles heading toward the calling adults fill the gap between the two sections. Oddly, before the actual feeding starts both the adult and the juvenile are usually back in the section they live in. Also, the juveniles tend to move away from humans when we get too close, but not when the feeding rush is on. If you’re not careful you’ll have hundreds of little, wet, webbed footprints right up your back as they bowl you over in the quest of krill.
Then it was back in the Rovers for the drive back to the Sparrow Cove pier and the tender back to the ship. Our entertainment for the evening was the Prinsendam Orchestra playing a program that highlighted each member of the group in solo performances. These guys have to be good technicians on their instruments because when the guest performers come on the ship they only get one rehearsal with the new music and then it’s time to put on the show. You’ve got to be pretty good to do that.
Two days at sea coming before Buenos Aires, Argentina. Good time to catch up on my pics.
Feb 10 – The first of two days at sea. That’s great! The weather is already warmer and the seas are getting smoother. We have presentations by our port lecturer, Frank, on Buenos Aires, and our naturalist, John, on his geological expeditions to Antarctica in the 1980s. Very interesting! Not much else is going on that I’m interested in. Diana is taking bridge lessons every sea day. She enjoys them a lot. I read, write and attend the CSI ‘Coffee Chats’ with Nancy.
We had a final change to our itinerary today. They are going to drop one of the three days in Rio de Janeiro, skip the ports of Recife, Brazil, Half Moon Cay and Barbados. That means that the second day in Manaus is back on the schedule as are St. Lucia and Grand Turk. This is much better for us as we love all the stops on the Amazon River and haven’t been to St. Lucia or Grand Turk and we’ve been to both Barbados and Half Moon Cay many times.
Our entertainment tonight was the Prinsendam Cast doing a review show of various songs that involve streets or the idea of roads (ex. King of the Road, Penny Lane, On the Street Where You Live, etc.) It was very good. They will be getting off in Buenos Aires and we will be getting the cast from the Amsterdam. That way there are no repeat shows on the longer cruises.
Feb 11 – Today the ocean is like a little pond. I’ve seen bigger ripples on a mud puddle. It’s amazing how the water can change. It’s even warmer today. By this afternoon I’ll be in shorts for sure. Frank lectured on Montevideo, Uruguay and John talked about plate tectonics and the formation of mountains, earthquakes, volcanoes and rift valleys. Pretty much geology 101 but a very interesting review.
Salima Wazir was the guest at Peter’s Coffee Chat today. As I said before she’s half Anglo and half Afghani. She was born in Germany but moved to Afghanistan when she was 3. She lived in the remote mountain area we’re all been reading about in the news. She was there until she was 10 and then they moved to England. She is now a British citizen. She talked about her life in Afghanistan. She lived in an area that the Russians and Taliban were never able to penetrate so they didn’t have to put up with any of those problems. They occasionally had to fight the Taliban to keep them out of their area but not the Russians. Her family is not at all friendly with the Taliban and although her father is Muslim, he is very educated and progressive in this thinking. She is not Muslim. She’s giving a classical concert this afternoon and I’m looking forward to it.
Just before the concert our captain, Halle Thon Gunderson, the naturalist, John Splettstoesser (now you can see why I haven’t been using his last name), and our ice pilot, Keith Johnson, had a question and answer session about out Antarctic experience. The all agreed that the second day we were down there was fantastic. More wildlife than any of them could remember seeing in one day. John kept a list of what he saw and he’s going to give it to Peter to share with us. They had a question and answer session and I asked about the most southerly latitude we reached. The captain guessed that it was 65° 2’ south latitude but he had Peter go to the sound room to call the bridge to check the log. When Peter came back the captain has been exactly correct. That’s pretty far south because the Antarctic Circle is at 66° 30’ south latitude so we were only about 100 miles from the Antarctic Circle and about 1,500 miles from the South Pole. The winds in the storm were around 100mph and the waves that hit us in quick succession to cause all the damage were 65-75 feet high. It was an interesting discussion. Keith was in the Coast Guard for 28 years most of that time spent in icebreakers. He had done many deployments to Antarctica during is career, as well as the Arctic.
The concert was great, a little Mozart, Schubert and two, two-named composers of whom I’ve never heard. (Two-named is what I call composers that are not famous enough to be known by one name such as Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Rimsky-Korsakov, etc. The last is one name, just hyphenated)
Feb 12 – Buenos Aires, Argentina, Day 1. We arrived at the dock at 8am and are tied up right next to the Golden Princess. Now that’s a big ship. It holds about 3,000 people and they are getting off at the moment. We are taking a city tour this morning.
The bus picked us up right at shipside and we were off. From the port we passed the Plaza San Martin, honoring the General that led them to independence, and the city’s main train station. Across the street from The Plaza is the Monumental Tower. Because the British were the first nation to recognize Argentina’s independence from Spain they built the tower to help Argentina celebrate the centennial of the May revolution and it was originally called The British Tower. Due to the Falkland’s war the city renamed it the Monumental Tower but the people still call it ‘British’. Directly across the street is the monument to the Falkland’s War.
From there we drove to the Avda 9 de Julio (9th of July Avenue). They say it’s the widest avenue in the world and it certainly is wide. It has 22 lanes of traffic, a central median that’s about 8 feet wide and a median down either side that is about 7 lanes of traffic wide separating the center 16 lanes from the outer 6 lanes; a total width in lanes of 37 lanes. Yikes!! The amazing thing was, in the morning rush hour, all the lanes were packed. We rode down the avenue to the Plaza of the Republic. There’s an obelisk there that is about 67 meters tall and it’s the center of the city. From here we drove down one of the diagonal streets that cut across the city to the Plaza de Mayo. This is the main plaza of the city. The Cathedral is here and the Government House that everyone calls Casa Rosada because the building is built of pink stone.
Scaffolding is up on the front façade of the building because they are doing some restoration work on it. There’s a long balcony on the second floor that was used for Presidential speeches. Evita Peron rallied the ‘descamisados’ (shirtless working class) from this balcony. During his visit in 1998 Pope John Paul II blessed the crowd from there and Madonna sang ‘Don’t Cry for Me Argentina’ from there in the film Evita.
The Cathedral has a neoclassical front mixed with neo-romantic urns and 12 Corinthian columns representing the 12 Apostles. It was built in 1827 and the remains of General Jose de San Martín, Argentina’s liberator are interred there in a marble mausoleum carved by French sculptor Carrière Belleuse. It is a rare cathedral in that it has no towers. Most in South America have two, some only one but this is the first one I’ve seen with none.
In one corner of the plaza is the Cabildo (Town Hall). It’s a colonial era building that was the epicenter of the May Revolution in 1810 from which the plaza takes its name. The patriotic citizens gathered here to vote against Spanish rule, much like Carpenter’s Hall in Philadelphia (commonly known as Independence Hall). It was constructed in 1765 but has had subsequent renovations. It’s totally whitewashed and has the traditional colonial second story balcony.
There are several banks on the May Plaza and each one had a long line of people patiently waiting for the bank to open at 10AM. The most impressive bank building was the National Bank of Argentina. It’s a neoclassic building constructed in 1940. Its vaulted ceiling is the third largest in the world after those of St. Peter’s in Rome and the US Capital Building. The front doors are completely covered by a large, thick solid brass door that goes down into the floor when the bank is about to open, a pretty impressive sight. The front door of the building is in a clipped corner of the building and the façade in this clipped corner is ornately carved with figures, symbols and ornate panels with flowers, leaves and geometric designs
From the May Plaza we drove down to the La Boca (The Mouth) District. This was once the very upscale area of the city but during a Yellow Fever epidemic all the well to do people left the area and built large houses on the other side of town in La Ricoleta. This area became very run down but was resettled later by artists and others of a more Bohemian bent. It is now a vibrant working class neighborhood and home to numerous cafes, pubs, restaurants and boutiques. We spent about 45 minutes here. Diana was shopping for some leather items and other locally produced goods. I went on a photo expedition.
There was a small plaza where some artists had set up an art show. Some of the work was very nice. A two-couple tango dance group was setting up for a tango exhibition. The men were working hard getting a small shade screen put up over an area they has staked off for a dance floor. One of the girls motioned to me that I could take pictures of them if I wanted to. Her counterpart took two pictures of us in tango positions. I do not look very convincing in these poses but it was fun. When the got it set up I watched them dance for a while. They were great dancers!
After that we drove back north along the waterfront and cut across town to head out to the Recoleta Cemetery. This is the oldest cemetery in the city and the place where all the upper crust of the city are buried in very fancy mausoleums. It covers 13.5 acres of prime real estate in the La Ricoleta district. This is where the rich moved from La Boca during the 1871 yellow fever outbreak. The barefoot Franciscan Recoleto friars from whom it takes its name settled it in the early 1700. Originally the home of brothels and seedier activities it became very upscale during the late 1800s when the wealthy resettled here.
The cemetery is much like a small city in itself. It has paved streets lined with mausoleums looking very much like stately marble, granite or concrete manors. Our main objective is to see the Duarte mausoleum, the final resting place of Evita Peron. The cemetery is very ornate. It’s totally enclosed by at 10-12 foot brick wall. Inside are mausoleums of all types, some plain, some fancy and everything in between. Evita’s is of black marble with a high polish. Over the main door it says ‘Duarte Family’. Down the sides along the door are plaques listing the family members interred there. The top one is Eva Peron. She died in 1952.
On the way out we passed a mausoleum that looked like a modern church with the statues of a young woman and dog in front. She was holding a fresh bouquet of white flowers in her left hand. It was such a haunting scene I had to ask our guide if it had a story. Of course it did, and a very sad one at that. The statue is of a young bride and the church behind her is the church she was married in. She died the same day as her wedding and her husband had this mausoleum built and she in it in her wedding dress. He, or someone he sends, brings a fresh bouquet of white flowers to put in her hand every day.
We were going to take the shuttle back downtown to look around after our tour but the roads getting back to the port, as well as the port itself, were jammed with busses. A drive that should have taken no more than 10 minutes took over 45 and we were still at the port gate and hadn’t moved for about 20 minutes. We asked our bus driver to drop us off where we were stuck and we walked about 150 yards to the terminal past 8 or 9 busses that were ahead of us.
When we got to the terminal the line to enter was out the door about 40 yards or so. I didn’t recognize anyone in the line so I just assumed I didn’t need to be in it and walked past them all to the terminal door and went in. Got a lot of dagger looks from people but I didn’t know them so I didn’t care much, I just smiled my best smile in return.
Once inside it was apparent that the line was for people checking in for something so we continued passing them around several corners and finally saw a sign that said ‘Golden Princess’ on one side and ‘In Transit’ on the other. Since we arrived by ship in the port we are considered to be ‘In Transit’ so we were not supposed to be in the line and walked right past as there was no line at all for our side. Winds up that the Golden Princess is one of those 2,800 passenger monstrosities and that was why the port facilities were so overcrowded. Thankfully they were leaving at 6pm, long before we head out again.
Consequently we decided not to fight the crowds to head downtown and spent the afternoon on the ship. Since we’re overnight in Buenos Aires they had a BBQ on the lido deck. We had dinner there before we had to get ready for the show.
In the evening we went back to the La Boca section of town to a tango house, El Viejo Almacé, and since we didn’t leave until 7pm, the Golden Princess was gone. The corner where this building is located is reputed to be the birthplace of Tango. It’s in a historic building and one of the oldest buildings in the city. It started out as a market in 1798, hence the name. In the 1840s it was a British hospital where ether was used as an anesthetic for the first time in South America. Later it became a customs house. In 1969 tango artist Edmundo Rivera purchased it and transformed it into a small European style theater. The stage is elevated about 3-4 feet on the short side of the rectangular room. It has a U shaped balcony around the second story. The main floor is set up like a café with small, round tables each with 4 chairs on the first floor and the same tables with 3 chairs on the balcony. The room is only about 18 feet wide and 30-35 feet long so everyone has a very good view of the dancing.
Tango music was originally played on guitar and flute, but is now played on piano, violin, double bass and concertina (a small specialty accordion borrowed from the Italians). They had four pairs of dancers and male and female singers for the tango portion of the show. The first dancers were both men because this is how the tango started. Apparently when men were visiting the brothels they used to dance while waiting and this led to competitions among the waiting men. It wasn’t until years later that women were allowed to do the tango. The men simulated this contest by each taking turns dancing ever more complex and athletic steps.
Then they switched to costumes from the 1800s and early 1900s, while they danced the old style tango. The couples danced two at a time usually one couple doing a complex step while the other stayed in the background doing a simple step. Then they would change and the other couple would take the spotlight. The male singer was obviously the big deal because he came in part way through the dancing of the last two couples and they simulated the dance floor rivalry of men vying for the attentions of a woman using their dancing ability.
Next they had a folk music band consisting of a guitar, a small guitarra that was traditionally made from an armadillo, a drummer and a flautist. They played music from the Andes of Argentina and it's much like the music from the Peruvian or Chilean Andes. If you remember El Condor Passa by Paul Simon that’s the type of music they played. They were very good and got a good reception. Then the tango band played a few songs and the singers each sang a solo and then one duet.
After that it was back to the tango but now the modern version. Each couple came on individually and each did a more complex and apparently difficult dance. They each danced twice and the forth couple who did the last dance was absolutely unbelievable. He turned her every which way but inside out. The dancing was fantastic!! As the finale all the couples came back on stage and danced in unison ending up in a tango pose that brought down the house. It was a great evening but no pictures allowed so I can’t show you any of it.
When we got back to the ship there was a folkloric show that included gaucho dancing. Gaucho dancing is a lot of fancy boot stomping and hand slapping. They turn their ankles to impossible angles while doing the stomp. I’m sure it would sprain any normal ankle. They performed dances from all over Argentina and the dancing was very energetic and lots of fun. They had a tango couple that was very good also. One move they made was spectacular. It started out with a lift that positioned the woman lying across the man’s shoulders. Then he drops her by flipping her over his shoulders and catching the back of her head at about the level of his hips with only his right hand. If he ever misses she’s going to have one nasty headache for sure.
Feb 13 – Buenos Aires, Argentina, Day 2. – Today we are headed out of town to the Tigre Delta for a boat ride. Our first stop was at San Isidro, a small village on the Parana River that retains a bit of its charm from the early days. The main attraction, the cathedral, is under renovation. They are still in the tear out phase so things were quite messy inside. The Stations of the Cross had been removed along with much of the statuary and most of the carved altar. It was fun to watch the workers painstakingly removing the floor tiles and other items to prepare for restoration. The church is very pretty from the outside. The city had a nice little park with a floral clock at the center. The park was on several levels, the upper one being next to the cathedral and the lowest one ending across the street from a small shopping area. We were there too early for the stores to be open so we had to content ourselves with looking around. It was a quaint little place.
Then it was on to the city of Tigre and the Piranha Delta. Every year the Piranha Delta grows larger as the result of silt carried down the Piranha River. It is laced with waterways, some that are lined with weekend homes and some that are completely wild. The homes range from modest to opulent and everything in between. Most have a pier out into the waterway, some with devices for lifting their boats out of the water. The water is clean but cloudy because of all the silt.
We boarded the tour boat in Tigre and sailed a short distance out of the harbor to the River Luján where we turned east and after passing a large and very modern amusement park we turned north onto the Rio Sarmiento. This river was lined with small restaurants, bed and breakfasts and weekend homes. Since this is Tuesday there are only a few swimmers and fishermen in evidence. We had the area pretty much to ourselves. We passed a boat about the same size as ours but outfitted to be a floating market. It had canisters of propane, large bottles of water, fruit, vegetables, soft drinks, dairy products, meat and dry goods. If the homeowner wants to buy something they hang a shopping bag on their dock and the ship stops and blows its horn. As we were passing a woman was buying something from the market. She gave us a happy wave as we passed. Everyone here seems very friendly. The Sarmiento is also home to several rowing clubs, a very popular activity in the delta area.
From there we turned east again onto the Rio San Antonio. This river is in a much wilder state with fields or reeds and trees along the banks. Some of the reed fields had small rowboats moored at the edges. There were men gathering reeds into bundles. The guide said that they can sell the reeds to basket makers for a few pesos a bundle, which is not bad considering they gather the reeds for free.
After a while we turned south on the Canal Vinculación for our return to civilization. The water is muddy but we saw lots of people in the water swimming or wading. Everyone from kids to Seasoned Citizens was enjoying the water and unlike the Middle East, everyone here seems to enjoy having their picture taken. Then we were back on the River Lujan and returned to Tigre.
When we returned to Buenos Aires the tour bus dropped us off at Passeo de Florida. This is a shopping street, closed to traffic. I know that’s the definition of a Passeo, I just wanted to add that for our non-Spanish audience. It has shops of all types but one of the main products of Argentina is beef and where there’s beef there’s leather. The quality of the leather goods here is really high. There’s even a branch of Harrod’s Department Stores of London on the street.
We didn’t really want to use up a lot of time eating lunch and Buenos Aires is a very European city so lunch in a café will take a long time. Fortunately our favorite tourist time saving eatery has a branch right at the end of Passeo de Florida, that’s right Micky D is on the job in Argentina and right on the main shopping Passeo in the capital city. We dropped in and Diana had a Cajita Feliz (that’s a Happy Meal for the monoglots) Hamburger and I had a McCombo #2, that’s a Cuarto de Libra con Queso (Quarter Pounder with Cheese) both with papas fritas and a drink. All that cost us 20.50 pesos, approximately $6.00.
It dawned on me that we have eaten in McDonald’s on 5 continents, North America, Europe, Asia, Australia and now South America. In all the other places the menu had the US favorites plus some local entrées. For example, in Rome they had a Caraibi Sandwich. It was a breast of Jamaica spiced chicken on pita with lettuce and a jerk like sauce. In Singapore they had a Taro Turnover for desert. Here in Argentina they have such an American like diet that the menu didn’t have a single thing you couldn’t order in the US. They love potatoes, beef, chicken, eggs and fish and the McDonald’s regular menu has all those things, both here and there.
After lunch Diana continued shopping and I headed across the street to the Plaza San Martin to sit in the shade and watch the locals and tourists mingle. Most of my fellow sitters were locals out for lunch. The Plaza is actually a park with wide tree lined paths dotted with benches for sitting in the shade and talking. Of course the park has the obligatory bronze statue of General Jose del San Martin (What, no O’Higgins?) erected in 1862 and designed by French artist Louis Daumas. It also has the Monumento a los Caidos en las Malvinas, 25 black marble slabs engraved with the names of those who died in the 1982 Falkland’s war. A Grenadier in full regalia guards it.
One observation that Diana made at lunch surprised me. She observed that Buenos Aires is the worldwide headquarters for breast enhancement surgery. It surprised me on two levels. First, that she had noticed and commented on it. Second, that I hadn’t noticed this for myself. Actually the second is not that surprising as I am more of a leg man, still I pride myself on being observant and once she mentioned it, I had to agree that she might be correct. An observation that I made was that most of the girls under 35 had tattoos. The back of the right shoulder and the ankle seem to be the popular places, many having both. They are not wearing enough of the bare midriff fashions that make it possible to see if they have one in the small of their backs like so many in the US have but the few that were lead me to believe that they have them there too.
From war to women, now that’s a transition that not too many people can make as seamlessly as I did. Wow, how’s that for tortured but correct grammar! If Shakespeare were alive today he’d be quaking in his boots!! Now that has even me laughing out loud. I sincerely hope you joined me.
Diana came to get me because she found a red leather jacket that she thought she liked and wanted my opinion. She had tried to find one before but the stores never had her size in a color she liked. When she tried it on it was as if it was made for her and the color was very nice. The leather was so soft and supple it almost felt like silk. I said, ‘Happy Valentine’s Day!’ and closed the deal.
The Marriott Hotel is on Passeo Florida at the Plaza San Martin end. The H. Stern jewelry shop in the hotel provides a free shuttle back to the ship. We happily jumped in and headed to our floating home away from home.
Our entertainers for the evening were a pair of British comics named Hope and Keen. They’ve been doing this type of work since the Vaudeville days. They were very funny in an old fashioned way. One bit they did with bird whistles in their mouths. The acted the part of a male bird trying to pick up a female. It was very funny!!
Feb 14 – Montevideo, Uruguay. Well it’s St. Valentine’s Day in Uruguay. Uruguay is the second smallest country in South America after Suriname. It’s slightly larger than England and Wales combined but has only a little over 3,000,000 people. Much of the country is small rolling hill open land that is being ranched or farmed. It appears to be the most European of the South American countries and most of the population is of Spanish or Italian origin.
Montevideo was established in 1726 by the Spanish governor of Buenos Aires as a buffer for protection against Portuguese infiltration from Brazil. It changed hands several times until it became the capital of an independent Uruguay established in 1828 as a buffer state between Spanish Argentina and Portuguese Brazil.
It’s a very pretty and clean city but there’s not that much to see in Montevideo itself. We are headed out of town to nearby Colonia del Sacramento, the oldest city in Uruguay. It’s also the one city that has retained much of the colonial aura that has been lost in most places. UNESCO declared it a World Heritage Site in 1996.
The Colonia was founded by the Portuguese 1680 to rival Buenos Aires and it is situated just across the river delta from there. It was the subject of several wars and pacts between Spain and Portugal before becoming part of independent Uruguay.
We entered the city by the reconstructed portón (city gate). You can still see remnants of the old city wall that went all the way to the river. A block inside the wall you come to an old cobblestone street lined with one-story colonial buildings, Calle de los Suspiros (Sigh Street). Walking down the uneven cobblestones was a lot like crossing a stream skipping from rock to rock. This is not your modern well-laid cobblestone; this is the ‘we brought these rocks over as ship’s ballast’ type of cobblestones. Some rounded, some flat, small, large and everything in between. The street looked more like a rocky riverbed than a city avenue. The best bet to avoid a sprained ankle or slipping was to select large flat rocks to walk on. This is a difficult process when you are trying to keep alert for good photo ops. Pretty soon my ankles and lower legs, unaccustomed as they are to walking on uneven places, started to tire almost like I was ice-skating after a summer layoff. A feeling that was very nostalgic actually.
One of the colonial houses on Suspiros had lace curtains and geraniums on the windowsill. Very picturesque. One of the houses has been converted into an art gallery. We went through the house and the grounds in back. It had a built in BBQ area at the back. Just an open pit with walls around three sides to hold the racks of meat. The Uruguayans love to BBQ and apparently this love affair started in the colonial days. Every house where you could see the yard had a BBQ built in from the most modest to the ultra fancy, it didn’t matter.
A man stood in the doorway of his home, tourist watching. He was dressed only in shorts and sandals but he did have his Poro (a gourd used as a drinking cup for Yerba Matte tea), bombilla (the metal straw with the strainer device attached that I’ve described before) and his thermos of hot water to refill the poro. According to our guide, Uruguayans are hooked on the stuff and have devised a serious ritual to drink it. It is not served in restaurants and the Yerba Matte we had in Ushuaia was a very weak shadow of the real thing. It’s apparently made from the leaves of an indigenous tree that is plentiful in Brazil. Although Uruguayans are hooked on it they do not have the tree and all their Yerba is imported, the best being Brazilian. I hope to get to taste some before we leave South America.
Everywhere you turned in Colonia there were picturesque buildings, flowers, streets, cafes and a lighthouse. The lighthouse was built in 1857 and is not used anymore because changes in the delta area have moved it too far inland to be helpful. Every year the delta area grows from the deposits of silt carried down from upriver. There is a map in ceramic tiles on the lighthouse building that shows the entire river mouth on both the Argentinean and Uruguayan sides. It even includes a little of the delta we sailed on yesterday and the narrow channels that are navigable by ships the size of ours and larger.
There were several cafes on the main square as well as government buildings and museums all in prior colonial era houses. The city also has an extensive riverfront area that is lined with parks, restaurants and a marina. One of the houses we passed on the way to the riverside had a large whale skeleton in the back yard. In the lower jaw you could see the bones that had been used to make the intersecting arches in Stanley in the Falklands. We are having lunch at the marina’s restaurant in the yacht club.
We walked up Calle de la Playa, another cobblestone street, to the Iglesia Matriz del Santisimo Sacramento, Uruguay’s oldest church built in 1699. The current structure has the columns, the font and the baptistery from the original building. The plaza in front of the church has several cafes and shops. One restaurant is very unique in that it has two cars from the 20s or 30s parked on the street in front. One is used as a large planter with what looked like oleander and crape myrtle growing up through the roof. That car looked like a Citroen. The other car is a larger sedan that has had the inside removed and a table and chairs installed. It’s a nice place to have lunch and the two old cars add a lot to the ambiance of the street.
The lunch was very good, salad, Uruguayan beef, French fries (they do love their potatoes here) and excellent, home made style, ice cream for desert. Yum!! They grow a grape here that they say is only found here and in Italy, Tannat. It produces a full-bodied, somewhat spicy red wine that is sort of a cross between a syrah and cabernet. They served one made by Casa del Sol and it was very good.
After leaving Colonia del Sacramento we drove back to Montevideo. The open space between the two cities, they’re about 100 miles apart, reminds me of the north Texas area, fairly flat rolling hills mostly involved in farming and ranching. I saw corn, sorghum and soybeans in very large fields. There were smaller fields of vegetables and some fruit groves. Most of the fruit and grapes are grown in the northern part of the country. They don’t have any heavy industry to speak of here so pollution is not a major problem. The do have auto assembly plants and the like around Montevideo.
On the way back to the ship we had a short city tour of Montevideo itself. We stopped at the legislature building. It’s a very impressive structure. At one time Uruguay was a prime supplier of granite and marble. The legislature has almost 50 different types of marble in its interior, a representation of every type of marble that was ever quarried here. It’s gorgeous!! The exterior is grey stone but is very impressive with its tall columns and statues. It has two flags flying out front. On the left is the current national flag, blue and white stripes much like our flag but only nine stripes and a field of white, where our blue one is, with a large golden sun in it. The shade of blue they used and the sun depicted are the same as the ones used on the Argentinean flag. On the right is a flag with three broad horizontal stripes the upper and lower a dark blue, the center one white. Across the flag diagonally from top right to bottom left is an equally broad stripe of red. This was the flag of the area when it was the buffer zone held by Argentina before its independence.
From there we went to Independence Plaza in the old city. Dominating the center of the plaza is a 30-ton statue of General Gervasio Artigas, the father of Uruguay. He was the founder of the 19th century independence movement. At the base of the monument are two flights of marble stairs leading to the underground mausoleum that holds his remains. The walls are chiseled with graphics that depict Artigas’ major achievements. Two soldiers wearing period uniforms guard the urn of this unusual crypt.
On the west side of the plaza is Palacio Estévez that served as the seat of government until 1985 when it was moved to a more modern building. This structure is still used for ceremonial occasions and is one of the most beautiful buildings in the city.
On the north side of the plaza is the 26-story art deco Palacio Salvo. When it was built in 1927 it was the tallest building in South America (it’s still the second tallest in Uruguay) and one of the most beautiful skyscrapers in the world. I love the Chrysler Building in New York and I have to say that this building gives it a run for its money. The only thing ruining the esthetics is that they’ve constructed a tall red and white antenna tower on top of its dome. Very ugly topping on a wonderful building.
On the south side of the plaza they have reconstructed the original gate to the walled city. It looks much like the gate to Colonia but a little larger. After that it was back to the bus and on to the ship.
My enduring memory of Uruguay will be Yerba Matte. Young and old, male and female, urban and rural, everyone was drinking it. They even carry it on the street complete with the thermos of hot water so they are never more than a few seconds away from a Matte jolt.
Our evening entertainment was Nick McCullock doing a show of Neil Diamond songs. I think some years ago he was pretty good but his voice is giving out. It has a gravely quality that is not present in Neil’s voice. He was ok though and the show was enjoyable. If he had not been promoted as a Neil Diamond impersonator it would have been fine, but my expectations had been raised and that led to the disappointment.
Two days at sea coming up to catch up on the last three days. Yahoo!!
Feb 15 – At Sea. A day at sea after 3 day in port is a very welcome relief for me. I can’t do everything I want to and still keep up with my journal and pictures. Today is the day for that. We were going to go to the Pinnacle Grill for our anniversary (#26) but the First Officer has asked us to eat with him this evening so I changed the Grill reservation to tomorrow.
This afternoon they had a Yerba Matte tea demonstration in the Ocean Bar. They give you the poro, a bombilla and a bag of Yerba Matte. I’ve heard from different people that it’s the leaf of a tree; some have said it’s a grass; well I’ve finally got the answer, it’s Ilex Paraguariensis. Help, someone please look that up and tell me what it is! I assume it was originally found in Paraguay from its Latin name but that’s all I can tell. Botanical Note: Winds up that Yerba is a relative of the Holly.
Here’s how they brewed it. They filled the poro about half way with the very fine Yerba. Then they put in about a tablespoon of cold water that was supposed to soak in, and it did. Then they filled the poro with hot water, which the Yerba soaked up so quickly it was like it just disappeared. At this point the yerba is quite thick, a little thinner than potters clay but not much. Here’s where you put the bombilla in being sure to hold your finger over the sipping end to seal in the air, otherwise the yerba mush will clog the strainer on the end. You put the bombilla in along the left side of the poro and slide it to a spot on the bottom. It looks a little like a mole tunnel if you do it right.
Now you add more water, which again is soaked up by the yerba very quickly. After the third infusion of water you can finally get some liquid when you suck on the bombilla. The first taste is very bitter and strong. It’s like drinking a very fresh McDonald’s milkshake. You really have to pull to get anything to come up the bombilla. You add more water and drink, then water, then drink, the yerba will last all day. I probably drank about ½ a cup of yerba while we were there. Then it was time to get ready for the First Officer’s dinner. It’s a formal evening so some preparation is required. I’ve got a red bow tie to wear with my white dinner jacket so I’m set.
Dinner was great, Paul Spaas is the First Officer, he and his fiancée were the hosts. Dinner was very good indeed. The filet mignon was fork tender and very flavorful. The desert was something I’ve never seen before. At first I thought it might be an ice cream bombe but it was not. It was about 3 inches in diameter and domed like a flat-bottomed scoop of ice cream. It had a white band around the base and the rest of it was rose pink with white stripes of cream icing. A curlicue of rose pink sugar candy was sticking up from it. Also on the plate were three raspberries on one side, three blueberries on the other side, two halves of a strawberry in the front flanking a white chocolate heart swirled with red and some white chocolate designs on the plate.
When I cut into it, it was soft on top with a thin layer of light brown cake as the base (left). The best I can do is say that it was strawberry-raspberry moose on a thin spice cake base, iced with strawberry coulee. It was great for something with absolutely no dark chocolate. Whenever I see a desert this complex I wonder how many hours were spent putting it all together.
Everyone is celebrating St. Valentine’s Day and it’s a formal night so the ship is looking pretty smart. I wore my white dinner jacket with my red bow tie in honor of the day. On the way to the show in the Queen’s Lounge we ran into Jacky (the ship’s hostess), Adam and Jen (both members of the Cruise Staff) for a photo op. We had sailed with Jen Richards before on the 2005 Amazon Cruise. Amazingly Jacky’s mother was on the same cruise.
Our entertainer was Viviana Guzmán a flautist. We had seen her before and she is excellent. She plays all types of flutes from the common one to native American Indian, Peruvian, Chinese jade, tin whistle and some sort of flute she just acquired that has no holes and all the notes are breath control. She put on a great show.
Diana and I went back to the room and she was reading and I was working on my pictures and journal. At 2am we looked at each other and I asked her, ‘Are you tired?’ She said, ‘No.’. Then we each said, ‘Yerba Matte!’ I know I asked if someone would look it up by the scientific name, now I really asking!! For Diana not to be tired at 2AM is absolutely amazing. We decided to turn in anyway and were both up at 6am feeling rested and ready to go. I had been told by people in Chile and Argentina that it’s a pick me up of the first order and makes you feel very good but then people say that about coffee and it’s not really that effective. Plus caffeine can give me the jitters. This yerba just makes you feel alert and energized, but not jittery or any of the other caffeine side effects. If it wasn’t the yerba I don’t know how to account for both of us being up so late and then also up early. Even after normal bedtime Diana is a slow starter in the AM. Not this time. She was getting dressed before me at 6:30am, unheard of!!
Feb 16 – At Sea. Today we are still sailing northeast to Rio. It will be Saturday and Sunday of Carnival week when we get there. The place should be jumping.
In the afternoon the ship is offering a tour of the galley. I’ve been there before but I had nothing better to do so I went. This time I just tried to imagine the chaos that must be dinnertime. The assistant stewards rushing from the floor to the galley to pick up the foot ordered by the ravenous herd, moving from station to station to pick up appetizers, soups, salads, entrées and deserts. Then lugging the trays, loaded with food back to the floor for the steward to serve and starting all over again with the next table or course. It’s amazing the great job they do.
Today was very low-key except for our anniversary dinner in the Pinnacle Grill. I really like the beef they serve. The chef had prepared a special soup, Indian pea soup with curry, it was exceptional, but then I love pea soup.
Our entertainer was Paul Emmanuel, who we had seen before. He does a lot of Nat King Cole songs that he sings in Nat’s style. He is really good at that. Then he sings other songs in his own style, which is also outstanding. His voice is good, his control of it is brilliant, but it’s his style that really puts him over the top. Like Sinatra, he really has developed a unique and very exceptional style.
Feb 17 – Rio de Janeiro – Day 1. Well we were supposed to be here three days total but now we’re only staying two to help make up the time we lost to the storm. We were to be here Wednesday through Friday, just before the big weekend of Carnival. Now we are here on Saturday and Sunday, the big Carnival weekend. Should be interesting.
Apparently when our old friend Amerigo Vespucci, an Italian, arrived here in 1501 leading a Portuguese expedition to the New World he thought Guanabara Bay was the mouth of a river and named it Rio de Janeiro (January River) in honor of the month he arrived. In 1555 French Huguenots establish a colony here but the Governor General of the Portuguese colony of Brazil drove them out between 1560 and 1565. The city was not founded until March 1, 1565 by Portuguese knight Estácio de Sá, who named it São Sebastiao do Rio de Janeiro (in Portuguese the J is pronounced as an English J not the H of Spanish; ‘Saint Sebastian of the January River) in honor of King Sebastian I or Portugal. Originally the settlement was called São Sebastião, or even Saint Sebastian, instead of the currently popular second half of the name.
Pirates and privateers, especially the enemies of Portugal, such as the Netherlands and France often attacked it. In the late 16th century the Portuguese started treating the village as an important port for the Atlantic transit of ships between their African colonies, Europe and Brazil. Fortresses were built and an alliance formed with the nearby native tribes to defend the settlement against invaders. Never the less, until the early 18th century pirates and buccaneers, such as Jean-Francois Duclerc, René Duguay-Trouin and Nicholas de Villegaignon continued to threaten and occasionally invade the city. The city’s fortune and fame were sealed when in 1720 gold and diamonds were discovered in nearby Minas Gerais. Rio became the port for shipping all this wealth to Europe. The final touch came in 1808 when the Portuguese royal family and most of the Lisbon nobles, fleeing from Napoleon’s invasion of Portugal, moved in. Portugal’s capital was moved to Rio, which then became the only European capital outside the political boundaries of that continent.
We are on a city tour this morning and I’ve been anticipating this since we left Uruguay. The tour departed at 8am and I have to say that the streets were deserted. We drove through the city past the Sombodromo, a stadium built especially for the Samba School (they do teach samba but we would think of them more like clubs than schools) competitions that take place during Carnival. The stadium is 1,000 yards long, over half a mile, and is essentially a set of grandstands built along a very wide avenue that is only used for these competitions. They used to hold the competitions on the street but they had to erect grandstands etc. like Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena does for the Rose Parade. They decided that was too much trouble and built the stadium. It was nice because the floats for tonight’s competition were already lined up along Avenida Presedente Vargas ready to enter the stadium and we got a good look at them as we drove by. Tonight is the second night of competition so these are the floats of the lower ranked schools. Yikes!! They were elaborate and beautiful. I’m hoping that tomorrow we will see the floats of the top ranked schools.
They have four nights of competitions. The first night is for youth from the Samba schools, the second night is for the lower ranked Samba schools and the last two nights are for the best Samba schools based on last year’s competition. Of course the lower ranked schools are constantly trying to get promoted into the last two nights competition so they are really going all out. The schools represent various neighborhoods in Rio and work very hard all year long to get ready for these four days. The membership of each is 5,000 to 10,000 of these 1,000 to 2,000 march in the competition. Each school is given 45 minutes to march through the stadium so they have to get 2,000 people, dancers, floats and musicians down the 1,000 yards in that amount of time. If they finish early or late they loose points on the scoring. There are 10 areas of judging and 4 judges for each area. They judge the dancing, music, floats, creativity, use of color and the like and assign a numerical score. The results give the schools rank for the next year so a lot depends on that three quarters of an hour. If they are going long the last dancers will speed up their steps to get out on time. They loose some points for this but not nearly as many as if they go overtime. This is the one thing in South America that runs like a Swiss watch, on time or else!
Our ultimate destination on this tour is Corcovado Mountain. I know you’ve seen pictures of this mountain because that’s where the 30 meter tall Christ the Redeemer statue stands with his arms outstretched in welcome to all. We arrived at the base of the mountain at about 9am and our trip to the top doesn’t start until 9:20 so we had some time to look around and do some shopping.
At 9:20 exactly we started boarding the Swiss designed and built cog railway for the very steep, 20-minute ride to the top of Corcovado. The railway is pretty unique in that it is one of the few surviving railways to use three-phase electric power. Consequently it has two overhead lines instead of one. At 2,330 feet the view from the base of the statue is fantastic. Rio is built in a very interesting area. There are lots of granite mountains and hills sticking up and there are bays and beaches everywhere. The town itself flows around all these features like pools of water. Favelas, poorer neighborhoods, spread up the mountainsides like waves breaking on the hills. This may be the only city in the world where the poorest residents have the best views. The government tried one time to move one of these neighborhoods for development but the resulting riots made them abandon the project and they haven’t tried since. These neighborhoods have been there for generations and they residents are very loyal and vociferously proud of their favela and don’t want to leave them.
We could see Flamengo Beach (not misspelled, its named for the Flemish that used to live there not the pink wading bird) Sugar Loaf, Copacabana Beac, Ipanema Beach, and about 17 of Rio’s neighborhoods. It was a nice day and just a little haze shows up in the pictures. The statue of Christ the Redeemer was completed in 1931 and has a definite art deco and machine age look, very modern. It’s about 125 feet tall, weighs 700 tons and is made of concrete and soapstone. I couldn’t get far enough from it on the mountaintop to get it in a photo even with my wide-angle lens. We spent about a half hour up there enjoying the fantastic views. You used to have to climb several hundred stairs to get to the top after getting off the train but in 2003 after the statue and hilltop were restored they put in escalators making the monument much more easily accessible and popular.
After riding down the hill again we went to the Cathedral of San Sebastia, the patron saint of Rio. The cathedral will hold 20,000 people and is round at the base looking much like an inverted Dixie cup. It’s a large cup to be sure the base is 315 feet in diameter and it’s 263 feet high. It was built in the 1960 and is not very attractive from the outside. It’s a whole different story on the inside. Four large stained glass windows on the ordinal points of the church cover about 30% of the exterior. They go from just above the door height all the way to the roof. They are beautiful and light the interior very well.
All around there were personal belongings just setting on the benches. I asked our guide whose they were because most of them were unmonitored. She said that some people come to the cathedral for the four days of Carnival to escape the celebrations and that their belongings were very safe there when they left to eat or work.
When we left the cathedral the bus couldn’t move at all on the street. It turns out there was a bloco happening on the Republica do Paraguai Avenue directly ahead of us. A blocos are spontaneous (well, they are planned ahead but not city approved) street parades and parties that break out in the neighborhoods all over the city. The 10 minute trip back to the ship took over and hour and a half. I didn’t mind, as the video opportunities out the bus window were great. I took a few stills but mostly video. The streets were absolutely clogged with people. These are wide avenues not tiny lanes. At the intersection of two very large streets, the streets and the intersection itself were packed with people.
The people who would notice that I was filming them would wave and smile. Suddenly they started cheering, jumping up and down, giving the thumbs up, yelling and carrying on in general. I was focused on my video eyepiece but I could feel something rubbing against my ear. Turns out that Diana had purchased an almost tube top, almost because it has one shoulder strap, that was the colors of the Brazilian flag and has the word Brazil on it. She was waving this in the window and that was the cause of all the commotion. I told her to keep it up, as the video it was producing was great.
There were street vendors selling everything you need for a moving mass of humanity to keep up the party spirit. On one street corner where we were stopped dead still for about 10 minutes, a man had erected a small blue tent that spanned about a foot of the sidewalk and about 3 feet of the street. It was about 4 feet square and about six feet tall with a cloth door on one side and a peaked roof like you see on medieval tents for a total height of about seven feet. When I could read the sign, hand printed on part of a cardboard box (in Portuguese of course), it said, ‘Use the WC for 50 centavos.’ That’s half a Real or a quarter US. As I was watching he pulled aside the door so I could see inside. It had been set up directly over a sewer grate so his only cost of business was the tent. Oh, he was selling toilet paper as an extra for 10 centavos. I’m not sure how much he was giving for that but I would have bought a dollar’s worth if I were to use his facility. Surely for 2 Realis, 20 times what he was asking, I would have gotten an ample supply.
The view from the windshield of our bus was amazing. Everyone was walking in the street as far as you could see. People were dressed in every imaginable way from the sublime to the ridiculous. They were wearing costumes of all sorts; princesses seemed to be very in for both women and men. Some were masked, some not. Wigs of outrageously colored hair (ex. silver, gold, glittering red) were very fashionable. Tank tops, tube tops, bikini tops and t-shirts were most popular on the women. Bare chests, muscle shirts, t-shirts and soccer shirts were big with the men. Everyone seemed to be in a good mood and I didn’t see any problems at all on the way back to the ship. The four-hour tour we were to take took 6 hours but it was great. I’ve never seen such a sight in all my life.
The closest I can come to this is when I went to the very first Long Beach Gran Prix. I think it was 1972 or 3, back when they were still bringing the Formula 1 cars to the west coast. I rode my motorcycle to Long Beach because I knew parking would be a problem and it was. The streets were mobbed with people speaking every conceivable European language. It was a hoot. This was 100 times bigger than that.
When we got back to the ship we were too late for lunch in the restaurants but the burger, pizza, salad and sandwich bars were still open.
Tonight we are going to a samba show but it doesn’t leave the ship until 8:30PM so we ate dinner in the dining room and then headed to the Queen’s Lounge for the tour. We took about 7 busses to the show. It was very good. The samba is a much simpler dance than the tango, anyone could lean it but professionals take it to an entirely different level. They also had some men showing a dance the African slaves devised to disguise the fact that they were teaching each other a martial art. It was very acrobatic and athletic. We got back to the ship about 1AM. While we were gone they had a samba show on the ship. They had the same sort of dancing but pictures were allowed.
We have a tour at 8:30am tomorrow so we hit the sack immediately on returning.
Feb 18 – Rio de Janeiro – Day 2. Again the day starts our with a bus ride through the nearly deserted streets at 8:30am. On the way we passed the floats that were set up very early this morning for tonight’s festivities as the Sombodromo. These are the floats of the first rank schools. Unfortunately it has been raining and most of them are covered with tarps. I was able to photograph a few through the water-streaked windows. Oh well, you get what you can. Most of the floats were accompanied by sleeping school members who were supposed to provide security of the floats overnight. They might as well have been sleeping as everyone else, except the tourists, was sleeping.
Today we are headed to the Tijuca Forest that is known for its exuberant vegetation. The park is a preserved part of Brazil’s Atlantic Rain Forest right inside the city limits of Rio. The park has 60 miles of roads and we are going to tour it in the back of 4-wheel drive jeeps. It was part of a Brazilian nobleman’s estate since colonial times. He never developed most of it and thus the forest was preserved.
We rode in the back of a pick-up like vehicle on bench seats that faced each other, much like the military duce and a half only much smaller. There was no top on the back so we had an unobstructed 360-degree view from our perch. Our first stop was at a waterfall, the Cascatinha de Taunay, that was not spectacular but very scenic nevertheless. From there we drove to Capela Mayrink a small pink and white chapel with painted panels by Brazilian artist Candido Portenari. It was very pretty but no flash was allowed inside.
Our next stop was at the Emperor’s Table. The concrete gazebo, complete with a large table, was built on an overlook from which you can see Corcovado and Christ the Redeemer on the left with Sugar Loaf on the right and part of Rio woven in between. It was a little misty in the early morning and this gave a Japanese watercolor feel to the scene but it was a great view nevertheless. Brazil’s last Emperor, Pedro II, used to bring his court here for picnics. It was a very pleasant drive. The temperature was cooler in the forest than in Rio or on top of Corcovado and the breeze created by the jeep’s movement was refreshing.
Our jeeps drove us down from the forest back into Rio to drop us of at the botanical garden. The garden covers 340 acres has more than 5,000 species of tropical and subtropical plants and trees, including more than 900 varieties of palms. Portuguese king João VI created it in 1808 during his exile in Brazil. In 1842 the garden received its most impressive display, the Avenue of the Royal Palms. This 800-yard double row of 134 Royal palms soaring 80 feet into the air is a wonderful sight. There’s an old gunpowder factory in the park that has been restored and displays objects pertaining to the lives of both the nobility and the slaves.
There were several very impressive greenhouses that we visited. The orchid, bromeliad and carnivorous plant houses had great specimens of all these families. I’ve never seen so many meat eating plants in one place. It was great!! Of course the orchids were fantastic. I’ve loved them ever since I used to help my grandmother make corsages with them when I was a kid. She was a much in demand floral designer in the Lehigh Valley from the 40s to the 70s. The concepts she used for designing floral displays have been very helpful to me in photo composition. Now I should tell you that travel photography is such that you don’t have time to get creative with composition but you can still apply the principles to make your travel snaps better pictures in a broad sense.
Author’s Note: I hate asking people to take pictures of Diana and me. I didn’t always hate it but that was back in the days when you could tell something about a photographer by the equipment he or she was using. People who took the time to learn to use a good 35mm camera could be trusted not to screw up a simple snapshot opportunity. The advent of fully automatic digital SLR cameras has allowed people with much more money than photographic skill to use cameras that mislead me into thinking they have a clue about composing the simplest travel shot that includes people. I can’t tell you how many times I have had to discard pictures of the two of us on just this trip. The major mistake that people make is putting the subject in the middle of the picture regardless of what that does to the photograph. Perfect example was today. Diana and I stood behind some props that made us look like two Sambanistas. I had a drum in front of me and Diana had some props that were on a table. The set included the legs and shoes and all the trappings. I asked a man with a $3,500 dollar SLR digital camera to take the picture for me and what did he put in the picture? Our faces are directly in the middle of the picture regardless of the fact that nothing below our waists is visible and there’s nothing in the top half of the picture of any interest whatsoever, only sky. I would love to see the pictures he winds up with at the end of a trip. Yikes!! About one in seven of the photos I ask others to take winds up even marginally acceptable. The one today is a good example of one that is done correctly, Diana and me at the waterfall. We are in the bottom and off to the side. The waterfall runs from top left to lower right leading the observer’s eye directly to us. Notice what’s in the middle of the picture. NOTHING!! And except in exceptional cases that’s exactly what will be in the center of a good composition, something of so little interest as to be invisible. I’ll bet that when you looked at the picture your eyes either went from us up the waterfall or down the waterfall to us, and you never even noticed the boulder at the center of the picture. Your eye followed the water either up or down and that’s what a good composition will do, lead the observer to the main subjects of the picture. If the photographer had stepped 4-5 feet to the right it would have been acceptable but not good. The falls would have been too vertical and the balance would have been lost. I know the guy I asked to take this picture and I knew it would be good because he and I share our pictures and I am familiar with his eye. Most of the time I don’t have that luxury so I rely on looking at their equipment. That used to work very well but not anymore!
Yikes, what a tirade. Sorry, but this situation is bad and getting worse all the time. It’s one of the reasons you don’t see more pictures of Diana and me together, most of the ones taken are so bad I won’t send them. I’ve got to find a new way to pick a photographer but, short of having seen his pictures, I don’t know how to do that anymore and as you can tell I find that mildly irritating.
In the park at the base of a large tree was a memorial to Antonio Carlos Jobim, the Brazilian jazz/samba composer and guitarist who wrote ‘The Girl from Ipanema” in 1965 made famous by Stan Getz and Astrid Gilberto and covered by Sergio Mendes and Brazil ’66. I’ve mentioned them before. In the ‘60s I bought all three Jobim LPs that were issued in the US, then he disappeared to remain a huge success in South America. I don’t think I ever owned any Mendes.
The botanical garden was great but the one-hour plus walk in the heat and humidity had some of my fellow nature lovers whining for the bus. You could stay in the US and ride an air-conditioned bus for crying out loud. As you all know, I dislike heat and humidity with the best of them but please, if you want to see a place you have to take it as it is. Ironically, these are the same people who constantly complain that the show room is ‘too cold!’ Now they have it nice and hot and they’re still complaining. Wait until we get 500 miles up the Amazon. As the old saw goes, ‘You ain’t seen nothin’ yet!’
We eventually walked past the administration buildings to the back gate and there was the bus waiting for us as promised.
The blue haired guide (This gimmick made it possible to pick her out even at a great distance and in a crowd it was a wig of course) said that she was going to have the driver take the fastest route back to the bus. I guess she had heard the whining. Well she discovered that this was definitely the minority opinion because most of us asked if we could drive by the beach on the way home. Fearing reprisals from the whiners she put it to a vote and the beach route won in a rout. (Nice turn of phrase, don’t you think?)
After consulting with the driver she said there would be too much traffic to go by Ipanema Beach but we could manage Copacabana Beach. The main road runs right along it and it shouldn’t delay our return too much. She was correct. The problem was that the bus kept moving so all I could shoot was video. We did stop shortly when some idiotic driver decided to stop in the middle of both lanes for some reason and I took my one and only photograph of the beach from shore side. We returned to the ship at about 2pm just in time for our 3pm departure.
To get back to the ship in this port you had to walk through a little shopping area that had a variety of tourist goods for sale. There was a small café and also a bar in case you wanted to get a drink at a lower price than the ship. In the aisle down the middle were various advertising racks and other tourist information. One thing in particular caught Diana’s eye. One of those boards you stand behind and stick your head through for photographs. We tend to like them for some reason. This one was of a Samba couple and we had to stop for a shot.
The sail away was great. The captain said it would be one of the best in the world, tied with New York and Sydney. He was right. From our birth in the inner harbor we sailed past Guanabara Bay and Beach, Flamengo Beach, Botafogo Beach, Pão de Açúcar (I just couldn’t resist writing Sugar Loaf in Portuguese just once), Leme Beach, Copacobana Beach and Ipanema Beach; all with Crocovado and Christ the Redeemer in the background. It was very impressive. I was able to get pictures from the other ocean side of the beaches with the city, hills and favelas in full view. We were quite a way off shore so the pictures are definitely landscapes. The captain did get permission to cut closer to Sugar Loaf then is usually allowed so we could round the corner to go down to the last two beaches. It was out of the way but well worth the effort. When we finished the run along the shore we were heading southwest so we made a U-turn and headed north east to start our run to our next port.
Our entertainer was Andy Leach. He’s essentially a magician who has chosen to deemphasize the magic and build up the humor and zany stunts. He was very funny and I think he made the right choice. You just can’t do big, serious magic on a ship. They join the ship in weird places and travel from ship to ship by air all factoring into the level of difficulty in getting any reasonable sized props along with them.
Feb 19 – Today was a very restful day. I spent it catching up on my journal for Rio and resting up. I can’t say it often enough. I love days at sea. The ship is celebrating Chinese New Year tonight with a Chinese theme dinner. It’s the year 4705 on the Chinese calendar and it’s the year of the Pig. If your birth year is 1995, 1983, 1971, 1959, 1947, 1935, 1923 or 1911, you’re a pig and there’s nothing you can do about it. The Chinese zodiac system says that pigs have excellent manners, make and keep friends, work very hard and appreciate luxury. Anyone fit this description? All the dining room stewards, captains and assistants were dressed in Chinese garb. The maitre’d, whose haircut is just like mine, fastened a Chinese pigtail to the back of his head and wore the robes of a Chinese mucky-muck. He looked great. I had Peking duck and it was very good!
The entertainment was a variety showtime of the last three acts because they are getting off the ship in Salvador, Brazil.
Feb 20 – Salvador, Brazil. Here we are in the state of Bahia, more specifically the city of Salvador. This is the place where, in 1500, Pedro Alvares Cabral made the first European contact with the native peoples of the area. The city’s full name is São Salvador da Bahia de Todos os Santos. I’ve discovered that most of the cities down here have longer names then those that appear on the map. This is especially true of cities established during the colonial period. Later cities like Brasilia conform to the more modern naming modes.
The city was founded in 1549 and was the first capital of Brazil. In 1763 the capital was moved to Rio and in the middle of the last century moved again to Brasilia. (I love saying the last century and meaning the 1900s, it’s just too cool.) The state of Bahia is in the northern part of the country and it is a much poorer area than the south around Rio. At least 70% of its population is classified as Afro-Brazilian. The cooking styles, the spices and the dress are definitely recognizable as African. The food here is much spicier than in the richer south. They are known for their laid back, ‘party on’ attitude. Their music has a definite African influence, lots of percussion, and this makes Salvador one of the most exciting places to spend Carnival, which happens to be today. One proof of the party attitude is that, while Carnival may be the big blow-out of the year the people here celebrate more than 20 other festivals during the year, almost 2 a month. We have a walking tour of the old city this morning. I expect the streets to be pretty empty early on.
We left the ship by bus at 8am for a short drive to the place where we can get to the Cidade Alta (upper city). Old Salvador has two sections just like Quebec, upper and lower city. The difference is that here the older part of the city is upper city and the newer, more commercial part is lower city (Cidade Baixa). The city developed this way because in the 1500s what is now the lower city was ocean. The lower city is built on reclaimed land. A church where the congregants used to arrive by boat is now 6 blocks inland.
It’s a pretty steep climb to the upper city so they have installed elevators to get up and down. In the old days the monks had a lift system that relied on pulleys and manpower but those have been replaced with very modern and fast Otis elevators. The 24-story ride takes only 1 minute. It takes our ships elevators that long to go 5 decks. Usually you have to pay a few centavos to ride it but during Carnival it’s free. It’s known as the Elevator
Lacerda and it goes from very near the city’s larges market, the Mercado Modelo in the lower city, to the Praça Municipal (Municipal Park) in the upper city. We used this elevator several times later in the day but our guide took us up a very small elevator on the other side of the city so we could walk all the way across the city, ride the Elevator Lacerda down and wind up down at the Mercado Modelo.
We walked up a very narrow cobbled street that was decorated with colorful circles that represented ladies in traditional dress as though you were looking down on them from above. These decorations were hung above the street on wires that went from side to side. There were streamers of white, red, purple, yellow and white hanging from the same wire. We turned on to Rua Gregoriria de Matos. This street is decorated with colorful silhouettes of the same dancing ladies on the wires.
It was on this street that we ran into the home of one of the Carnival groups in the city, the Gandhys. They adhere to the principals that guided the life of Mahatma Gandhi; they just spell it differently. It just happened that the leader was sitting in front of the building. They wear turbans and robes that are primarily white with mineral blue trim. They wear lots of blue and white beads and I get the idea that their rank in the club is shown by the other types of necklaces they wear. The leader was wearing many different types of beads and if they had been gold it would have been a display worthy of Mr. T. He was a very happy man and was more than pleased when I asked him if he would be in a photo with Diana. He was carrying a short metal cane that was clearly ceremonial as it was much too small to be used as one. The best I could determine by sign language is that it serves as the staff of office for the club.
Then we kept to the left on Rua Pelourinho to get to Largo do Pelourinho. Pelourinho means whipping post and this square commemorates the day in 1888 when Dom Pedro II freed the slaves of Brazil, the last western country to adopt emancipation. The square is very interesting and according to UNESCO is one of the best surviving examples of 17th and 18th century architecture in the New World. Looking down the hill you can see three churches. The closest one is Igreja de Nossa Senhora do Rosario dos Pretos (the Church of Our Lady of the Rosary for the Blacks). It was built in 1704 in the Baroque style by and for the area’s slaves. The side altars hold statues of all the black Catholic saints. Brazil was the cornerstone of the slave trade with Europe and the US for years. At the high end of the square is the Casa de Jorge Amado. This building housed the city’s slave market. Today it is a cultural center and for Carnival they have erected 4 very colorful 8 foot in diameter pinwheels.
We exited the Plaza on Rua Alfredo do Brito, making a U turn of sorts to head up to Terrerio de Jesus (Jesus’ Terrace). This small square has three churches and a row of craft stores. Many are closed today, as it’s the last day of Carnival. Some have opened this morning, as there are seven cruise ships in port. The Cathedral Basilica is on the Northwest side. It was built in the 17th century and has tiles made in Macao, another Portuguese colony, in the 16th century adorning the sacristy.
A little further down is the Igreja São Domingos de Gusmão da Ordem Terceira, the Church of the Third Order of St. Dominic. This Baroque church was built in 1723 and has a collection of processional saints used in festivals. These sculptures often had hollow interiors and were used to smuggle gold into Portugal to avoid taxes.
The third, and most majestic church is the Igreja de São Francisco, the Church of St. Francis. This is another magnificent baroque church from the 1700s and it still has an active monastery. The ceiling was painted by Joaquim da Rocha a mulatto who founded the first Brazilian art school. The interior is covered in gold leaf; some estimate would weigh in at about a ton. We spent about an hour there looking around and Diana did some souvenir shopping.
We left Jesus Terrace on Rua de Misericórdia heading across the Sé Park to the Municipal Square. On the way we passed the Igreja of Santa Casa Misericórdia and I’m not sure how that translates. It’s a church of some sort. Just to the south of the square is the Palacio Rio Branco, once the home of the governor of Bahia. It’s on the site of the original colonial government of Brazil
From there we looked around a bit and then rode the Elevador Lacerda down to the Mercado Modelo plaza for some shopping.
We reboarded the bus for a tour of the city. We drove out to the Bay of All Saints where, because the tide was out, a sizeable stretch of mud flats was exposed. There were some fishermen out in the water waist deep, casting small fishing nets. On the mud flats themselves there were small groups of people digging oysters. Our guide says that the water in this area is not particularly clean but the people gather and eat the oysters anyway.
The area along the bay is an older part of the city. In one of the old houses Art Prentice, of African heritage despite his name, has a tile studio where he produces his own hand made tiles. He and his assistants are the only artists in Bahia who make their own tiles, fire them and decorate them. All this is done on the first floor of the house. He and his family live upstairs. The tiles depict local sites and people in Afro-Brazilian attire. The buildings are fairly detailed and complete, the people are often somewhat stylized. They were very unique and beautiful and I couldn’t resist buying some.
From the studio we drove up into the hilly area of the city to the Igreja de Nosso Senhor do Bonfim or Our Lord of Good Ending (the crucified Jesus at the moment of his death) church. This is a very popular site in Brazil for pilgrimages. It was built in 1754 and has a reputation for miraculous healings. As you approach the church young boys and women will sell you a colored ribbon, called Fitinhas, to tie on your wrist. The different colors represent different needs, spiritual, physical or financial. You tie them on your wrist with three knots representing three requests and when the ribbon finally falls off, your requests are granted. It’s a Catholic church but as is the custom in many areas of the world is has a connection with a local deity as well. In this case the Candomblé (an African religion) deity Oxalá.
From here the bus took us directly back to the ship after which Diana and I grabbed some lunch on the ship and then headed back to the upper city. We want to get a little taste of the last day of Carnival in Salvador. We walked to the Elevador Lacerda, a little over a mile and a half from the ship and after waiting in line for about 20 minutes, took the elevator to the upper city. When we arrived we found the Rua da Misericórdia lined with semi trucks pulling large trailers. Each trailer had a bandstand on top with platforms on each end but it was not clear what was inside the trailers because the sides were mesh grillwork that had been painted like those one-way screens you can buy for privacy. It didn’t take long to discover what was behind the screens, massive amphitheater style speakers. When the first band started to warm up on the truck we were standing by I thought I might loose my eardrums. Loud would be understating it by hundreds of decibels.
We walked past 10-12 of these rigs, each with the same basic elements, the bandstand on top, the platforms front and back above the top level and the midsection filled with large speakers. They each had the emblem of a club that was to perform in the Carnival celebration. What they do is the club band climbs up to the rooftop bandstand; some dancers and club dignitaries get into the platforms fore and aft of the band. Marchers, often including dancers, and a drum line form up in front of and behind the truck. The plans is for each of these rigs and accompanying ground troops to perform as they go down the street and then stop at the 3-way intersection at the bottom of the hill to put on a 30-40 minute performance for the temporary grandstands. When that club is done the truck pulls up the other side of the hill and a club truck from the other street of the 3-way intersection pulls in to perform, then our street gets a turn and so on.
The problem is that our street, the other ingress street and the egress street are totally clogged with people, and I mean shoulder to shoulder. Fear not, over the years they have formulated a plan to make space for the marchers and the trucks. They take long blue ropes and tie one end of the rope to each side of both the front and back bumpers of the trucks. People wearing blue ‘Cordero de Paz’, Cordon of Peace, t-shirts take hold of the rope and stretch it taught in front of and behind the trucks in a loop as wide as the street and as far out as it will go creating an empty zone inside the rope that the marchers then fill in. As the truck moves slowly forward the Cordon of Peace rope handlers keep the rope taught and this creates a space for the truck to move into. The people in the street squeeze back toward the sidewalk to let the cordon through. The rope handlers try to keep a bit of free space in front of the first marchers to allow for the truck to go at a steady snail’s pace so the driver isn’t constantly on the clutch. It’s amazing how well this simple thing with the rope works. The crowd seemed to part like magic as though the ropes and the truck were a ship moving through water. The people parted in the front and as soon as the rear cordon passed they closed in just like liquid filling a void. It was amazing to watch. No one shoved, or pushed; everyone just move out of they way and then returned to their previous position.
When a truck from the other street took its turn in the intersection performing, we could just stand in the middle of our street and look down the hill to see the performance. The closer you were to the truck in the intersection the tighter the people were packed. Anywhere near the truck was like a Mosh Pit at a punk nightclub. If you don’t know what that is just ask anyone under 30 and they’ll be able to tell you. A rugby player would describe it as a gigantic scrum. Each of the three streets, ours, the other street that had trucks coming down and the street the trucks drove up to exit the performance area, was packed with people. Our guide told me that there would be 2 million people on the streets tonight and I think I can see 30% of them from where I’m standing. All the balconies of the buildings lining the streets have people on them, as do the rooftops. As time goes by the crowd just keeps getting bigger and bigger. At first we were some distance from the crowd. In a very short time we were on the edge of the crowd and about 5pm we were definitely in the crowd and the street filled up like puddle in the rain and crowd level just kept moving higher and higher up our street.
The intersection they picked for the performances was well chosen. All three streets that intersect there go uphill from the intersection. This makes each street a sort of standing grandstand. Also there is a small square where the three streets meet and that has been filled with temporary grandstands that I’m sure have an admission charge. They reminded me of the grandstands they set up on Pasadena Blvd. for the Rose Parade. Our challenge will be to get back to the ship before it sails. I plan to allow lots of time as moving through the crowd will be difficult. This celebration will go on until about 6am tomorrow and the crowd will really start getting big about 9pm.
The first club to perform was CEN. The full name indicated that it was a confederation of people representing black slave descendants. Their symbol was a double-headed axe and their colors were red, white and black. They had marchers and a drum line in front of their truck. A man in a yellow shirt was their drum major and set the beat and the pace for the group. A little old lady, not in their uniform, with a small stick kept trying to get in the act but everyone ignored her with a good humor.
When their truck came by I had to turn my back and hold my ears the sound was so loud. The bands are mostly drums, guitars and other percussion instruments (ex. cymbals, shakers, rattles, etc.). Some of the more modern bands had keyboards and bass.
The next band on our street was the Gandhys. They had hundreds of marchers, a drum line, a little Gandhy on a white elephant, several small floats with people on them and two large trucks separated by marchers. The first truck was the band and sound. The second truck had the club dignitaries and dancers on top. The Gandhys were the largest group we saw. In
addition to those in the parade there were Gandhys coming and going up and down the hill all night. There must have been several thousand of them. Either that or the same 30 kept going up and down the hill all night. Later in the evening there were a lot of them standing around us enjoying the shows put on by the other clubs. When the Gandhy trucks pulled up the exit hill the white turbans on the marchers’ heads made it look like a slope of snow. Both the CEN and the Gandhys played traditional African and Brazilian music.
Lest you think this is just all fun and games I feel I should remind you that we are only 12 degrees off the Equator here and it is hot and humid, there’s no place to sit and the sun was up until about 6pm.
After the Gandhys left the intersection two trucks in a row came into the performance area from the other street. They were far less traditional in their music and style. The bands had keyboards along with a brass section and the songs they were singing were obviously pop songs in Brazil. Everyone knew the lyrics and hopped and swayed and clapped on cue. It was pretty amazing to see a chorus line of thousands all hopping, clapping, waving and jumping on cue. Pretty wild.
The first truck from the other street had a female soloist dressed in a green one-piece bathing suit like costume. She had a great voice and was very energetic. As the truck pulled into the intersection she was on the front platform high up on the front of the trailer. As it pulled into the intersection and stopped she moved to the center section of the roof with the rest of the band. They had a brass section as well as the keyboard and while drums and rhythm were still important, lyrics and musicality were just as important. I think she was well known to the crowd as they cheered her arrival with gusto. She performed for about 30-40 minutes before the truck pulled up the far hill with her still singing
As the next truck pulled into the intersection from the other street it is getting pretty dark for pictures but I’m still trying. Wide-angle shots are still working but the telephoto makes the f-stops so small that the shutter speeds won’t allow me to hold the camera still enough. This truck has another modern band with a male soloist. He was even better received than the previous performer so I’m assuming that the crowd likes him better or he’s better known or the crowd is drunker. I’m not sure which because there’s a lot of beer drinking going on all up and down the street.
This brings me to the only other negative aspect of this experience besides the heat. Apparently everyone in town that can afford a Styrofoam cooler, some ice and a couple of 6 packs of beer fancies him or herself to be a beer vendor. Now I’m in favor of private enterprise and I like to see the little guy hustle to make a living but the one consistent thing was how these titans of the liquor industry advertise their wares. The find an empty beer can, put a few pebbles in it and shake it vigorously over their heads. For about the first hour this sound is noticeable but not remarkable. For the second hour it begins to wear a little thin. The third hour it’s really getting on your nerves. The fourth hour you want to strangle the idiot with his little beer can rattle. I mean, they only started out with a small cooler that holds at most 12 beers. If four hours of shaking that rattle can hasn’t produced enough customers to sell out, why would you think the next rattle would bring a sales rush? Eternal optimism, not a bad idea but these guys should get a clue. They do provide a public service however. The sound of an empty aluminum can hitting the sidewalk or street sends them scurrying to pick it up, crush it and put in a bag they have tied to their belts.
The last band we heard was the Filhas de Olorum. If that name sounds familiar to you, move immediately to the head of the 60s rock and roll trivia class. They made an album with Paul Simon in the early 70s that was a big hit but their fame was fleeting. It did introduce Americans to the beat of Afro-Brazilian rhythms and that’s what makes me remember it. Prior to that all I knew of Brazilian music was Samba (The Girl from Ipanema sound) and the jazz of A C Jobim. The earlier generation had Carmen Miranda’s music but she was over before I was music conscious.
The Olorum had a group very energetic dancers and a trio of excellent singers. Their outfits were red and white and their symbol was the same double-headed axe as the CENs. The women marching in front of them were dressed in the long, large skirted white dresses adorned with lace that were on part of many of the decorations around the city. The women dancers had on long, slit sided, white hip hugger skirts with red or white tube tops. They also wore a strange type of sleeve. It was tied around their upper arm and was open all the way down from the tie. When they were standing still it looked like they were wearing a midriff peasant shirt. When they started dancing it became apparent that the sleeves were not connected to the rest of their outfit and the arms waived with their motions like flags hanging from their arms. The men wore white slacks and red vests with no shirt.
It was starting to get dark so we began the trek back to the ship. All over town there are enterprising chefs cooking on the sidewalk to feed the hungry revelers. First we had to retrace our steps uphill to the Municipal Square. There was a stage up there with a band playing. We paused a few minutes to listen to them. Then we headed to the elevator and down to the lower city. After that it was just the hike back to the ship. We entered the port area at the closest spot to the elevators and walked along the pier past all the other ships in port with us for Carnival. One of the ships was the University at Sea. Apparently if your parents can afford it you can spend a semester at sea touring some part of the world as you attend classes on board. Needless to say the passengers on that ship are at least 40 years younger on average that my fellow travelers on the Prinsendam. There was also a Costa Lines ship and at least 4 others, all gaily lighted for the evening in port. We were exhausted. We had been on the walking tour all morning, then walked back to the city and stood all afternoon watching the Carnival festivities and then hiked back to the ship. Between the exercise, the heat and the humidity we were pretty well wasted. We had a little dinner in the lido, watched the show and went to bed.
Feb 21 – A day at sea and after two days of Carnival in Rio and Fat Tuesday in Salvador, I need both this one and the next. Didn’t do much today except read and work on my pictures from the last two ports.
It was a formal evening celebrating Mardi Gras. The staff was dressed in brightly colored costumes and had masks. I wore my flashiest tie and cummerbund, they
remind me of abalone shell in color and Diana wore a green mask she bought in Rio. Actually I think it came with a DVD of the Carnival club competition.
The entertainment was different and very good. A group of four singers and a pianist named Opera Interludes, performed “A Night at the Opera”. They sang songs from Mozart, Rossini, Verdi and Bizet. They had a soprano, tenor, mezzo soprano and baritone. They were excellent.
Feb 22 – Another day at sea and I feel recovered. Today is the first of four presentations of our Amazon lecturer Jean Paul Dössegger. He’s been on the ship both previous times we’ve been up the Amazon. His presentations are excellent. He’s Swiss but he has lived in Manaus for 25 years. His lectures are informative, interesting and have just a touch of humor. His unique accent adds a lot to the situation. Can you tell that I like him?
I caught up on my journal and pictures from Rio got a good jump on Salvador so I’m just about breaking even. There’s not much to see in a normal day at sea, rarely you might see a freighter, very rarely another cruise ship and most rarely a military ship. We are not very far from land here and there is a large quantity of bird life.
The ship celebrated Washington’s Birthday and the staff and dining room were dressed up on red, white and blue.
Our entertainer was Phil Walker, a British comedian. His humor was a little too British for most of the audience but I watch so much BBC TV that I’m pretty tuned in and thought he was very funny.
Feb 23 – Fortaleza, Brazil. This is the first port since Panama that we have been to before. It’s the place where Brazilians come for vacation. There’s not much foreign tourism here yet, but when it gets cold in the south around Rio and Sao Paulo (read cold as 60°F) they escape it by coming up to Fortaleza.
The city was founded in 1611 and is in the state of Ceará. This area of the country is known for its natural resources. The main exports from here are coffee, cotton, carnauba wax, beans, rice, sugar, fruit, rubber, hides, skins and cachaça (pronounced ca-sha’-sa).
Our travel agent, Cruise Specialists, has given us a free tour here. We are headed out to a ranch about an hour from town to tour the grounds and then tour the cachaça museum. Cachaça is the national alcoholic beverage of Brazil and is distilled sugar cane juice. The traditional kind is clear but they have some that are aged in barrels of different types of wood that give them a different flavor and color.
It’s raining off and on today and our guide told us that the rainy season here is usually March through May but this year it started early. Apparently this region is a lot like California, brown in the summer because it never rains and green in the winter. He said we are seeing it at its best but not its most typical because everything is so green. It looked very lush to me but apparently much of it is very dry most of the year.
When we arrived at the farm we were greeted in a large wooden vat that serves as the entry gate and boarded carriages for the trip to the facility. The carriages took three people at a time and the ride was only about 5 minutes but it was fun. When we boarded and disembarked the carriages they had staff with umbrellas to make sure that we didn’t get wet, very good service. When we got to the assembly area the staff served us fresh sugar cane juice. It’s a little bit green and has a very mild coconut tang to it and it’s very sweet.
Our group was split in two and one half went on the museum tour while our half went on a trailer pulled by a tractor around the farm. We toured the cane fields, the cashew orchards and the mango orchards. We went to the house where the family lived in the 1800s; they’ve been in business here 160 years. The house is maintained for special celebrations and is still furnished with the original family furniture.
Because much of the year is dry the family built an aqueduct in 1910 to provide water to the fields and the families that live on the ranch. It looks like a brick version of a Roman aqueduct and runs from special reservoirs they had built in the hills all across the farm. Some places it was about 25 feet tall. When we got to the house, which was located on a little hill, I noticed that the aqueduct ran right across the yard, from front to back, at ground level. When you approach the house the first thing you see in the front yard is a large swimming pool. The pool is about 4 feet lower than the house and the front yard slopes gently up to the front porch. The aqueduct runs between the house and the pool and has a small waterfall that drains some water from the aqueduct. This diverted stream runs down into the pool and since the pool has a small drain at the top of the wall on the opposite side, without any pumps the water in the pool is constantly circulated as fresh water runs in one side and out the other. Very impressive engineering, to hit ground level at the house with a constant downhill slope from a reservoir that is miles away in the hills. Can’t be too steep or the water runs too fast but must have a negative slope to keep the water moving. I thought that was great.
The fifth generation of the family is currently running the farm and distilleries and the sixth is waiting in the wings, but are still very young. These guys are very good businessmen. Every detail is well thought out, from the buggy rides, to the staff with large umbrellas to get the tourists to and from the buggies without getting us too wet and the very attractive girls in very conservative uniforms that served us the sugar cane juice, every detail was perfect.
When they wanted to break into the export market they formulated a special brew that suited the German market and they were off. They export to many markets and have special packaging and formulations for each. In fact, the product they export to California is different from the product they export to Florida and New York. I’m telling you these guys are marketing geniuses.
Here in Brazil the cachaça is very inexpensive. A bottle about the size of a fifth of whiskey in the US is about $2. The good stuff they export to California was $3 and the special blend they made for their 150th anniversary was only $5 in a commemorative bottle with two glasses bearing the company name.
After the tour of the ranch we returned to the visitor’s center to take the tour of the cachaça museum. It was very informative; they had a separate room for each of the generations of the family from the founder to today. Each has pictures and artifacts from that era with information of the changes in the business and economy that were encountered. No photos were allowed. The most impressive sight was the largest wooden barrel in the world. It’s 26.25 feet tall, 25.75 feet in diameter and can hold 98,800 US gallons of cachaça. It’s certified by the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest wooden barrel. It’s in its own building and I couldn’t get far enough from it to get it all in a picture.
At the end of the tour you walked between some of the large vats that hold the aging cachaça. The smell was almost enough to give you a little buzz, but not unpleasant. At the end there was a tasting room where you could sample various grades of the product. The make some mixed with passion fruit, lime and mango. They have just recently formulated a chocolate version that is very low in alcohol, 16%, but very big in taste. It was very thick and very chocolaty.
We had a buffet lunch at the farm and it was delicious. They had three kinds of meat, beef, chicken and pork, plus grilled tilapia. They cut the in chunks on the bias sort of like salmon steaks but in much thicker slices, perhaps 2 inches. They grilled the fish, skin and all, after marinating it in a very nice sauce. The skin was crisp and the fish tender. You just had to watch out for bones because they cut it just as it was. It was by far the best thing on the menu. At buffets I like to take just a little of everything to try it out and then go back for the best stuff.
I went back for the tilapia and something that if I had been judging by looks I might not have taken. It was a brown ball about an inch and a half in diameter and looked pretty boring. Well it wasn’t! It was a deep fried ball of mashed potatoes with dried beef and spices. They were great, the next best thing to the fish!! All the food was good. They had fried yucca (also big in Peru), potatoes, rice and beans with cheese, and lots of things I couldn’t identify but that were very tasty.
In Brazil they like their sweets really sweet. For desert they had, fried bananas, sweet coconut, dulce de leche (exactly like the Mexican dish, in Portuguese that’s not what they call it but that’s what it is), mango, papaya and custard similar to flan. The latter was the least sweet. The rest were very sweet indeed.
It was a nice, low-key day. When we left the farm they gave each of us a bottle of the cachaça, the type they export to California. Not the small airline bottle or even a pint but the full sized bottle.
After lunch it was on the bus and back to the city. We stopped at a native craft store on the way in to satisfy the shopping urges of the women. They had wares from the sublime to the ridiculous. A great example was two versions of the Last Supper. One was carved from wood in the very recognizable Leonardo da Vinci mode; the other was a painted plaster cast of the scene superimposed on a human face about where the mouth would be. “Muito incomun!!” as the locals would say. Then back to the ship.
Our entertainment was a performance by the new cast we have onboard. We switched casts with the Amsterdam and the new cast is 10 performers rather than the 6 we had before. They sang and danced to songs that had won a Tony, Oscar, Grammy, etc. They are very talented and the show was great.
Feb 24 – Today we are at sea again. Next stop, the Amazon. Once again, on a day at sea I’m taking the time to relax
Opera Interludes was back again this evening with a program done in Victorian dress that imitates the style of performance you might have seen at a Victorian ball. The ladies looked very different in their large crinoline skirts but the men’s tuxedos looked for the most part, contemporary. They performed songs from Mozart, Verdi, Bizet, Puccini and Offenbach. Their encore song was from Porgy and Bess, a little more modern.
Feb 25 – Belém, Brazil. This is our first time in Belém. This is supposed to be the poorest area of Brazil so we’ll have to see how it looks. I might feel at home here since Belém is Portuguese for Bethlehem and that’s the Post Office for Salisbury Township, Pennsylvania, where I grew up.
We are anchored in Icoaracy Village about a half hour drive from Belém. Our ship is too large to dock at the city pier so we anchor up here and take a shuttle bus into town. Diana and I are on a city tour so we don’t have to take the shuttle, our tour bus will be here to pick us up. Usually when we tender in a port we use the ship’s tenders but today there are three large riverboats that will be doing the duty. The three of them can hold almost all the passengers so there shouldn’t be a crowd waiting for tender numbers to be called.
The bus we got was double decked and very modern. Our first stop was at the Basilica do Nossa Senhora de Nazaré (Our Lady of Mercy Basilica). This place holds a position of very high importance with the people of this city. The statue of the Virgin is highly revered. It was made in Nazareth during the first centuries of the modern era. When the Moors captured Spain in the 8th century, the statue, which had been in Gauliana, was moved to Portugal for safety. The virgin was lost for several centuries until it resurfaced in the Middle Ages. The so-called “period of great relief” in Europe as the plague had just ended and as the result of a series of questionable miracles a cult formed around the statue. This sect was part of a larger group of missionaries that traveled to Brazil to evangelize the indigenous people and they brought the statue with them.
On the second Sunday of October they hold an extraordinary festival devoted to the virgin and hundreds of thousands of people gather for a procession as the statue is carried from the Cathedral to the Basilica. It is still believed that the statue has miraculous powers.
The inside of the church has lots of mosaics. Just inside the main door to the right was a five-panel mosaic of saints that was very nice. It appears that many of the mosaic tiles are at least partly gold. The Stations of the Cross are also done in mosaic and set in carved marble frames, also very pretty.
But the crowning glory of the church is the altar. It appears to be carved entirely of different types of marble...At the bottom is a shelf divided by a box at the center, which has an ornate bronze door. On each side there are three large candlesticks that each hold a long electric candle.
Above this shelf is another that is also divided but this time by a cupola that covers an ornate crucifix. On each side of the cupola are two angels carved from marble, one on each side kneeling and one standing, each holding a 5 place candelabra. The standing angels are about 4 feet tall.
On each side, between the two 4-foot angels and slightly above them are two larger angels that are flying and looking up. The angels are looking at a large, wreath-like circular marble carving representing a mob of cherubs, the top two holding a crown between them. In the center of this carving is the statue of the virgin that was brought from Portugal in a glass case. Behind the carving and the virgin is a huge gold and white sunburst. It was pretty impressive but the interior was dark and I had to hand hold a one second shot. I think it’s pretty blurry but it will give you some idea of how it looked.
From the Basilica we drove to the city’s botanical garden. It’s a combination zoo and garden that has only flora and fauna indigenous to the area. It was fairly busy as this is a Sunday. The first things we encountered were snakes, boas and anacondas. The boas were in the trees and the anacondas were resting on the bottom of their pools. Next was the manatee exhibit. They were once very common in the Amazon but hunting has diminished their number to almost zero in the wild. There’s a program up river in Manaus to breed them and reintroduce them to some areas because they eat the vegetation that will otherwise choke the lakes and streams. The breeding program is very successful, the problem is that when they reintroduce them the first person that comes upon them kills them for food and the leather hide.
The next few exhibits were turtles and alligators. Mostly they were in separate enclosures but one exhibit had both. They seem to coexist very well. In fact, several turtles were taking alligator rides while we watched. Yikes.
Next we encountered a pond where giant Vitoria Regia (Queen Victoria) water lilies grow. Some of the pads were at least 5 feet across. They start out small and sort of bunched up and wrinkled. Slowly over a period of days the spread out and flatten until they are very flat with about a 1-inch rim around the edge. The immature leaves are very pretty as the underside is red and prickly. It makes a nice contrast with the green upper surface. All sorts of insects live on them but there were no frogs on them when we were there. When the leaves die, in just a few days, they sort of corrode from the edges in. They appear to be rusting away.
On the bank of the pond I found another very strange flowering plant. The flower is a white, five-pointed star shape with a very red center. Around the flower are bright red sepals. The example I found had four sticking out at the cardinal points but if you looked closely there were more immature red sepals to come in. Very pretty!
Our next encounter was with jaguars. They had two of them in separate cages. Some idiots didn’t turn the flash off on their cameras, although there was plenty of light and the flashing caused the cats to move back in their cages. I did manage to get one lousy shot before they moved. I was hoping for a better pose.
Monkeys were scampering about in the next several exhibits. Spider monkeys were moving around the most. The others were just sitting there watching us watch them.
After that came bird enclosures, macaws, egrets, ibis, parrots, toucans and other birds were all there to be seen. This was a great park and worth the visit to Belém even if we hadn’t seen anything else.
Next we headed to the riverfront to the Ver-o-peso Market. Ver-o-peso literally means “see the weight”, a reference to the days when the Portuguese weighed everything going in and out of the city for tax purposes. It’s a throwback market where people sell all sorts of locally made products. The area is known for its ceramics and articles woven from straw. There are booths there that sell fruit juice, fruit and nuts (both Brazil and cashew). In one area there were restaurants that were largely just counters to sit at with a small prep area for the cook. The food looked pretty good. Mostly there was rice, potatoes, fish, chicken and noodles of some sort. Every place had sauces and condiments to add to your taste. When I paused to take a picture of people eating at one place a lady and her husband in the background gave me big smiles.
Have I mentioned that these are very friendly people? Well, I cannot in any way over emphasize that thought. That’s why I am willing to put up with the heat and humidity; I love these people. They may not have much but they are happy and outgoing and just plain fun to be around.
One special type of shop they have in this market is the mandingueira. These women claim they can cure any ‘problem’ with miracle jungle roots, potions, animal parts and charms. Disease, romance, money, depression, you name it; nothing is beyond their powers. They have great sales pitches and some of the oils, ointments and potions they have smell very nice. They are very colorful and hang from loops in strings all around their consultation booths. Some in our group were buying but I’m not sure what they wanted to change. One of the mandingueiras kept holding up a bottle of purple liquid with some twigs in it and shouting, ‘Viagra, Viagra!!’ and laughing.
As we left the market to walk over to the fort we encountered a group of youths, mostly girls but some boys. They started posing for pictures. Ah, the beauty of digital photography. You take their picture and then you show it to them. They grin from ear to ear and point and laugh. It’s fun to watch their reaction.
We walked around a small wharf area where some small river boars were moored. The area is just a block from the fort and is obviously of colonial origin. Some of the buildings have been renovated and are now restaurants, tobacco shops, etc. The colonial wharf building was very interesting. It had spires at the corners and was painted a very pleasing blue. In the small wharf square there were lots of black vultures eating fish remains that had obviously been tossed overboard after fish were cleaned aboard the boats.
Then it was on to Forte do Presépio. The fort was established on January 12, 1616 and is considered to be Belém’s birthplace. The fort was a base for exploration of the Amazon River system and protection against incursions by other nations, mostly Holland and Spain. They unearthed over two dozen canons of British and Portuguese manufacture during a recent renovation.
Across the square from the fort is the Catedral da Sé. It is adorned with Carrara marble and the high altar is a gift from Pope Pius IX. It’s an interesting mix of baroque, colonial and neoclassical styles but it all works very well.
From the cathedral square it was back to Icoaracy Village where we catch the tender to the ship. When we returned to the village the dock area was totally transformed. There were kids everywhere sitting on the dock, swimming, diving from the pylons and watching the tourists. After a short wait we boarded the riverboat that was acting as our tender and went back to the ship.
The Academy Awards are on tonight and they will be showing them in the Queen’s Lounge on the big screen. Diana and I went down to see them although we never watch them at home. Somehow a crowd of mostly pinheaded liberals engaging in narcissistic self-congratulation interspersed with not so veiled political rhetoric is generally not interesting to me. Wonder why that is?
This evening is a little different. When Diana and I saw the movie ‘The Queen’ I told her it should be nominated for multiple Academy Awards and as I wrote on Jan 24 you should go see it. I wanted to see if the idiots could get something right and select Helen Mirren and the move as the year’s best.
Peter Daems, our cruise director sat beside Diana and me at the rear of the auditorium. I like Peter a lot and will miss him when he retires from cruising after his marriage in June. It will be a great loss to HAL. He’s a movie buff, big time, and it was fun to sit with him and discuss the goings on. It somewhat compensated for having to see that idiot Al Gore every 2 minutes. It did not, however, compensate for the Academy voting his trash film best documentary.
This is the second year in a row that a quasi-documentary full of half-truths, total lies and misrepresentations has won for best documentary. Michael Moore’s huge pile of garbage won last year and the trend seems to be continuing. Apparently to qualify for the award in this category the films no longer have to be fact based. They just have to be supportive of a liberal political agenda. Don’t misunderstand, I do believe that the earth is warming but I’m bright enough to know that if humans are influencing it at all it’s in the margins. The earth has cooled and warmed before man was part of the equation, if you accept the idea that the earth is billions of years old. Even the scientists from Palmer station in Antarctica, at the leading edges of their various sciences said that, although the earth is warming NOONE, and I assume that includes the self-proclaimed ‘inventor of the internet, Al Gore, knows the reason or reasons why!! In fact, they studiously avoided using the political term ‘global warming’ in favor of the more accurate term ‘climate change’ because while in the short term the trend is warmer, at any moment an event could occur that will change the trend in the other direction.
When I was studying science I was told that for something to be thought of as fact you had to be able to reproduce it consistently in experiments. Now apparently if a computer model says it’s so, it becomes fact. The unmentioned dirty little secret in this story is that the same computer models that are now being used to predict the path of climate change were predicting a new ice age when they were used in the late ‘50s early ‘60s. I remember reading articles in Popular Science and The Scientific American magazines about the coming ice age. What made these models switch to global warming you might ask? The programmers altered the code to include a new set of assumptions while supposedly updating the models. None of these assumptions has been verified through scientific experimentation or observation. So you’ll just have to forgive me if I think we have a long way to go before we know what’s going on with the climate. Remember the same scientists have to admit that we are just one large volcano away from a three-year long winter. That would slow ‘global warming’ down at bit I’d say. The main source of free methane in the atmosphere is flatulence from mammals. Perhaps we’d all be better off if nonproductive mammals were eliminated. This would drastically reduce the methane problem. I’ll bet that the PITA people and Earth Firsters wouldn’t get behind that solution because it’s as ridiculous as most of their proposals.
I kind of like it when I get a little peeved while I’m writing. Sometimes the things that appear on the screen crack me up. My fingers are flying so fast that I’m eternally grateful for spell check.
Anyway, Helen Mirren won and that made me happy, as I said on Jan 24, I’ve been a big fan of hers for years. Diana and I saw ‘The Departed’ in Fargo, ND. We liked it, although I thought The Queen was much better. However, I am not offended that ‘The Departed’ won.
The best part of the evening was the best song category. I like music and since Dreamgirls, which I haven’t seen, had three songs nominated I thought I’d get to hear some good 60s girl group music. Absolutely every one of the nominated songs, including all three from Dreamgirls, stank. In 5 years no one will remember any of this trash. The great equalizer was when they, predictably, gave the Oscar to the worst of the lot, the song from An Inconvenient Halftruth, I got to hear Melissa Ethridge thank his ‘wife’ for her support. A truly great moment in TV!! Sorry about the incorrect pronoun usage but it was helping to make my point.
Ellen was totally blah as MC. She wasn’t bad but she certainly wasn’t funny either. Where’s Billy Crystal when you need him. How can a three-hour show run 1.5 hours over? I don’t want these show biz types ever to complain when a freeway or building project runs a little long. Except for the Big Dig in Boston they usually aren’t 50% behind schedule. Remember this isn’t rocket science; it’s a bunch of self-congratulatory people with huge egos yapping at a camera. It didn’t end until 2:15am in this time zone and Diana left to hit the sack at about 11:30pm. Pete and I stuck it out to the bitter end. Now I remember why I don’t watch them at home. Way too irritating.
Feb 26 – Amazon River – Today is a day “at river”. It would be at sea but we’re on the Amazon. The river is so wide down here that we are not close to either bank but we can see them. There’s other traffic in the river so there are occasional boats to watch. When you are on the Amazon it’s like coming into a port, you need a local pilot. We stopped to pick ours up at Macapa. Last time we were here we had to anchor in the river and wait for several hours while the authorities went through our passports. That didn’t happen this time because we already entered Brazil in Rio.
I spent the day attending lectures by the excellent Amazon lecturer, Jean Paul, writing and working on my pictures.
Prior to the theft of rubber tree seeds by an Englishman to start plantations in the Pacific, this area had a monopoly on rubber. It was not gown on plantations but gathered by workers from trees in the wild. All over the area the rubber plantations established camps for these workers. We passed a relatively intact one on the way up the river.
Our entertainer was Peter Fisher, a violinist. He was really very good. He could have cut down on the inane chatter between pieces but then he’d have had to play at least one more song. Oh well, the music was great!
Feb 27 – Santarém, Brazil. Today we return to Santarém for the third time. Each time we’ve been here we’ve met a guide named Krishna. The first time she was on our riverboat for the Tapajós River and Jari Canal tour. The sun was setting on the way back to the ship and Diana and Krishna had a long time to chat and get to know each other. I took their picture on the riverboat.
When we came back in November 2005 I saw her on the dock and asked her if she knew Krishna, of course she did and she and Diana hugged about five times and had a little party. I felt somewhat left out but that’s how it goes sometimes.
This time I brought a print of the picture I took on the first trip in hopes that we would see her again. Sure enough, we walked off the ship and around to our riverboat and there she was. I gave her the picture and Diana and I posed with her for another shot. As out boat pulled out she was showing the picture to her coworkers.
We’re going on one of the boat tours that I love so much. Boats have busses beat all to pieces almost anywhere in the world. You’d think I’d get enough of sailing on the ship but it’s a whole different story on small boats.
At this point perhaps a little explanation of the area is appropriate. The Amazon Basin has three distinct types of rivers that flow from the different shield areas of the basin. The Amazon is a ‘White River’ and they flow from the west. White rivers get their name from the color of the water. These rivers carry so much sediment that they look muddy, like the Mississippi in flood. They are actually pale yellow to light tan in color. The rivers that flow south from the northern land shield are ‘Black Rivers’. These rivers have a great quantity of dissolved minerals in them and are actually a rusty red/brown color. At most angles they look very black and have a wonderfully reflective surface. ‘Clear Rivers’ flow north from the southern shield land mass. They look a little green because they carry a large amount of small plant life out of the jungle in that area. The water in both the black and clear rivers is actually very clear.
White Rivers have the largest array of marine life. There are many species of Piranha that live exclusively in white rivers. Some will also live in black or clear rivers, but only where they meet with white rivers. Their danger is greatly exaggerated. They view humans as too large to be prey. In fact, baby Cayman have to hide during the day to avoid attack. But full-grown Cayman, crocodiles or alligators swim all day with immunity. They are too large also. Our Amazon lecturer has lived upriver on the Amazon for 25 years and has never heard of piranha attacking a human in all that time. The other odd animal in the waters here is the ‘Boto’, an endangered, pink, freshwater dolphin. They reach a length of 8-10 feet and weigh about 200 pounds. They are unique among dolphins in that they have unfused cervical vertebrae that allow it to turn its head 180 degrees. They also have a hump on their back instead of a dorsal fin.
Black rivers are unique in that the dissolved minerals make them very acidic; they have a Ph of about 5, the same as coffee. The nice part about this is that piranha and mosquitoes don’t like this alkaline water and these areas are clear of both. Many of the larger cities (ex: Manaus) in the Amazon Basin are on black rivers for this reason, no mosquitoes.
Clear rivers are much the same in effect; except their waters have less dissolved minerals and carry a large quantity of small plant life that makes them appear pale aqua green to clear. The city we are in, Santarém, is on the Tapajós River, which is a clear river. When the waters of these black or clear rivers meet with white rivers the temperatures and water density are so different they don’t mix for miles and miles. Locally this is called the Encontro das Águas (Wedding of the Waters). Since Santarém is on the southern bank of the Amazon (a white river) and the Tapajós (a clear river) enters from the south, the water for hundreds of yards out into the Amazon is clear river water and it does not support the breeding of mosquitoes leaving the area almost totally free of the pests.
We are touring Mica Lake a few kilometers north of Santarém down the Tapajós River just where it meets the Amazon. Since we will be in an area fed by the Amazon we might encounter some mosquitoes so we’re going to break out the deet. Mostly bugs don’t bug me but I’m going to use some anyway. These same bugs view Diana as lunch so she always uses the stuff.
We boarded a small riverboat, one deck for passengers and a lower half deck for cargo. We’re going to fish for Piranha today, that’s me on the bow, and I guess they don’t want us too far from the water.
Our first destination was out to the middle of the river to see the ‘Wedding of the Waters’. This is the local name for the fact that water from the Amazon and the Tapajós won’t mix for several miles downstream until the temperatures match better. This is a good place to see dolphin, both the black and the pink, as the fish from each type of water view the Meeting of the Waters as a barrier and won’t swim through it. The dolphins use this fact to corner the fish and have an easier time feeding. The first objective of the trip was met big time. We saw several of the black dolphins jumping and having a great time. The problem in seeing the pinks is that they don’t jump.
They are more like whales, they just surface briefly to breathe and they don’t really have a dorsal fin. We did spot the humps of two as they quickly took a breath. Unfortunately they were traveling not feeding so they were off a long distance before they came up again.
We are here in high water season so much of the surrounding fields are flooded. Cattle ranches have to use barges to move their stock to higher ground and many are gone. The river has not yet crested so some are still here. We passed several families that were still at their lowland pastures. Our guide said that they would be gone in three weeks. Almost everyone we passed was fishing. They catch and eat most of the time so the fish are very fresh. They have submerged net cages that they keep fish in if they have a really good day and catch more than they need. They keep the live fish in them until they are ready to cook them. Can’t get much fresher than that.
Most of the ranchers live like people did in the 1800s. They raise vegetables, pick fruit and nuts from the many trees in the forest, sell some livestock to get money for gas for the boat, raise chickens for meat and eggs, etc. Except for the weather and the sturdiness of the buildings this could have been my Grammy’s farm into the 1950s in PA. I guess when you have a harsher, colder climate you have to spend a little more time and effort on your housing.
After weaving along on some very narrow streams we arrived at Maica Lake for Piranha fishing. The guide gave each of us a small board with wide notches cut into each of the narrow ends. Fishing line was attached and wound up using the notches to hold the string in place. At the end of the line is a hook with a long metal shaft. I’m sure that these hooks are designed to keep sharp-toothed fish from cutting the line when you catch them. Each hook was pre-baited with red meat of some kind. Looked like beef but I’m not sure. Just above the hook was about an eighth ounce lead split sinker. We were told to let the bait get to the bottom and then back it off about 8 inches.
The water is very cloudy with sediment, this is Piranha country and they don’t like clear water. If you had a hit and wanted to see if you had any bait left you had to pull the hook all the way to the surface. Lots of people lost their bait pretty quickly. The Piranha are very quick. You have to be very fast to set the hook before they’re gone. I had several hits but the fish never had the hook in its mouth so I just lost part of the bait.
Our boat captain was a good fisherman and caught 2 fish, our guide caught one and Diana caught one so we had the four we needed for eating. They had a little grill on the stern of the ship and the guide grilled the fish and we each got a little to taste. It was a very mild, white-fleshed fish with no fishy taste at all. Quite good. Problem is they are very bony and you have to very careful when you eat them. Since we just got a small piece that the guide picked for us it wasn’t a problem.
We saw lots of wildlife on the trip, egrets, 3-toed sloth, ibis, water buffalo, dolphins (both black and pink) and lots of other birds I couldn’t identify. One was particularly striking. It had a black head, tail and wings and a breast of bright yellow. The water buffalo were mostly on the banks but one small group; about 8 were swimming up the stream. White egrets were perched on three of them, two on the backs and one on the buffalo’s head. He looked like a little white George Washington crossing the Delaware. I could almost hear him muttering, ‘Let me at those Hessians! We’ll give them a good what for!’
After fishing we cruised back past the city further up the Tapajós River to a swimming beach. Since the Tapajós is a black water river there won’t be any mosquitoes or dangerous fish. When we got to the landing area the captain just pushed the bow of the ship onto the sand and then a plank was fastened to the side of the ship that ran to the beach and we clambered down that. Well, clambered may be a little too active a description for what some of the people did but almost everyone went ashore in one fashion or another. All five boats that are doing this tour were there and, as we were the last boat to leave the ship, the beach and the water was dotted with tourists. I’d been in the water last time we were here and decided to look around in the sand and surroundings for a while.
After about 40 minutes of beach time it was back on the boat and back to the ship. When we arrived at the pier Krishna was still on duty so we said our farewells and told her we hoped to be back some day.
Our entertainer was Jimmy Tamley a ventriloquist. He had four dummies to work with and he had a unique show that was very funny.
Feb 28 – Boca da Valeria, Brazil. This is our second time here but our first time during high water season. Last time we were here in November when the river is quite low. This time we are here just before the peak of high water and the river is much higher. Last time we landed about 40 yards from the edge of the village at a rickety pier that the ship’s carpenters had to reinforce before the tenders could use it. The Valeria River was just a muddy ditch with a little trickle of water in it.
Notice the little green house on the right. In low water season it’s high and dry, in high water it’s beach property and the river is not yet at its peak. No wonder the houses are on stilts.
Today we are tendering right into the middle of the village and sailing up the Valeria River about 300 yards to get there. The water has to be about 25 feet higher than when we were last here. They call the people who live on the river ‘Caboclos’ (River Dwellers). They are generally Mestisos, a mixture of Indian and Portuguese. The village appears to be very small. Because we are stopping here people from neighboring villages are also here bringing wares to sell. They set up a small arts and crafts center of thatched roof, open-air booths in which they displayed their handicrafts. Wood carving and weaving seem to be popular. There were some clay pots and handmade dolls also.
We landed just across the square from the round elevated open building that is the village restaurant and snack bar. We opted to walk through the village and back to the riverfront to take a look at our ship and see if we could tell where the pier had been on our previous visit. The water was right at the edge of the village and there was no sign whatsoever of the pier. I think it’s under about 20 feet of water now.
There are lots of people out to see the tourists. Children are everywhere. As we walked across the village square we accumulated a small crowd of children. As we continued walking and it became apparent that we weren’t handing out anything all but one left us, a boy about 9. Unlike last time our little guide definitely had an agenda, unfortunately our plans didn’t match his but he tagged along anyway.
Our first objective was to get to the school. I haven’t been eating my good night chocolates that the ship leaves on our pillow every evening and I don’t think Diana has eaten half of hers. That means we have about 75 very good chocolates between us. We gathered up the chocolates, some stationary the ship gave us, pens, paper, cards, a leather binder and a very nice pair of binoculars that the ship gave us just before arriving in Antarctica and some other misc. things kids might like and that could be useful at the school. Diana put all this in a HAL cloth tote bag and we gave it to the teacher. They are way out in the boonies and always short of supplies so the paper and things will come in handy.
There was a young man with a monkey on the main path so Diana and I paused to have a picture with them. Like last time we were here, there were people dressed in native Indian costumes waiting for us to ask to have picture taken with them. Diana loves to pose with the children and I have to admit that they are great photo opportunities. All ages were represented. The most attractive items in the little craft mart were still the carved tablets that have figures of local sights on them. There were about 6 booths with carver’s wares and in most of them the carver was working.
Our escort soon became bored with us as we were not following his suggestions and we gave him some chocolates and a dollar and he was off to his next tourist.
We did some looking around. The school building was freshly painted and there was a new open covered platform that looked like a community center. When we got back to the snack bar Diana and I decided to have something cold to drink. I got Diana a coke but they didn’t have any diet drinks or water so I just sat with her watching the goings on. Lots of kids were pestering us to give them money or buy them a coke but two little girls were content just to stand by us and look us over.
After some time everyone, except these two girls, left and Diana gave them each a postcard from the ship. It has four pictures on the front, Machu Pichu, Tical, a tropical island and Antarctic Ice. One of the girls pointed at each picture and then looked at me. She then pointed to one picture and waited until I told her what it was. She didn’t recognize the names but when I pointed at Tical and said, ‘Guatemala’ she smiled in recognition, same with ‘Peru’ but Antarctica and Barbados (I had to pick some island to say) were not familiar to her. I used my meager Spanish, assisted greatly by Diana, to tell her that the Antarctic picture was floating ice in the ocean. (I know that Portuguese is the language of Brazil but I don’t speak that at all.) This got me a puzzled smile. I guess when you live somewhere that is always 87 degrees plus you don’t relate to ice just roaming around in the water. They were so patient with my awful attempts at communication that I decided to get them a coke. Now that got me some really big smiles from both of them.
As we sailed away from the little town several canoes of kids came out to bid us farewell.
At 3PM the Amazon lecturer gave a presentation on Manaus and Parentins, our next two stops both in Brazil.
Our entertainer was David Scrimshire, a cellist. We’ve seen him before and he was pretty good and he was the same this evening.
Tomorrow we arrive in Manaus for a two-day stay.
March 1 – Manaus, Brazil, Day 1 Today and tomorrow we are in Manaus, Brazil. Manaus is the capital of the State of Amazonias. It was founded in 1669 by the Portuguese and was a rubber boomtown from 1890 to 1920. It’s a city of 2,000,000 people in the heart of the Amazon Basin. After over 1,000 miles of small towns, villages and lots of just plain rainforest, it’s an amazing sight to sail around a bend in the river and smack into a large city with tall buildings, large factories and all the elements of urban development.
One really surprising thing here is the Teatro Amazonas. It’s a European style opera house that seats over 1,000. That in itself wouldn’t be surprising, but to find that it has been here since 1896 when the city was very small and that everything in it was imported from Europe except the woodwork. Now that’s surprising. While the wood may be Brazilian most of it was sent to Europe to be carved and then returned to Brazil. The marble and glass are from Italy, the ironwork is from Scotland and the whole thing sets here in the middle of the Amazon rainforest and has for 110 years. The interior is beautiful and the acoustics are wonderful.
It has not been continuously in use for the entire 110 years. In the late 1800s Brazil had a monopoly on rubber production and Manaus was known as the ‘Paris of the Tropics’. Twelve very wealthy families, known as the ‘Rubber Barons’ paid for the opera house and their names are inscribed on the front. The greatest entertainers from Europe and North America came here to perform. This boom would have lasted longer but in 1876, Henry Wickham, a British adventurer, managed to smuggle 70,000 rubber tree seeds out of Brazil and take them to England. These seeds were germinated and then sent to the Far East to plant and formed the basis for very successful and much cheaper rubber source. By the 1920s, cheaper synthetic rubber put the entire rubber industry here out of business.
As the result, Manaus sank into decay and obscurity. Wickham became known as the ‘Executioner of Amazonas’. During this time the opera house was unused and fell into disrepair. It was renovated in small ways over the years but it wasn’t until the 1970s when Brazil declared Manaus a duty free zone that the city began to regain its former prominence. Coincidentally, in the 1980s with the collapse of state funded institutions in Russia and the Eastern Block countries two events happened that made the opera house a very special place again. A Russian orchestra came to play there and loved it so much they stayed. A year later a Bulgarian orchestra came to play and also decided to stay. Now the opera house has a permanent orchestra made up of mostly Russians and Bulgarians that is the best in South America. The opera house was completely restored and is in wonderful condition.
Our ship is docked at a floating pier to assist in docking in both high and low water seasons. It was built in 1906 and is still in use today. It’s connected to the shore by a long arm that has a roadway and walkway on it. During high water season that arm is almost level, right now it’s about a 20-degree climb at the steepest point. Riverboats of all sorts dock across the pier from the ship. When we arrived in the morning trucks and vans were on the pier loading goods of every type on them. Most of them are 2 or 3 decks above the water. They load cargo on the first deck and passengers on the 2 and 3 decks. They were loading produce and all types of dry goods all day long. The cargo has to be carried on one box or bag at a time because the configuration of the ships doesn’t allow for mechanized loading. People can travel for as long as 4 weeks to get to their destinations on these ships. The decks are completely open. They use molded plastic chairs like you can get for outdoor use in the US. The decks have hooks all along the ceilings. The passengers hang their hammocks from these hooks for sleeping. You have to bring your own food on board or buy it at stops on the way.
Today we are going on a flora and fauna trip. Our first stop will be Bosque da Ciência, an open-air research center that specializes in the plants and animals of the Amazon. Their most famous project
is the revival of the Amazonian River manatee. One of our guides in Belém was skeptical of this project because, according to him, the river people kill them as fast as the center can release them. Regardless of this it’s a very impressive place. Its layout is very natural, that is you have to walk on dirt paths, up and down hills on very natural terrain. The most animals and birds are in enclosures but some are allowed to roam around.
We did see a white fronted capuchin monkey in the trees while walking in the park. They are a very rare species and it’s unusual to see one in the wild. The reason they are rare is that they only live in the jungles around Manaus. As the city has grown their habitat has been reduced. They think there are about 40 left in small pockets of jungle that still exist as parks in the city, this research center being the largest still remaining. There’s a plan to make corridors to connect these separate tracts hoping that they capuchin monkeys will make a comeback if they can move around freely. There were lots of parakeets and parrots free in the park as well.
We saw lots of different species of turtles, caiman, and birds as well as manatee, electric eels and a fish that eats fruit and leaves. They’re pretty funny. They just lie in the water with their heads up at about a 45° angle waiting for something to drop on the surface of the water. Then they dart up to see if it’s something to eat. They were in the same pond as the electric eels so I guess they get along.
After hiking around the park for about an hour we drove over to CIGS. CIGS is where the Brazilian Army does its jungle training. It’s an operational base but it maintains a large zoo of animals that have been rescued or orphaned. Those that can be returned to the wild are but others are kept here for them to use to familiarize their students with the animals and plants of the Amazon Basin. They have the old style US draft here. Everyone must register but only some are selected to serve. They serve 11 and ½ months of which 4 will be in the jungle on Brazil’s borders. Everyone comes to CIGS for jungle training for a month before going to the jungle for more training and service. They learn survival skills like which plants can be eaten or used as medicines, which animals to avoid and which can be trapped safely and how to trap them and how to find water that is safe to drink. I would imagine that the draftees from this area do fine but the city boys from Rio or Sao Paulo are probably in for a lot of hard times during this training.
The Zoológico do CIGS is very well maintained and nicely laid out. Each exhibit has a large sign giving the name of the animal in Portuguese, Spanish and English. It gives the complete Latin
designation of the Species including Kingdom, Phylum, Subphylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus and Species, which in Portuguese are Reino, Filo, Subfilo, Classe, Ordem, Família, Gênero and Espécie. It also tells where it can be found geographically, the type of habitat it likes, what it eats, a verbal description of its size, color, weight, etc. and its method and period of reproduction. Quite an informative sign except for the fact that the only English on it is the animal’s name. If you know some Spanish you can make out a lot of the Portuguese, that’s how I knew what the rest of the sign said.
They had a lot more birds here than at the park, toucans, parrots, hawks, herons and eagles were represented by several species. They had four cats, ocelots, jaguars, black jaguars and a grey cat about the same size as the ocelot but I can’t remember its name. They had lots of snakes including a 30-foot anaconda and several large boas, three types of caiman and a multitude of turtles. It was pretty much on one level and the walks were paved so the going was much easier that at the park.
As a sidelight there was a class of new recruits being ‘welcomed’ to the base. As we were walking around I could hear the choruses of what I assumed to be the Portuguese equivalent of ‘Yes, Sir!’ When we were leaving the base they were all lined up on the road at the front gate dressed in white t-shirts, blue dungarees and a mixture of civilian shoes. They were formed up in what appeared to be three company size units each led by five soldiers in full jungle uniform with side arms. I’m assuming that the uniformed men were the drill instructors. At the front of the column was a squad of what looked like senior NCOs and officers. Just inside the gate was a small reviewing stand and just past that was the band. Further along the street was lined on both sides by uniformed troops; maybe those who have been in training long enough to wear the jungle uniform. Outside the gate the street was lined with relatives, girlfriends and wives wishing their men farewell and watching them prepare to enter the base. As we were driving off I heard the band start playing and the column began to move forward. As hot and humid as it is here I felt a little sorry for these guys, but not much.
After that it was back to the ship to get ready for dinner.
Our entertainment was a folkloric show of Amazon area dances with some modern thrown in. We saw the same group the last time we were here and they were just as good this time.
I’ve said it before and I will say it again. As beautiful as the Amazon Basin is the people are the main attraction. They are warm, gracious and outgoing to the max. It’s a pleasure to be around them.
March 2 – Manaus, Brazil, Day 2 Our second day in Manaus. Today we are taking a tour provided by out travel agent. It’s a riverboat trip up the Rio Negro to visit an Indian settlement. These Indians have been displaced by a government project but they have made a village for themselves on the bank of the river about an hour and a half upstream from Manaus.
First we boarded a bus for the half hour trip to the Hotel Tropical, a five star resort on the banks of the Rio Negro about 12 miles from the center of the city. It’s a nice place; we had lunch there last time we were here. Then it was called the Hilton Hotel and Resort. I can still taste the cheeseburger they make with a fried egg on top. Yummy!!
The hotel has its own pier and seaplane dock and we are catching our riverboat here for the trip up river. On the way we passed a few small areas that had some small buildings and our guide told us they were weekend beaches where people from Manaus come to spend some time out of the city. For the most part the area was without any sign of development or habitation once we were a half hour out of town.
Since this is a black river there’s not many fish and the land is not very productive as the ph is so low. Consequently it’s harder for people to live in the jungle here and there are fewer villages than you see on the Amazon. We only passed about two boats on the 1.5-hour trip. One was a government boat that works on malaria and dengue fever reduction.
The village we are going to has members of the Tuyuca and Tatuya tribes living in it. As we approached it you could barely make out the buildings atop a cliff set back from the river by a wide sandy beach.
When we pulled up to the pier it was just some sticks in the riverbank that had three boards to walk on to get to shore. A man with some children from the tribe was there to greet us. His wife and youngest child waited on the beach in the shade. The riverboat crew put a red 2x8 plank through one of the tires they use as fenders and rested the other end on the pier. You had to walk down this plank to get to the pier and then negotiate the pier to get to shore. Not a bad deal for Diana and me, but a lot of the people on this trip have a huge hitch in their get along. With the help of the ship’s crew and some Indians everyone got ashore dry and safe.
After you reached the beach you had to cross about 60 yards of soft sand and then climb, on dirt steps held in place by boards, a 50-foot cliff to get to the village. Once there we were greeted by some of the tribe. It was mostly adults and small children, the rest of the kids were in school. We were led to the community hut and as each of us went inside an older woman put a necklace of seeds and pods on each man’s neck and an older man put a similar necklace on the women.
The hut was about 50 feet by 40 feet and built in benches of a sort lined the perimeter. We sat on these while the locals put on a program for us. There were openings about 7 feet high by 5.5 feet wide in the forty-foot sides of the hut. They had a small pot on a stand in the middle burning something that made thick black smoke that rose towards the ceiling. I think it’s to control the bugs. First, the tribal elder would address us in his language. Then a younger man would address us in Portuguese. Finally, our guide would translate to English for us. It’s funny how a 5-minute speech by the first man would only take about 1 minute in English. I don’t think we were getting the full text.
One of the highlights of travel for me is interacting with local people. Part of that is the confirmation that people everywhere have some of the same values. Another much more fascinating part is that some values differ radically. Trying to understand these differences and why they might make sense in the context of their culture is fun for me. The biggest and most noticeable difference here is that, as in many tropical places, the women go topless. Talking to our guide of local Indian descent he says that the modesty code here does not cover anything above the waist. However it is considered immodest to show your thighs when standing. Consequently all the adult women have grass skirts that extent to the bottom of their knees. In this hot and humid climate I can certainly understand why anyone would want to be shirtless most of the time.
First a woman sang a welcome song for us and then they did a welcome dance that they perform when a delegation from another tribe comes to the village. The only accompaniment was a boy on a drum. The men wore anklets of seeds on their right legs so every time they took a right step the seeds rattled. They would land the steps with more energy if a stronger rattle was called for. The variance in their steps made a good companion for the drum beat which was just a steady rhythm. As with most of the dances this one started out with the men together and then each round a man would pick up a woman until they were all dancing.
The next dance was a gifting dance where they would all dance in and bring in various gifts to place in a large basked that was put in the center of the hut. Mostly the gifts were fruit but there were some necklaces like the ones they gave us in there as well. These dances are not short and time is passing rapidly.
The last dance they did was a celebration dance that is done to commemorate an agreement or pact between two tribes. I have video of all this but few pictures as it was very dark in the hut. I’ll see if I can get Photoshop to help me salvage some to send.
As we were leaving the meetinghouse some of the women from the tribe had set up a little stand with some of their handicrafts for sale. Of course, Diana had to take a little time to shop. I don’t mind at all in this situation. Supporting indigenous people is a great idea for a traveler. After that it was back down the hill and across the beach to board our boat. We rode through a little storm on the way back to the ship. It seems like about 2-3pm every day there’s a very short but heavy rain shower in this area.
It was a very good tour. I wish we had had more time to spend at the village but we didn’t want to miss the ship.
Our entertainer was Ronnie Hayward a very British comedian. He looked like a member of the Royal Family in his conservative, three piece tweed suit. He was very funny. One of the best comics we’ve had so far.
March 3 – Parintins, Brazil. This is our second visit here. We are on the island of Tupinambarana in the city of Parintins, Brazil. This is a very unique city in many ways; the most amazing of which is the Boi-Bumba Festival they hold each year in June. It’s the largest party in the state of Amazonias, which is the largest and least populated state in Brazil. The three-day festival has theater, drums, dancing, music and a circus all combined. It’s a blend of European and African traditions. The festival reenacts the kidnapping, death and resurrection of a bull, which is a metaphor for their agricultural cycles. Over the years the festival has developed into a competition between two teams that live in Parintins, the red ‘Gaurantido’ (guaranteed) and blue ‘Caprichoso’ (careful) teams. Each team has several thousand members.
This rivalry grew out of a friendly feud between two families, the Monteverdes and the Cids. They hold a competition between the two teams in a 35,000-seat stadium built just for this contest. The stadium has two sides; one with blue seats, the other side is red. Each side performs in turn. When the red side is performing the blues remain totally silent while the red supporters whoop it up to the max, and vice versa. Most everyone in town supports one team or the other.
To say that this festival dominates the entire city’s culture would be to completely understate the case. The people are red or blue to the bone. They have red taxis for the reds and blue taxis for the blues. The phone booths here in Brazil are traditionally blue, but in Parintins you will see red ones right next to the blue ones. A red person would never use a blue phone booth or taxi. In general the major directional signs are green and white in Brazil, like in the USA. Not here, here they are red in the red area of town and blue in the blue area. People wear blue or red clothes, paint their houses blue or red, at least the trim, and drive red and blue cars. I knew the level of commitment to their color when I saw cans of Coca-Cola in blue and white last time we were here, rather than the normal red and white. If they didn’t have the blue cans of Coke the blues wouldn’t drink it. Amazing!! I was going to get some blue Coke cans this year but the bad news is that they only produce them during the month of the festival. Last time we were here in November and they still had some left over. None were available this year, as the festival hasn’t happened yet. Apparently the blues will drink ‘red’ Coke but not during the festival. Some enterprising taxi drivers have half their car blue and the other half red. You just have to make sure you pick the customer up on the correct side of the cat. Double yikes!! That is not to say that the people themselves don’t get along, they do.
We are lucky in that last year’s winning team, the reds, has agreed to perform their show for us. 500 people from the ship are going to an arena to experience Boi-Bumba. Diana and I are going for sure. It was great last time and it changes every year.
Parintins is a small city of about 27,000 people but during the festival there are over 300,000 people here. This makes the 35,000 tickets for the stadium competition a hot commodity.
It’s not quite as hot as it was when we were here in November, or at least it didn’t seem so to me. There was a small breeze and that helped. I sat on the arena floor instead of up in the view level like last time. The main dancers cover the area pretty well so it doesn’t matter where you sit. As you arrive at the stadium there are vendors set up in the parking lot selling mementos of both teams including feathered costume pieces.
One of the ladies from the ship, Josie, bought an entire outfit. At first she just donned the headdress and arm pieces, then she put the bra on over her t-shirt, then she put the bottom on over her slacks. Before the event was over she has pulled her t-shirt out from under the top and her slacks from under the bottoms. I think the Caipirinhas (the national drink of Brazil) had something to do with that. A Caipirinha is the national liquor, cachaça (alcohol distilled from sugar cane), with key lime juice and sugar. During the show they will serve you as many as you can drink and with the heat and humidity some people drank way too many without knowing it until they tried to get up. The Shorex and Cruise Staff had warned everyone about the potency of these drinks ahead of time, but they taste like limeade and are very easy to drink.
At the entrance to the stadium they had some of the dancers posted for pictures. Naturally there was a huge roadblock created as people stopped for a souvenir shot. Diana had to get in on the fun. She posed for a picture with one of the girls that was doing waitress service for the crowd inside. They served Caipirinhas, water and several kinds of local nuts, yes including Brazil nuts!!
The show started with a student band playing a song in the Boi-Bumba beat. Then the Gaurantido band took over setting up a very strong beat as well, sort of a samba type beat. The band had lots of drums of all sizes, guitar, bass and a singer. The music was loud but it was not overwhelming. It certainly set the mood for the show. The story will be told by the entrance of a series of floats carrying the main characters into the stadium.
The dancing started with a solo dance between a man and a woman dressed as farm workers. They danced a very romantic duet. After a few minutes a chorus line of insects joined them. After a few more minutes of dancing the girl apparently dies. In any event, the man carries her from the arena.
A float made up to look like a cloud carried the Gaurantido flag girl into the arena. She danced with the chorus line made up of three types of insects. They were large and green; perhaps grasshoppers, praying mantises and one could have been an iguana. That’s not an insect, I know but I’m also not at all sure that’s what it was.
Next came a chorus line of man and women dressed in simple farm worker clothes. A girl in a large red, pink and gold colonial style hoop skirt accompanied them; she’s the farm workers daughter that wanted to eat the tongue of the bull. After a little while a line of fancy horsemen and the Red Team bull joined her. The team bull is white with a red heart on its forehead. The girl and the bull danced together for some time.
A chorus line of girl dancers dressed in red and orange feathers and men dressed in green followed the bull and girl. The soloist rode in on an electric eel and was dressed mainly in pheasant and green feathers. She’s the queen of last year’s festival. Like the other major characters she had a long solo dance that covered the entire arena. After a while the entire group left the arena.
They were followed by a Javelena float carrying the shaman. As he was carried into the arena by the float, two men carried in the inert body of the girl that had died in the opening sequence. The shaman is dressed in orange and black feathers with straw skirt. His dance was much like the Navajo Fancy Dancers steps, lots of spinning and moving about. Eventually he was joined by some of the previous chorus line and they danced in a circle around him until the girl regained consciousness.
After that a chorus line of butterflies joined them. I guess this is the emergence into a new life metaphor, caterpillar to butterfly. A large hummingbird float that carried the clubs most beautiful girl into the arena joined them. She was hard to spot as she was partly up inside the bird and her legs were the bird’s legs. She had two large Macaw heads on each shoulder, her feathered cape was mainly green and red and the feathered bands around her legs were red and white. It’s a tough call because all the girls in the show are very pretty and she is no exception.
After the dance was done they introduced the main characters, in Portuguese of course. After the show was over, the band played and the dancers invited people out to dance with them and pose for pictures. It was a very impressive show and a very good time.
Diana and I were some of the last people to leave the arena. They always let the passengers go first if possible. The ship is supposed to leave at 2pm and as it’s already 1:40 I think they will have to wait and be late. Now we have two days at sea and after five straight days in port we need them! Yea!!
Our entertainer was Sally Jones, a ballad type singer. We’ve seen her before and she’s very good. Diana is pooped from going strong for five days so she headed down to the room for some extra sleep. I stayed up to see the movie Prime and the show. Prime was ok but I wouldn’t see it again so it wasn’t great.
March 4 – A day at sea at last. We’ve had a lot of interesting and fun experiences in the Amazon but five port days in a row is tiring. It doesn’t have to be that way, but we really want to get the most out of the time so we go… go… go… in port.
Today Frank, our port lecturer, is talking about Devil’s Island. We’ve been there before so I’ll catch it later on TV in the room.
We’re still in the Amazon River today heading northwest toward the mouth. We’ll cross the bar some time tonight or early morning. The bar is a bank of silt that has built up across the 200 mile mouth of the Amazon due to the settling of the silt carried downriver that makes it as much as 150 miles out to sea. Ships our size cannot cross the bar at low tide so they have to time the exit from the river for at least the middle between high and low tide but they prefer high.
Since we have another day at sea tomorrow we decided to see the movie and then go to the show. The movie is ‘Babel’, one of the Academy Award nominated movies. It’s about 2 hours 20 minutes long but one and a half hours into it the bulb on the projector blew up. Unfortunately the theater’s main projector was destroyed in the storm and they’ve been using an old projector that is set up in the middle of the seats. Because it’s a projector they don’t use anymore they have no spare bulbs for it so the theater is out of business until we get to St. Lucia where they may be able to get a bulb shipped in time to meet us. The final irony of the situation is that our change of schedule has had our shipment of new movies chasing us around South America since we left Buenos Aires. Well, today in Parintins they were finally taken on board and now there’s no way to show them. Peter could only smile and shake his head.
Our entertainment tonight was ‘Love Songs from Broadway, Costumes by Bob Mackie, performed by the ship’s cast. They are 10 very talented people, four primary singers, two singer/dancers and four primary dancers, although all sing and dance at least a little. All four of the primary singers and dancers are very good, but two of each are excellent, in both cases a guy and a girl. They did love songs from Broadway shows, as the title would suggest. It was very good indeed.
March 5 – Another restful day at sea. I finished my journal on Parintins last night and sent them all off this morning so I’m completely up to date on my writing. In fact, I just finished lunch today. We’ll have to see how the day goes from here.
It went well. The entertainment tonight was the movie ‘Papillion’ from 1973. They’re showing it in honor of our visit to Devil’s Island tomorrow. Last time I saw this movie it was just released and I had just read the book a couple of years earlier. I remember being very disappointed by the movie. I watched it again last night and after 40 years I think it has improved. Maybe I just don’t remember the book so well anymore so I no longer care that the movie is seldom as good as the book. This is the major reason I feel a little sorry for non-readers. The entertainment they get in the movies and on TV is usually not as good as reading the book. But then they don’t know that because they haven’t read the books and I guess that makes the movies and TV look better. Double edged sword, as most things are.
March 6 – Iles du Salut, French Guiana We arrived at Îles du Salut (Islands of Salvation), French Guiana at about 8am. We have to anchor and use the tenders, as there are no facilities to handle a ship of our size or of any size bigger than our tenders.
The group is made up of three islands, Île Royale, Île Ste-Joseph and the infamous Île du Diable (Devil’s Island). Actually all three islands were used as part of the French Penal Colony but played a very small role as the main portion of the prison is on the mainland in a large swamp. Only the most dangerous, in both the violent and political sense, were sent out here. As you probably remember, this is the setting for the novel and movie ‘Papillion’. From 1852 until 1946 it was the home of the infamous French penal colony for dangerous or political prisoners. They stopped sending people here in 1938 and slowly phased it out over the next 8 years. In 1895 French army captain Alfred Dreyfus, the colony’s most famous prisoner, was sent here after being convicted of espionage, even though he was totally innocent. It seems that being Jewish and in the French army was enough evidence to sustain the guilty verdict. A reporter investigated the crimes and in an open letter to the government in his newspaper he disclosed the corruption and bigotry that led to the unjust conviction and Dreyfus was set free. He served during WWI as a lieutenant colonel.
There were 2,000 prisoners here, 500 each on Devil’s and St. Joseph and 1,000 on Royale. We actually landed on the largest of the three, Il Royale. The main settlement was here. The guard’s quarters, the largest cellblock and the solitary confinement building are all still standing but in various stages of repair. There’s a hotel operating here that uses the main administrative building and the guard’s houses for rooms. We rested there for a while and had something to drink.
Because the waters around the islands are so treacherous and shark infested, the prisoners on Devil’s and St. Joseph’s were often left unguarded. St. Joseph’s was used for more restrictive solitary confinement and burial of the prison warders who died. The bodies of the prisoners were thrown into the sea to encourage the sharks to stay nearby.
From the tender pier it was about a mile hike to the top of the island where all the buildings are. There was a shorter route to the top but it was very steep and the gradual but longer way seemed better in the hot, humid weather. It’s not as hot as during our last visit. Maybe it is as hot but it is not as humid, there’s more of a breeze and the sun is not out.
There is some wild life on the island. Agoutis, a sort of long legged guinea pig, Macaws (those large colorful parrots you see in all the parks in the USA, monkeys, peacocks, and of course chickens.
I’m sure that the Macaw we saw was the same one that we saw last time. Along with the two small dogs that belong to the hotel manager, this particular bird seems to be the local mascot.
Because the prisoners were fed to the sharks and the guards who died were buried on St. Joseph’s, it was a surprise when we encountered a cemetery on the way up to the prison area. Turn out that the wives and children of the staff who died here were buried in a small plot just a little way down the hill from the main yard of the prison. Since the staff’s families
lived with them here I guess they wanted to keep the graves close to the staff quarters so they could visit them when they wanted to. The graveyard, though small, is a very melancholy place. The small graves were very nicely decorated and at one time some might have offered a more heartening impression. However, most are not in good condition, which makes the area even more poignant. The French inscriptions on some of the headstones were still partly legible. Most of those graves were from the early 20th century, 1904-1938. The two children’s headstones that I could read both died at the age of 9 months. The one wife’s grave was from 1938; she was not quite 34 years old. The size of the place implies that there were not many dependants here. Most, wisely, elected to remain in Europe.
After climbing the last bit of the hill we arrived at the lighthouse and the convent hospital. The size of the hospital is a testament to the harshness life here. For a small place this is a big building, even allowing for the fact that the nuns who staffed it probably lived in it as well. Just past the hospital is a large central square. The hospital is on the west side of the square.
On the south side is the island’s church. It’s a simple tin siding and brick structure that is currently under renovation on the inside. Last time we were here it was not open but this time it was.
On the north side of the square is the main cellblock. This building is still in good condition on the exterior. The interior has seen better days. After passing by the cellblock and leaving the square, we came to the warder’s quarters. This was a nice row of duplex buildings with a palm-lined walkway through the center. It’s in great shape as these houses are in use by the hotel as rooms. Past here was the administrative building, now the restaurant, gift shop, bar and check in for the hotel. We got a large bottle of water and a Coke for Diana and headed out to the patio where we sat and had a great view of Île du Diable as we rested up from the climb.
Just behind the warder’s housing was the solitary and condemned cell building. Even without doors they are dismal and depressing. I’m sure they were more so when the prison was in use. Yikes!!
Not everything here is depressing. Both Diana and I were struck by the idyllic tropical island impression that the islands give as you approach them. If you either didn’t know or can get past the history of the place you would think you were in French Polynesia rather than French South America. Being a tropical place there are lots of beautiful flowers and plants.
We walked back down the hill, stopping at the Commandant’s house, which is now a museum and gift shop. He had a great view over the harbor. After a short tender ride out to the ship we cleaned up, cooled off and went up for some lunch.
We sailed away from the islands by circling about 2/3 of the way around them so we got to see all three from the ship.
Our Entertainer was Cecil Welch a trumpeter. He worked for Henry Mancini and traveled with him as his principal trumpeter for 18 years. He played the trumpet, flugelhorn (sp?) (Can you say Chuck Mangione?) and coronet and he was excellent.
March 7 – Another great day at sea. I’m getting pretty bummed out about packing to leave the ship in Fort Lauderdale. I just worked on some pictures and wrote a little.
They did have a grand show buffet for lunch today. I went in to take pictures during the viewing time but ate lunch up in the lido. As you probably know, both Diana and I are chocoholics and these Grand Buffets give the chefs a great excuse to indulge in fantasies in chocolate. However, I didn’t want to fight the locust swarm that my fellow passengers become at the grand buffets.
Our entertainment was the last three performers, Cecil Welch, Ronnie Hayward and Sally Jones. All were very good once again.
March 8 – Castries, St. Lucia. We have never been to St. Lucia but we understand that it is a very beautiful island. Our port lecturer, Frank Buckingham, says that it is pretty close to Dominica in its scenery and that is very good indeed. We have been there and it was beautiful.
Our travel agent, CSI, has given us another free tour here. We will drive through the city of Castries and then leave town heading south to a plantation house outside the town of Soufriere to have lunch and look around the botanical gardens.
Castries is a very convenient port, the city is right outside the port gates and the ship is docked right next to the terminal building, which is very small. Those of you who know the Long Beach Airport terminal will have a good idea of the size and I’m talking about that terminal back when I used it in the early ‘70s. I haven’t been there in a while and I don’t know if they’ve enlarged it.
The island is of volcanic origin and has a mountain range crossing it north to south. The southernmost mountain has the largest height, 3,117 feet. There’s very little flat ground on this island. You’re either going up or downhill almost all the time. It’s very green and gets about 60 inches of rain at the coast and more than 100 inches in the mountains. Bananas are the most important export but tourism is the largest industry. The do produce a very potent rum here that they export and several regular rums that are only sold in the West Indies. In addition to bananas they also export mangos and coconuts. Ironically most of the sugar cane that they use to make the rum arrives as molasses produced from the sugar cane of other islands like Barbados. Sugar cane was a big crop here but it collapsed when the Europeans and Americans started using sugar beets which can be grown, harvested and processed more cheaply and closer to home.
The control of this island was hotly contested between the British and the French. Europeans got here in the early 1500s and France established the first successful colony in the mid-17th century. England held the island from 1663 to 1667 and subsequently the island changed hands from the British to the French 14 times before it was finally ceded to the British in 1814. Representative government was introduced in 1924. From 1958 to 1962 St. Lucia was a member of the Federation of the West Indies and in 1967 it got became fully self-governed. It is still a member of the British Commonwealth and has a Governor General appointed by the Queen, but the role of the GG is largely ceremonial and a British style parliament governs the island.
The island has produced two Nobel Prize winners making them the highest per capita Nobel laureate country ever, anywhere. They are also proud of their Olympic athletes although they have never won a medal at the games. They have produced several Gold medal winners at the Caribbean Games and hope to send several to the Olympics in China.
The first stop on our tour was an overlook just outside Castries. It had a great view of the city and port below. We are here today with Carnival’s Destiny. Fortunately they are docked on the other side of the harbor and their traffic congestion is not affecting us at all. I think there are about 3,000 people on that ship and that can cause quite a bit of congestion in the port. Behind the city we can see several mountain ranges on this every vertical island.
From there we drove to the little village of Anse-La-Raye. It’s a small place with narrow streets lined with very small houses in all different states of repair. Some obviously lovingly cared for, others very seriously neglected. Our guide said that these homes were all very old and housed slaves who worked in the cane fields before the collapse of that industry. After they were freed the slaves were allowed to continue living in the homes and many of the islands families still live in the same homes that their slave ancestors lived in. One of the streets right next to the sea has been converted into a block of shops selling native crafts and locally produced products. Some of the local products that are for sale are banana ketchup (you use it anywhere you would put tomato ketchup), banana essence, vanilla extract and essence, cinnamon, nutmeg and coconut products. Handicrafts include necklaces, carvings and products woven from palm and other fibers.
Then it was on to Soufriere where there’s a drive-in volcano. The area has a great deal of geothermal activity. There are boiling mud pots and water pools as well as steam vents and an occasional geyser, a very small Yellowstone-like park. The side of
the main caldera blew out a long time ago and small busses and autos can actually drive inside to drop you off for viewing. There’s a trail going down into the valley and then up the side of the caldera to view the steam vents, mud pots and pools. The area has a very strong sulfur odor from the vents. The volcano is classified as semi-dormant, which seems to me to be to be a term as useful as semi-pregnant. What does it mean? Something is either dormant or it is not and from the bubbling mud, boiling water and amount of steam being produced I don’t think my description would include the term dormant at all.
Our guide told us that as long as the steam comes out of the vents no one worries but when the steam stops they head for the hills, of which there are plenty. Apparently every now and then earthquake activity clogs the vents and the pressure builds up to a small eruption. They haven’t had a big blow up in a very long time.
From there we headed to the Diamond Botanical Gardens and lunch at the Soufriere Estate. The estate was originally a coconut plantation but has now become a botanical garden and restaurant. Lunch was very good indeed. They had chicken with island spices, rice with beans, pasta in a spicy tomato sauce, green salad with tomatoes and onions, some sort of vegetable prepared like creamed potatoes (I was told it was not potatoes but it tasted and looked like them to me) and two kinds of bananas, one we recognized and one we didn’t. The recognizable one was sliced and fried and very delicious, pretty much a regular banana but maybe sweeter. Did you know there are over 50 varieties of bananas? I sure didn’t. The islanders consider this banana to be a fruit.
The second type of banana was called a ‘green banana’ and is considered to be a vegetable by the locals. You can prepare it any way you can make a potato. They fry it, mash it, deep fry it and make pancakes with it. When it’s prepared they way we had it, it looks very much like mushrooms, a sort of grey color. They had prepared it in a casserole with pimentos and some kind of small bean. It was very starchy and bland, like a potato. Not objectionable just bland like most starches.
After lunch we walked around the estate on our own. They had several types of ginger, haleconia (crab claw and red) loads of vines and a very large red leafed plant that was very pretty in the sunlight. I saw a new species of hummingbird; new to me that is, I’m sure that it’s a common one here. It is totally black with iridescent green upper wing and long curved beak. It is larger than the common Ruby Throated hummingbird we see often in California and Texas. It was moving so fast and the shade was so deep in the forest that there was no way to get a decent picture.
After that it was back toward Castries to Cul de Sac Bay for a picture stop and then back to the harbor. Cul de Sac Bay is a very deep bay with a naturally small entrance that provides a very good shelter when storms hit the island. There are several hotels and restaurants clustered around it. Pretty sight.
There was a small shopping center in the port terminal. On the second floor there was a cricket wear store. I’ve loved cricket ever since I wrote a report on it in the 5th grade. My first school report ever that was not a book report. I must have read the rules 50 times trying to envision the game because I’d never seen it played. When I finally saw my first game on St. Kitts about 20 years ago I was totally engrossed by it. Anyway, the ICC World Cup of cricket is being played here in a couple of months and the store had hats for all the teams involved, India, South Africa, Australia and the local team the West Indies. I bought a West Indies hat. It looks very USC like because their colors are maroon and gold but the maroon is pretty red and not so purple.
After that it was on to the ship and adios to St. Lucia.
Our entertainer was Bettine Clemen a German flautist who lives in Missouri, USA. She’s a very good musician but her personality is way too new agey for me. You know that ‘all things are one’ attitude like Shirley McLain or Babs Streisand. I had to close my eyes and just listen.
March 9 – Another great day at sea! I like this one day in port, one day at sea routing very much. Today I packed all the stuff I won’t be using until I get home, and that’s almost everything. HAL gave us two more rolling duffle bags, this time in light blue the theme color for the trip. They hold a lot of stuff.
Our entertainers tonight were Marty Allen and Karon Kate. You may remember Marty from the 60s and early 70s. He was a guest on almost every variety program, nighttime talk program and series that featured guest stars, in addition to game shows. He’s a very short guy with a mangled mess of black hair and big eyes. He looks a lot like a troll doll. He was on Steve Allen, Johnny Carson, Love Boat, Hollywood Squares, Fantasy Island and dozens of other shows. He’s worked with Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole and other singers as an opening comedy act. His catch phrase was, ‘Hello Dere.’ He’s a wonderful storey teller and good comic.
Karon Kate is a singer and has a great stage presence and good voice. Marty has to be 85 or so and Karon appears to be about 60, hard to tell sometimes with women. Marty’s going strong and I’m basing his age on when I first saw him on TV, around 1960. He wasn’t that young then, probably almost 40. Their show was the best we have seen on the ship and we’ve had some very good shows.
March 10 – Grand Turk, Turks & Caicos. This island is a true Cay (pronounced Key). It’s a low-lying, sandy coral island with a circling reef, actually two. Its highest elevation is Gun Hill at a whopping 90 feet. The country consists of 40 islands and cays and is a British Crown Colony.
Grand Turk is 7 miles long and 1.5 miles wide at the widest point. It has served as the colony’s government seat since 1766. It has crystal clear turquoise waters and smooth power white beaches. It’s one of the best dive and snorkel spots in the Caribbean. Its most famous recent event was the landing of John Glenn after his first ever orbit of the earth by an American. Although it is at the extreme eastern edge of the group Grand Turk’s only real city, Cockburn Town, is still the capital of the Colony.
Diana is going on a 4x4 tour of the island and I’m going snorkeling.
The snorkeling tour was absolutely fantastic. We were in the water at two very different sites. The first was at the inner reef. There was a multitude of coral types and colors and hundreds of small fish of all colors and shapes. I’m not as good at identifying fish as when I was diving regularly in Southern California. Of course, the fish here are different anyway.
There were fan, finger, organ pipe, brain, lettuce and other species of coral in colors from vivid blue to reds and oranges. I didn’t see any urchins or anemones, I think the water is to warm for them. The water was easy to handle here, very little surge and since there was not much tidal flow I think the tide was just turning. It’s so much easier to dive on coral when you don’t have to work so hard to make sure you don’t touch it. Most corals are not dangerous to touch but any contact removes the thin layer of mucus like coating they have that is their only defense against disease. Any contact, even a light brush against them can create irreversible damage. Very calm water allows you to get very close for a good look without the concern that you might inadvertently damage it. Of course, some corals are very hazardous to touch with the bare skin and will inflict painful stings if you do. In Mexico I encountered some careless divers that had gotten into some Fire Coral and it’s a mistake I’m pretty sure they will not repeat. Touching any coral is unwise for the coral’s sake, if not your own.
The second site was at the outer reef. It was a totally different environment as the water out here is more turbulent. The delicate formations of the inner reef are almost totally absent even on the island side of the reef. We were diving on a small horseshoe shaped reef just inside the main outer reef. Even so the surge was significant, especially in the gaps in the reef. Sometimes you could get pretty close to the formation but mostly it was smarter to keep your distance. I try to maintain about 2 feet. That seems to give me enough room to counter any sudden surges toward the reef unless the currents are significant. Being in the water under those conditions is not much fun anyway.
At the second site the fish were much bigger and there were more of them. The first thing I saw that was remarkable was a 4-5 foot barracuda slowly cruising the reef accompanied by a small armada of various fish who feed on the scraps created by a barracuda feeding. It is probably a small Great Barracuda. That species can get to over 6 feet. If you’ve never seen a barracuda in the water you are missing a great experience. I’ve been diving with sharks, rays, skates, sea lions and otters but, for me, none is the equal of the barracuda.
They are the long, thin, aerodynamic, silver speedsters of the sea. From the front where their overlapping teeth sticking out along the jaw line to the whip quick tail they look just like what they are, the sports cars of the fish world. I’m told that from a very slow cruising speed, in three feet they can be doing over 25 mph. From almost a dead stop to 25 mph in three feet, now that’s acceleration. Their long, thin bodies not only allow them to accelerate quickly but they have a very high top speed, although I’ve never seen one go all out for a long distance, and they can turn like a Formula 1 race car. It’s amazing to watch.
One reason that all the other fish swim slightly behind them is that when a barracuda attacks it does so at high speed. It clamps down on the victim with its long sharp teeth and allows its speed to rip a chunk of flesh off. This ripping bite produces a lot of small bits that are quickly snapped up by the trailing fish. They have to be a little careful, as the barracuda will turn back for another ripping bite as soon as it gets the last one swallowed. It’s the eating process that allows the crumb-snatchers time to clean up.
Thankfully, barracuda are not stupid. They know that a human is much too large for them to want to mess with. The danger from them comes if you are wearing a wet suit without gloves and swim using your hands. They apparently don’t see all that well and can mistake a naked white hand contrasting with the dark wetsuit for a fish of just the right size to eat. Divers have received nasty bites on the hand under those circumstances. Around barracuda you either want to go without the wet suit or wear the suit and gloves to prevent this understandable mistake. Fortunately, one bite usually tells the barracuda that a mistake has been made and second bites are extremely rare. In fact, I’ve never heard of one.
The second impressive sight was a large grouper. It was probably a Goliath grouper, as it didn’t look like a Black grouper, which is common in this area. Goliaths are a very rare and I think they are listed as Critically Endangered. In the 1960s when I was diving and fishing on the east coast they were highly prized for eating. Sometime in the early ‘90s both the USA and the Caribbean area put a total ban on harvesting them. They are increasing but it’s a slow process, as they do not reproduce in large numbers. I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve never heard of the Goliath grouper. Until 2001 they were officially known as the Jewfish. That year the American Fisheries Society changed the name to the ‘less offensive’ Goliath. I wonder how the ancient Phillistines feel about that?
They are the ‘duce and a half’ trucks of the fish world. They move slowly, turn in pretty wide circles and get very big. This one was about 4 feet long and probably weighed in at 45 pounds or there about. Obviously these are very round fish. This one was a greenish grey, mottled pattern. I’ll have to look it up when I get home to make sure what he was.
The last thing was an adult stingray with a juvenile cruising along the sandy bottom. The adult was about 5 feet across and the young one about 1.5. Despite the tragic accident that happened to the Crocodile Hunter, I’ve been in the water dozens of times with them and they have never even once acted with anything but a friendly curiosity towards me. When you encounter them in the open sea they are usually very shy and it is not that easy to get close to them. In colonies that have been interacting with humans for some time they will eat out of your hand. It’s kind of fun to rub some squid on someone’s leg and watch the reaction when the suction mouthed ray comes by and, smelling the food, vacuums the leg clean. These two were not of the human friendly persuasion and as I swam toward them they changed direction to move away from me in a maneuver that would have made any fighter jock proud. Turn and extend baby, that’s the ticket to survival. After that stop it was back to the ship.
Our ship is docked at a pier that is only about a year old. Carnival Corporation built it to facilitate using this island as a port. It can accommodate two ships of almost any size at one time, one tied up on either side of the single wharf. Since Carnival is the parent company of HAL as well as Princess, Costa, Windstar, Silversea and Cunard, all those brands of ships will probably come here. It’s a great place for going to the beach, fishing, diving, snorkeling and just plain relaxing. They’ve
developed a small, pier side shopping plaza with a very nice beach in front of a ‘Margaritaville’ restaurant and bar. Margaritaville is a chain of Jimmy Buffet themed restaurants dotted around the USA and Caribbean. The passengers were taking advantage of the relatively cheap drinks in addition to the swimming pool, beach and restaurant. A DJ was playing a mix of party. Caribbean and reggae music and everyone seemed to be having a good time. A spontaneous farewell party had broken out as Adam is leaving the cruise staff in Fort Lauderdale.
Dermatological Note: The new sunblock I mentioned early on is fantastic!! I don’t know if I’m overly sensitive to this or not but most sunblocks make me feel like all my pores are clogged up, make me perspire more and feel hotter. This one does none of those things. After it’s on for about 5 minutes you don’t even know it’s there. The brand is Neutrogena and the type is Ultra Sheer Dry-Touch Sunblock. It comes is a variety of strengths, I bought SPF 45. The tube says it ‘Feels clean and weightless’ and I have to agree with that 100%. It’s a little more expensive but we were in 37 ports, I used it every time and I still have some left from the 10oz tube. You don’t have to use much.
Our entertainment was the Prinsendam Cast in a show called ‘On the Air’. It featured pop songs from the 50s, 60s and 70s. In each era the singers and dancers wore time appropriate costumes, Poodle skirts in the 50s, Twiggy like miniskirt outfits in the 60s and disco clothes in the 70s. It was a very good show and the cast is very good.
We are mostly packed. Tomorrow we will equalize the suitcases. We are shipping four home and taking two with us on the drive.
March 11 – Today we attended the Sunday Protestant church service that HAL always provides for the guests. They have a Priest, Rabbi and Minister on board all the longer cruises. The Protestant services are nondenominational, as they should be, but they vary greatly depending on the minister. Sometimes you get someone who really understands what the gospel is and has very relevant messages, other times you get someone who makes you wonder if they have ever even read the Bible. The minister on this cruise is somewhere in the middle, mostly he sounds good but you leave wondering what it is he was trying to say.
After church we went to the disembarkation speech and the crew farewell show. They bring members from every department on board from the kitchen and housekeeping to navigation and entertainment. They assemble about 200 of the 450 some odd crew on the stage and they all sing a song called ‘Love in any language.’ It’s a pretty appropriate song for them to sing, as there are 20 countries and 15 languages represented in the crew. It’s a fun time but it’s pretty much the same on each cruise.
Tomorrow is the worst day of any cruise. On embarkation day it’s just as big a pain but at least there you have the cruise to look forward to. On disembarkation day the trip is over and it’s just a chore, especially for me, as I never want to leave the ship.
You always make some friends on a cruise, some among the passengers, some among the crew. As you leave you wonder if you will every see them again. We have traveled with quite a few passengers before and some of the crew. We have previously sailed with the captain, Halle Thon Gunderson, the cruise director, Peter, and two of his staff, Mike and Jen. Peter is from Holland and has been cruising for about 12 years. He is leaving the ship after the next 56-day European cruise to get married to a Pennsylvania girl in Hershey, PA. He will not be cruising in the near future as once he is married he can’t leave the US until all his immigration forms are properly filed and authorized. His fiancé, Loren, joined us in St. Lucia. They make a very good-looking couple and she is a very bright and outgoing woman.
March 12 – Today is the sad day we have to leave the ship. We were supposed to be off at 10am but did not get off until Noon. The new rules are that all the luggage has to be offloaded before anyone can leave the ship and the stevedores don’t really like to work that hard so the luggage is not off quickly and thus neither are we.
Once we disembarked I gathered up all our luggage and found a porter to take us through Customs. I guess I have an honest face because I’ve never been stopped on any of our trips. We dropped off the 4 suitcases that IPS is shipping to TX for us and headed to the airport to pick up our rental car. When we arrived at the Budget counter there was a huge line of people to get a car but since I signed up for the FastRes program I didn’t have to wait in it. I went directly to the FastRes counter and in 5 minutes was dragging the remaining suitcases to our car, a brand new Mercury Crown Victoria. It’s a huge car but the Chevy Impala we drove to FL had twice the trunk as this hog. It doesn’t drive very well either, you have to constantly adjust the course or it weaves all over the road. I don’t really like it at all.
We headed toward Orlando where we will be staying with a friend of ours who was a missionary to Russia for about 12 years and before that at the Christian Embassy in Washington DC. She’s still in missionary service but now she’s in the US at the organization’s HQ. She is part of a remarkable family. Her father, mother, sister and brother are or were all missionaries. Their service has taken them to all parts of the world and they have sacrificed much in the way of family comforts and proximity. That being said, I don’t know any family that is closer or has a stronger bond than the Cowans. (Ruth and Esther, I know you are reading this but it’s true and I hope you are not offended) They are the sweetest people and could not be warmer than they are. Esther has just purchased her first home and we can’t wait to see it.
We met Esther at the Wycliffe Bible Translators HQ and had lunch in their cafeteria. They have a translation exhibit called the ‘WordSpring Discovery Center’. There are many interactive exhibits demonstrating and explaining the work they are doing in the field. Esther’s sister Ruth had arranged for us to have passes to the exhibit and we spent the early afternoon exploring the exhibits.
From there we went next door, it’s the next building but it’s about a half-mile drive, to the Campus Crusade for Christ HQ where Esther works. They have a tour that explains and interprets their work on the ‘Jesus Film’. The film, a two-hour docudrama, is based on the Gospel of Luke. Since the release in 1979 the film has been translated and dubbed into 985 languages. They don’t just add the new language, a method that results in the Japanese film syndrome of the lips moving but having no relationship to the sounds coming out. They actually do a syllable count from the English of the original film and then do the translation in a way that matches that count and then use computers to edit the new sound track to match the actor’s lip movement to the words. The result is amazing. It really looks like the actors are speaking the new language. Sometimes this process just won’t work because the language is so different. In those cases they produce an audio only version, bringing the total languages covered to over 1,000.
I was very impressed that a few years ago, every school in Russia showed this film and discussed a Judeo/Christian system of morality. Try doing that in the good ole’ USA! The Russians tried a humanistic system under the Communists and they are now smart enough to know it does not work. We are going to make that discovery here someday; I just hope it’s not too late.
The day ended with dinner and conversation at Esther’s home. She has a beautiful townhome very close to CCC’s HQ. I know that she is enjoying it and we are so happy for her.
March 13 – Today we were up early enough for Esther to get off to work after we were on the road. We had a great visit and we hope to get together again soon.
We are headed to the city of Lady Lake in The Villages, a golf cart community where our friends Bill and Almira live. We met them in 2001 when we went to Europe and cruised back via the Baltic and then a transatlantic cruise on the ms Amsterdam. They were our dinner mates along with John and Monique from Chicago. We were with them again on the 2002 AsiaPacific cruise. They are a great couple and we’re looking forward to seeing them again.
Our visit with Almira and Bill was great. They have a nice home in a golf cart community. We went to lunch at a very good NY style deli in the village. About two months ago a tornado came through here but fortunately it passed about two miles from their home. We went out to see the damage. Some structures have been repaired but others are awaiting demolition or under construction. The damage was amazing. One house had a strip right through the center that was gone from the roof to the foundation right along the eaves. The rest of the house was still standing. In one place a home would be mostly flattened and the houses on either side would be undamaged. Tornados are truly amazing phenomenon.
Since our visit to Jacksonville was cancelled we headed west as soon as we left Lady Lake. We drove to Pensacola and stopped for the night there at the same HI Exp. we stayed in on Jan 2. It seems like months ago we were here and that’s because it is.
March 14 – The drive from Pensacola home is a very long day. It’s not that far in miles, 734, but you can’t make time like you can from CA to TX. The wide-open west has far fewer cities and higher speed limits. The combination of less congestion and more speed can really help. The drive from Pensacola took about 12 hours, 734 miles from Deming, NM takes about 10. While it was long, the drive was very uneventful, a little rain is about all the excitement we had. That’s always fine with me. I love going away but it’s always good to come home. Our house was fine and the watering system in the backyard did a great job. All the plants look great. I don’t know if you are familiar with ‘Old House Gardens’. They are an organization that preserves and cultivates, or subcontracts the cultivation, of old bulbs. Many of these flowers are the early ancestors of the flowers we have now. Through the years hybridization has changed the species so much that the old flowers are no longer commercially available. Everything they sell was in existence before the 1960s. I purchased some Dreamlight daffodils that I planted before we left. They have come up and are very unique indeed. The petals are pure white and the trumpet is very short and wide, green in the center, fading to pale yellow and ringed in a fringe of red/orange. I’ve never seen anything like it. The advantage of these heritage bulbs is that they are more hearty and disease resistant than the more modern hybrids. Their web site www.oldhousegardens.com is a thing of beauty even if you don’t want to order anything. Just looking and reading about the old flowers is very interesting. Be forewarned, the rarest bulbs are expensive. In my last order, near the end of the fall planting season, they sent me more bulbs than I paid for. It’s that kind of an organization. I placed my order by phone and the lady that helped me actually walked into the bulb room to check on the availability of some items.
Thanks for going on the trip with us. Hope to see you face to face soon.
Editor’s Note: Please keep in mind that the above represents concurrently recorded, stream of consciousness daily journaling. They are emailed every few days to a list of longsuffering friends who enjoy reading them. It is possible, even likely, that some factual errors are included either as the result of the author’s faulty recollection or bad information passed on by guides, etc. Any shortcomings are entirely the responsibility of the author. Any opinions express are solely his as well.
