World cruise 5.1

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http://www.thecruisevillage.com/live-cruise-ship-tracker.phtml

World cruise 5

Not really back in business, but we'll make a start doing it the long, hard way.

January 11

We spent the majority of the day transiting the Panama Canal. The first photo is of the gates at the Gatun locks closing behind us as a another cruise ship (which never got close enough to identify, but someone said it was one of the Silver Seas ships) approaches the locks on the other side.

Next is a photo as we move into the third lock with Gatun Lake in the background. The locks are only 4 feet wider than our ship which leaves literally very little rom for error. They are building new locks at each end of the canal which will serve much bigger ships and be much more efficient in using and reusing the vast amounts of water it takes to raise and lower big ships 85 feet.

We spent a long time almost inching through Gatun Lake. I suspect that was due to heavy traffic through the canal. I wonder whether that will change when they open the new locks in a couple of years.

The third photo is of the mystery ship and our escort tug following us through the Culebra Cut. To me, this is the most interesting portion of the canal as it is where they had to dig the canal through the backbone of the isthmus.

The last photo is the Pan American Bridge over the canal at Panama City. The Pan American Highway goes from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. I've been to the southern end, but not the northern one.

Although we were past the Panama Canal, at dinner everyone, including the waiters and other dining room staff were given Panama hats (made in China) to wear. I have promised M that I will get her a real Panama hat while we are at Manta, Ecuador since that's where the real ones are made. She's going on some sort of wildlife tour there while my tour will visit an area where I should be able to find her a hat.

January 12

Chugging along off the South American coast...way off. At noon we were 120 miles north of the (west) coast of Colombia. The weather has been mostly cloudy, hazy and quite warm with an occasional shower. The ocean has been very smooth.

I am hoping that Mike can show me a better way to upload photos to my blog because I spent a frustrating hour trying to get yesterday's post and photos done with no success. He says it's easy...we'll see.

Oh, by the way, for those of you who know me in person, the other evening at dinner I actually ate some cauliflower and have two witnesses, maybe three if the waiter happened to be looking. I was not impressed.

Another apology

We are in the middle of the South Pacific where satellite connection is pretty iffy. Today we've een zigging and zagging to try to keep connection to the South American satellite which, if we were going straight would be blocked by the ship's funnel. I'm still working on the photo problem and hope to start "real" posts again soon.

Apology

Sorry for the hiatus. I'm having trouble up-loading photos again. Hope to get it working better soon.

World cruise 4

January 8

The ship developed some "ocean motion" last night. Not a whole lot of moving around, but enough to know that you are at sea. Also enough to make for very good sleeping. The old phrase "rocked in the cradle of the deep" has some truth behind it. Fortunately, this morning I was up before the ship's alarm went off for a Crew Emergency Drill.

The rest of the day was much like yesterday except for continuing motion as we are out in the middle of the Caribbean away from the protection of any islands. I do like days at sea, and there are lots of them on this trip. So far, my only problem is that I seem to have forgotten to pack my sea legs in all those suitcases I brought. I do realize that our cabin at the far aft end of the ship so will be bouncier than elsewhere on board. I finally did get some photos of the cabin so here they are.

We did go meet Helen who is the representative of a travel group called vacations.com with which my travel agent is affiliated. As members of her group on board (along with 50 or 60 others) we get several free tours, a party, etc. Plus she can organize things like tours, dinners, or lunches ashore etc. for small groups of us. At a meeting this afternoon, it became apparent that many in the group have been around the world on this ship before and have good advice to offer.

January 9

Up early, just in time to see us come in to the harbor at Santa Marta in bright sunshine. This is evidently a freight terminal rather than a cruise terminal. I later found out the Holland America only began stopping at Santa Marta this past year.

I had a nice tour of the city with the usual obligatory stops at a cathedral, a restored manor house, a modern hotel for a folkloric show on the beach and a museum. The folkloric show was loud drumming which I listened to from as far away as I could. I was more interested in the plaza at the cathedral than in the building itself. At the manor house, there was a great deal of walking involved, so I opted out of some of it and found a lovely shady spot with a nice breeze under a huge tree which I think was a banyan. I got out my crocheting and several local people stopped to ask what I was making. I did manage to get the idea of a string shopping bag across even with my very limited Spanish.

The stop I enjoyed the most was the Museo del Oro Tairona (the Gold Museum). It was very nicely done and featured pre-Colombian gold pieces and pottery from the Tairona area near Santa Marta. Interestingly, there were 4 previously unknown groups of natives in the Tairona Forests discovered in 1975. Evidently, after their initial exposure to the Spaniards' violent ways, they just determined to hide from white men. However, some of their tribe's burial sites had been discovered quite a while back. The gold piece here is a bat man from te group that has the bat as their totem. The pottery piece is also a bat man, but rather more ferocious looking. Many  of the other pottery pieces were extremely graceful and beautiful.

M

January 10

Half day at sea, and half at the San Blas Islands off the coast of Panama. This is a tender port with about 20 miutes' ride in one of the ship's small boats to get to the island. As much as I have always loved seeing the molas and the fine sewing of the women who make them, I'm skipping it this time. I still have a number of molas at home and don't really need more. However, M has gone to look around.

As we approached San Blas, we were passed by the Thor Heyerdahl which is a 3-masted barque. Here is a photo of her with sails set just perking along.

World cruise 3

January 5

There were another 5 ships docked at the port when we got up ths morning. We headed over to the passener terminal about 11:30 or so arriving at the same time as several hundred other passengers. That just meant an exercise in "hurry up and wait," but it didn't take more than about an hour until we were in our cabin. We were originally supposed to sail at 5:00 p.m., but didn't actually sail until about 10:00 p.m.

We had some lunch then wandered around a bit. I enjoyed seeing the ship agan, but I probably thoroughly confused Margaret since it is all new to her. Back at the cabin, we spent most of the afternoon until dinnertime unpacking our suitcases. Everything including the ones we shipped back on December 19th arrived in good order, although some things were pretty wrinkled after being packed for 3 weeks.

I'm sorry I don't have any good photos of the cabin, but there isn't really a good view point to do it justice. The cabin is pretty good size with more closet space than I expected and a reasonable amount of drawer space. However, I am glad that we brought along a shoe bag thing to hang over the bathroon door for more storage in there. I picked up that tip from someone on the Facebook group for this voyage. It really helps keep things controlled...especially with all the stuff two women want to have available. One of the best parts of having a handicapped accessible cabin is that you don't have to step up to get into the bahroom...no cracking your toe in the middle of the night because you forgot to step up.

We have the cabin's beds set up as twins with both nightstands in between. That makes things a little tight in the entry area, but generally gives us more moving around space and less claustophobia. The portion of the cabin toward the windows has a desk with tv set and dvd player, a lot of drawers, and a bar area. There is a partial wall and curtain between that area and the sleeping area. Also there is a love-seat-sized couch in black leather, an end table that houses a mini-fridge, another chair and a coffee table that goes taller if you want a dining table. Our balcony is huge and has one chair, one small side table and one lounge hair.  However, the balcony extends past the width of our cabin almost to the back of the ship. With all this, we managed to get everything stowed away including the suitcases most of which are under the beds serving as additional storage.

January 6

Lazy day at sea. Anyone who has followed my blog on other trips knows that means sleep late, putter around or read in various locations for most of the day, talk to people, have dinner and read some more or go to one of the entertainment venues. Today the choices were read, nap, and dinner followed by a bit of classical music by a piano/violin duet. M added in a good bit of wandering around the ship and one of the guest lecturers' presentations.

The red roses we were given at dinner last night have opened nicely. This evening when we got back to the cabin, we found a lobster made from a towel on M's bed and a very nice travel journal for each of us. Tomorrow I plan to figure out how to get my internet access set up. At least I get a strong wifi signal in the cabin.

January 7

I did get hooked to the internet this afternoon, but there just isn't a whole lot exciting going on as we are still headed toward our first port in Colombia. We did have a pretty good view of Cuba as we passed through the Bahamas Channel. I hope that someday I will be able to sail on a ship that stops there.

Project Linus (a nationwide organization that makes and donates blankets to sick children from babies up through teenagers) is alive and well on board. In addition to a number of folks working on their own projects, there are several huge boxes of yarn to be made into hats and blankets. So I started a corner to corner double diamond blanket and now several other ladies want me to teach them the pattern.

I spent a good deal of time in consultation with one of the Shore Excursion staff going over all the various tours I've chosen. She's trying to talk me out of a bunch of them as being too strenuous. Also, at a number of the islands in the South Pacific the vehicles they use for the tours cannot accommodate my walker. Most of those are also tender ports where we will have to go ashore on the ship's small boats. I can do tenders if the seas are calm, but am not fond of the "tender high jump" when trying to get back onto the ship if the waves have picked up. Will have to think about all of this.

The Captain's Welcome Champagne Reception was this evening. Of course that meant formal dress. As we were waiting to go in, we met up with Mike who is one of our tablemates. He's a retired school superintendant from South Carolina on his first long cruise...nothing like starting off big! There's another couple at our table, but I don't have their names down yet. I think they are from Long Island. Tonight we were joined by one of the guest lecturers and his granddaughter who is a lovely young woman who recently moved from Hawaii to San Francisco. It was a congenial group.

I still haven't taken any photos of the cabin, mostly because it's almost always in some degree of disarray.

World cruise 2

January 3

Yesterday we were actually packed and ready to leave half an hour before our target time. Once in Richmond, we had a nice dinner with M's family including the very well-behaved granddaughter (age 2). They will be keeping M's car while we are gone.

Today's flights to Ft. Lauderdale were both on time and both had very young children. The first flight to Charlotte had a cute little girl of 1.5 years who was perfectly behaved. The second flight had several who were quiet and one little boy (right across the aisle from us) of about 2 years who had a screeching meltdown for a solid 40 minutes. I'm not sure that even a set of those fancy noise-canceling headphones would have been able to cope with that.

By the time they brought the drinks cart around, he had worn himself out. Thus I was able to once again enjoy the perennial miracle of having iced tomato juice 36,000 feet up in the air. For some reason, that never fails to evoke my sense of wonder at the technology (and physics) that makes it possible for me to do that.

After some less than satisfactory go-rounds with the hotel in Ft. Lauderdale, I finally got the room I wanted...11th floor with a balcony facing the port so I can sit and watch the big ships tomorrow. One of the big ones arrived this evening while we were at dinner. It was too dark for me to make out its name.

We had a fun, relaxed dinner with a friend here in Ft. Lauderdale at a place called Bimini Boateyard. We had a table outside overlooking the marina. She is a cruise travel agent, so we had lots to talk about, although the conversation ranged all over the map way beyond cruising, as usual.

January 4

This morning there were 5 big ships in port that I could see and possibly another docked directly in front of the one closest to us judging by the morning shadows. I couldn't tell exactly which ships they were -- except for the Regal Princess right in front of us with her wide stern pointed at us -- but there was at least one Carnival ship with its "whale tail" on top.

We had a lazy day watching the ships, boats and drawbridge over the Intercoastal Waterway, reading, managing to get hooked to the hotel's wifi (not as easy as one would think in a Hilton hotel), and wandering around this huge hotel complex. We got back to our balcony just in time to watch the ships parade out of the port. One got too far away for us to see what it was, but the others were 2 Holland America ships, the Eurodam and Niew Amsterdam, then the Regal Princess and the Carnival Freedom. Sure enough, the "wide-bodied" Regal Princess had been hiding something even bigger than herself...Royal Caribbean's Allure of the Seas.

"And so to bed" (to quote Samuel Pepys) for our last night on land for a good long time.