It's getting a little Chile out ;-)

We arrived in Arica, Chile at 6:00 a.m.  Some people were on buses by 6:15 a.m. That was not us, but we heard about that excursion - 5 hours to the Altiplano national park, up 14,000 feet for 45 minutes, then 5 hours back.

Nope, nope, nope, that was not us. We were on the 6 1/2 hour "Arica and Ancient Cultures" excursion. Off we went.

The cruise excursion booklet stated "A/C buses not guaranteed" - but no worries, not only did our bus have A/C, it also had a bathroom! Woohoo! (?) Because it sounded like a long stretch to the first stop with real bathrooms.

Our first stop was in the Lluta (YOO-tah) Valley by the side of the road to see the geo glyphs: huge ancient rock sculptures on desert hills. On the left you can make out stick figure horses, or whatever they are supposed to be:

Next stop was San Jeronimo church and its cemetery - very old and out in the middle of nowhere. The church is considered "female" and the walls enclosing it "male" to complete an ancient symbol of fertility:

The cemetary is well visited - all the graves are highly decorated:

One of the headstones had a two liter soda-bottle filled with water sitting on it. No clue as to the signficance of that.

This was also the first opportuntity to try out the onboard bathroom. I had learned from assorted travels in Europe that it was always a good idea to figure out the flushing mechanism before anything else. This turned out to be a real good idea, since the flushing mechanism (a huge red button labeled "DISGARDAS" - oh I guess "disgardas" means "flush"?) wasn't anywhere I would have assumed it to be. Interesting.

Next stop - up to the sandt top of a hill (many switchbacks later), where a member of the Pachamama native population waited for us to lead us through a welcoming ceremony. The ceremony involved super sweet wine (think: Chilean Manechevitz), incense, and brightly colored confetti.  There were 3 buses on this tour; we had to wait a bit for the last bus (#16) to show up before we began with six volunteers (2 from each bus):

The ceremony included spilling wine in 4 corners (east, west, north south), taking a sip and then tossing the rest over your shoulder. Good thing the tour guides told people behind the Ayamura guy to make an opening.

At then end of the ceremony, everybody got confetti dumped on our heads.

And coca leaves:

You were supposed to chew these, which did not sound appetizing. The leaves in this photo will be left behind when we return home (no plant matter is allowed into the U.S.).

Buses 14 and 15 continued on - as our bus (15) pulled away, I thought I heard someone say "Wow that bus is really stuck"), but  didn't think anything of it.

Next stop was at the San Miguel de Azapa archeological/anthropological museum. First order of business - a real bathroom. 

Of sorts. The door to the ladies room was bolted open. The stalls on full view of anybody passing by. The door to the first stall would not lock. A little too much excitement for a bathroom break.

The biggest highlight of this museum were the 7,000 year old Chinchorro mummies - twice as old as Egyptian mummies.

After that appetizing sight, it was time for "snack" - which consisted of two tiny ham (?!?) and cheese sandwiches and a cookie. We didn't realize we had to make a special request on the ship for something else. The cookie was very good, though.

We were doing the best with our "lunch" when Bus #16 suddenly shows up. Oops, it did seem like something was missing, but couldn't quite put a finger on it until they showed up. Bus #16's tour guide was a bit upset - the bus had gotten stuck in the sand up at the top of that hill. It had taken awhile to get loose.

{After the fact and next day, we heard the full story - the bus was stuck in the sand, no cell service, no mechanism for freeing the bus. The driver had no idea what to do. A school bus climbed up the hill and proceeded to also get stuck in the sand behind Bus #16, so #16 couldn't go backwards or forwards. Tourists are trying to dig out the wheels with thier hands. There is no air conditioning and it's getting mighty hot on that hill in the desert, with little or no water. Others flag down a huge truck. The truck hauls the school bus out via a chain. The truck attaches the train to the tour bus - and the chain breaks. The chain is somehow repaired, and that does the trick. When the complaint was lodged at the end of the tour, the tour company asked, "Did you receive the full cotent of the tour?" as opposed to, "Are  you all right?"}

But we were oblivious to all that. And we're thinking that we were real glad we had come down to the early morning meeting spot so we were assigned to bus 15 instead of 16.

Next stop - an artisan's village. Unfortunatey, or maybe fortunately, nothing looked very interesting. Except this flower:

Last stop was downtown Arica. We thought we might take the shuttle back. We thought we might climb to the top of El Morro:

We reconsidered that thought. 

There was a church designed by Gustav Eiffel (of Tower fame), but it was covered in scaffolding for renovation. That's it in the background - the tower covered in green. Getting closer to it would not have helped.

After shopping for a bit, we decided to go back to the ship via the bus.

The entire day I had forgotten about the confetti - until I pulled the scrunchy out of my hair and it started snowing colored bits of paper. I shook my head and this came out:

And a few more came out in the shower. I had been walking around with this stuff in my hair all day.

Arica was the last "official" stop of the cruise - two days at sea and we arrive at Santiago.

Next blog - sometime next week (after we get home, the dogs are home, the laundry is done, and my flat tire (that I know is waiting for me) is fixed).

If Tuesday, Then Peru

The information about Lima was amazingly confusing and conflicting - all sorts of dire warnings ("Danger! Danger, Will Robinson!"), including a letter from the captain slipped under our cabin door. One presenter even suggested that we make sure we go out into Lima in groups, and have one person all the other people's valuables. And whatever you do, DON'T TAKE A TAXI.

Francisco, the destination coordinator, had a somewhat different story - it's the port area (Callao) that's dangerous. Lima itself is fine. The taxis in Lima are fine. The problem is the traffice - all gridlock all the time.

Originally we thought we'd go back into the city after the morning excursion and then take a cab down to an Incan Artesan Market in the Miraflores neighborhood. The more Francisco ranted on about the traffic, the less feasible this plan became.

So off we went on our morning excursion, leaving the ship at about 8:00. Traffic was indeed hideous. We creeped through the Very Bad Area of Callao - and indeed, it did not look appetizing. There were very nice houses:

And then this:

As we continued to snail our way along, our tour guide spoke of the 12 years of terror under a dictator, which resulted in an exodus of people from the city center. Huge buildings were left empty and/or damaged. Some are still empty, even 20 years later.

We got off the bus at the Plaza de Armas or the main square. Here's my attempt at a panoramic shot:

After 20 minutes of photo shots, we walked over to the Santo Domingo monestary. Yey, bathroom break!

Here's the courtyard, with its Moorish-influenced wall tiles:

A close up of the tiles:

We heard Gregorian chanting in the background as we walked around the courtyard, and then into a chapel and library. This is a hand written and hand illustrated book of music:

And then the church itself:

After we got on the bus, the rest of the tour was spent dragging us through the city to see the various neighborhoods. The nicest, most modern is Miraflores. Below Miraflores, at the bottom of the cliffs is the beautiful beach of Costa Verde:

Though the excursion was billed as 3 hours, it ended up closer to 4 hours - all because of the traffic. Lima has some city buses, but no metro/subway, and little regard for traffic lights. Pedestrians play a game of frogger every time they cross the street.

We once again did a quick turn around - got on a shuttle that took us to the San Miguel shopping center. Because it almost never rains in Lima, the mall had no roof. There is no need for heating or air conditioning. It had been overcast and chilly in the morning, but by the afternoon the sun was out with temperatures in the mid-70s. Just beautiful.

We picked a restuarant in the mall (Tanta) - I must say, the wait staff was very patient and helpful, locating the couple of people who could sort of speak English. They got us an English menu, which helped tremendously. Andy had a Pisco Sour (the "national drink" of Peru) and ceviche - raw white fish in a lemon sause, rice, and corn (the hugest corn kernals you've ever seen).

I had Aji de Gallino - chicken, potatoes, and eggs in a curry-like sause. Everything was delicious. We hung out at the restaurant leveraging the free wifi for quite some time. No rush; our only limitation being the 4:30 last shuttle back to the ship.

In the park in front of the shuttle stop was a little craft fair - a lot of Christmas stuff, what a shock. But we still did well. We had taken out some Peruvian currency (sol), but we only used up a little bit of it - most of the vendors were happy with U.S. dollars.

Oh yes, before I forget, apparently Christmas in Peru still involves reindeer:

As I type this the ship should be pulling away from the dock. It's not. This is not the first time the ship has been late leaving port.

A very successful day. I like Lima and all its weirdness. Hopefully we'll be back in 2017 for a longer stay in Peru.

Tomorrow - another (single) day at sea. One more stop (Arica, Chile) before we disembark on Sunday.

Ecuador - Isla Corazon

We had selected the excursion for Isla Corazon because if its description as a "mini Galopagos", teeming with (mostly) bird life. This sounded a bit more interesting than the other excursions that basically took you places to buy hats.

Ah yes, Panama hats - that are, in fact, made in Ecuador. Made popular almost 100 years ago by Teddy Roosevelt who wore one of these hats while visiting the in-progress Panama canal. And also by Humphrey Bogart in "The Maltese Falcon". At any rate, real Panama hats are made in Ecuador.

But we were not headed anywhere near hats. Almost 2 hours in a mini-van headed north to Isla Corazon.

Unfortunately it wasn't till the boat ride to Isla Corazon that I perfected the technique of using the "burst" mode on my iPad camera in order to capture a photo of something of interest out the bus window as we zoomed along. Hard to describe the houses and towns we saw along the way - other than the highway, not many paved roads at all. Most of the houses were incomplete - a floor or two finished, with an unfinished upper floor - literally the support beams sticking up from the roofs of the highest completed floor. As in other areas we've seen, people build what they can afford and leave the structure for the next piece, ready to be completed when money becomes available.

This resulted in odd juxtapositions of randomly complete, incomplete, and ramshackle houses. There would be a beautiful, finished house and literally right next door would be a house that wasn't much better than a shack. Many of the houses were on stilts, because of the annual flooding of the two nearby rivers.

Also interesting were the tiny town-centers - with restuarants and stores - and hardly anybody in them.

The group was very small - only 10 of us in a mini-van. We had all noted that there was an age limit - no one over 65. Nobody had any idea why. There was also a note that this excursion was NOT for those with limited mobility. This became obvious with the first super-steep ramp down to the boat that took us to Isla Corazon. There were a bunch of them. After the first down ramp, I figured out how to creep down crab-wise. No problem!

Out on the water we saw coromants, pelicans, and frigate birds galore, all hovering around the fishing boats:

We then checked in at the wildlife center - we recorded our names, nationality and age. This was proably the place to ask about the age restriction, but none of us thought to do that.

And here was this little guy:

I was leery of getting any closer, thinking he'd bolt. Turns out, I could have gotten much closer because he wasn't going anywhere. This is a juvenile frigate bird - one of his wings was badly damaged when he was caught in a fishing net. He was rescued and brought to the wildlife center. Apparently he will neer be able to fly, so now he lives here, quite used to humans.

Walking along the boardwalk back to the boat, we could see the beach was covered with crabs:

Yeah ok you can't really see the crabs, but the egrets could see them and were doing a great job at plucking them out of their holes.

Once on Isla Corazon itself, we were joined by the local guide, Julio. I was actually able to understand about 95% of what he was saying in Spanish.

What we mostly saw on Isla Corazon was - mangrove trees. Black mangrove and red mangrove. Apparently at one point, these trees were mostly gone and with them most of the wildlife in the area. The trees were replanted and protected and now have since recovered.

In case you've never seen a mangrove tree, they look like this:

The whole island was covered by these trees. We did spot a tiny yellow bird called the Mangrove Warbler, but it moved too fast for me to get a photo. That turned out to be the only non-frogate/pelican bird we saw the entire day.

BUT there we more crabs. This is a fuzzy photo of a red crab:

This was as exciting as the wildlife got. Highly disappointing to the two birders in our group (one equipped with the requisite ginormous camera).

Interesting, but not as exciting as we had hoped.

Lunch was at the hotel that served as a loading dock for the tour boats. The menu - three kinds of ceviche, the local (and/or Peruvian) equivalent to paella in Spain. One was octopus, the second shrimp, and the third a generic fish. Which was liberally peppered with cilantro. In case you are not aware, I don't do cilantro. The plantain chips were really good!

On the way back I captured this photo of an unfinished house:

And a kapok tree:

These trees are everywhere. The fiber that comes from their seed pods is used to stuff pillows and mattresses.

We contemplated whether or not we had the time after the tour to take the shuttle into Manta to find the marketplace. We got back to the ship at about 3:45; we decided to take a chance.

Turns out it was pretty easy - the shuttles stop literally across the street from the market. Success! I have a genuine Ecuadoran "Made In Montinegri" visor! With purple trim!

I think it was $8. Ok, not the highest quality, but eh, who cares.

Since Manta is the tuna capital of the world, here's the obligatory photo of a fishing trawler:

We enjoyed the day, even though we didn't see the promised "teeming birdlife".

Now we were faced with 2 days at sea. Yesterday we managed to fill the time, including the last night of Hanukkah. Once again a huge crowd. The kitchen never really figured out how to make decent latkes, but the sufganiyot were great.

There was a silly poolside ceremony for people crossing the equator for the first time. This somehow involved King Neptune, a colorful pirate, and something involving kissing a dead fish.

Just realized all those photos are on my phone as opposed to my iPad, therefore not within easy access. I will come back and update this entry after we get home and all my devices are on wifi at the same time.

<silly photos are here>.

Oh and our "official" certificates showed up yesterday as well:

Here we are on the second of two days at sea, and I'm filling up the time by catching up on my blog. Unfortunately, only one of us can be online at a time.

Tomorrow is Lima. For the first time, we had to fill out a customs form. We also received a letter from the captain with dire instructions on how to be safe in Lima - stick to your tour group (we only have a 3 hour "highlights of the city" thing), don't take taxis/use only the ship shuttles, etc. Egads. Tonight will be the the "Destination Explanation" talk at 8:00, which will be a great time to find out what the heck the story is with that.

Adelante a Lima!

Panama Canal Obsession Day 2

The Big Day Is Here!

It did require getting up at 6:30 a.m. on a vacation day, but so worth it.

We were out on the bow at 7:00 a.m.- I was out there through the 2nd lock (about 2 hours), which was way longer than most people (breakfast called!). Ironman Andy stayed through the 3rd lock when the ship entered the open lake.

At a presentation from a couple of days ago, we had this graphic with suggested places to stand for each segment of the transit. Not sure how many of these suggestions we actually followed. (Note: "P" is for "Port", "S" is for "Starboard", and "U" is for Upperdeck".

Our view at 7:00 a.m. as we approached the slip:

Ships enter the lake in the morning from both directions, pass each other and exit in the late afternoon. Our first partner ship was the Seven Seas:

During the afternoon transit of the lake, I hung out in a chair by a big window:

For the transit under the Centennial Bridge and the Pedro Miguel locks I stayed up on the 12th deck:

This is a view from the back of the ship as we entered the Pedro Miguel lock. Andy was on Deck 4.

By that time, The Island Princess ship had caught up with us and was our companion in the snail-pace race to the Pacific. I pushed the limits of the "PANO" setting on my phone. I guess the Island Princess was a little too close:

Here's a better photo taken when we pulled further away:

For the Miraflores locks, I cam down to deck 4. The two ships were so close, it felt like we could reach out and touch hands. There were a couple of people displaying signs from their balconies. One guy seemed to really really want somebody to notice him, so I took his photo. This seemed to make him very happy.

This is how close we came to the sidewalk:

The ship entered the Pacific a little after 5:00. An amazing experience.

Fifth night  of Hanukkah - at sea included the ship's Holiday Show. The big ship menorah, normally down on deck 3 by the concierge desk, was on stage. The stage crew took several attempts to get the right number of candles and the right candles lit - all while the performers continued undaunted. The selection of Hanukkah songs was actually not cringe-worthy!

Friday is a day at sea, followed by Manta, Ecuador!

Panama Canal Obsession Day 1 - Colon, Panama

On Tuesday night after dinner, we went to a presentation about the next day's (Wednesday) destination, Colon, Panama. He made it clear (with a funny/scary story of walking back through Colon after his bicycle AND shoes were stolen) that there are places you go and places you don't go. Which is most of Colon.

This sentiment was repeated on Wednesday by our tour guide, Jill, as bus #20 pulled out of the parking lot. Since we weren't planning on diverting from the bus itinerary in any way shape or form, we were good. 

Jill herself was pretty interesting- a proclaimed 5th generation Panamanian, whose grandfather was an engineer working on the building of the existing canal. Fifth generation, but with a 100% American accent to her English - and her Spanish as well. The family tradition seems to be to send the kids back to the USfor education and they somehow always come back to Panama. 

Anyway off we were to the Gatun locks, the first set we will enter the next day entering the lake from the north. Panama doesn't seem to. Invest much in road infrastructure- few traffic lights, a few totally ignored stop signs and pot holes the size of trash cans. There was a huge tanker truck in front of us - I made the mistake of watching as the truck (and our bus) swerved around the holes like a slalom even if that required zooming into the opposite/oncoming lane. Jill said, "I'd rather not know." 

The viewing stand was up a flight of 70 stairs (yey). 

We arrived  just in time to see a barge come through in one direction and an MSC cruise ship come through the other.

This photo is just as the water level in the cruise ship's chamber began to lower: 

8 minutes later, the gates opened and the ship pulled through.

The ship's are guided through by little locomotives called mules. This is one of the display mules. That's Jill, our 5th generation Panamanian tour guide 

Very exciting to watch the whole process. On our way to the next stop, we drove over the construction of the new locks. This one is just missing some water:

The new gates will slide back into the wall instead of folding flat.

The next stop was to an island in the middle of Gatun Lake to visit with the Embera Indians. Once on board the ferry, we took a spin around a small area of the lake in search of wildlife. 

Here's a fuzzy photo of a tiger heron:

There's also a fuzzy photo of a cormorant, but the heron is more exciting. 

Andy may have a fuzzy photo of a howler monkey, which I will add once we get home and I can get to it. We did see them, though, prehensile tails and everything (I think now I'll remember it's new world monkeys with the prehensile tails and old world monkeys do not. Yes, yes, I know who cares, but after all these years I'm still a wildlife nerd).

The Embera were delightful- their sole acquiescence to technology are their cellphones so they can coordinate tourist visits. Tourism is now their main source of income. The chief's 27 year old son delivered a Toastmsters-worthy presentation, with Jill and the other tour guide translating fro. The Spanish. Proud to say I understood about 70% of each sentence (I.e. There would be at least one or two words per sentence that I had no clue what it was). Of course that meant that 30% was a total loss, making for a spotty story. 

Here's the  chief-to-be (his father is 57 and looking pretty healthy, so I think he has a bit of a wait) showing cloth with Embera original designs (which changes every month):

Next they demonstrated a couple of dances, and then dragged us up onto the dance floor. Fortunately there is no video of that. 

Only 15 minutes of shopping (what are these tour companies thinking) and we were back on the bus on the way back to the ship.

Fourth night of Hanukkah and the crowd was abut sparse - many of the tours were just straggling in

Interestingly enough, at dinner we were seated at a table with two other couples we ad dinner with a couple of nights ago. I guess there's a limited number of people who go to dinner earlier than later and are happy to share a table. 

The ship didn't leave till after 8:30 - the no ounces reason was an extended time needed to finish "bunkering", a term that I needed to look up: having to with refueling the ship. Or something to that affect. 

Thursday: the piece-de-resistance: the transit of the Panama Canal (goal - be up by 6:30 to go out onto the bow to watch up close and personal as we go through the first series of locks). 

DRY LAND AT LAST! or Maybe I'm Not The Best Sailor

I know there are people who love being at sea for multiple days on a cruise ship, but it just doesn't work well for me. What exactly happened yesterday? What did we actually *do*? I mean besides eat.

I think there were a couple of lectures in there - one about the canal (which was a bit confusing, because there had been a differet guy on Monday talking about the canal who never definitively answered the question - why Panama and not Nicaragua?), and another about plate tectonics. It was way more interesting than it sounds.

We had an even bigger crowd for the 2nd night of Hanukkah - at least 50 people! 50 Jews out of 2000 people on the ship - what is that, .0001 percent of the boat population?

And we had yet another great dinner conversation (steered away from politics AND football).

Yesterday's challenge was staying upright and walking in a straight line. The ship left port on Saturday over 3 hours late (some strange BS sounding story as to why). We all got the impression the captain was making up for that time by putting the pedal to the medal, resulting in an entertaining game of human pinball and nobody was spared. I, for one, was leveraging my hiking stick as a third leg to keep me from flopping over completely. Didn't work 100% of the time, but better than nothing.

The running joke all over the ship was - if you see somebody walking in a straight line, they are obviously drunk.

The evening entertainment was Lesco James - not that I've heard of him before, but he was excellent.

So it was really nice to wake up this morning (to the auto-email from AT&T reminding me that I DO NOT HAVE A DATA PACKAGE IN THIS LOCATION) to the sensation of not rocking. And walking to breakfast without bumping into a wall or table or chair.

Today was our first excursion - The Best Of Cartagena as opposed to A Taste Of Cartagena (which I think was about coffee).

Highlights - Fort San Felipe:

Which withstood many a foreign attack, including one from the British and Vernon Washington (half brother to our more familiar Father of Our Country, George). Did you know Mt Vernon was named for Vernon Washington? I did not. Nothing like a little American history while in South America.

Oh our guide did warn us that we would be chanting "No, gracias" more times than we could count to beat back all the street vendors, and he was right.

This guy Don Blas de Lezo, a Colombian hero (defeated the aforementioned Vernon Washington) while missing assorted body parts:

We then ventured into the old city of Cartagena. 

We toured the museum of the Inquisition (yep, that Inquisition) with assorted versions of how many people were actually killed. Turns out, depends on who you ask.

You know there's always a bathroom related story when we're traveling - luckily, today was pretty easy. Except of course that I had to ask when the bathroom break would be, because tour guides almost never think to mention it. Mind you, our cohort consists entirely of people over 60. 

But fortunately, the Inquisitors managed to install a bathroom, I guess. The yellow sign (posted on the remaining original walls of the building) points the way, and those two people are coming through the bathroom door. Can you get any more exciting than that?

Next was the convent for San Pedro Claver - the tower at the end of the street in this photo.

There is also the very pretty Iglesia de San Pedro Claver.

And finally, San Pedro Claver:

Yep, that's him. I guess "in the flesh" doesn't really apply here. He was a champion for African slaves and the poor.

We did do a little bit of shopping, but it was a major national/religious holiday of sorts and most of the shops were closed. I did score the first elephant of the trip.

I haven't mentioned up to this point that it was about 85 degrees and a zillion percent humidity, but it was indeed a bit toasty. Apparently we just missed a heat wave. The Colombian "summer" is the drier and cooler season of the year (as opposed to even hotter and constant rain).

The best part of the shopping (main items offered for sale - emeralds and coffee, and we weren't interested in either) was the random few minutes in air conditioning.

The tour ended with a drive through modern Cartagena, with tall and expensive apartment buildings.

Unfortunately no opportunity to sample local cuisine - which we were warned away from (DON'T EAT STUFF FROM STREET VENDORS!!!) in the usual subtle manner. And then I saw people from a different bus (always kinda hard to "blend in" when you have the silly "BUS #6" sticker on your shirt) buy some coconut milk from a street vendor. Good luck with that.

We were back at the ship by 1:00. Followed by lunch, hanging out and blogging.

Soon to come - more food and tonight's entertainment. Must say, evening shows have been great. Just wish there was a piano bar.

Ah yes, tomorrow - yesterday we received a voice mail and a letter telling us that our "Panama Canal Tour" scheduled for Wednesday (is that tomorrow?) was canceled due to low turn out. So this morning we stopped by the excursion desk and booked the "Panoramic Panama" tour instead. Not exactly sure what that entails or even how much it costs, but the excursion guy says it most closely approximates our original plan of going through the canal in a ferry boat. Which would have been way, way, way cool. Putting on my optimistic hat, I'm sure the 6 hour Panoramic Panama tour will be great. As long as the bathroom breaks are well planned.

Hasta manana! 

(ok you have to imagine the ~ over first "n", because iPad)