A GOOD CUPPA JOE

Good gravy!  As I write this, it is one week shy of a year since we ended this cruise.  The King of Procrastination will be my epitaph for sure. 

We departed Costa Rica and spent a day at sea enroute to Guatamala, our next stop.  The usual routine.  I gallantly assisted Loni by finishing off the second half of her breakfast cinnamon bun.  After, of course, demolishing my own along with a bowl of oatmeal.  What happens at sea, stays at sea, except for the poundage.  Spent the morning reading in front of the panoramic windows at the bow in the Constellation Lounge.  For me, this is the best place on the ship.  Relatively quiet and with 180 degree views.  After lunch, we heard another Bill Hall lecture on the Canal and learned that the U.S. got outbid on supplying the concrete for the construction of the new locks by only $1.5 million (to a consortium of Italy, Korea, Spain, and Panama).  Fast forward to today.  While the century-old U.S. concrete of the old locks is still in excellent shape, the newly-opened locks suffer abismally from holes that are causing huge leaks.  The “fix” is to insert steel rods and inject epoxy into the holes!  Many lawsuits are pending.  Amazing.

Walnut pie for dessert at lunch and chocolate/mocha cake for tea in the afternoon.  Decadence.  Afternoon trivia did not go well, us scoring 12/20 with 17 as the winner.  Who could possibly know that Wrigley gum was the first barcoded product? Bah!  Dinner was vegetables en croute for Loni, shrimp pasta in lobster sauce for me.  Oh, the hardship.  At our table was a couple from Yorkshire, so we made the obligatory “All Creatures” comments to tolerant smiles.  He was upset because the ship had run out of his favorite cider and this was simply an outrage.  The other couple was from Germany so we discussed my old beer clients, Bitburger and Erdinger. Early day tomorrow for portfall, so to bed early.

The port for Guatamala is Quetzal (the national bird), which is strictly a working port, surrounded by jungle, with nary a tourist spot of interest.  I don’t include the bazaar that one has to navigate between the gangway and the waiting buses.  If kitchy shopping is your thing, it lies within that grove of trees behind us.  We again signed up for an all-day tour ($119 each)to include a coffee plantation and the colonial-era city of Antigua.  As the tour left at 7:30, we were up at 5:30 to ablute, grab breakfast, and wait for our disembarkation call (we were group 16, as you can see by my sticker). 

All went smoothly and we were on our way with our enthusiastic guide, Dario.  It was about a 1 1/2 hour drive to the coffee plantation, with not much to marvel at until we got near the volcanoes.  One was distantly venting a bit of steam, below.  When we got to the plantation, the entry drive was so narrow the bus had to do a 47-point turn to back into it, completely blocking the highway for some time, resulting in a huge backup in both directions.  Incredibly, not one car honked.  Everyone, even the motorcyclists, waited patiently (and it took a while) for the maneuver to complete.  Try that in the states and the drivers would be threatening to sue.  I liked the Jeepney-style bus that got hung up in the traffic.

The tour was quite interesting.  Coffee bushes are grown under canopy trees to provide shade.  A tree starts producing beans after only two years, but is not mature until about the age of ten.  The trees self-fertilize, having both the female and male parts.  The pods are ripe when they are red or yellow and are all picked by hand, in December, by local women.  The beans you see in the photo are all colors, and this in mid-November.  After harvesting, the beans are dumped in a large vat.  The best quality ones are the heaviest and they sink; the #2’s float.  After washings and fermentation for 2 days, they are spreand outside on drying tables for about 10 days.  Our guide said this farm grows 40,000 lbs annually, which doesn’t seem like enough to pay for the 60 temporary pickers, but I guess they are only on the payroll for a short time. 

After the tour we all relaxed under the trees for a very nice coffee break.  I thought the coffee was quite smooth, but my impaired taste buds couldn’t pick up any particular flavors.  Loni thought it was good.

As we were waiting around to get on the bus, the local volcano decided to put on a show.  In the inset picture, it’s the one on the left, and you can barely see the smoke puff starting.

Back on the bus for the drive to Antigua, which was designated the capitol in 1541, and sits at an altitude of 5,000 ft.  This is supposedly a big flower growing area, both roses and tulips, the latter for export to Holland!  We didn’t see any flower farms, but lots of farmland and jungle growth.  The city is laid out grid-fashion, with fairly narrow streets and no buildings over two stories (save government, churches, etc.).  It all looked pretty much like this shot from the bus.

Once we arrived we assembled the group for a walking tour over the cobblestone streets.  Alas, we never went inside anything!  Except the jade store, of course.  Gotta keep those merchants happy.  Except for a couple of views, I didn’t find the place particularly interesting save for the fact that it has looked like this for hundreds of years.

Almost nothing is open to the street; private homes are all behind walls, but we did get the occasional peek into a courtyard, and some of the homes sport flowers.  The fountain was in the main square, and featured a number of bosomy babes clutching their, uh, bosoms.

This was the prettiest street we saw.  Don’t know what any of it is, our guide was less than stellar.

There was a main town square that was packed with locals, tourists, and hucksters.  It was quite colorful, centered on the fountain and backed by the handsome white government building.

There were loads of Indian women in bright colors that were hawking wares throughout the square and in other areas as well.  Talk about multitasking—the woman leaning back on the car is not only carrying her cloth goods, but a huge bundle on her back and a baby in her arms.  Check out the look on the lady at the left as she glances over.

Off for lunch at a very nice patio restaurant.  Everything was steam tray served, but it was quite good.  This is pretty much the standard fare for the country, and quite similar to what we got in Costa Rica.  Chicken, plantains, beans, rice, beef and potatoes, and a blue corn tortilla.  I appear to be in white face from my suntan lotion.

After lunch we trundled down the street to the Jade Museum, which is a working jewelry shop that gives lectures and demonstrations.  It was interesting, especially learning that Guatamala has some significant deposits of quality gems, but we found it easy to avoid buying anything.  After the shop, it was time to load up for the 2 hour trip back to the ship.  This shot illustrates one of the downsides of cruising.  Multiple ships with multiple tours all congregate on the same few tourist spots.  That’s our guide in front, but that’s another tour altogether across the street.  Out of view are three more buses and related groups.  All trying to escape at the same time.  Oye.

Trying to get out of the city we encountered repeated traffic jams, as the buses all had to perform multi-point turns to negotiate various corners.  At one point we passed a bunch of firemen soliciting funds.  Apparently they are not paid by the government, but have to rely on donations.  Yikes!  Back on board around 4:45.  Loni’s foot made it through the day, but it is swelling up again with a bruise on the inner ankle.  We applied first aid in the form of tea and cake on the stern as the ship pulled out of its berth.  Dinner in the “to order” cafeteria, but they overcooked our fish.  Nice show with a gal pianist doing jazz and show tunes and remarkably well supported by the house band seeing as how she had just come on board before departure and had no rehearsal.  Still not sleepy, so we finished off the day with (groan) coffee and dessert.  It never ends.

COZZZZZZTA RICA

After exiting the Canal, we had a sea day on our way to CR.  We got to put our clocks back an hour after entering the next time zone.  Sticky bun and fresh OJ for breakfast, nice lunch with a couple from Austin, TX, played trivia with only us as a team, dinner (pea soup, escargot, and salmon) with a Trump-supporting (but nice) couple who were power cruisers with 6 future trips already lined up, and the evening entertainment of a trumpet playing singer and and lady standup comedienne.  Both were quite good, and we thought this the best show so far.

Unfortunately, CR was the most boring part of the trip, other than Puerto Vallarta (more about that later).  It’s too bad, because every travel report I’ve read about CR extols the natural beauty of the flora and fauna.  I’m sure they’re not lying, and were probably talking about the Caribbean side of the country, but our Pacific-side tour didn’t come close to being satisfying on either front.  We docked at Puntarenas, which is nothing more than a working seaport, no tourist sights at all. We had signed up for the most expensive (gasp) of the tours, at $199 each (!), a nine hour excursion to include the Pacific Rain Forest Aerial Tram and a boat trip of the “famed” Tarcoles River.  This was, of course, the “Manager’s Recommendation” of the various tour options offered by Celebrity.  The Manager is a master of hyperbole.

We hit the breakfast buffet early at 6:30, and after the usual waiting-around disembarkation routine, we boarded buses and settled in for a 1 1/2 hour ride to the rain forest tram.  I will say that everything was lushly green, but that’s all it was:  a lot of green.  The trams were modern and seemed well-maintained.  The group ahead of us taking off:

The rise up is pretty steep.  Note the two cars at the top, and the watercourse below.

Aaaaand, that’s pretty much all we saw.  Virtually no wildlife.  The most interesting things were the other trams.

OK, we did see one bit of fauna, a bird, waaayyy off in the jungle.  Can you spot it?  I had to use the electronic zoom on my little Lumix, and the results are definitely not sharp. Not even Audibon Chuck will be able to identify this sucker.

At least it wasn’t raining during our ride up and down the tram, but it sure started once we returned to the bottom.  The next phase of the tour was to view various snakes and critters in enclosures while trying to follow the earnest but unintelligible guide, Armando, all while trying to stay dry.  Yes, his mouth seemed perpetually to be skewed like that.  Nice guy, tho.

On our walkabout we did see a few bits of life.  Don’t have any notes on what the hairy pods were, but that’s a tree iguana and I think the plant is some variety of heliotrope, with a false flower which actually is an asymetric leaf.  I think.  Loni’s notes are, um, obscure.

We had lunch at the park, simple local fare that was quite tasty.  Beans, rice, chicken, salad, fruit, and a plantain cooked in maple syrup.  We also bought some CR coffee, 3 bags (12 oz each) for $15 total.  After lunch we piled back on the buses to go back to the coast for the Tarcoles River tour.  This turned out to be an even bigger dud than the tram.  I guess I had some African Queen steaming in mind, winding up a twisting river lined with dense jungle and lots of monkeys and birds.  Not!  We loaded on to the boat, scrambling and elbowing to get an outside seat so you could take a picture without shooting over someone.  Needn’t have bothered, there was precious little to shoot.  The “river” turned out to be the estuary of the river, very broad and with uninteresting vegetation on the banks.  So much for the African Queen. 

No monkeys or exotic birds, just caymans and mostly shorebirds we can see in California.  Even with my binocs there wasn’t much to view.

And that was pretty much it.  We spent a loooong time idling in the estuary at one point while the guide was imploring everyone to use their binocs or long lenses to see some interesting bird that was about a football field away in deep brush.  I never could focus on the dang thing, whatever it was.  This is pretty much all I saw.  I was sympatico with the guy in the rear leaning on his arm.  Oh, the excitement!

By the time we got back to the buses, the rain had started again and we got pretty soaked.  It was not a comfortable ride back to the ship in wet clothes inside a humid bus with 40 other drenched souls.  Once back, we changed clothes and opted to skip the sit-down dinner and headed for the buffet instead, and it wasn’t bad at all for dinner.  Roast beef, lots of Mexican entrees and sides, and of course desserts.  We looked in on the evening’s entertainment and saw some acrobats (meh) and some not-bad classic rock (Stones, Beatles, etc.).  Didn’t keep us from leaving early and crashing.  Fitting end for a fizzled day.

HERMAN THE GERMAN

Gatun Lake is situated in the valley of the Chagres River. It was formed by the construction of the Gatun Dam in 1907–1913. The damming of the river flooded the originally wooded valley; almost a century later, the stumps of old mahogany trees can still be seen rising from the water, and submerged snags form a hazard for any small vessels that wander off the marked channels.  The lake has an area of 164 sq mi at its normal level of 85 ft above sea level; it stores 183 billion cubic feet of water, which is about as much as the Chagres River brings down in an average year.  Here’s another view of the dam, with the river running off behind:

Ships waiting for their turn to enter the Gatun locks; the middle one is really riding low.

There’s not a whole lot to see while crossing the lake to get to the Cut.  Mostly it’s meandering shoreline with estuaries branching way off to the sides.  Too bad it was such a hazy day, not great for photography.

The Canal has an elegantly simple means of navigation across the twisting path the ships must follow in order to stay in the dredged channel.  On the islands or the main shore are a series of verticle markers, visible from a great distance.  Once a set of markers is lined up so that it looks like a solid stripe, the ship knows it is on the proper course in the lake.  It follows those markers until the next set appears, then it alters course to make those line up.  See the offset markers in the top half below, meaning the ship is not precisely on course and needs to come starboard a bit.  In the bottom half, the markers are (almost) lined up and appear as an unbroken vertical stripe.  Actually, we need to come port a bit.  The approaching ship is keying on a set of markers behind us.

An interesting historical footnote appeared as we approached the Gaillard Cut.  During WWII, Germany built a number of gigantic cranes to be used to haul U-boats out of the water and other tasks.  One of these,  Schwimmkräne No. 1, was turned over to the U.S. as a spoil of war, redubbed “Herman the German,” dismantled, shipped through the canal in 1946, and resurrected in Long Beach, Ca. After extensive testing, YD-171 was officially placed into service on 31 December 1948, and was a fixture at the Naval Shipyard for decades. She lifted everything from the gun barrels of USS New Jersey (BB-62), steam locomotives for South Korea, the underwater habitat SEALAB II, the first atomic reactor on the West Coast, and even Howard Hughes’ H-4 Hercules (the “Spruce Goose”) when she was placed on display in Long Beach in the early 1980s.  Deemed obsolete, it was sold to the Canal Company and moved here (intact!) in 1996, and played an important role in the expansion of the canal.

The Gaillard Cut, also called Culebra Cut, is an excavated gorge 8 miles long across the Continental Divide. It’s named for David du Bose Gaillard, the American engineer who supervised much of its construction. The unstable nature of the soil and rock in the area of Gaillard Cut made it the most difficult and challenging section of the entire canal project. Workers who labored in temperatures of 100 or more degrees used rock drills, dynamite, and steam shovels to remove 96 million cubic yards of earth and rock as they lowered the floor of the excavation to within 40 feet of sea-level. Hillsides were subject to unpredictable earth and mud slides and at times the floor of the excavation was known to rise precipitously simply due to the weight of the hillsides. The well-known Cucaracha slide continued for years and poured millions of cubic yards into the canal excavation. Although the hillsides have been cut back and their angles decreased over the years to lessen the threat of serious slides, dredging remains a necessary part of canal maintenance in order to insure an open channel. This shot shows some of the cut-backs, unfortunately taken through the blue-tinted windows of the lounge.

Work continues on cutting back the banks to reduce slides and erosion.

Approaching the end of the cut, the difficult nature of the dig is displayed by these huge hillsides.  In the background appears the Centennial Bridge, opened in 2004 to supplement the only other crossing, the Bridge of the Americas (the small service bridges built in the lock structures at Miraflores and Gatún Locks are only usable when the lock gates are closed and have limited capacity). 

For perspective, there’s a bus or truck crossing right in the center of the bridge.

After passing under the bridge, we entered the Pedro Miguel locks, the middle set of the three locks series.  We again are using the narrower old locks, on the left.  To the right of the picture you can see the much broader new channel for the new super lock in this set.  The PM lock is a single one.  There is an oncoming ship in the left lock, but you can only see its superstructure as it is at the lower level.

Having not eaten in, oh, hours, we retreated to the cafe to watch the proceedings while downing a nourishing lunch.  Hmmm.

The procedures and equipment at the PM locks are much the same as at the Gatun ones, so I won’t lard up the blog with similar photos.

 

 

I did want to include, however, the famed “rubber bend” in the lock.

Below is the view straight down the side of the ship.  One foot of clearance!  I gripped the camera fairly tightly.  That’s the top of one of the little donkey engines down below.

Looking back while in the PM locks, towards the Centennial Bridge, with the new lock channel on the left.

Turning back the other way, we are immediately approaching the Mira Flores locks, the last of the series.  In the right background is the Bridge of the Americas, the first one to cross the canal.  The channel for the new locks is out of the picture way off to the right.

Peeping over the hills is the only view we had of the skyscrapers of Panama City, which lies on the Pacific.  From what we heard from other travelers, we aren’t missing anything.

Entering the Mira Flores locks.

The water goes down, the workers go home to dinner, and the final gate opens to let us out.

Exiting the lock, into the bay just before the Pacific Ocean.  The roiling water is from the discharge of the lock water back into the sea as our lock emptied.

We’re through!  Under the Bridge of the Americas and we’ll be in the Pacific.  Farewell Panama Canal, you were a very neat ride!

Happy Cruisers.

GETTIN’ THRU GATUN

Along with most of the ship we got up early so as not to miss any of the transit through the old locks.  It was overcast and intermittent showers, but not a problem except for photography.  On our approach from the bay, we passed by the towers that will form the bases for the bridge that will replace the tiny crossings over the locks.  It’s a huge project that is years away from completion.  As we passed between, we could see the eastern terminus of the new locks (left channel) and the old Gatun locks (right channel) which we would be going through.  Through the gloom, you can see a ship coming out of the new channel on the left.

We moved over to the right channel and crawled our way up to the beginning of the old locks.  I think we were going only 2-3 knots, if that, and of course slowed down to almost nothing as we got closer in.  The ship uses its own power to move forward, even while in the locks themselves.  The old locks are actually two lanes, side by side, so traffic can go both directions simultaneously.  In the pic below, both sets of gates are closed in each lane, and the two ships are riding higher in the elevated second lock of three in a row.

Here’s a closer shot showing the gates closed, with the two ships in the last of the three basins, which are at the level of Gatun Lake.  For scale, note the two figures walking across the near right gates.  The 100-year old gates don’t close precisely enough to avoid some leakage, as you see in the left gates.

Obligatory long-arm selfie.  It was after this trip that I broke down and bought a selfie stick, which I have yet to use.  Guess I just washed my hair and can’t do a thing with it!

Vehicles wishing to cross over the canal have to wait for predetermined times when the gates will be closed and the bridge lowered, and the delays can be lengthy.  Once underway, it’s one-way traffic only over the old, narrow bridges.

Looking back as we enter the first lock, another ship is being lined up by the tugs to enter our channel.  The towers for the future bridge are visible on both sides.

Looking down on a ship heading east in the other channel.  The donkey engines on both sides are keeping it straight in the lock.

We went down to a lower deck that was right at the level of the lock.  Look at the near-zero clearance between the ship and the side of the lock!  In the background, the donkey engine in the distance is climbing the hill to the next lock’s level.  The covered areas in the foreground are maintenance bays for the engines.  Closest on the right edge is the rail line on our side that the engines travel on.  The hill up to the next lock level is at the extreme right.  The viewing structure behind the thick pole at center is where we visited on our tour yesterday.

While almost all other measurements at the Canal are in metric, for some reason they have retained the old “feet” markings to show the distance to each end of the lock. Preserve a bit of history?

According to Loni’s notes, we had a fairly fast transit of the Gatun locks, about an hour and forty-five minutes.  At the exit end, we prepared to go out into Gatun Lake, which is the waterway through the center of the Isthmus to get to the western locks at Miraflores.  We still have a ways to rise in this lock before they can open the gates to the lake.

Off to our right (marked by the arrow) is the Gatun Dam that holds back the lake and provides the water level necessary for the ships to travel on the lake.

Before we exit the third lock, a look back from the stern towards the first two locks and the next traffic coming into and exiting the Gatun lock.  Note the turbulence from our props as the ship is under its own power all the way through.

At this point it might be helpful to see a map of the situation.  It’s hard to wrap your mind around the fact that to go from the Caribbean to the Pacific, which in your head is east to west, you actually are travelling southeast.  On this map you can see the area of the Gaillard Cut, which was the downfall of the French effort and the bane of the American one.  This is where they had to carve out the mountainsides and remove megatons of dirt in order to create a channel big enough for the ships.  Lots of landslides took lots of lives.

As we were exiting Gatun, an eastbound freighter was coming in from the lake.  In the background are other ships awaiting “the call” for their turn to enter.

As we were passing out of the old locks, across the way we could see a mega-freighter on its way out of the new locks and into the lake.  Above the ship you can see a flying saucer structure which is the visitor center where we were yesterday morning observing the operation of the new locks.

Adios, Gatun locks!