Week 4

After we passed through the Panama Canal, we anchored off Panama City for an overnight and following day visit. That evening I went ashore with crew friends for a nice dinner. We had the name of a recommended restaurant in the French Quarter but found it closed as it was a Sunday evening. So we let our taxi driver takes us to somewhere he thought we would like which ended up being a fantastic place, not too expensive and great local food.


The following day I escorted a ship’s tour to Monkey Island where of course, we saw lots of monkeys. We rode a small boat around the Panama Canal waters and learned of the upcoming expansion (a mere $5.2 billion project). We saw many monkeys, a couple of crodociles, sloths, turtles and a manatee.

Tuesday night we will be crossing the equator around midnight. Most times there is a special ceremony – King Neptune – but they have chosen to do the ceremony later on in the cruise as we will be crossing again.


Our next stop was Manta Ecuador. We are now in the southern hemisphere and the sinks drain goes the other direction! I went on a tour where we stopped at a home where they made Panama Hats which actually are from Ecuador. They are very durable – you can roll them up and they still spring back to shape. They are called Panama Hats because they were sent to Panama during the building of the Canal.


Kapak trees are a tree that when they shed their leaves, the trunks turn green.



Along the way we saw some “Blue Footed Boobies” which I thought could only be seen in the Galapagos Islands. They are web-footed birds. There are some other pictures here of some of the sites seen in Ecuador. A friend who went to the Galapogas and took photos of blue-footed boobies said if I showed him my boobies, he’d show me his. Is anyone listening???? Comment if you are!


This weekend we were in Lima, Peru. I escorted a tour around the area which took us through a quaint artist district then to a personal home which was a museum of many church artifacts he has collected over the years. After being awed by his treasures of silver, paintings all artistically displayed throughout his home, we continued on to Miraflores (in Spanish it means look at the flowers) and it was truly a beautiful arboretic area (is that a word?).



We stopped at a restaurant/bar for a demonstration on the making of Peru’s traditional drink – Pisco Sours. They are very common hear and taste sort of like a margarita/daiquiri cross. Very tasty! Then on for a typical Peruvian meal at a house of Royalty near the Presidential Palace with more Pisco Sours! Lima was a lot cleaner and safer than I remember in the past. They have a new president who has done a lot to improve their country. One interesting note – every citizen is REQUIRED to vote. If they do not, they are fined heavily. If people in our country all excercised that privilege, they would have the right to criticize.

And as I'm tediously uploading all these images, I'm in my cabin watching the Golden Globes. I also was able to watch the Vikings victory today against Dallas. That's all for this week. Tune in next week!