It sure doesn't feel like Christmas. It is about 75, clear and sunny.
We left from Acapulco and are at sea for two days, and then spend a day in Costa Rica. Elizabeth is sharing a cabin with her Aunt Beth, and CJ is in a cabin with his uncles KC and Peter, and both cabins are some distance from us. The kids were afraid that the cruise would be mostly the Geritol set and that they wouldn't find much to do, but there are about 100 kids on the cruise, about half teen-agers and half pre-teen, and there are organized activities as well as lots of things they can do on their own, so they seem to be having a good time. Elizabeth has made friends with several teen-agers. Meg calls them a pack, and it is an apt description, since we see them now and then prowling the decks.
The sun deck around the pool is a very popular place and you have to get there early to get a seat. Personally I find the bright direct sunlight there unpleasant (despite the fact that it is the winter solstice and we are still well north of the equator, the sun seems almost directly overhead) and I've staked out a nice shaded place on one of the aft decks.
Costa Rica has very pretty, mountainous terrain with lush vegetation. It's not heavily forested, except near the coast, because the land was cleared in a misguided attempt to establish ranching; what they ended up with was erosion. They grow sugar cane in the lower elevations and coffee at higher elevations, and bananas on the Atlantic side but not here. Roads are narrow and winding because of the terrain. Heavy rainfall, seven meters per year, routinely washes out parts of the roads. Even the Pan-American Highway is narrow and bumpy. Traffic moves at 30 or 40 mph max and drivers pass on blind curves and hills, and somehow the traffic coming the other way knows when they have to stop or move to make room.
The main building material seems to be rusty corrugated steel sheets, and only the better off have doors and windows. Everything seems shabby but clean. We passed quite a number of people who were walking to Christmas Eve church services, and many of the children were very nicely dressed, which made an interesting contrast to the appearance of poverty everywhere.
We stopped at Sarchi, which I thought was going to be a market we could wander through and bargain in, but we were herded into one big souvenir shop with prices marked in dollars. There were nice hand-made wooden goods and such, and the prices were good but not really bargains. Each town has its own traditional specialty, and Sarchi is known for wooden carts that are hand-painted in very intricate and brightly colored designs.
Our tour guide spoke very good English, but several times he spoke of jello buildings or jello flowers, and it took me a while to realize he meant the color jello. Like, mellow jello, or tie a jello ribbon 'round the old oak tree.
I felt very comfortable in Costa Rica. The scenery everywhere is stunning, the crafts are unusual and interesting, and (granted that it Christmas Eve) I don't recall seeing a scowl or hearing cross words from anyone during my day in Costa Rica.
Santa came today. I was afraid he'd come down that big chimney and end up in the engine room, but he seemed to know where to go. To my surprise, both CJ and Elizabeth sat on Santa's lap and had their pictures taken.
Santa came to the casino, too. I walked into the casino and found Beth stacking up dollar tokens into plastic coin holders. She was up about $500. KC is up over $2K. We had fun joking about what we will do when KC and Beth win the boat. Elizabeth can drive. CJ and I will play in the band.
There were about a dozen and a half ships queued up to go through but we got to go first. Traditionally, cruise ships got first priority because they carried the mail. They don't any more but the tradition has continued. Panama City is on the south side of the canal where we entered from the Pacific side, and it is pretty built up there, but after a few miles it is lush and green and wild looking. There are two sets of locks to move ships from the Pacific level up to the level of a small lake, then one more set to move them to the level of the big lake that constitutes most of the canal.. I had not really thought much about the details of getting ships through a set of locks, but they have to get in and out of the locks quickly because of the traffic behind them. Big ships don't stop very quickly and are not too quick to accelerate, so they use electrical locomotives called mules that run on tracks along the sides of the locks. There are no pumps used in the Panama canal. Water from the lakes is released into the locks to raise their level, and is released from the locks into the ocean to lower their level.
The lakes are manmade lakes behind dams. I have always had kind of a bleak view in my mind of the canal, because of the stories of disease and death in making it, and because of the grainy old black-and-white photos from that time. I was not really prepared for the lush beauty of the place.
Three docks on the other side lower ships to the Atlantic level. It took about 12 hours for us to pass through the canal, and the cost for the cruise ship was $94,000.
Cartagena has some interesting and very old architecture and an interesting history, but it all went by a little fast. I bought some Colombian coffee and CJ bought sunglasses from a street vendor.
Yesterday, Peter saw CJ in the afternoon while we were going through the canal, and asked him if he had seen his parents yet, and CJ answered, "No, isn't this great?"
After our stop in Cartagena, Meg's mother Mary had been to all the continents except Antarctica, and this fact was somehow leaked to the waiters at out dinner table. They brought a cake decorated to say "Happy Congratulations" and they all gathered together to sing that most famous of songs, "Happy Congratulations to You."
We went on a submarine tour that took us to a depth of 150 feet and showed us a variety of coral and fish. There were quite a number of fish, including yellowtail (which make such good sushi) and a barracuda, and many different types and shapes and colors of coral. We took many pictures, most of which came out uniform blue.
Shopping in Aruba was a pleasant change from the t-shirt stores after t-shirt stores we have seen everywhere else. There were quite a number of nice shops with nice merchandise at good prices. I bought my very first pair of Birkenstocks there. Everyone assures me I will grow to love them but right now my Birkenstocks and I are not getting along so well.
The food on the ship is good and plentiful. We have eaten every evening in the dining room. The food there has generally been quite good, if not always the gourmet treat we were led to expect. The dining room is open for breakfast and lunch, too, but we have generally eaten those meals in the Lido Lounge, which has big buffets at breakfast and lunch, pizza in the afternoon, and table service overnight. There is no additional charge for any food anywhere on board, but you have to pay for drinks, even soft drinks.
There is a nice exercise room, and a deck that is reserved for walking and jogging, and I have made use of both to keep my weight and my blood sugar under control.
St. Thomas is very scenic and it feels a little more comfortable than the other ports because it is a US territory. Everyone speaks English and they use US money (although they drive on the left). Most of the stores are jewelry stores and t-shirt shops. It is a good place to buy jewelry and watches. We might have found more interesting places had we had more time to explore. Many of the little alleyways between buildings have been converted into little malls. CJ and I walked into a couple of these and found interesting gift shops, restaurants, and even an antiques store. For the most part, though, we didn't see the better quality and name-brand merchandise we saw in Aruba.
CJ and I went up to Paradise Point, a hilltop overlooking downtown and the harbor. There was a tropical bar there, and CJ had a virgin pina colada, and I had some rum concoction that probably gave me my week's ration of sugar. We rode a tram down.
Because of the short stay, we didn't really get more than a taste of St. Thomas. The same is really true of all of the places we stopped, but I know that St. Thomas in particular has many very interesting and scenic places that we simply couldn't get to in a one-day stop.
One advantage of stopping in St. Thomas is that it increases the amount you can bring back duty-free. Normally you can bring back $400 worth per person before you have to pay duty. Our limit was increased to $600 because we stopped in Colombia, and up to $1200 because we stopped in St. Thomas ($600 from other places and $600 from St. Thomas). Not that we had $1200 a person to spend (that would buy a lot of t-shirts) but it's nice to know.
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