Everglades, Air Boats & Alligators

Fort Lauderdale, Florida
Saturday, May 6, 2006

Fort Lauderdale is the Venice of America because it has 165 miles (266 km) of navigable inlets and canals, and like Venice, has a public water bus service.

The first photograph is a bird of paradise flower arrangement that my bride Janet made at a class on board the Amsterdam and it graced our suite for several days. Jan also did a smaller flower arrangement of mixed flowers at another class that we also had in our suite. So our suite was bloomin lovely, if you know what I mean.

Jan and I took a tour out to Sawgrass Recreation Park and Education Centre about the everglades and wildlife of Florida. The tour started with 30 minute bus trip from the ship to Sawgrass and then we met a full size alligator in a pond and a number of other animals. The highlight of the tour was our thirty minute ride on the air boat over the everglades.

Air boats have no brakes or reverse but are very agile as they float across the water and grasses of the everglades driven forward by a large fan and steered by a rudder. There were twenty-four of us on our air boat and it wisked along nicely, floating and turning with ease. Other smaller air boats were available for rent. They were designed for a single passenger and a boat captain both of whom sat on a high chair for better viewing. These smaller boats were much faster and could go through the denser grass without concern.

Anyway, we did see several very large alligators in the everglades - at a distance, who mostly submerged. We saw a small alligator up close and personal at the education centre. Alligator skin is much smoother than you'd think from looking at it.

Rum, Turtles and Stingrays

Georgetown, Grand Cayman, BWI
Thursday, May 4, 2006

The Cayman Islands, are three small islands located about 480 miles south of Miami, Florida in the Carribean Sea. It is a tax-free British Crown Colony and tax-haven, home to over five hundred banks and streets of high-end shops that sell luxury items tax free!
Daniel, our bus driver and tour guide, a wiry young black man from Jamaica, working as a tour bus driver on a work permit, picked us up at the ship at 8:45 AM. On the bus radio a hell fire and brimstone preacher from Dallas tells us that "Eve wasn't told not to touch the tree but not to eat the fruit. Eve had freedom with boundaries. A football player cannot play football without goal lines and boundaries...

"Welcome aboard," said Daniel, "it's a pleasure to have you with us today, don't you know."
We passed a number of hotels along the world-famous Seven-mile Beach with its white sand and shallow azure sea, perfect for swimming. "The beach is actually 5 1/4 miles long," explained a local woman with a wink and a wide grin, "but the length was estimated by a man, and men are prone to exaggeration when it comes to size, don't you know."

Many of the hotels are still being rebuilt after they suffered damage from Hurricane Ivan two years ago. Six months ago the 7-star Ritz Carlton Hotel and Resort opened, with rooms starting at US$1,000 a night, and it became the largest hotel on Grand Cayman. This moved the Westin into second place.

Our first stop was Hell, a strange rock formation that looks like scorched rock, which inspired the name. Some enterprising soul saw the potential and now there is a post office and gift store at the site where you can purchase post cards and mail them from Hell.
Next, we stopped at a shop that specialized in rum and rum cakes for free samples. Janet loved the rum cake so much she bought one to bring home.

Then, we went just down the road to the Cayman Turtle Farm, which raises Green Sea Turtles for release into the Carribean Sea to restock falling population and as a food source for local residents, to whom turtle meat is a delicacy. It was amazing to see sea turtle from one-year old to seventy-five years old, although they can live to one hundred and twenty-years old. The older turtles loose their colouring as they age.

Finally, we arrived at our final stop, Safe Haven Harbour, to catch our tour boat to Stingray City. We are greeted by Dayton, a tall, muscular , tanned, Grand Cayman native who was our guide for the stingray swim.

We boarded our boat, "Free Willie", and took the four mile trip over calm, tourqoise seas to a sand bar where stingrays feed on squid, known as Stingray City. Four other boats were already there.

We climbed down the ladder into warm seas that swelled from waist to shoulder depth and stood on the soft sand of the sand bar. Almost immediately the stingrays swam right up to us and rubbed are legs. Dayton began feeding the stingrays squid and Christine, a twenty-something blonde from Nicaragua, joined us in the water in her bikini and photographed us as we interacted with the stingrays.

Jan and I held a stingray, remember this a wild stingray in the sea, on our hands and we were amazed at how soft and smooth it felt and how calm and docile the stingray seemed. Since it was a girl stingray, she kissed me goodbye before she swam away. She had incredibly soft lips. Both Jan and I loved snorkling with the stingrays and would have gladly stayed longer.

Once we reached shore and returned to the main pier in Georgetown, Jan and I did a little shopping. Jan bought a watch and a gold stingray charm. I paid. Then we returned to the ship exhausted but happy, very happy.

Emeralds, Gold and Street Vendors

Cartagena, Columbia
May 2, 2006

Cartagena was founded in 1533 by the Spanish who used it as a supply centre and storehouse for their plundered Columbian riches, which included gold and the finest emeralds in the world. For obvious reasons, Cartagena was a prime target for pirates until the fortified walled city was built.

Jan and I and a number of our cruise mates were tentative about visiting Cartagena because of Columbia's reputation for drugs and violence. We were assured by the ships tour office that Cartagena was safe and so we booked a city tour, which started at 12:45 Noon.

Street vendors constantly swarmed us like flies and were equally persistent.

Vendors sold bottled water, coke and coke light for $1 kept cold in ice filled barrels wheeled around on a dolly or in a styrofoam cooler with a shoulder strap, which I bought several regularly. Black women dressed in colourful dresses carried large bowls of fruit on their heads and posed for photos for $1. Other vendors sold cheap neckalces, tea shirts (I bought a ncie blue one), hats, and cigars, supposedly Cuban Habanas. Since we were continually walking, the street vendors hounded us continuously. It was so annoying, some from our tour group retreated to the bus. Even this wasn't a barrier, the street vendors would repeatedly tap on the window and hold up what they were selling negotiating through the window.

The colonial architecture of the walled city is beautiful and our tour bus was comfortable and air conditioned, however, much of the four-hour tour involved walking in 31 C temperatures and 95% humidity. Fortunately, most of the walking was on the flat. Still, many of the places we visited were not air conditioned and most of us were sweaty, tired and grumpy after about three hours.

For our last stop we visited a small shopping plaza with air-conditioned and elegant shops. Jan bought a gold charm and pendant and a ceramic bead necklace and bracelet all from "authentic" indian designs and I bought a hand made leather computer briefcase/backpack.
We made it back to the ship at 5:30 PM but never made it to the dining room for our 5:45 dinner seating.Instead we grabbed a quick bite in the Lido, the buffet restaurant, and passed out in our room.

Locks, Lakes and Channels

Panama Canal
Monday, May 1, 2006

We entered the Panama Canal at 8:30 AM to begin the 80 km journey from the Pacific ocean to the Atlantic ocean (Carribean Sea). The skies were clear, it was 80 C and humid, which wasn't too bad because there was a breeze on our verandah when the ship was moving and we have an overhang on our verandah that shaded us from the sun.
After we passed under The Bridge of the Americas, from which you can drive on the Pan-American Highway all the way to Alaska, we began the first stage of the Panama Canal crossing. Our ship, the Amsterdam, squeezed into the two Miraflores Locks that raised us 54 feet to Lake Miraflores. After crossing Lake Miraflores, the ship was raised the remaining 31 feet by the Pedro Miguel Locks and we entered the Gaillard Cut, a winding 8-mile channel (big ditch?), that takes us to Gatun Lake which is 85 feet above sea level. Gatun Lake is the third largest man-made lake in the world, after Lake Tahoe in Nevada and one in Egypt, although it was the largest when it was built in 1914.
The locks are like elevators for huge ships. The ship enters each lock and the multi-ton gates close, using a 40 horsepower motor, which is possible because the gates are hollow. Next, gravity is used to fill the lock with fresh water, or drain the water when you're going down, raising or lowering the ship to the next level.
The scale and magnificence of this engineering achievement is astounding, even more so because it is still an amazing feat nearly 100 years after it was built. It was achieved at the cost of 30,000 lives lost due to malaria, yellow fever and hard labor in daytime temperatures as high as 50 C. It is hard to imagine that 152.9 million cubic meters of material was removed. This is enough to fill railroad flatcars that, placed end-to-end, would circle the globe four times. The Panama Canal operates today using the same system and lock gates it opened with in 1914.
The Panama Canal eliminates the need for the 9,000 mile trip around South America and navigation of the treacherous Cape Horn to go from the Pacific to the Atlantic or vice versa. At 4:30 PM we left the last of the three Gatun Locks and entered the Carribean sea as we sipped an ice-cold drink on our veranndah.