OLD FOLKS Panama Canal Cruise 3

I mentioned that there are no children on this cruise.

Only old folks.

“I see all the couples walking around out on the deck holding hands,”

I report to DeRay.

“Really. All those old geezers?”

“Yes.”

“Well, maybe they’re holding each other up,” he quips.

  

   

Just had to add this one for good measure.

Ed and I went to the Showroom to be entertained

by Vivienne & The HALCats.

We enjoyed watching all the fat people dance.

I wished I had my camera.

I never went anywhere without it again.

Old people are a distinctive society unto themselves.

The guy next to me in the Showroom,

takes out his hearing aids

and sets them on the cocktail table in front of him.

I anxiously await the teeth coming out next.

That's mine and Eddy's feet just watching the pot bellies pass by.

This woman from Canada broke her leg swatting a fly two weeks before the cruise.

 Wheelchairs, electric carts, canes, and walkers aplenty.

Off to gamble.

Here's a fashion statement for you.  That's her hair--not a hat!

 Bathing beauties, old people style,
are slightly different than young people.

I couldn't resist.  I'm mean I know.

That slender one on the right side in the orange shirt is the Cruise Director, Anthony.

The day we went through the canal, all you had to do was jump in the pool and you received a certificate saying you swam across the Panama Canal.

And that’s why we didn’t go swimming!

This is the way the pools usually look--empty.

Especially empty when the seas are rough and the water is splashing out!
 Old arthritic folks can jitterbug.
You better believe it.

This woman is from Salt Lake City.  She didn't miss a dance.  Crow's Nest.

This was "The World's Largest Cruise Sale" International Ball

This picture was taken in the Crow's Nest at the Tropical White Party with Vivienne & The HALCats.

And that’s why we didn’t dance.

You gotta love ‘em,

I mean “us”.

WHY? Panama Canal 2

I wonder if “Red-Eye” isn’t a code word for “Nightmare”.

Nightmare #1 – Passing through Security at the Las Vegas Airport, they informed me that my driver’s license expired over a year ago.  NO!  They still let me through without showing my Passport.  Surprise.  Surprise.  I wasn’t worried because I did have my passport with me but I’m confounded.  How could I let this happen?

Nightmare #2 – Ed told us first but no one believed him.  “Didn’t you hear?  The airport is closed.”  We heard the next announcement.  Lightning and thunder showers.  How often does the Las Vegas airport close?  Jerry and Lana’s flight was delayed 1½ hours.  Will they make their connecting flight in Atlantic City?  Just barely, as it turned out.  They had to go up, down, and around; take the train to the other side of the airport.  As slow as DeRay and Ed are, we would have never made it.  It is a mighty good thing we didn’t get on their flight like we tried to do.  We boarded late, of course, I don’t know why we had to wait for them to board after the airport opened.  When we got settled long after midnight, the pilot promised he would make up the time.  Pretty much he did.  Still, we barely made our connecting flight in Detroit, even though we only had 15 gates to go.  The passengers were loaded when I got there ahead of DeRay and Ed.  She said we had two minutes but it was more like ten because a few others passengers got on after us.  They used to hold up the plane for connecting flights that were late, especially if there were quite a few passengers, but not any more.  Ratings are important to them and they are ranked by departure and arrival times.

Nightmare #3 - When we finally got on the ship, DeRay’s blood sugar was down to 60.  He wasn’t going anywhere or doing anything. At least we weren’t throwing up, like Gary and Joyce, Lana’s brother and wife.  They were quarantined for three days.

 In contrast to the Carnival Splendor we were on with Brent last January (which we anchored next to in San Lucas Bay) that had 3,500 passengers and 1200 crew, Holland America’s Statendam has room for 1,258 guests with a crew of 560.  It wasn’t filled to capacity.  They were really offering bargain prices just before we sailed.  Third one in the room free and all.  IF we had only known.

Jerry took this picture of me in Huatulco, Mexico, in front of our ship The Statendam.

 On this cruise there are no children on board.  Not one person under the age of 21.

Jonathan wouldn’t have had a bit of fun.

According to the Ship Log, we traveled a total of 4,819 miles in 14 days.

There are 5 diesel generators on board that consume 72 tons of fuel per day; two propulsion motors.  They are able to produce 400-500 tons of potable water per day while using 300-400 tons per day.

And here’s a fact you don’t want to miss:  To help save water and power, the vacuum toilets use only 0.4 gallons of water per flush.  75% less than the 1.6 gallons used by most residential toilets.

There you go. 

Jerry told us the day after we were in Costa Rica, that they had an earthquake.

6.5 earthquake shakes Costa Rica

By CESAR BARRANTES

Associated Press /  October 23, 2012

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica (AP) — A powerful earthquake struck Costa Rica’s Pacific coast on Tuesday, swaying buildings and sending people running into the streets in the nation’s capital of San Jose.

Then Jerry told us about Hurricane Rafael striking the Bahamas.  They announced that we were skirting a Hurricane but it seemed rather calm to us most of the time.

Does it look fun?

 According to the news services, Rafael first became a tropical storm on October 12, just as its predecessor, Tropical Storm Patty, was waning. The storm strengthened as expected and was declared a hurricane by the National Hurricane Center (NHC) as of 5:45 p.m. EDT, making it the ninth hurricane of the 2012 Atlantic hurricane season.

So why do people put their lives in danger for no good reason?

We are not military personnel going to war.

We are not defending our property, our lives, or our freedoms.

We are not conquering new lands.

We are not going for a job opportunity, or to see relatives or friends.

We are not sightseeing.  The ocean looks the same everywhere.  A few swells here and there.

We are not exploring or gathering scientific data. We are not discovering.

We are exposing ourselves to danger on this mighty ocean for no good reason. 
     Besides earthquakes, hurricanes and other weather related concerns, we could experience mechanical failure, human error, sabotage, terrorist attack.  No?  OK, so why do they station armed guards at every port?  

     The ocean is enormous; the ocean can be vicious.  On a raft, the ocean could be a very lonely place.  (We’re reading Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand.)

WHY?

The Cruise of a Lifetime - Panama Canal I

“Is it beautiful?”  92-year-old Sylvia asks breathlessly.  She leaves for the Panama Canal next Tuesday.

This was my first view.  I thought it was buildings to the left, painted funny.  A cargo ship in the next lock!

“Beautiful?  No.  It’s ugly.  It’s a canal.  It’s a marvel – the first vertical cement ever poured; it’s insanely expedient and compelling but it is not beautiful.”

Road parting so ship can pass through.

Bus waiting that didn't get through before the road parted.

  Actually, family and friends could have watched us pass through the Canal on computers at home if we had known the link ahead of time.  I’ll bet that would have been action-filled viewing, watching the water slowly rising or falling.

The bow from Deck 11

 There are currently two sets of locks operating continuously, employing a workforce of over 9,500 men and women.  14,000 vessels pass through each year.  In 2014, when the Canal celebrates 100 years of operation, an expansion to three sets of locks will be in operation, doubling the canal’s capacity and allowing the transit of longer, wider ships.

DeRay says this is an oil tanker.  We were in hopes to see a liquid natural gas tanker.

 Passing through the Panama Canal was the Christmas Day of our cruise.

The night before, Panama Eve, we were as eager and excited as children on Christmas Eve.  Tomorrow is the BIG DAY.

Wednesday October 27, 2012.  Caribbean Sea.

Panama Canal Transit 5:27 am 1^st Pilot boards the Vessel;

6:30 am Entering Gatun locks;

we passed by Gamboa around noon;

1:30 pm Entering Pedro Miguel locks;

2:40 pm Entering Mira Flores locks;

3:40 pm All clear of locks.

4:30 pm Pilots disembark,

Welcome to the Pacific Ocean!

Like children on Christmas morn, we awaken early, going straight to Deck 6 where they opened the bow for our viewing pleasure.  WOW! 

Catch Ed in the "Bike Missouri" shirt.

 The Christmas of our Cruise.  Long anticipated.  Thrilling.  We were not disappointed.  We were in rapture all day long, hardly taking time to eat. 

Heat Advisory:

When you are outside,

make sure to wear a wide-brimmed hat,

use plenty of sunscreen and drink plenty of water.

By some fluke of good luck, it was cloudy and rained off and on for most of the day.

They brought an official narrator on board to explain what was going on and what we were seeing.  The Panama Canal not only shortens the distance between many Atlantic to Pacific ports by 8000 miles, it cuts the total mileage from Great Britain to New Zealand by 1500 miles.

Since 1999, the transit through the locks has been controlled by Panama Canal shoreside officials.  The locks form a kind of “staircase” for taking ships through the canal. This interoceanic waterway uses a system of locks with two lanes that operates as water elevators and raises the ships from sea level to the level of Gatun Lake, 26 meters above sea level, to allow the crossing through the Continental Divide, and then lowers the ships to sea level on the other side of the Isthmus. 

  The United States proposed the lock canal when they took over the project from France in 1904.  To do this, they needed water available at the higher levels to fill parts of the canal.  This was accomplished by damming the Chagres River.  The water used to raise and lower the vessels in each set of locks is obtained from Gatun Lake by gravity and poured into the locks through a main culvert system that extends under the locks chambers from the sidewalls and the center wall. 

Here's your beauty, Sylvia.  The only flowers I saw in all day.

The Panama Flag.

Within the locks, ships are kept centered by electric locomotives called “mules” moving along the banks.  They are called mules because, especially during the Gold Rush, one method of transportation was to take a ship to the Isthmus of Panama, then travel by mule train across to the Pacific Ocean and catch another ship to California.  They eventually built a railroad which cut the time drastically.  

Because we had time in our queue before the second set of locks, we circled around Panama City to get a better view of the new locks and saw the Mormon Temple from both sides.  The narrator said that we could catch a glimpse of the Mormon Temple through the trees.  

The captain bragged later that the pilot was very nice and let him drive his own boat through the canal.  To reserve a spot in the queue cost our cruise ship $35,000, plus $145 for each occupied cabin and $110 for each vacant cabin.  The cargo ships pay so much per container; oil tankers pay per gallon since you can’t weigh a ship.  Only 4% of the traffic through the canal is cruise ships so it is mainly used for transporting cargo.  When a swimmer swam through, they charged him 38 cents. 

Ed relaxing.  Jerry & Lana below.

It's been a long day on our feet, huh.

Ice Cream in Lido to celebrate our passage through the Panama Canal. 

5:10 PM we are cruising again. 

What a Wonderful Christmas Day!

DeRay read David McCullough’ book on the Panama Canal:  The Path Between the Seas:  The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870-1914. 
Ed and I have yet to finish it.  Fascinating. 
Two weeks later, Ed was engrossed in his kindle.  I thought he was reading The Secret Garden.  "This is sure interesting, Mom.  You know something, Mom.  I love God's children.  Especially the Americans."  Curious, I checked to see what he was reading.  It was David McCullough's book on the Panama Canal and he was to the part where America took over the failed venture.