Cruise Day 15
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For webcam watchers: You can watch the Zuiderdam transit some of the Panamal Canal locks live, at www.pancanal.com - click on English, go to Multimedia:Webcams, and click on the link See More. We are scheduled to arrive at Miraflores Locks at 10:10 Eastern Daylight Time, and at Gatun Locks at 16:10 Eastern Daylight Time. Transit time at Miraflores Locks is about 70 minutes, transit time at Gatun Locks is about 100 minutes. Times are approximate and subject to local weather-delays due to fog are possible, even likely.
2008 Note: The above link will let you see what is happening now at the Panama Canal locks; you will not see our transit.
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It is late in the afternoon on Saturday, warm, but overcast, so I am able to sit on the verandah and write this as we sail more or less eastward towards the Panama Canal. Right now we are sailing south-south-east; by later this evening we will turn almost northward into the Gulf of Panama toward the canal. We will have reached our southernmost latitude at just a little more than 7 degrees north, and from there on will begin to move northward.
Yesterday we were in Puntarenas, Costa Rica. We arrived early in the morning, and because the tidal currents in the Golfo de Nicoya on which the harbour is located are very strong, we waited for slack tide to actually dock. The town of Puntarenas is not very much - the name is descriptive, Sand Point, and it literally is a several miles long sand spit that juts out into the bay. In places it is only about 100 meters wide, in others it might be half a kilometer. Much of the immediate area of the cruise ship terminal is industrial, although there is a branch of the University of Costa Rica in a large building just off the harbour, and a thriving artisans' market along the Malecon by the pier.
Our tour left the ship relatively late in the morning, so we had the opportunity to watch the activity on the dock for a while. Aside from the loading of tour buses, and the ferrying of other passengers into town on a little complementary "railroad" the ran from the ship to the land end of the rather long pier, we spent some time watching the unloading of provisioning trucks onto the ship. Since some of the hotel staff were at dockside doing quality control checks (by eating something from every different container!) we could see what was being loaded. Tropical fruits were to be expected, and they had all kinds. But also there were strawberries, raspberries, and blueberries, whose origin we could not see. Also fresh fish, probably local, since tonight Costa Rican fish was on the menu. But there were crates of apples, clearly marked as from Washington state, which was cause for reflection on how complex our trading systems have gotten, since our ship went by Washington state about 12 days ago, yet these apples had come to Costa Rica by other means, we suspect by truck! And the logistics behind this-someone in Holland America's office in Seattle had ordered these apples for this day, and this time; since the unloading area was quite small, and everything had to come on to the ship through a 6 foot by 6 foot hatch, and since they were provisioning all day, the arrival time of each order had to fairly precise. All this activity, just so that our cabin steward can each day replenish our in-cabin fruit basket with two apples, an orange, a pear, and a banana!
Costa Rica is an anomaly among Latin American nations, in several ways. Most notably, it has no armed forces, having abolished them in 1948, and by law the money it cost then to have armed forces, 8% of the GNP, must be spent on education. An immediate visual consequence for the visitor at a ship's dock is that there are no uniforms to be seen - with no military to be kept busy, there are no uniformed soldiers employed to check out the tourists. In fact, no Costa Rican authorities check papers as you enter and leave the dock area, and it is ship security that is the only check that ensures you actually belong.
There are police, and there were actually two cops on the dock, but mostly they directed the traffic of provisioning trucks, buses, taxis, etc. that descend when a cruiseship docks. The reason they were not immediately obvious was that they were "uniformed" in shorts and t-shirts, and while armed, did not have the "gangsta" look that is popular among Latin American police. As our tico tour guide (Max, only Max, not Maximiliano-named after Max Schmeling by his grand-mother, a boxing enthusiast) later explained to us, not having armed forces and putting the money instead into education has other consequences; the highest literacy rate, 98%, in the area, which is in fact higher than North America, very little corruption because the country is run as a meritocracy, where intelligence, skill and hard work are rewarded, rather than connections. Very few very rich or very poor people, most everyone is middle class. Health is very good, the infant mortality very low at 8 per 1000, and so on. The unemployment rate is below 5%, in bad times below 6%, which is effectively full employment.
For those of you with Latin American experience, ticos or ticas are what Costa Ricans call themselves. It comes from a verbal anomaly in their Spanish (incidentally, on the Caribbean side of Costa Rica, which was settled from the West Indies, English is spoken extensively, but with a West Indian flavour, while on the Pacific coast Spanish predominates). In Spanish, to make a word into its diminuative, ...ito or ...ita is added as a suffix. In written Spanish this also happens in Costa Rica, but they pronounce the suffix ...tico or ...tica, hence their name.
The social safety net is extensive, and relative to Canada is actually better. 9% of income is an employee's contribution, and employers pay another 9%. For that, medical care of all kinds, including drugs, is free. Dental care is free, although they need more dentists, and thus waiting times for more complex work can be long. Dependents are fully included, and dependent is defined as anyone being supported by someone working, who are not themselves working - meaning literally no one is excluded. Education is free to the end of high school, and 96% of children are in school. The public universities are open to all by competition, and tuition is low, of the order of $100 per term (which includes all materials), and government scholarships and loans are freely available. There are private universities, but they are considered to be less desirable, and academically of lower quality, and they basically take the overflow from the public universities.
Our guide used himself as an example. Coming from a very poor family, he went to university on scholarship, for which he was expected to work - by playing french horn in the university orchestra. He is now a Master's student in eco-resource management, and working for an eco-touring company to pay his way. In between he has traveled extensively studying eco-policies of various countries, and he expects to work in rain-forest preservation, a subject about which he is passionate, having grown up in the jungle.
Ecologically, Costa Rica is unique, and not only for its preservation policies. With a land area of less than 1/1000 of the earths surface, it is home to more than 5% of the world's species. It is the most bio-diverse place on earth. We got the full explanation from our guide, who obviously has studied the subject! For those of you who are familiar with the Latin American need to contextualize, he started with the big bang, but very quickly progressed to the time at which the earth's original single continent split into the present large land masses, but when North and South America were not joined. As the various plates drifted about on the earth's surface, life developed independently, but when North and South America finally were joined together, it was at the present location of Costa Rica. It was there that the species of two independent continents began to merge with one another, hence the present diversity.
After a few false starts (such as deciding to clear the rainforests to get into beef growing in the 60s, and having the bottom fall out of the beef market) Costa Ricans are now dedicated conservationists. 27% of the country is national park, biological preserve, wildlife refuge, or protected area. (Back to the cutting down rainforest for beef production: this was done with no thought for resource management,and the cleared trees - mahogany, ironwood, balsa, red cedar, and so forth were simply left to rot. Recently an academic estimated the lost value of all these trees, and came up with a number almost equal to Costa Rica's national debt. Although, the Costa Rican national debt is less than $1000 per person, this was still a great waste of resources. And the land, being tropical soil, was not really that good for cattle, or anything else. Costa Rican have learned from their experience.)
The tour we took was advertised as an aerial car ride through the rainforest. This involved a 75 minute bus ride each way, hence the ability to get a two hour lecture from a graduate student on Costa Rican natural, social, political, and environmental history. And, there are reasons why this country, of all of Latin America, has been democratic for a long time, has no army, and is passionate about conservation. I won't bore you with them, but those of you who share my enthusiasm for experiential learning, I'd be glad to talk to you about this experience, and why I think Costa Rica might be a destination worth considering for a study tour!
After the bus ride (through a very varied countryside; dry forest, rainforest, and semi-desert, crossing some rivers with crocodiles visible) and the 1st half of the lecture, we arrived at the site of the aerial tram. This was built by a company, one on each coast of the country, as an educational tourism destination to teach about rainforest ecology and management. Some of the profits are reinvested to buy rainforest land for preservation, and for educational and research purposes (eg. research into medicinal uses of rainforest plants). The guides are mostly university students and graduates who work in eco-resource management; thus are very knowledgable. We took a one hour forest walk in small groups of twelve with a guide, viewing the plants, animals, birds, etc. with explanation. Some of this is scripted and prepared, some just happens. Thus our path was paralleled by thousands of leaf-cutter ants, carrying their leaves back to their nest, over distances that in human terms would be thousands of miles, with loads several times body weight. Where the ants crossed the path, temporary "ant-crossing" signs had been placed to protect them. So we got a lecture on the role of leaf-cutter ants in rainforest growth and health. And, they do have a vital place, allowing light to penetrate lower down into the canopy, which is good for the tree on which they are working (they do not take the entire leaf) and plants on the forest floor.We saw a species of snake (not a big hit with June!) that played a vital role in the evolution of hummingbirds. It is a bright yellow, and lives in trees, where it coils into a shape that looks like a flower, luring hummingbirds, which it then catches (or at least once did more than it does now). Originally, hummingbirds could fly in all directions except backwards. This snake provided the evolutionary pressure which selected for the ability to fly backwards within the hummingbird population, and over the many generations, hummingbirds evolved to fly backwards, to escape the snake. It still catches hummingbirds, but not nearly as many!
After the forest walk, we rode the aerial car. Each car holds 8 persons, two side by side, with a guide at the rear who does narration. The length of run is about 2000 feet up the side of a mountain, and then the return, the total ride being about 50 to 60 minutes. At the lower levels, varies species of toucan (or onecan if they are not in pairs - just quoting the local joke) can be seen, but as one gets higher up, very few bird and animal species can be seen. As our guide pointed out, most animals do not have the burning desire to be seen by humans, and the jungle is dense enough that in some places a pink elephant with bright blue spots could be fifty feet away, and totally invisible. But the plant life is plentiful in varied, and there is lots to see, not to mention the magnificent view out over the Pacific Ocean on the trip down. We passed by the tree that the leafcutter ant colony was working on, perhaps 500 feet up the hill from where we had seen them on the valley floor (consider 500 feet up a perhaps 50 degree cliffside in ant terms, and they were climbing a mountain higher than Everest, and then climbing a 70 foot tree when they got there, to cut out a perhaps 5mm by 5mm piece of leaf per ant, and then carry it home!). This ride was the best shore attraction we had experienced so far this trip. We had done a similar cable car ride in Australia, over a much longer distance of about 7 1/2 km, but that one was over the top of the rainforest canopy, whereas this one was through the canopy.
Afterwards, we had a typical Costa Rican lunch: green salad, rice and black beans, fried plantain, with chicken poached in a mildly spicy tomato sauce, also fresh papaya and water melon, and fresh mango juice. Then back to the bus, for the return to the ship, and the second half of our lecture on Costa Rica. Several factoids; Costa Rica has removed the restriction very common in Latin America against politicians being re-elected to office, especially higher office. With this, they have removed a large amount of the incentive for corruption, as politicians no longer have to secure their future over a relatively short working life. It also allows for good politicians to be re-elected, to continue doing good for the country, and not wasting experience and talent. Thus, the current president is a Nobel Peace laureate, who was first elected in the 1980s and was a major influence in negotiation a peace in the Nicarauguan war, was out of office for a bit, and has now been reelected several times on a what we would call a "green" platform, but green with a responsible development and conversation flavour.
Someone asked about the almost universal prevalence of window bars on the houses that we passed, and whether that meant a high crime rate. The crime rate is actually quite low, but the bars are a status symbol, indicating to the neighbors that you have something to protect. Max likened it to some of our people having the need to drive large off-road capable vehicles. When he first toured North America to visit national parks, he thought that we all were passionate about our nature preserves, and needed these vehicles to tour the wilderness. Then he discovered that most parks had better roads than cities and highways, and realized that our fascination with vehicles with capabilities we don't need is the same as the tico need to have window bars on a house that no one wants to break into.
After the end of the tour we walked around Putarenas for a while, mostly the artisan market. Lots of nice stuff, most of it quite non-commercial, but we have decided that we don't just want to buy stuff, and then have to carry it home, and find places for it, unless it really speaks to us. I was tempted by a "Pura Vita" t-shirt. Pura Vita is the universal tico answer to questions of the "Como esta" variety- how are you, how is it going, how is your life, are you doing ok, ... ? Pure life, life is good, is the standard answer.
After dinner we went to the top deck for the sail-out at 8 p.m., the time of slack tide. Pitch black night, with only the shore lights growing dimmer, but the ocean illuminated by a spectacular lightening storm to the north of us. We never got rain, but we did get a great light show.This morning we cruised the Golfo Dulce, a small body of water just north of the Panama border, probably the result of an earth quake along one of the many faults in the area. Maybe 20 or 30 miles long, it has several large rivers running into it, and is nearly fresh water, hence the name. It is isolated, and home to a variety of sea life. Normally the bow of the ship is off limits to passengers for safety and security reasons, but the captain allowed passengers onto the bow today, and again tomorrow for the Canal transit. We saw dolphins and whales, lots of sea birds (pelicans, cormorants, and some we couldn't identify) sea turtles, and one flying fish (probably lost). We also had a compulsory lifeboat drill, as we had gone beyond 11 days at sea, and thus needed reminding of emergency procedures.
Afterwards, on leaving Golfo Dulce, we sailed south-south-east, to get around the large part of Panama that sticks out into the Pacific, before turning north into the Gulf of Panama towards the Canal entrance. That turn happened sometime after we dressed for the 3rd formal dinner of the cruise, and had gone to the restaurant. But this ship sails so smoothly, that we didn't notice the change.
We will arrive at the Canal entrance sometime before 7 a.m. tomorrow morning, and will begin our transit sometime around 9 a.m. It will probably be a busy day, watching, and getting pictures. The batteries are charging and the SD cards (camera recording cards) are going to be emptied tonight, so that we are ready.I am going to send this still tonight, and try to upload some pictures, although the latter may not happen until tomorrorw night.
Hope all is well with all of you.
Gerry and June
On Board M/S Zuiderdam
Somewhere in the Gulf of Panama
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