At Sea Toward Nuku Hiva
Between Panama City & Nuku Hiva we had 8 sea days in a row. That’s a lot. It gives you an appreciation for how really, really big the Pacific Ocean is. The Captain commented that with the vastness of this ocean he sometimes wonders how the opposing fleets found each other during World War II. Actually, they sometimes had difficulty doing that.
After we were all aboard in Panama City the Captain came on the loudspeaker and welcomed all our newly arrived passengers. From this we take it that all the folks who missed the boat in Ft Lauderdale made it here by Panama City. Some had caught up with us earlier, but now all are aboard for the long sail to the South Pacific.
Life on board is pretty relaxing, if that’s what you are looking for. If not, there are games, lectures, movies, shows, eating (of course) and other things to do just about every minute of the day. Often, there are sunsets, especially as you near the South Pacific.
We usually eat breakfast & dinner in the main dining room, where the food has been really very good with a lot of variety. Sometimes food on a cruise ship can get a little bland, presumably to ensure that everyone on board is able to enjoy it. But the food on this trip has often been fairly spicy. We generally eat lunch on the Lido deck near the pool. The Dive In there serves very good hamburgers & hot dogs & the Lido buffet serves a wide variety of dishes every day, including some kind of meat that is sliced to order, an Asian station that prepares foods from a rotating selection of countries, and a sandwich station where you can get a sandwich made to your specifications. All are very good. They also have a variety of pastry, pies & ice cream for dessert. We are slowly getting control of our appetites.
Outside our cabin is a deck that extends all the way around the ship, for sitting on deck chairs & walking. A mile is 3.5 laps of the ship & we walk every day, at least once. Have to keep the muscles tuned for some of the more demanding port visits! Sometimes we see birds out there, much less often sea life.
We go to the Explorer’s Lounge almost every night to listen to Adagio, the Hungarian violin & piano duo. David & Attila, the duo on this ship (same as in 2016), are really terrific, playing flawless show tunes & light classics with flair & improvising jazz, together & solo. An intimate concert before dinner every night really enhances this voyage for us.
Almost every night after dinner there is a show in the main lounge, which we attend about half the time. We generally skip the comedians & magicians, but some of the musical performances have been very enjoyable. The Amsterdam Singers & Dancers are the in-house performers (4 singers & 6 dancers). Last time the singers were very good but the choreography left a lot to be desired. This year the dancing has, at least, caught up to the singing. The dancers have been pretty spectacular & the choreography is worlds ahead of last time. Photography during shows has been difficult, so some of these are not very sharp.
A Polynesian location team has been on board since Panama City, demonstrating dances, giving music & dance classes & presenting lectures. Kainoa, who is from Hawaii, is the lecturer & his presentations have been informative & enjoyable. There are four younger people who make up the dance group. Again, pictures are not very sharp.
There have been several special nights. We had a Black & Silver Ball on one formal night. Masks were provided to everyone at their table at dinner, & some actually wore them. At the end of the ball waiters circulated with trays of various kinds of chocolate.
One night was designated Dutch Night. Dutch cuisine was on the menu, orange lights filled the dining room & Dutch hats were distributed to the diners. Below is our usual table array (front: Bob, Judy, Bill, back of table: Rick, Mary, Lee, Robert, & standing behind our friends Corinne, Kathy, Peggy). Some of these photos were by Lee.
Robert & Bill inhabit a spacious Neptune Suite & they invited the rest of us to a party after we crossed the Equator (first of four times this trip). Wine was plentiful, canapes were provided by the ship & a good time was had by all. Apparently the ship has a rule against having more than 8 people in a room; don’t tell anybody, but the eight at this party was more than the usual 8 you learned about in school (photos by Lee).
After all this time at sea most folks are looking forward to getting their feet on dry land in Nuku Hiva. Abbafab, one of the entertainment groups, had an song for that feeling, which went (to the tune of the Beatles’ Let It Be):
“Day at sea, day at sea, day at sea, day at sea. What’s on for tomorrow? Day at sea.”
To finish off this segment, here are a couple of the towel animals we received during this period.
Panama City, Panama
We were still anchored off Fuerte Amador on the morning of January 10 when the alarm went off at an ungodly hour so we could meet our tour group by 7:30. We had a room service breakfast, showered & dressed & then headed out. We had visited this city on the 2016 world voyage:
https://baderjournal.wordpress.com/2016/02/06/panama-city-panama
Today we would visit one area visited then & one area that was new to us.
We tendered to a yacht harbor on Isla Flamenco, part of Fuerte Amador, and boarded a bus for the ride all the way across the city to Panama Vieja. Established in 1519, Panama Vieja was the first European city on the Pacific coast. It was the main Pacific terminal of the Spanish gold route, where gold & silver from Peru & spices and silks from the far East were stored before being transported by mule train across the Isthmus to Portobello to be loaded onto ships bound for Spain. It was quite prosperous, with numerous warehouses & churches, along with several thousand houses. In 1671 the English privateer Henry Morgan attacked & plundered the town, which burned to the ground.
We visited the museum for this site and walked through the ruins. After the town was destroyed the inhabitants moved to a new location about 8 miles away that was easier to fortify and defend. They used Panama Vieja as a stone quarry, thus further reducing the ruins. Today efforts are being made to restore some of the buildings, but most of it still looks like a rock pile. While we can’t identify all of these ruins, some of them are of a Dominican convent.
Our guide told us that the town’s name came from the Panama tree, but a plaque in the museum said that it was the local Indians’ word for “fisherman,” which they were. Perhaps the tree was named for the local fishermen & the town was named for the tree. Near the museum was a striking Banyan tree with many trunks descending to the ground from the wide branches.
The best preserved & restored structure is the cathedral tower, situated on what was the main square of the town. They have built a modern staircase to climb up for what is supposed to be an excellent view, but our group didn’t go up there. In front of the cathedral is a stone base that once held a stone cross. This is where Africans (presumably slaves) came to pray, because they were not permitted in the cathedral. The stone cross is now in the museum. Our guide told us that it was not known that this cross was the one that had been in front of the cathedral until one of the people she was guiding showed her a picture of her great grandfather praying there.
We walked back to the bus, passing more interesting ruins. Then we headed back across town to Casco Viejo, the site where they moved after the original town was destroyed.
We crossed through the contemporary city of skyscrapers. The city is impressive from afar, but from inside it just feels massive. The most interesting one is the Revolution Tower, which twists its way up to a white pinnacle. A lot of foreign (and particularly US) businesses have outposts here, such as Hard Rock Café, & there is also a Trump Tower. Our guide told us that the Trump Tower (which bears his name but is not owned by the US President) was sold last week & the new owners intend to change its name. We passed a fishing village that the developers apparently failed to dislodge.
Casco Viejo is the new old town of Panama City, established in 1673 by the folks whose original town had been destroyed by Henry Morgan. It is full of old buildings of two or three stories with interesting balconies. The streets & sidewalks are very narrow, so it quickly became crowded & difficult to navigate, especially if you are a group of 40 people, as we were. Here are some typical street scenes.
One thing you will notice in these pictures is the very extensive renovation work in progress all over this area. In 2016 we visited the cathedral & were glad we had the opportunity to do so when we saw it this time entirely covered in construction cloth. Its good to see, however, that they are restoring these old buildings rather than tearing them down for new construction.
We visited the Iglesia de San Jose, a church transferred from the destroyed town in 1673. It contains a very impressive carved wood altar covered in gold, called the Altar de Oro. There is a story, repeated as history by our guide, that the gilded altar was saved from Henry Morgan by a friar, who either had them hidden in the Pacific or painted black. When Morgan arrived & demanded the church’s valuables, the friar told him the church was unfinished for lack of funds & requested a donation. Morgan supposedly said “you are more of a pirate than I am” & ordered that the friar be given the donation he requested. But anyone visiting the church knows this story is untrue. There is a sign right in front of the altar that not only says this never happened, but says that the style of the altar indicates it was created much later, in the 18th century, and church records say that the gilding was applied in 1915. So why does a guide leading people ?
We walked by the façade of La Compania de Jesus, the Jesuit church & school. In the late 18th century this became the first college in Panama. It functioned until 1767, when the Jesuits were expelled from all of Spain’s colonies. The pope had decreed before the Spanish reached America that Christians could not be enslaved. This was a problem, beginning with Columbus, who wanted to convert the indigenous people but also wanted to enslave them. Apparently the Jesuits became more & more adamant against keeping African & Indian Christians as slaves until the Spanish authorities had had enough & removed them on the theory of out of sight, out of mind. Our guide said that part of the section on the right may have been rented out for use as the first Synagogue in Panama. The building was later destroyed by fire & earthquake.
We passed what is left of the Iglesia y Convento de Santo Domingo, a Dominican church & convent built in 1678. It is known for its “flat arch,” visible just behind the door, which is about 30 feet high & 45 feet wide, with no keystone or external support. It was cited as evidence of Panama’s geological stability during the debates on where to build the canal. It collapsed in 2003, but has been reconstructed.
Given 30 minutes of free time, we walked through a flower covered walkway onto a street along the city’s old walls. There was a great view of downtown Panama & there were a number of Kuna indians with booths selling the molas they make. Molas are very colorful needlework, in which there are several layers of different colored fabric & pictures are made by cutting through to the various colors. There was also an artist at work next to the wall.
We returned to our bus & drove back to the yacht harbor on Fuerte Amador where our tender picked us up & took us back to the ship. Later in the afternoon we set sail for Nuku Hiva, an eight day trip with nothing but water to see beyond the ship. It will feel good to step onto land again after that.
Panama Canal
The Amsterdam entered the Panama Canal at 7:30 on the morning of January 9. This is our third time through this canal, so we were not planning to be up that early to be outside before reaching the first lock. However, the Panamanians provide guides to narrate the passage of the canal & ours began broadcasting on the ship’s loudspeaker system at about 6:30, and since one of these speakers is on the deck outside our window that was the end of sleep for us. Still, we took our usual time to shower & dress before wandering outside, so by the time we got there the ship was already inside the first lock at Gatun.
While we will post a lot of pictures here, for a much more comprehensive review of a Panama Canal transfer take a look at that episode of the blog from our 2016 world voyage here:
https://baderjournal.wordpress.com/2016/02/04/panama-canal
That posting also has a link to the episode recounting our first Panama Canal passage, on the Grand South America Voyage in 2012. So, if you are interested in the canal there is plenty to see in addition to what is set out here.
In contrast to the beautiful morning sun on our last visit, the weather was gray & overcast as we entered the Gatun locks on the Caribbean side of the canal. The weather proved highly changeable during the day, moving from cloud to sun to rain repeatedly & often very quickly, so that folks outside taking pictures had to run for the doors. We followed the Azamara Quest through the canal, passing the Gatun control building with the help of the “mules,” a sort of tractor on rails that helps keep the ship on a steady course through the tight space between the canal walls. The bow of the ship was opened to passengers for the transit of the canal & in the morning coffee & delicious “Panama Rolls” were served there. Interestingly, the massive gates between levels of the locks are all still the originals, installed more than 100 years ago.
After leaving the Gatun locks we sailed across Gatun lake, a body of water that is probably the largest segment of the canal. It passes through dense rainforest, but is pretty uneventful. So we went to breakfast, then we went up to the Crow’s Nest for most of the transit. The Crow’s Nest is a multipurpose room on the top inside deck, a venue for parties, for reading, for activities such as Zumba in the morning and a disco at night. It has a bar and a panoramic expanse of windows across the front of the ship. Many passengers seem to spend a lot of time up here.
As we sailed through the lake we passed a huge container ship coming the other way, called the Houston Bridge, we think. This is one of the world’s largest container ship with a capacity of some 11,000 containers, each of which is the size of the payload of a tractor-trailer truck. Until last year ships this size could not use the Panama Canal, but a little over a year ago they completed a new, larger set of locks on each side that can accommodate these giant “Panamax Plus” ships. These ships still use the central portion of the same old canal, but enter & exit through the new larger locks. The Panamanians charge by weight to traverse their canal; a ship the size of Amsterdam pays about a quarter of a million dollars for one passage, so these new ships must be paying a lot more. We also passed several dredges, employed to scoop muck from the bottom to ensure the canal does not fill up with silt. This is, we were told, a never ending process.
Following us through the canal was a strange looking armored ship. We were told that this is the Pentagon’s newest intelligence ship & the extra plating includes stealth technology that obscures it on radar. It is too wide for the original locks & instead passed through the new locks. We speculated that maybe it is headed for the waters off North Korea. At one point a tugboat pulled around & pushed us for awhile; no idea why. Soon we came to the Centennial Bridge, built (guess when) in 2000. This area is known as the Cut, It was blasted out of solid rock during the building of the canal, perhaps the most difficult & dangerous part of the project. The walls are terraced to help keep debris from sliding down into the canal.
On the Atlantic side the Gatun locks raised the ship three levels. On the Pacific side the Pedro Miguel locks lower it two levels & the Miraflores locks lower it one more level to reach sea level again. As we approached the Pedro Miguel locks we could see the new larger version to our right. On the left was a tree dressed in bright yellow that we were told only blooms for three days a year.
The Miraflores locks only drop one final level, but as you go through on the left is a building housing a museum that always has hundreds of people on the balconies welcoming you. They wave & take pictures of you while you wave & take pictures of them. On our right we could see a big ship going through the new channel & locks, but we couldn’t see the locks themselves because there was a hill in front. We noticed that the Panamanian flag was at half staff all day & learned later that it was a holiday. Martyr’s Day commemorates a student uprising in 1963 against the Americans for reneging on an understanding that the Panamanian flag could fly along with the American at schools in the Canal Zone (if I have this right). Some 21 students & one toddler were killed as students tried to shimmy up a flag pole with a Panamanian flag. The next day we saw a monument to these students.
After finishing with the locks we sailed on to Fuerte Amador, a group of connected islands off the coast of Panama City, near which we anchored. The islands are connected to the mainland by a causeway on top of a huge breakwater that was built with rocks & dirt removed when digging the canal. In this last part of the canal we could see some of the towers of Panama City beyond the hills, above an old American military barracks. We passed under the Bridge of the Americas, which connects North & South America, completing the Pan American Highway that extends all the way from Canada to Patagonia. And on one side was the modern ecological museum designed by noted architect Frank Gehry. It looks a little like a brightly colored building that has collapsed into a heap.
Tenders were running to Fuerte Amador during the evening, but not many went. We had a full day in Panama City in the morning (with yet another early wake-up call) so after dinner & a show we retired for the evening. We heard later that those who went found there was nothing to do, so it was just as well.
Puerto Limon, Costa Rica
At 7 AM on January 8 Amsterdam backed into its berth by the dock in Puerto Limon, poised for a fast get-away I guess. We have been here several times, most recently on the 2016 World Cruise. On that occasion we explored the town, which you can see at:
https://baderjournal.wordpress.com/2016/02/03/puerto-limon-costa-rica
This time we took an excursion for a treetop gondola ride in the rain forest. This is a good example of why returning to a port you have already visited is not redundant (unless you have been there a dozen times, as a number of people on board have). Our experiences on these two visits to Puerto Limon couldn’t have been more different . . . city vs jungle.
We had to get up very early to make it to our 7:15 meeting time for this excursion (we agreed that next time we will pay closer attention to the departure times of excursions). It was overcast in the morning but got increasingly sunny as the day went on. It turned out that there had been six straight days of rain here & our visit brought the turn to good weather. The bus ride to Braulio Carillo National Park took about 2 hours & our guide, Marvin, talked the whole way about Costa Rica & the flora & fauna of the area. Driving up into the mountains we passed an impressive volcano & scenic forests & rivers.
Once there, before the tram ride, we had a walking tour. We saw a mother Tapir & her offspring, who was mostly interested in eating. Tapirs are related to the rhinoceros & are delightfully ugly.
We saw a 3 toed sloth high in a tree above us, with a hairy face like Oscar the Grouch, & we walked through an orchid garden.
We toured a butterfly reserve. There are several thousand species of butterfly in this area; they built a large caged structure to ensure many of them would be here together & they feed & care for them here.
Walking back, we saw a Costa Rican Robin, the national bird, a large spider in its web & a Toucan (very cool).
From there we walked to the tram terminal. It worked a lot like a Disney World ride, in that the gondola would come to the platform, let out its passengers on one side, move around to the front and stop for us to climb in. Passengers, six to a gondola, were carefully arranged by weight to ensure the gondola was balanced. They move along a cable held up by very tall metal poles. To build the tramway, the poles were brought in by helicopter so that the ecosystem wouldn’t be disturbed unnecessarily. The gondola was built of open caging on the bottom so you could look down at the floor of the forest.
The ride through the treetops was really fascinating, but I don’t think it will really come across in pictures. A photo can’t capture the vastness or the complexity of it all. But here are a few anyway.
We could see several small rivers winding through the floor of the forest under the branches.
Tree trunks and branches were covered with mosses & lichens vines of amazing varieties.
Our guide pointed out “Broccoli Trees.” If you are familiar with broccoli you will see why.
High in the canopy were a lot of bromeliads (we think that’s the name), plants that attach themselves to tree trunks but do not attack the trees in any way. Some of them send very long tendrils, which are like roots, down to the floor of the forest to obtain nutrients.
Perhaps the best things we saw were the ferns, in great variety with sizes from small plants to large trees. They are lush & graceful in design & they stand out from the other greenery around them. The perspective from above is also somewhat different than usual.
We also saw fauna in the forest canopy, but they were too fast for my camera. There were tiny flying creatures looking like flies and bees that would hover like a hummingbird within reach right by the gondola. But they are really wasps, we were told, & if you try to grab one it will sting your hand & it will really hurt. We saw two umbrella birds, undistinguished looking to our eyes but our guide said that bird fanciers come to Costa Rica just to catch a glimpse of one. We saw hummingbirds as well & other birds I can’t really describe to you (which translates as I don’t remember). Our guide was really good at identifying birds; he had a bird book & would quickly open it to the page for the bird we had just seen & show it around.
After the ride through the treetops we had a “typical Costa Rican” lunch of chicken or beef with red beans & rice, but the meat portions were pretty poor. Then we made the long drive back to the port, where we reboarded the ship. 
Dinner on the ship was, to say the least, much better than the lunch. We went to bed early because we were due to enter the Panama Canal early the next morning.
George Town, Grand Cayman
As we post this we are back in the USA after the world cruise. As promised, this is the first port of the 2018 world cruise (it seems so long ago!). If you need a reminder about the start of the voyage & the original itinerary, you can take a look at the initial episode from January 4, 2018:
https://baderjournal.wordpress.com/2018/01/04/
There have been a few summary updates as the voyage went along, but now we are going back to the beginning to post the chronological episodes that we have been preparing, but not posting, as we went along. This will take about a couple of months to complete.
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We arrived at our first port, George Town, Grand Cayman Island, on January 6. There was some doubt about our being able to tender in to the island because of sea turbulence but in the end the tender ride was rough but doable. But before getting to our day on Grand Cayman we should talk about getting there.
You may well remember that the beginning of January was unusually cold, so we were glad to leave the Arlington chill behind to drive south to sunny Florida on the morning of January 1. Well, we stopped in South Carolina that night & it was no warmer. We felt a little cheated of the Southern warmth we had been anticipating. On January 2 we drove to Daytona Beach, Florida. It was slightly warmer but not much. Good thing we had brought along long sleeved shirts! We were a little peeved that the cold couldn’t have waited a few days as we drove to Ft Lauderdale on January 3. But later that day we heard about all the snow falling in South Carolina, Georgia & northern Florida. So we had just missed the heavy snow, which was even more unwelcoming than the cold had been, and also might have prevented us from arriving in Ft Lauderdale on schedule. A narrow escape, & we felt a whole lot better about our driving weather.
We sailed at 8:00 PM on January 4, as scheduled, but we were told that some 100 passengers weren’t able to make it to Ft Lauderdale in time for the sailing. They would have to meet the ship at Grand Cayman or later. If, as feared for a while, we had been unable to tender into the island there, I guess they would have had to proceed on to Costa Rica or Panama, a whole lot of hassle & expense. What a way to start a world cruise!
We posted lots of pictures of the Amsterdam in two episodes of our 2016 World Cruise on this blog. It hasn’t changed all that much so if you want to see what the ship is like look here:
https://baderjournal.wordpress.com/2016/01/31/at-sea-on-amsterdam-part-1/
https://baderjournal.wordpress.com/2016/02/01/at-sea-on-amsterdam-part-2/
Here are just a few new pictures, of the library, the espresso bar & the entrance to the main dining room showing some of the new carpeting installed throughout the ship during a “wet dock” last summer (“wet dock” means some refurbishment was done while on the water). Amsterdam is scheduled for a 10 day dry dock after our cruise, which will result in much more extensive changes.
We were very happy to see David & Attila, the same violin & piano duo as last time, back in the Explorer’s Lounge. They are really first rate musicians & add a lot to the cruise. Sadly, Debby Bacon, who played & sang in the piano bar, was not employed by HAL for this cruise. She has been a fixture on HAL’s world cruises for 7 or 8 years, but apparently they decided she was too expensive this time. We (and many others) would gladly have given up some other amenities to save money to bring her back, but apparently the decision makers at HAL have other ideas. The new entertainer in the piano bar (which has been reconfigured with an actual bar surrounding the piano, undermining the classier lounge ambience of before) is an English fellow called Jamm. We haven’t attended any of his shows so far. There is also a good new jazz trio playing for dancing in the Ocean Bar.
On our first morning at sea there was a get-together in the Crow’s Nest of the people who had participated in the Roll Call (a sort of bulletin board) for this cruise on the Cruise Critic web site. There were about 200 people there having a good time. Which they should since HAL provides the refreshments. To our surprise, Captain Mercer arrived about halfway through & said a few words of welcome. A few years ago there were always several ship’s officers at these events, but recently they have stayed completely away. As to why, there are several rumors but who knows. Anyway it was very nice to see him there, greeting people & posing for pictures.
Sadly, our itinerary takes us first to Grand Cayman instead of Havana, Cuba. Havana would have been a much more interesting stop, but Grand Cayman it was & we only saw Cuba from a distance as we sailed by it (pictures taken through dirty windows).
One thing that hasn’t changed is that Eddy & Calista, Amsterdam’s great florists, are still filling the ship with their beautiful arrangements. Here are a few (much more breathtaking in person).
It was overcast & drizzly as we stepped onto the tender (after too long a wait) to Grand Cayman. Our main objectives were the library & the museum, & the museum was right in front of the boat when we docked. It is a small museum but pretty nice, recounting the natural & cultural history of the island. Originally named Tortuga by Christopher Columbus because of the large population of sea turtles, the island has a long history of turtle hunting (they eat them here). It is also a scuba diving mecca. After the museum, we walked down the street tracking the harbor front to the church, which is supposed to have an interesting interior, but we didn’t see it because the church was locked up. George Town is pretty small, but it has been built up quite a bit since we were last here, with many foreign businesses like the Hard Rock Café & Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Just a few blocks away from the harbor is the public library. Originally built in 1939, there is a much larger recent addition in the back. The original library building has a beautiful wood ceiling, reputedly the inverted hull of a boat. But that building was locked when we were there so, while I was able to photograph the room through a door with a glass window I was unable to shoot the ceiling because of window reflections. We headed on to the post office. There is no home mail delivery in the Caymans, so everyone living on all three islands has to pick up their mail from a box at the post office. There are some 3000 boxes. On the way, we passed a sculpture of a Cayman Blue Iguana, a pretty rock garden & a funky truck of the Tortuga Rum Company, which we were told was the originator of the (delicious) Caribbean Rum Cake.
George Town is full of free range chickens & roosters. You can hear the roosters crowing loudly all the time. We were told there is one that often walks back & forth in front of the Kentucky Fried Chicken, apparently ignorant of what is going on inside. We saw a lot of them.
We walked back along the harbor & down the road on the other side of town. We saw a Manta Ray fountain in town, then shortly beyond the congested area we stopped for lunch at the Paradise Restaurant, situated right on the water. We had delicious Mahi Mahi sandwiches with red beans & rice & Mary had the local beer, called White Tip (after the shark of the same name). From our table in the patio we looked out over the craggy coast line with a blow hole right next to the restaurant, where the tide comes in under the rock & shoots in the air through the hole with some force. Off the coast (Cayman has no cruise ship dock) stood the four cruise ships that had disembarked thousands of visitors to this tiny town. We learned later that Amsterdam was not actually anchored there because with the wind & water turbulence this might have damaged the coral. Instead it hovered there, with an officer using a joystick (like in a computer game) to constantly adjust its position so that it stayed in place.
We returned to the Amsterdam & enjoyed a violin/piano concert before a delicious dinner (the food has been very good so far). Then we went to bed & turned our watches & clocks back an hour for the first of some 24 times on this voyage (yay for an extra hour of sleep). And we were greeted in our room by our first towel animal. I guess that means we are really under way.
BADER JOURNAL 