July 25, 2023 - Day 211

At sea sailing to Cartagena, Columbia

I made a short video of the Masked Boobie fishing along side the vessel and posted it below. It is a magnificent flyer and must have very keen eyesight because it can spot a fish in a wave while flying at 25 mph. It uses the draft created by the ship to glide effortlessly along side the vessel looking for small fish like sardines or flying fish. With a lifespan of 12 to 25 years it has a wingspan of 62 to 68 inches and is found along the Central American coastline. The only place in the US you can find them is the Dry Tortugas near Key West. It sleeps on land but spends most of its life at sea fishing like the movie shows. When they dive they can go down 65 feet to catch fish. There was also the more common Brown Boobie fishing but they were not as good a flyer as the Masked Boobie. I really enjoy watching these birds at work.

July 24, 2023 - Day 210

Panama Canal Passage

This is our second passage through the canal on this trip and the fourth time we have been through and it is always an amazing experience. The canal is 109 years old and there have been over 1 million ships through the canal since it opened in 1914. Initially there were about 1000 ships a year and today nearly 14,000. The Panama Canal is about 50 miles (80.46 km) long and it takes a ship an average of 10 hours to transit from ocean to ocean. There are 280 working pilots in charge of the average of 38 ships that use the waterway each day. The transit is 85 feet above sea level and there are three locks at each end of the transit each one raising or lowering the ship 27 feet. For a passenger ship like ours the transit ticket costs $150 for each person. Our ship has 650 passengers and 400 crew so the passenger fee was $157,000. They charge for the ship by its displacement plus the handling fees like pilots. Each time a line is handled it costs $750. They still bring the handling lines to the ship in a row boat. When everything is added up it cost the cruise line $250,000 to make this transit cash up front.

There are three bridges across the canal. The newest is the centennial bridge which was built by Germany. I put some photos below of the Bridge of Americas and Centennial bridge. They are having some trouble keeping the water level in Gatun Lake up because they don’t seem to be getting enough rainfall and because they have opened a second set of locks, called “Neopanamax locks” for larger ships.

July 22, 2023 - Day 208

Punta Arenas, Costa Rica

This was our first visit to Costa Rica and it was a nice time. It is a favorite tourist destination for Americans because, unlike many Central American countries, it has a stable demographic government and a highly educated population. Puntarenas is a small town situated between the volcanic beaches of the Golfo de Nicoya and some very high and majestic active volcanoes. The county is actively harnessing the geothermal energy offered by these volcanoes which currently supplies 20% the the country’s energy. The country’s goal is utilize geothermal for 95% of its electricity requirements in the next ten years and is the leader of the technology in Central America.

We took a bus to a Safari park which was a 3 hour ride away from the harbor. The high light for me was finally having the opportunity to ride on the Pan American highway. I have been on parts of it in Alaska and Canada but never in Central or South America. At a total length of 19,000 miles the Pan American highway is the longest road in the world. The only place you can’t drive is a place called the Darien Gap which connects Panama and Colombia. Apparently you can motorcycle or bike through the area but not by car. For environmental reasons it is doubtful that a road through the area will be built but there are numerous ferries that will take you around. If I was younger with no dependents it would certainly be something I would do. Apparently some people have actually walked it.

Costa Rica has a new President “Rodrigo Chases Robles” who appears to be a progressive conservative president. On the section of the Pan American highway we were on there were sections that had been worked on twenty years before I saw them but were now overgrown with vegetation and had very slow stop and go traffic. Then there were about 20 miles that were a modern 4 lane highway just like a US interstate. The new president is finally going to finish the road all the way through Costa Rica.

I saw a lot of American tourists on the Pintarenas beaches. It is a secure developing country which is not to expense and has lots to offer.

July 20, 2023 - Day 206

Puerto Quetzal, Guatemala

Back in Pretty Puerto Quetzal. This is our third visit to this place on this trip. We got off the ship, walked, had lunch and came back to the ship. The tourist season is apparently over because most of the shops were closed until next winter. There were 16 big cargo ships anchored just outside the harbor. It looked like a big ship parking lot.

July 18, 2023 - Day 204

Zihuatanejo/Ixtapa, Mexico

We were here on Jan 21 at the beginning of this trip. The ship was here only a short time so we walked the beach and had lunch. It is one of our favorite places in Mexico. The photos below are bronze statues spread along the beach promenade.

July 16, 2023 - Day 202

Cabo San Lucas, México

After 3 days at sea we are back in Mexico and what a change in temperature and climate. It was 87 deg F in Cabo and I put my warm clothes away for the rest of the trip. We were in Cabo on January 11 at the beginning of this trip. The place is booming with new construction and lots of tourists. Warm water, nice beaches, good restaurants and world class diving locations. None of the extreme poverty we have seen in so many places and I didn’t see any homeless like we just saw in San Francisco.

July 13, 2023 - Day 198

San Francisco, California

With our arrival in San Francisco the ship completed its circumnavigation of the globe and 314 people left the ship and were replaced by a new group traveling to New York. We will continue until we reach Miami.

We have been to San Francisco many times so wanted to do something different. The “F line” of the San Francisco tram system runs right in front of Pier 27 so I got on line and purchased a metro day pass for $13 US and we spent the day viewing the city on the tram. The ticket was good for the cable car so we rode both of the historic cable car lines and had a wonderful time.

On the second day we wanted to go to the De Young Museum to see the Ansel Adams exhibit so off we went on the Tram. It was an adventure just learning the system and how it works. The De Young Museum is in Golden Gate Park and there were many things to do and see so any visit to the city should include this park.

July 10, 2023 - Day 196

Astoria, Oregon U.S.A.

The Lewis and Clark expedition spent the winter if 1805-06 at Fort Clatsop just southwest of Astoria. John Jacob Astor’s Pacific Fur Company built Fort Astoria in 1810. It is located right at the entrance to the Columbia River which gives it access to the interior of the Northwest. There are acres and acres of abandoned wooden piles along the water front. They were used to build foundations for the buildings of Astoria raising it above the marshy ground. All of these wooden buildings made Astoria susceptible to fire which almost completely destroyed the city in both 1883 and 1922. The 1922 fire destroyed 30 city blocks, displaced 2500 residents and caused hundreds of millions in damage.

There was a shuttle bus that took us to the post office to mail home some of this stuff we have acquired on this trip. We then walked the town and went to the Columbia River Maritime Museum. They have a huge collection of vessels and maritime artifacts that were displayed beautifully. They also have the United States lighthouse ship Columbia on display. It was the fourth and final lightship stationed from 1952 to 1979 at the mouth of the Columbia.

July 9, 2023 - Day 195

Victoria, Canada

Victoria is right at the Southern tip of Vancouver Island and is the capital of the Canadian province of British Columbia. The population is 78,000 and the city is one of the oldest in the Pacific Northwest. There were 4 large cruise ships in addition to ours visiting the city and they were having the annual “Gay Pride Parade” right in the middle of town. It was a beautiful sunny day with mild temperatures so everyone was outside and the city was full of people at the parade.

We got on a city bus and toured the town. Because of the parade there were a lot of diversions but we saw most of the city. I got off downtown and walked 3 miles back to the ship. It is apparently a very attractive place to live because things are very expensive. I looked at some realtors signs and the home prices run $570/sq ft Canadian. I visited the Bug Zoo and had a great walk. There were many displays of flowers and a interesting visit to Fishermen’s Wharf.

July 8, 2023 - Day 194

Cursing the inside passage, Canada

Below are some shots of the art work that Janie has done on this cruise. She has also done 25 needle point projects but says they are not art so doesn’t want to show them. There are also a couple of shots of the inside passage.

July 7, 2023 - Day 193

Prince Rupert, Canada

Prince Rupert is the Western terminus for the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway and was founded in 1910. It is named after “Prince Rupert of the Rhine” who was governor of the Hudson’s Bay Company. The name is the result of a nation wide competition held by the railroad which gave a $250 prize for the name. The place had a tough time from 1996 to 2004 because the paper pulp mill closed, a big fire burned down the fish processing plant and a lot of people left the community.

The 12,000 people that live in Prince Rupert are working hard to bring the place back. There is a new container port and cruise ship port so the place is recovering nicely. With 103 inches of rain a year it is Canada’s wettest city. They only get 100 sunny days a year and we were here on one of them.

There were quite a few Canadian tourists that had driven into the city. You can walk to anyplace in the lovely city but on a rainy day it might not be as comfortable. It has a nice waterfront with lot of shops and a historic train depot that reminded me of my youth and maternal Grandfather’s profession.

July 6, 2023 - Day 192

Ketchikan, Alaska

Ketchikan is known as Alaska’s first city because it is the first city you reach when coming by sea from the South. There are 8000 people and 14000 bears living in the area. It also has the second smallest Walmart in the world. There is a 20 foot tide and the city is right up against the mountains so most of the downtown area is built on stilts. They get 120 inches of rain a year but it was a beautiful 57degF sunny day for us.

It is a large cruise ship destination and there were 5 ships in this small city which meant there were more cruise ship passengers in the small town than bears. We took a bus out to a Dungeness Crab festival so we learned about the little beast and them sampled the fair. They are delicious. All the shops, restaurants and bars were looking for help so any college student looking for a summer job could come here and get a job. I talked to one of the restaurant owners and he provides housing for anyone interested in spending the summer working in his restaurant.

July 5, 2023 - Day 191

Sitka, Alaska

Sitka was called New Archangle while under Russian rule from 1799 to 1867. There is a lot of Alaskan history involved with Sitka including the main trading center for the Russians, a war with the local native Tlingit nation and the formation of the Russian-American company. It is a small city with a population of 8,500 which is the fifth most populated city in Alaska.

It was a beautiful 57degF sunny day when we visited. The mountains were snow capped and the wild flowers were in full bloom. We took the local bus out to the post office to mail some of the stuff we have purchased home. It cost $3 for a senior day pass. There was a local brewery next to the post office so we had lunch there and then walked through a beautiful rain forest to a Totem Pole museum. The colorful totem in the photo is called “Wolf Man”.

The plant in the photo below is Cow Parsnip or Indian celery. It is a valuable pasture for cows and sheep. It is also important in the diet of numerous wild animals including bears. It is the host plant for many species of butterflies. The native people harvested the young stems and leafstalks, peeled them and ate them raw. The dried stems can be used as drinking straws or made into flutes.

Sitka is certainly a tourist destination with lots of shops and restaurants. It looks prosperous, is clean and was certainly worth the visit.

July 4, 2023 - Day 190

Hubbard’s Glacier, Alaska

In the comments section “easyasgoingtothedentist” asked the following question so I thought I would try and answer. My response is probably too long but I wanted to give it a go so here it is.

Question = “It’s hard to believe you have been on this journey for half a year now. With one month remaining, would you reflect on your favorite places and where you would return to? Any comments on the world atmosphere post-Covid which you have experienced? How about any interesting people you have met on the ship? Which ports did they embark? What nationality were they? It has been really fun to read of your escapades. Thank you. Oh- and could you please post a map of the rest of your ports-o-call?”

Thank you for your note. I appreciate that someone is actually looking at this. It is hard to answer your first question because there have been so many but let me give you a few statistics before I try.

On this trip we have visited 44 countries with 117 stops in different cities. I keep track of how far we go each day and the two screenshots below show my mileage markers. To date we have traveled 51,430 miles and have 7,195 miles to go for a total voyage of 58,625 miles. As far as the rest of the voyage we will be visiting Sitka, Ketchikan, Prince Rupert, Victoria, Astoria, San Francisco, Cabo San Lucas, Zihuatanejo, Puerto Quetzal, Puentarenas, Cartagena and Great Stirrup Bay in that order. We weren’t allowed to land in Peru or Myanmar because of political unrest and missed Kodiak Island and Hubbard’s Glacier because of weather. Because of CoVid we were the first cruise ship to return to many of the ports and there were extremely happy to see us. Bands, dancing and big welcome signs were common. Many of these places depend on the tourist business and there were many closed businesses and restaurants that didn’t survive.

The average age of people on the ship is 72, the oldest is 92 and the youngest is 23. Five people have died during the voyage, there was one helicopter evacuation because of a heart attack, there have been 8 people that have broken arms, legs and wrists because of falls and 2 couples have been kicked off the ship because of misbehavior. The ship doesn’t advertise these events so there may have been more but these are the ones I know about.

Three hundred and fifty of the Around The World passengers got on and will get off in San Francisco. Fifty seven got on and off in Miami and NewYork. Half the passengers are from the US, 25 % from Canada and the rest from other countries including Switzerland, Germany, UK, New Zealand, Australia, Holland, Israel, Mexico, Columbia, Turkey and two Ukrainians. The passengers are fairly affluent with representation from all races, colors and nationalities. Most are retired but some still working a little. The professions include medical Doctors, lawyers, engineers, book authors, a retired bus driver, a police detective, a tobacco factory owner, university professors, bed and breakfast owners, medical laboratory technicians, the owner of a Canadian lumber company, the chief architect for Home Depot, high school superintendents, a physiologist and many more that I don’t know.

The crew is even more diverse. The Captain is from Croatia and most of the officers from Eastern Europe. There are only about 8 of the crew that actually work for the cruise line the rest work through a contract company and are mostly Indian, Philippino and Indonesian. The chef and ship manager are French.

As far as places I would like to go back to there are many so let me just pick one or two from each continent. The highlight of the trip was Antartica. Amazing scenery, amazing animals and absolute desolation. In South America it would be Punta de Este, Uruguay followed by Puerto Monty, Chile and Recife, Brazil. In Africa it would be the Seychelles followed by Cape Town, South Africa and Walvus Bay, Namibia. In the Middle East it would be Muscat,Oman. Dubai, of course, is great but it is just a big international city. In South Asia it would be Columbo, Sri Lanka. In the Far East all of Japan was great but if I had to pick it would be Hakodate and Kobe, Japan followed by Ha Long Bay, Vietnam and Singapore.

Politically my biggest surprise was how strong the Chinese influence is in many of the countries especially West Africa. The situation in these countries is very sad. It is to much to discuss here but basically the vast majority of people live in extreme poverty with the few people in power selling off the resources of the country to China to enrich themselves. The Chinese then move their people in to gain land and resources at the expense of the local population.

Another surprise and disappointment was what I saw in San Diego and San Francisco. The downtown streets are lined with tents and cardboard boxes housing the homeless. There were many many more than I saw in even the poorest countries we visited. I am not going to get into the reasons I think this is happening but there is definitely something wrong in these cities and it needs to be fixed.

June 30, 2023 - Day 186

Dutch Harbor, Alaska

Dutch Harbor is a harbor on Amaknak Island in the town of Unalaska, Alaska. The Battle of Dutch Harbor occurred here in June 1942. It was bombed by the Japanese during WW II. I took a few photos of a couple of the American bunkers left over from that time. There are many all over the island. The US had 15,000 troop on this tiny island and it was a main naval base. All the roads and airport were built by the military and there are Quonset huts, barracks and former gun emplacements all over the island.

Dutch Harbor is a top fishing port with huge harvests of pollick and cod. There are a billion dollars of fish sent out of the port each year. The boats in the tv show “The Deadliest Catch” are based in Dutch Harbor. There were many fishing boats docked but the boats from the tv series were out to sea.

The island chain is part of the ring of fire and there is an attempt to bring geothermal energy to the area. The island currently spends about $4 million a year to bring oil to the island to generate electricity and heat the homes.

It was rainy and cool the whole day. We took a taxi to the downtown area and then I walked back to the ship. There was lots of wildlife and many blooming wildflowers.

June 25, 2023 - Day 181

Kushiro, Japan

It is 58 deg F today much cooler that In Tokyo. Kushiro in in eastern Hokkaido, northern Japan. The Kushiro River runs right through the middle of the town. It has a population of 160000 which is decreasing. There are many retired people from Tokyo because it is much cooler. The main industries are paper , pulp and coal mining. It was a a absolutely beautiful day but apparently we were lucky because is usually foggy. They have 100 foggy days a year which is more than London. It gets down to -10 deg C in the winter but they usually have ice rather than snow. There are tall markers with a red arrow in the road to help in the fog. I put a photo of one below. Another interesting thing about these Japanese towns is that they have novel manhole covers. In Kushiro the have images of cranes and wagons cast into the covers.

We took a bus out to the Shitsuhen National Park which is the largest wetland in Japan. It is what I call a bog with deep pockets of compressed vegetation which will become peat. There were many interesting plants and some deer. It is the home of the rare Japanese Red Crowned Crane.

There is reserve for the cranes that we also visited. It was thought that the species was extinct but 10 were found living in the wetlands in 1955. The Kushiro Tancho crane reserve was started in 1958 to try and help the species recover and today there are 1,632 cranes. The cranes don’t migrate and they live about 35 years. I put a few photos below of the birds and a 30 day old chick.

The plant in the photo is a Japanese Butterbur. The Japanese call it the Fuki and eat the long stalks like celery. It is naturally bitter so the stalks are prepped by rolling them with salt and then boiling them to reduce the sharp taste.

June 24, 2023 - Day 180

Hakodate (Hokkaido), Japan

It has really cooled off since we got to Northern Japan. Being surrounded on three sides by the sea and with the cool water Hakodate has great seafood. We docked right next to Ada-ishi (The morning market) which is a seafood lover’s dream. Stall upon stall have every kind of seafood you can imagine.

The city has an old tram system that is really fun and easy to ride. We took the tram into town to a viewing tower that overlooks Fort Goryokaku. There is a lot of Japanese history involved with the fort and it was the last hold out for the shoguns as Japan consolidated the nation. It now has 10,000 cherry trees planted inside the walls of the fort. It is a classic example of a star-shaped citadel.