Montecristi, Ecuador

Ecuador is also the country where the famous Panama hats are actually made. Handmade, extra fine ´Panama´hats are made in the town of Montecrisiti, so I took a tour to see how these expensive ($75 - $600 USD) hats were made. (By the way, only foreigners who don´t know the real price of the hats pay $600. The most expensive hat that I saw only cost about $120, which is incredibly cheap considering that it takes about 9 months to weave one!)


The woman on the right has just started a hat while her friend on the left is starting to work on the brim of the hat.

Our guide , on the right, is showing what the hat looks like after several months work. The old lady beside him has been weaving Montecristi hats for 55 years and has lost all sensation in her finger tips!

Almost everyone on my bus bought a hat, but cheapies like myself, just headed to the market to look at the less expensive ($3 - $5) souvenirs.

Manta, Ecuador

As you can imagine, it was hot when we crossed the equator and travelled into Ecuadorian waters. (By the way, Ecuador is the Spanish word for equator.)



Our first stop was Manta, the tuna capital of South America. There was a large fleet of fishing vessels in the harbour where we docked our ship.


As well as fishing, Manta is also known for the ivory nut. These hard nuts are grown to make natural buttons (not plastic ones) that are used all over the world.



Here you can see some workers (99.99% women) slicing the nuts so that they can be cut into buttons. They get paid $200 USD for working 8 hours a day, 7 days a week with these dangerous buzz saws. Nuts that aren´t used for buttons are carved into cute souvenirs for the tourists.



We also visited a ´factory´(basically the basement of a house) where a family made sacks, bags and other woven materials from the agave plant.



They used the dried agave to make a variety of objects. After splitting the thick leaves, the strands were brushed, then waxed and then spun onto reels. The small reels were then strung onto one big reel that was put on a loom for weaving.



This is very labour intensive work and our guide made sure that we understood all the steps that it took to make a bag so that we wouldn´t haggle too harshly with the vendors. This really wasn´t necessary since the costs were extremely reasonable and most of the vendors were selling items that only cost $1 to $5 anyway. (Even cheapies like me bought a few items!)


Our last stop was the archaeological museum where we got to see some interesting ancient afrtifacts.

Crossing the equator

Passengers amd staff members who have not crossed the equator are referred to as pollywogs. Those , like myself, who have crossed it before are referred to as shellbacks. No one knows why this is, but I think that it has something to do with people´s insatiable appetite to humiliate one another!

First King Neptune and his queen boarded the ship and a trial was held for each pollywog. Every pollywog was found guilty of some kind of crime (like filling their buffet plates too high at dinner time or farting in the elevator) and sentenced to punishment. The condemned were then forced to kiss a big, ugly fish in front of the ship´s photographers.

Then they were ´slimed´ with rotting lettuce, spaghetti, eggs and other gunk from the kitchen. If they were lucky, they were then dumped into the pool. The unlucky ones were left to ´rot´on the deck in the hot sun with all that gunk covering them!

Fuerte Amador, Panama

On this trip to Panama, I decided to do a tour that my cousin Robbie recommended – the Embera Indian village. After an 1.5 hour bus ride, we arrived at the Chagres National park where some enterprising Indians have set up a historical native setting (like Pioneer Village in Toronto). We boarded dugout canoes (with outboard motors) and travelled to the site.

The Emberas greeted us in their language and in Spanish (our tour guide translated). Then they described what life used to be like for their people before the Spanish arrived and the government stopped them from living off the land in the national park.

Then they served us their version of fish and chips – fried tilapia fish with fried plantain chips – delicious! Note – the tattoos on their skin are temporary. It is made with from natural sources that act like bug spray (which is why many of them have tattoos all over their bodies.

Then they played their native instruments and did some folk dancing for us. (As soon as we left, I'm sure that they just put on their jeans and returned to their TV sets to watch Latin American Idol – the biggest TV show down here.)

Panama Canal, Panama

I did the unspeakable today and actually got up at 6:30 in the morning! (To a night owl like me, that is basically sacrilege.) But I figured that it was worth it to hear a historical account of what it took to create one of the 7 manmade wonders of the world – the Panama canal.

Lots of people were on the deck as the ship went thru all three locks. Here's a photo of me as we passed thru the first set of locks, the Gatun lock. They get so much traffic that they are building another series of locks to accommodate the really big ships.

We had ships beside us and ships behind us as we passed thru the canal, so another lock would be welcomed. We arrived the day before, but had to wait until today to go thru because they were so backed up.

Here you can see boats waiting for their turn to pass thru the canel. In the background, you can see the many highrises of Panama city. Tonight, a Panamanian dance troupe came onboard to entertain us with their folk dancing.

Puerto Limon, Costa Rica

Four things that I didn't know about Costa Rica:

- it only takes 4 hours to drive from the Atlantic side of the country to the Pacific side. Because of this, many importers and exporters ship their goods overland instead of going thru the Panama canal (which is very expensive)

- because there is so much rain here, people aren't buried in the ground. Instead they are interred a

bove the ground (just like the cemeteries in New Orleans)

- only Catholic priests and lawyers can do marriages. Other religions aren't allowed to perform mar

riages here

- but prostitution is legal here

While I was here, I hopped on a bus that took us to the center of the country to see the rainforest. There, I boarded a gondola that spent an hour traveling through the top of the rainforest (like a ski lift).

It was very interesting and I would recommend this excursion to anyone who wants to get up close and personal to bullet ants (which are nearly 2 inches long), snakes (we ran into a poisonous fer-de-lance), sloths, toucans and exotic butterflies.

Isla de Providencia, Columbia

This island off the coast of Columbia is the way all tropical islands used to look like before Hilton and Club Med got into the tourism business. It is a laid back little island that caters to vacationers who like to snorkel and scuba in an environment that doesn't have souvenir shops, T-shirt kiosks or a McDonalds on every corner. In fact, this place looks a lot like a Caribbean island since most of the people on the island are black. Pirates, like Captain Morgan, used to hang out here (literally if they got caught).

At the end of this lovely boardwalk is the place where they used to hang the pirates.

There is a bridge connecting the big island to a smaller one where pirate treasure is supposed to be buried.

Some of the passengers brought their snorkeling gear and spent many hours swimming in the warm and beautiful blue waters. In the distance is our ship , the Prinsendam. The surrounding waters are so shallow that we had to park the boat far from shore and take a shuttle over to the island.

Santa Marta, Columbia

Santa Marta is the oldest city in Columbia.

As a result, it is a mix of old colonial buildings in the city center and new, modern and expensive buildings (for the super rich) in the suburbs surrounded by slums (for the rest of the people).

These days, the city is famous for being the place where Simon Bolivar, the liberator of South America, died. He helped free the people of five countries before dying here and statues of him are everywhere. After getting a tour of the city, we headed to the beach to watch some folk dancers perform.

Heading out to sea

The weather finally warmed up as we headed off to South America. In two days, we will be in Columbia. For now, there is nothing to do except go to ship lectures and gripe about the cost of things on the ship. Luckily I picked up supplies in Fort Lauderdale otherwise I would be paying 1.95 for a can of coke and 2.95 for a bottle of water. However, there is no way to get around the internet. Not only is it as S-L-O-W as molasses, but it costs 75 cents a minute! I will definitely be looking for an internet cafe when we reach Columbia.

Key West, Florida

Our first port of call was supposed to be the islands of Turks and Caicos. But, just like my last trip, there were cancellations so instead we ended up in Key West. As with the rest of Florida, it was cold down here and so I put on my winter jacket and took a tour around the town.

I went to the southernmost part of the continental USA and visited Ernest Hemingway´s house. I also checked out the pirate museum and had a few tasty samples of Key West´s signature dessert - key lime pie - yummy!

Departure day!

After returning the rental car to the airport, I took the slowest taxi from the airport to the dock (less than 2 miles away). Once the drivers realize that you are only going to the port, they take as long as possible to get you there and it cost me $13 to make the trip! Even though the ship wasn't leaving until later that night, they wanted passengers onboard by 4 pm. They told us to arrive after 11 am, so I (and a couple of hundred other passengers) thought that 1 pm would be a good time to show up. We were wrong. The ship had been in dry dock undergoing renovations and it was clear that it was not ready to take on passengers yet. We waited for over an hour in various waiting rooms before we were allowed to board the ship. When I got onboard, I found out that I had been upgraded from a small interior room to a larger exterior room with a window – nice!
After grabbing some lunch in the cafeteria, I explored the ship. The Prinsendam is smaller than the QE2 and only holds about 800 passengers and 400 crew members. The officers are mainly Dutch and European, the cabin staff are mainly Indonesian and there are lots and lots of Canadian passengers onboard. In fact, everyone at my dinner table is Canadian. Most of the passengers are younger than the QE2 crowd, although not by much. While most the the QE2 crowd looked like they were one day away from a coroner's toe tag, most of the people I have seen are between 65 and 75. But even then, it was apparent that some had waited too late to do their travelling. Soon after getting onboard we had a lifeboat drill. Just standing by the lifeboat was too much for one old lady and she collapsed right beside our lifeboat. The cruise hadn't even started and already she was on her way to the doctor's office.

It's freezing so it must be Florida!

Fortunately, the rest of my journey was uneventful. However, I did notice that the weather did not get warmer as we made our way southward. When I got off the train in Fort Lauderdale, it was cold, pouring rain and hailing. Welcome to Florida!

As with past trips, I booked a room at the nearby Motel 6. It was in a good location (close to the railway, close to the airport and close to the Port Everglades dock). After checking in, I went to the airport to pick up a rental car. Since I had a couple of days to kill before my ship, the ms Prinsendam departed, I decided to explore as much of the city as I could.

Unfortunately, a long cold snap had enveloped the region and record low temperatures and snow were reported. This put a damper on my plans and I was left to explore the indoor sites of Fort Lauderdale. Sawgrass Mills is a huge shopping complex that makes Yorkdale Mall's parking problems look like a joke. Because of the weather, half the city was at the mall and parking was a nightmare.

The next day I drove down to the beach to look at all the people walking on the sand in their winter coats. Then I boarded the Jungle Queen boat for a cruise through Fort Lauderdale's rich and famous waterways. I got to see multi-million dollar mansions and their equally expensive yachts. Part of the trip stopped off at a small zoo where we got to see some real life alligator wrestling (although it was more like a guy pestering his pet alligator).

Later that night, I made a generous donation to the Hard Rock resort and casino, which was strategically located less than 10 minutes from my motel.

Ready to go!

On Thursday I recovered my passport from the Brazillian embassy and was ready to go. I decided to bypass any potential airport delays by taking a bus down to New York and then catching a train to Florida. That night, I hopped aboard one of the new Greyhound buses (that has WiFi capabilities) and headed off to New York. The journey was uneventful until we hit Niagara Falls, NY.

There is a saying – 'The heights of human genius has its limits, but the depths of human stupidity is bottomless'. I got to see an example of this as we pulled into US customs at the border. One of the Einsteins onboard decided that now was the perfect time to start fooling around with electronic equipment. Apparently this fool had never heard of 9/11 or that Nigerian underwear bomber because he figured that the best time to start messing with suspicious electronics was when the border patrol was checking out the bus with their bomb sniffing dogs. I'm also sure that he thought his brown Arabic complexion would be a bonus too. When the bus driver got wind of what he was up to, he read him the riot act! He made him dismantle the device, remove all his belongings from the bus and remove everything he had on him (except the clothes on his back). What an idiot! I'm sure that we would still be stuck at the border if the customs agents had found him instead of the driver.

Three days and counting!

Celebrating Pandora's 2010 Olympic Adventure!

(this is as close as I will ever come to the Olympics)

Greeting fellow armchair travellers!

Welcome to my South American / Antarctic travel log.

For some reason, the Windows Spaces website that I usually use for my travel blogs is not working, so I am using this Blogger site instead. Despite the name, this is going to be more of a photo log than a blog. As I found out on my last cruise, internet rates on a cruise ship are unbelievably expensive, so I will only be updating this log about once a week. So check in every now and then to see what part of the world I am in.

If I can rescue my passport from the Brazillian embassy, then I can start heading south in 3 days.

Warning: If you are travelling to Brazil, get your visa ASAP. For some reason, the embassy takes weeks and months to process a visa application instead of the standard 10 business days. People have missed trips because of their slowness. I don't know what they are going to do when they have to process thousands of applications for the summer Olympics.

I don't fly in winter because I don't want to end up like all those vactioners who get stranded in airports for 4 days due to blizzards. So I will avoid any potential weather delays by catching a bus to New York, then hopping on a train to Florida. In Fort Lauderdale, I will board my cruise ship and start sailing around South America and Antarctica.

Hasta luego!

(See you later!)

Shirley