Spring Waxing Moon of the Southern Cross

Lima. Ordinarily gray according to Rosa, our tour guide for a quirky museum, the Museo Larco, Lima presented itself to us today in milky, but bright sun. My first venture out today was to the Miraflores section of Lima, an upscale neighborhood of exclusive hotels, fancy restaurants, and, improbably to me, a significant surfing community.

A free shuttle was on offer, so I took it. When I got down to the dock, I discovered that H. Stern jewelry had paid for it. Yesterday in Guayaquil, a nicely dressed man in a serious blue suit handed out brochure’s for H. Stern’s pierside stand. Today the shuttle with a map of Lima and a coupon for a free trinket. These guys want your business.

The ride, about 45 minutes, passed through lower to lower middle income areas, including the port district of Callao. There is the usual Latin American junky, run down feel with folks lounging in front of shops selling what look like used goods and the sometimes hidden behind steel doors fancy homes of wealthier Limenos.

There is, too, a difference. This is a city with an architectural sensibility It has trouble taking full hold because of poverty, but its aesthetic seemed consistent to me. First is color. Homes and some business often use pastels or bright colors for their side facing the street. Rosa said this was because Lima is gray most of the time. Maybe so. Also, there is a modernist use of blocky shapes, squares and rectangles in the shaping of buildings. These two things together produce a Matisse-Mondrian like built environment trying to be born.

Throw in the third element, the influence of Spanish colonial architecture seen in iron work, balconies and the use of wood, and there is a fusion between modernism, colorists and colonial influence that is unique in my experience.

Miraflores felt comfortable to me. Not what I’m looking for in a travel experience. This was 50^th and France in Spanish. It did have stunning views of the Pacific pushing big rollers toward the beach and a few hardy surfers paddling out to catch them.

It also had one quintessentially Limeno element, ceviche. This dish has brought to perfection in Lima according to the New York Times and Lonely Planet. I tried some on a restaurant patio overlooking the Pacific. More what I’m looking for.

When the shuttle let me off in Miraflores, it dropped me off right in front of H. Sterns where another nice man in a blue suit pointed out the store in case any of us had missed it. I went, just to see what the whole deal was like.

To the right as I went in the door was a tray full of Pisco sours, the national drink of Peru made from a brandy like wine called Pisco and lime and other things. Wasted on this friend of Bill W. The rest of the store had necklaces, rings and bracelets set in separate vitrines. Pricy stuff. One delicate gold necklace with pre-Incan frogs went for $1,300.

Back to the ship for a kip and then up for a trip to the Museo Larco. This was an unexpected treat. Set in a wonderful Spanish colonial mansion with all an white exterior covered with bougainvillea and various levels including a sunken patio with a restaurant and gift shops.

This museum contains a world-class collection of Moche ceramics. By that I mean floor to ceiling cases, each case about 18 inches high and four feet wide, chock full of first class work. There were portrait pieces with smiling Moche, laughing Moche, frowning, crying, fearful, awe struck and all detailed in the most careful and artistic manner. There were also cases of sleeping Moche, Moche with tooth aches, Moche tortured, Moche in costume. Other cases held cunningly created ceramic potatoes, corn and fruits peculiar to northen Peru. There were ducks, frogs, dogs and were-crabs, were-birds, examples of brain surgery, amputation.

The Moche ceramicists represented life in Moche culture in all its facets, including, in two rooms set off by themselves on the sunken patio level, the sexual. Here were Moche men with women performing fellatio, couples on their side making love, masturbating skeletons and certain scenes where the copulation occurred underground.

These latter two reveal something interesting about Moche beliefs. The masturbating skeletons showed that death enters into life as the semen falls on the ground. Fellatio and anal intercourse are sex acts by the living that do not have procreation as their intent and show life entering the realm of death.

The copulation underground involves the pacche mama, or earth mother. This is the fertilization of the earth itself so that it will be bountiful.

At the MIA we have several hundred shunga, at least. These are erotic ukiyo-e prints and were the fourth major subject matter for these works after beautiful women, kabuki actors and landscapes. I would hope the day would come when these prints could be on display as part of the permanent collection.

This was an unusual and captivating museum with additional high quality metal work by the Chimu culture and extraordinary 400 threads to the inch textiles by the Paraccas culture. It showed the best work by the best artisans of these all pre-Incan cultures. If you ever get to Lima, check it out.

We were supposed to be back on the ship by 6:15 pm, having left at 2:15, but a quick visit to the equally quirky but not as well curated Museo de Oro, put us on the opposite side of Lima from the dock at rush hour.

We got back at 7:15, but only after witnessing driving techniques best left in Peru.

Stop signs here mean, hesitate, but only if there’s something coming. Many times a person in the left lane crossed our lane to turn right as we were executing the opposite maneuver. Then there’s the just put your big bus out there and dare people to hit you move. This for an hour and a half.

We came back, got dinner from the Lido deck, deck `11 and sat out by the window looking at the lights of Lima spread out in fan from the Pacific to the mountains.

BTW: There were also many, many Limeno kiddos out with witches hats, micky mouse ears and dragon costumes going door to door.

Spring Waxing Moon of the Southern Cross

Chan Chan, several palaces of the Chimu rulers (750-1470 C.E.), spreads itself out over several square kilometers of dusky desert. The bulk of its buildings still covered with lumpy clay mounds, only one, Nik An, has been fully excavated, conserved and restored.

We saw it today, fittingly for a desert palace, under a direct equatorial sun (we’re still only 8 degrees S) that rendered its seven meters high and three meters thick outer walls dun barriers radiating heat. Each king built a new palace (like Angkor in Cambodia) and if the others are like this one they were stunners.

The décor featured waves, pelicans, squirrels (or sea otters), waves cresting, the full moon, fish and a diamond shaped pattern meant to evoke fishing net. There many, many rooms, some for residence, some for cult activities, some, the largest, for ceremonies at the death of a king. At the southernmost gate lay the dark and deep tomb of the former ruler of this palace.

When the Chimu king died, so did his concubines and officials and they had ancillary graves off to the side of his. The Spanish robbed these tombs of gold and bones so the king’s tomb is empty, a few bones are left in the ancillary graves.

After Chan Chan, we went to the beach, a nice resort area with summer homes, restaurants along an ocean road, boys collecting seaweed for ceviche and reed boats. Many, many reed boats.

This ancient craft continues to be made today by Peruvians interested in the craft and in the tourist appeal. A row of thirty reed boats stood, stumpy ends down and graceful curved bows up, along the wall separating the sidewalk from the beach.

Along the way children sold miniatures for the $1 price point so beloved in Ecuador. I bought one.

At yet another stop on what became a long tour (the bus had no air conditioning and we had all over dressed due to a cool forecast) I found a reproduction of a Moche ceramic. “$10. Cheap.” And it really was.

Spring Waxing Moon of the Southern Cross

Trujillo, Peru 8 degrees 14 minutes S 78 degrees 59 minutes W

Finished our run from Guayaquil early this morning. Today we’re docked in yet another working dock with a gray metal platform of some kind, a conveyor belt I believe, extending at exactly our cabin level from a gray industrial building to the end of the pier.

Below the promenade deck an Andean band plays with a large hand held native drum, pan pipes and a guitar, an airy lilting music that reminds of some Celtic music though the plaintive tone has a peculiar Latin American folk accent.

Both Kate and I had the same reaction when we heard the pan pipes. Austria. Vienna. The Astoria Hotel. We had a second floor room in this grand dame on the Ringstrasse and it had a balcony overlooking the the Ringstrasse. Beneath it, for the entire time we stayed, a three person Andean band played, featuring the pan pipes. In this city of Strauss, Mozart and The Vienna State Opera it was strange to have Andean music become our musical mnemonic device, but it’s true. So, here in the port for Salaverry, Peru we think of the Hapsburg royal city, city of waltzes.

We went out early to the artisan shoppes lined up on the pier. I bought two more alpaca sweaters, $50.00 total. I’m not bargaining so far, a breach of local trade customs, I know, but I have decided when

I feel the price is a bargain that I’m willing to donate the extra to the vendors.

I’m looking for Moche ceramics, reproductions, but excellent reproductions. They have them here, but they’re the cheap knockoff type; many of the ones for sale here in Salaverry are erotic. This is not an anachronism, the Moche did produce erotic ceramics though that’s not what I’m looking to purchase. The Moche did excellent portraits in their clever pots and that’s what I want to find. The local guide on the ship said the Museo Nacional Antropologia in Lima will be the most likely place to find what I want.

That’s tomorrow. We have two days in Lima and I plan to cab down to the Plaza de Armas tomorrow morning to visit the museum and hunt for Moche ceramics.

Today we visit the Chan Chan Citadel, a stronghold of the Chimu culture. While the Inca worshiped the sun, the Chimu worshiped the moon. I want to learn more about that aspect of Chimu culture.

Until later.

Spring Waxing Moon of the Southern Cross

A day at sea between Guayaquil, Ecuador and Trujillo, Peru. I’m sitting in the Ocean Bar watching the Pacific go by. The sun is out, something of a novelty since we’ve been overcast a lot since we left Panama.

Kate made an interesting observation at lunch. We often marvel at the numerous shades of green we can see on our property and I’ve read somewhere that the human eye can distinguish more shades of green than any other color. Out here, though, on the ocean Kate marveled at all the different shades of blue. Sky blue varies dependent on distance from the horizon, cloud cover, height of sun in the sky and the ocean reflects those colors and refracts them at its own wave lengths.

A slight chop and a small swell makes for a smooth ride in this artificially stabilized vessel. Soothing, even soporific.

Tomorrow we will have been out two weeks. On many vacations this would be the day when the bags get packed, tickets checked, that frisson of reentry would begin. On this wonderful trip it means we have gone one third through the journey. We’ve visited three countries so far with five more to go and numerous ports of call, shore excursions and days at sea.

Since this is a post-retirement celebration, we’re winding down not from the workaday world in a temporary way, but a permanent way. Kate will work another six moths to a year at a part time pace, but her head and heart are at home now.

Both of us, of course, have our own active lives, we’re not retiring from life, but from the world of formal expectations. This trip allows us to ease into a life together with a slower pace and more time together.

William, the wine steward at our dinner table, has come to see Kate and me as friends. We’ve had several conversation, the latest this afternoon. He comes from Mindanao, the largest island in the Philippines and physically close to Malaysia.

Most of the guys in his high school class are now smugglers, driving boats only wide enough for six volvo engines, made of fiberglass and very, very quick. When they run, the hull rarely strikes water. His friends, he says, are very rich, but he gets to live without fear and will probably live longer.

The crew on these ships work long hours for several months at a time and most of them, ironically, do it for family. It’s a good job, steady income with expenses covered. This allows them a predictable cash flow to support their families.

Spring Waxing Moon of the Southern Cross

To the southeast of the Veendam, low in the sky, a slivered crescent of moon hangs at the bottom of the darker lunar circle. This moon decorates our southern sky, carrying with it the flags of Islam and the romance drawn from us as the moon shows itself in elegant portions, exciting the imagination and wakening the dark heart.

From a norte americano perspective a dark heart beats just under the gaiety and high color of Latin cultures. Those bleeding statues of Jesus, the dessicated corpses kept in crypts and sometimes under the altar like Peter Clavier in Cartagena. The bull fights, although that is not so much, if at all, South American.

Then there is the white city, ciudad blanca, in Guyaquil. We drove past it today on our after Hacienda Castillo tour of Guyaquil. It goes on for blocks, filled with white homes; it climbs the steep side of the hill, too. This cemetery. This place where in the 19^th century wealthy residents imported Carerra marble, the stone of choice of Michaelangelo, to build crypts, mausoleums and statuary. This place where social status is no longer fungible, rather it has become literally cast in stone.

There were streets and alley ways, columbarium after columbarium, three deep and 6 or 7 each across the portion of the cemetery near the street, standing perhaps as high as a two story building. There were whole sections of mausoleums, large crypts for the wealthy deceased. Here the family name has durability, staying power.

A man beloved by Ecuadorians, Victor Estrada, has an especially striking monument, a half-moon of Ionic pillars capped by a marble facade with Estrada’s name carved in dark letters. Encased in a bronze outer casket raised high on a marble stand Estrada lies in the center of the circle that would be if the pillar’s went all way round.

Something powerful has its visual and concrete manifestation here. Not sure what it is, but it says something about death and the dead.

As does the day of the dead celebrated on November 2^nd. In 1989, exactly twenty-two years ago, I went with a group to Bogota, Colombia. On November 2^nd, a national holiday, we went on a tour to a salt-mine cathedral famous to Colombians and on our way back, we encountered a crowd in a small village carrying a purple casket high over their heads, saints bobbing up and down. In the same village there were families in the local cemetery, cleaning graves and sharing meals with their deceased relatives. Vendors sold balloons, sweet ice treats, flowers and a priest wandered from grave to grave offering blessings.

This is a culture for which death lies not at the distant end of a life’s journey, but lives (if death can be said to live) right next door. Death is a neighbor, a family acquaintance, an intimate with whom one shares those they love.

I’m not deep enough into Latin culture to pretend to understand all this, but I know it points to a profound difference between Latins and US citizens of European extraction.

Spring Waxing Moon of the Southern Cross

Out on a tour bus with Paul at 8:30 am this morning. Paul, “100% Ecuadorian, made by and for Ecuadorians” had wide knowledge of Ecuadorian history, botany and fauna. He also made a comment coming back that catches the essential of the South American attitude toward time. As we pulled into the docks after our 7 hour + tour, he said, “The ship is still here. We’re on time.”

The day had an odd feel to it. We started out driving through one of the largest contiguous dry tropical forests in the world. I didn’t even know there were dry tropical forests. This runs throughout Ecuador along the coast and, about 20 k into Peru, becomes desert. The western slope of the Andes, thanks to moisture wringing power of their high altitudes is very dry. The rain falls on the eastern slopes, creating the Amazon and the great Amazonian rain forests. Here, though, on the coastal regions of the west there is very little rainfall most of the year, then a lot from November through May. This rainfall occurs, not to thanks to the mountains, but to the waning of the Humboldt current, cold and inimical to rain, and the rising of another current, I didn’t get the name, which is warmer and conducive to rain.

In La Nino years, Paul said, the warming of the Pacific generally can amp up the rain fall to drastic proportions. Then those who live closest to the coast or closest to the rivers and arroyos get flooded out. The typical Ecuadorian home has one room with a large front porch and has stilts to raise it about a foot and a half above the ground. This protects from animals and high water.

The tour focused on Hacienda Castillo, a cacao plantation. We saw the various stages of taking the cacao from seed to seed pod to harvest to refining into chocolate. When we first arrived at the Hacienda, the hosts served a white, somewhat thick, liquid to us. Delicious, it had an unusual fruity taste. The juice comes from the pulp around the cacao seed. Apparently, it is a fragile liquid that ferments easily so must be drunk soon after pulping, so we don’t have it in the states.

The cacao plant bears a large oblong fruit, ranging from a foot to a foot and a half in length. The workers harvest the fruit by hand, cutting off a small top of the thick rind and pulling it up and out with the pulpy seeds coming out with it, dangling in a string of 10 to 40 depending on variety.

The rinds go back under the tree as compost and as breeding ground for a fly that kills disease producing insects on the plant.

Paul gave us dried beans to try. About thumbnail size and covered in a husk, the cacao inside has a slightly bitter, oily taste, not unpleasant, but certainly not chocolate. The processing removes the husk, and leaves the cacao which then gets mixed with milk and sugar after being heated. The oil from the beans gets siphoned off for use in cosmetics while the rest goes on to the chocolate making.

On our way back from the cacao plantation Paul gave us a good tour of Guyaquil, the largest city in Ecuador. Guyaquil’s name comes from Guya, an indian leader who killed his wife Quil, then himself to avoid enslavement by the Spaniards.

The usual parts of a large city were in evidence. Areas with mean housing, areas with fine housing, a downtown with fancy hotels, a KFC, McDonald’s and a Hampton Inn as well. The people seemed cheerful, waving at the bus and smiling when we waved back.

The riverfront, the Malecon, underwent a major renovation a couple of years ago and has a very pleasant, long stretch of paved walkways, cafes and restaurants, playgrounds for kids and statues, including with Simon Bolivar and San Martin, the two liberators of South America. Bolivar, showing slight taller than San Martin, was, according to Paul, really very short.

We passed one area that specialized in making paper mache figures: the Simpsons, smurfs, the Hulk, presidents, recent local political figures as well as many others. People purchase these figures to burn during a New Year’s celebration. Some of them will go as tall as two story building.

Paul says neighborhoods will collect money to purchase large figures, often competing with nearby communities. If they get worried about the fire they’ll set off, they notify the fire department to be on the watch.

Ecuador is part of a corridor of mega-diversity that extends through Colombia up to Panama and ends in Costa Rica. What is megadiversity? Ecuador along has 1,600 species of birds. In the US, if you count all the rare species, you can get up to 900. Ecuador is the size of Nevada. The Galapagos, 600 miles out into the Pacific from Manta, participate.

Ecuador’s new constitution, only a few years old, is the first to give rights to the ecological systems in the country. Ecuador lies at the cutting edge of conservation biology. It has a large region in its northeast, on the eastern side of the Andes, that has so many endemic species that Ecuador has protected the area for ever, allowing only scientific research and eco-tourism there.

Ecuador is worth a revisit. A person could fly into Manta, get a ship or plane to the Galapagos, come back, take the train to Quito, rent a hotel and visit the sites in Quito, then head out into the jungle areas with an eco-tourist guide. It would not be much trouble to reach Macchu Picchu on such a trip, too.

Back at the ship now after two days of touring, we head out soon for Salaverry (Trujillo) Peru.

Tomorrow is a day at sea, then Salaverry as we continue our journey south, below the equator, headed for Cape Horn.

Spring Waxing Southern Cross Moon

We sailed at 5:00 pm, leaving behind the Seabourne Soujourn.

I watched early this morning as a tug, a small motor boat and tanker went through a careful ballet, gradually snugging the tanker up next to the Veendam, but only after small lines were thrown onto each other decks and thick hawsers hauled aboard by crew on both ships. This stage came after carefull nudging by the Guayas II, some reversing by the Andes II (the tanker) and the aid of the small motorboat, taking lines from one ship to the other where the distance was too far for throwing the weighted lines.

A ship the size of the Veendam must go through a considerable amount of fuel maintaining its 16-18 kph on the open ocean. These ordinary parts of the shipping business fascinate me, I suppose in part because I grew up so far from big water and know little of boats or ships. Watching the pallets full of vegetables, fruits and liquor taken in during a stop shows how much human cargo rides aboard, crew and passengers.

The logistics of a cruise mount up. Food for three meals plus snacks for 1200 passengers and a similar number of crew. Fresh water. Beer, wine, hard liquor. 14 decks to clean, repair, keep painted and clear of corrosion from the salt. Security. Beds to make. Towels and linens to wash. Carpet to clean, bronze to polish. Glass, wood. Then there’s the whole matter of steering, navigating and maintaining adequate power to both move the ship and electrify it. Television. Internet. Waste storage and elimination. Air conditioning. This is a moving small town with all the needs and requirements of one, floating on the world ocean.

None of this accounts for the human interactions waiters, clerks, front desk, house keeping, shore excursions, billing and accounting. Or the crew never seen by passengers who maintain the plumbing, electrical and other mechanical aspects of ship operation including the large engines.

Stripped to its essence this is a cargo carrier, a carrier of human cargo, a cargo that needs special attention in order to arrive at its destination fresh and healthy.

Really remarkable.

Fall New Moon of the Southern Cross

At 2 pm today the pollywogs, members of the crew who had never crossed the equator, heard their “crimes” declared as they came before King Neptune, the ship’s captain dressed in a Halloween style costume with long beard and trident. Neptune had a queen, dressed for décolletage in a sea-green dress.

An example of a crime should suffice. A ship’s 4^th officer stood accused of steering the ship in the wrong direction, just because he could. Before passing judgment, Neptune decreed that each pollywog had to kiss the fish, a frozen tarpon on a bed of ice.

Several of the male pollywogs lifted the tarpon out of its icy bed and with a flourish planted a kiss on either its lips or elsewhere along in its body. A few of they younger female members of the crew, flailed their arms in disgust and quickly wiped off the offending fishy flesh. All were then smeared in some colorful paste, after which Neptune and his queen decided if they should be “dunked or survive.” Most of the time the pollywogs received dunking, at which point one of the pirates shoved them into the pool.

In the end all were brought before Neptune for final judgment. He forgave them all their crimes and decreed they be pollywogs no more, forever.

Since I had hoped to be included (on no evidence whatsoever), the ceremony disappointed me. It was, too, over the top in a way that might have been fun, but largely wasn’t. Kissing the fish came the closest to a real ordeal. Still, this is a long standing tradition among maritime crews and I enjoyed seeing it.

The captain says we will actually cross the equator between one and two o’clock tonight. At the moment our position is 2 degrees and 21 minutes N, 80 degrees and 16 minutes west. If I can, I may get up just to observe the moment, since this will be my first time.

Tomorrow we come to the port in Manta, Ecuador, a pre-contact city of 250,000 current population which has a large tuna fishing industry. We have no excursions scheduled here though we’ll probably take a shuttle through this working port, pick up another shuttle at the port entrance and see some of downtown Manta.

All of our ports so far since leaving the US have been working ports, meaning we can’t walk around the port area as is possible in cruise only ports like New York City and Ft. Lauderdale. We anchored off the San Blas islands and off Fuerte Amador, using tenders instead to get to land transportation. Some people find the working ports off putting, but I find the window they give into a nation’s economy interesting.

Fall New Moon of the Southern Cross

We will spend the next lunar cycle south of the equator so I’m choosing the iconic southern constellation, the Southern Cross, to name its moon.

This day, drizzly and gray, upset one of our fellow passengers, “I’m so disappointed with the weather,” she said, in what I’ve come to recognize instantly as an Australian accent. Not sure how you can be disappointed with the weather. The weather just is. Your hopes about it, your wishes for it, those can be disappointed, but not the weather itself.

Myself, a sorta gray skies and gloomy weather guy to begin with, this counts as good weather, the sort that encourages me to stay inside and write or read. In fact, I’m sorry I’m missing the fall transition toward winter just for that reason. But, understand, I’m not sorry enough to go home.

Thoughts on cruising. Think of a really nice hotel in which you have stayed. Not five stars, but maybe 4. Good food, attentive staff, interesting public areas and a good gym. Add to that several swimming pools, a theatre, a casino, a library with comfortable chairs, clothing, liquor and jewelery stores, a basketball and tennis court, a quarter mile wooded track. Now float all of that on an ocean. That’s a cruise ship. The hotel, a nice hotel, remains constant no matter where on the journey you are.

Now add in the ocean as a constant companion, 11,000 or feet of it where we sail right now, north of Ecuador headed south. The ocean gives the hotel experience a special character, changing it from very nice to special. That, too, is constant.

Also, the hotel moves from port to port and from country to country, culture to culture. Here the advantage lies in the number and variety of countries and cultures experienced, not the depth of the experience. I’ve now been to Santa Marta, Colombia and Panama City, Panama, both places about which I knew virtually nothing and came away from them realizing I would enjoy seeing them more. I also have a fleeting sense of their culture, their daily life, but a fleeting sense rooted in concrete experience rather than travel books or documentaries.

From this point forward Kate and I will collect similar impressions of six more countries: Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil, with multiple stops in Ecuador, Peru and Chile. At the end we will have, I’m sure, a gestalt of South America. It will be fungible and impressionistic, but it will have its roots in on the ground experience.

Cruising of this sort, then, provides an overview of a continent, say, with all the limitations of an overview, but with the utility of a solid overview, too.

Back to you after we cross the equator and celebrate Neptune’s realm.

Fall Waning Autumn Moon

Two very South American experiences. Buying a Panama hat. Check. Crossing the equator. Tomorrow. The Neptune ceremony will be at 2 pm for those of us who are equatorial virgins. I can’t wait. I’ve read about this ceremony in books about the sea for years. Now I’ll participate. It is, in a sense, a traveler’s baptism, a watery confirmation of changing one hemisphere for the other, even if only temporarily. Our next port of call is Manta, Ecuador, just a bit below the equator, so we’ll be at sea all day tomorrow.

Today though was Panama. Kate and I went on a 5 hour excursion focused on the shaping of Panama. Our guide, a black Minerva (literally), referred to those on her bus as “my people.” As in, Panama, my people, has been a focal point for travelers for centuries, even thousands of years.

The tour took us past Balboa, a town built to imitate a midwestern city with a town square, city hall, drugstore, dry cleaners, theatre when the Canal Zone was US territory. Since, as Minerva referred to it, the reversion, Balboa and Fuerte Amador, a former naval base charged with protecting the Pacific entrance to the canal, have undergone dramatic changes. On the old base many restaurants and chic businesses have sprung up, including a TGI Friday and Bennigans.

In an odd bit of US history, an old wooden boat, looking like small ferry and previously owned by Al Capone now does tourist duty out of one of Fuerte Amador’s many marinas.

Panama City has a very poor area, filled with multiple story tenements, painted various pastel shades, where General Noriegga was raised as well as a famous Panamanian boxer whose name I have already forgotten.

Panama City, looking down Balboa Avenue toward the northwest, has many skyscapers including a recent apartment and hotel building shaped like a sail and paid for by the Donald. A building, the Revolution, has glass window wall floors, each turned at a slight angle to the other, going up 51 floors, giving the hole a twisting, almost serpentine appearance.

Panama has a lot of money sloshing around right now thanks to the reversion of the canal, construction of the new, wider canal and locks and tourism, and has an unemployment rate, according to Minerva, of around 4%.

The original Panama City, now only ruined walls, was built by the Spanish as a shipping point for gold back to Europe. The Spanish came in, made slaves of the original inhabitants and developed a wealthy municipality. Worked pretty well until the many European wars of the 17^th and 18^th centuries spilled over to the Caribbean. Henry Morgan, the notorious English privateer, sacked and burned the old Panama City and all its churches and convents, stealing the gold in the process.

Legend has it that one clever priest, warned of Morgan’s arrival, painted the golden altar of his church. Black. We saw this altar in its new location in Colonial Panama City to which all the institutions of the original city moved after Morgan’s attack.

Old Panama City occupies land near a large mud flat that serves now as it has for millennia as a feeding station for migrating birds on their way south or north. Between old Panama City and its mudflat and the Colonial City lies the contemporary city of skyscrapers, condominiums for wealthy expats, office towers, hotels and restaurants.

Those interested in culture and history will pass over, as I did, this gleaming new city, think of it as a future ruin, interesting only much later and head straight for the charming colonial sector. This area, home to many Panamanian government offices, including the Casa Blanca, spent several decades slumbering, abandoned for the most part, so much so that squatters took up residence in the building with second and third floor iron balconies and narrow, winding streets. The French Quarter in New Orleans is a very small area similar to this large neighborhood, or, many neighborhoods rather, in Panama City.

That old urban phenomena, gentrification, has caught up with the squatters, however, and block after block of the colonial area buildings are either under construction or recently completed. If I return to Panama City, and I might, I will stay in the colonial area.

An interesting side light is a building soon to be the first 6 star hotel in Panama. This again according to Minerva, I don’t know if there are such things as 6 star hotels. These lovely ruins overlook the Caribbean side of Panama City and were demolished courtesy of the US government who bombed the place in our seize Norriega affair some years back.

I’ve not given much thought to Panama, but I found it a vital, intriguing country with rich ecological resources and a lively metropolitan area that, by the way, holds half the countries population.

Tomorrow we will we cross the equator into the southern hemisphere.