Circle South America: Miami to Lima

Circle South America

Oceania Regatta

Miami, Florida – Lima, Peru

Jan. 15 – Feb. 2, 2015

Trip to Miami was fine, overnight was fine, and all our bags were fine (thanks to Luggage Free), so we have had a fine start to our 72 day cruise vacation around South America. 

Regatta is a beautiful ship and has just come out of a big refit recently. Everything is really spiff and fresh.  Getting our bearings will take a little time but is always fun.  Our room is well-located on Deck 7 about in the middle – amidships to show off some probably incorrect lingo to you all.

Key West was our first stop.  We had a really good look all around the town and an interesting visit to Truman’s “Little White House”.  Lunch was at the original Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville restaurant, then a last visit to an American institution (Walgreen’s) for some last minute sundries and a long walk back to the ship past the Southernmost Point of the US and the End of the Road 0 Mile marker for US 1.  We have talked often of visiting Key West and one day turned out to be about right! 

That night we watched the last view of the United States recede from sight and Cuba slid by on the port side (not visible), the closest land until Cozumel where we will be after a day at sea.

Not much to see around the island of Cozumel, but we visited the original Mayan settlement there, stopped at a pretty coastal viewpoint, walked through a simple Mayan village, tried a Mayan dish of some kind of pumpkin spread on really fresh corn tortillas, then visited a tequila producer where we saw all the steps to make it, followed by a folkloric dance show from all the states of Mexico.  Wait, maybe there was more to see there than we thought!  Here’s a TIP we learned:  only buy really expensive tequila or it might be mixed with ethanol and you’ll have a horrific hangover.  No hangover with the good stuff!  Right…  Anyway, the dancing was really good – lots of colorful costumes, very white teeth and really black hair, shouting and great guitar music.  I think it was just the thing to wake up all those who sampled the tequila! 

On to Costa Maya which really exists as a gateway for seeing all the Mayan sites in the Yucatan Peninsula.  So that’s what we did.  We saw 2 sites, Dzibanche and Kohunlich (that’s for anyone who wants to say “I’ve been there!”), close to each other and somewhat similar in size.  Pretty well preserved and remarkable for how advanced their society was.  Of course I had to climb all those steps to the top of at least one of the temples, and I have to say, they sure built very steep, very high steps for people of such short stature.  Didn’t get any explanation for that but it would have been annoying after a while to have to do those big steps all the time if you were only 5 feet tall!  Well, they were really smart about a lot of other things.  Then that ball court!  And you got sacrificed if you were the winner!  What‘s up with that??!!  Well, it was a very informative day, that’s for sure.

And since we hadn’t had enough of the Mayans, we flew from our port of Santo Tomas, Guatemala (ick!) to Tikal to see the mighty ruins there.  Very big extensive site, the largest so far uncovered, with many many buildings not yet excavated.  Pretty much anytime you see a mound in the area you are looking at a buried temple or some kind of Mayan structure.  Whenever you see a mound, if you also see big fig trees growing on them, it means there is a lot of damage to the underlying structure from their roots - kind of like in Angkor Wat in Cambodia.  That also means they might not ever dig it out, since it will need a lot of extensive, expensive reconstruction.   There are also four of the tallest temples ever found.  Every time there was a change of leadership, or they got to some 40 year marker in their counting system (they counted by 20s), they built a new temple over the top of the existing one, and that’s how they got so tall over the time the site was inhabited. Tikal was a successful site for a very long time indeed!  There are big town squares all over the area, always with temples, government centers and quarters for the nobility on each square.  The very top of only some of the temples were used for human sacrifice; their gods needed a lot of blood to be happy, but it seems there were plenty of slaves for that.  They also told us that regular people were happy to volunteer but I can’t help wondering about that.  All the buildings were covered in stucco and painted red, the color of blood, which they felt meant life (seems more like it meant death, depending on who you were).  Hardly any of that remains but Tikal would have been an incredible sight during its peak.   We now have seen plenty of Mayan sites, including Chichen Itza on a previous trip, so we are good on the Mayans.  The plane trip was very nice too, with views of pretty scenery of the region not… far... below…

At Belize we immediately could see there was a much better infrastructure and economy than any of our stops so far (except Key West), probably because it was once British.  Anyway, here we went out on airboats, like in the Everglades, through a mangrove marsh on a wildlife search.  We saw lots of birds…but no manatees or crocs.   The marsh was an interesting kind of ecosystem with all the mangroves and lily pads and unique trees, and we really enjoyed the airboat ride since we had never done that, but the wildlife sightings were less than we hoped.

We went to Gumbalimba Nature Preserve for our day in Roatan, Honduras.  We had great success here with wildlife.  Hummingbirds, macaws, green and black iguanas, monkeys, and birds all over the place.  I had a great green macaw, Barney, perch on my shoulder, as well as two white-faced capuchin monkeys, mother and baby.  They were very well-behaved (much can be accomplished when there’s a sunflower seed on the line), and the monkeys only briefly searched around in my hair, I’m sure because they liked my shampoo =).  There was a black iguana that had a skin disease that was slowly turning it white.  Our guide said they all called it MJ – short for Michael Jackson.  His words, really!

Costa Rica – more critters and nature!   We had a ride on an ancient wooden train called the Eco-train, even though it spewed terrible exhaust the whole time.  But we saw numerous spider and howler monkeys.  The howlers actually growl, not howl, and there doesn’t seem to be any reason for it, but it’s pretty loud and frequent!  There are also lots of 2- and 3-toed sloths in the trees; luckily you can tell them apart by color, not by actually looking for their toes, which is good since they always seem to be curled up sleeping with no toes in sight.  At one point our guide shouted out that there was another one…and it was moving!  And it had a hairless baby laying on its stomach while it moved hanging upside down so the baby was right side up.  Just another mom thing like we all did for our kids for lots of years, right?   Don’t understand what the big deal was, really. We passed lots of banana plantations along the way, many poor squatter huts and shacks giving way to more substantial houses in the plantation area.  After the train ride we got on a boat and traveled through a network of canals dug to connect lagoons in order to facilitate trade.  More sloths and monkeys, lots of birds, and at one point our driver pulled over and got off to look for a poison dart frog.  In just a flash he was back with a teeny tiny bright red one on a big leaf that he walked up and down showing everyone.  Pretty neat, and he didn’t die or anything from touching it, because you have to grind them up and smear them on the tip of your arrow or spear or DART, which will then poison your enemy when you shoot him.  Hence, the name.   Good to know.

Then the biggie – transit of the Panama Canal.  We had several guest lecturers on board and a series of documentary films shown beforehand so there was lots of information about this huge project 100 years ago.   It is a fascinating story about which we will probably try to learn even more when we get a chance.  The films really helped us understand the vast scope of this undertaking and all the challenges of digging through the mountains, building the dam, constructing the huge lock gates, the locomotive system for keeping the ships centered, the vast amount of concrete poured.  All this using the tools and equipment of 100 years ago.   All this plus confronting the diseases of yellow fever and malaria.  One of the early architects of the project said it wasn’t a challenge of task, it was a challenge of scale – so much bigger than anything ever done.   Our transit took about 10 hours, through the first 3 locks on the Atlantic side, through the lake, the Gaillard Cut through the mountains, and then the last 3 locks on the Pacific side – and cost $300,000.00!!!  We went in a convoy, ships in both locks going in the same direction.   Everyone was on deck just about all day, watching and taking pictures.  We also saw the cut of the expansion locks under construction scheduled to be completed this year.  Pretty great day.

And Panama City was a huge surprise.  Almost 2 million people in a brand new shiny city of skyscrapers, all constructed since 2005 with money from the Canal since it was turned over to them from the US.  It actually looks a little like Dubai, just with shorter skyscrapers!  We saw it in 3 parts – ruins of the original settlement from 1500s, the colonial village of the 1800s, and the modern city.  Really much more interesting than we were expecting. 

Manta, Ecuador is not much, but it is a major tuna fishing center with 100s of fishing boats in the harbor where we were docked.   We went to a small museum about the early people, the Mantenos, whose descendants are still in the region, all so closely resembling the depictions of them on pottery and other artifacts.  It is really uncanny how unchanged they are and also how they resemble our American Indians and even the Mongols, all descended from those who crossed the ancient land bridge between Asia and North America.  We visited the village of Monte Christi with a huge church and a small square with a market.  Ecuador is really where ‘Panama’ hats are made (but that’s another story), so we saw a demonstration of how they are made; didn’t buy any.  Next went to see how this one small remaining ‘factory’ still makes the bags used for storing coffee and cacao beans as well as a few things like flip flops and shower mitts from the fibers of the blue agave.  Guess if they got tired of making bags they could make margaritas!  Didn’t buy any.  Finally visited a tagua nut factory where they showed us how they use the nuts inside a certain kind of coconut to make all kinds of products from the incredibly hard substance they call a vegetable ivory.  It can be dyed and polished and the main product from this place is buttons, exported all over the world.  But they also use it to make jewelry; bought some!  When we got back to the ship around 1:00pm, two large tuna boats, so large they each had a small helicopter on deck, were unloading their tuna catch into transport containers and were still unloading at 6:00pm when we left Manta.  It was almost time for them to go back out to fish again!  Wow it was a lot of fish!  Big ones, too.  The Pacific is a really really really really big ocean with vast amounts of fish, or tuna, at least!   

Ecuador exports about 80% of the exotic flowers around the world, so our excursion today in Guayaquil (3 million people) took us to an orchid grower where we saw thousands yes thousands of species, all in various stages of growth and development and blooming.  It was surely very beautiful and we took many many flower pictures.  Some even bloom in the air – no soil, no tree host, just air.  We learned it takes 5 or 6 years to get the first bloom.   We also learned to watch our step!  This place would never be OSHA approved in the US for any worker, much less any tourist groups!  So much mossy, wet, rocky, muddy ground with narrow slippery concrete tracks between all the tables of plants.  Drainage culverts and other dark mysterious holes full of dark water were everywhere we were walking.  It’s a miracle we all made it back to the bus without a broken arm or leg in the group!  Beautiful – but risky!

  We traveled further into the countryside to go to an exotic tropical plant and flower grower.  It was in the midst of seeming miles of banana plantations and then cacao plantations, but wow, what beauty when we got there.  You all need to remember Magic Flowers as your source for the most beautiful flower assortments and arrangements you have ever ever ever seen!  They are available through Costco (under a different name that I will share with you sometime … maybe!).   Some of the group took huge bouquets back to the ship for only $10.  The owner was an art major in college so she looks for any way to use nature in an artistic way and she has nailed it.  She dyes, wraps, staples, and combines the most gorgeous bird of paradise, ginger, helaconia(sp?), sugar cane, mini-bananas,  and who knows what all else into the most amazing combinations I have ever seen anywhere any time.  It was also a safe place to visit!   Really – it was a beautiful wonderful place.  We have even more beautiful flower pictures to use for desktop backgrounds. 

On the ship we had ‘sea trials’ in the pool for some passenger-made vessels, a competition for any passengers who wanted to participate.  It required the use of materials from around the ship.  It was great fun to see what people did.  We are wondering where some of the PVC piping in one vessel came from as there is an issue of a wet spot in our hallway.  There was also a Crossing the Equator Party up on the pool deck, in which those who have never crossed the equator (polliwogs) are initiated into the society of Shellbacks by King Neptune.  This involves kissing a very large fish, some embarrassing chanting, and getting doused with some green slime.   We have already crossed the equator several times, so didn’t need to participate, but it is always entertaining to watch.  So these are some of the shipboard activities we have going on during our days at sea.  We like the sea days quite a lot!

Our visit in Salaverry, Peru started off poorly but improved greatly later on.  We began with a long drive through some of the direst looking areas yet – all trash and rubble everywhere and miles of really high concrete block walls with either broken glass or razor wire along the tops, paralleling the road and then running perpendicular from the road forming enclosures around….nothing that we could see!  Nothing behind or inside!  It was incredibly bizarre and depressing.  Al thought we were driving past a lot of prisons!  On top of that, our guide’s microphone wasn’t working so it was a miserable 25 mile trip.  We finally arrived at a beach town to have a look at some traditional reed fishing boats that are still used and made the same way after 100 years:  long and thin with the front tip curved up.  Mildly interesting demonstration, but at least the microphone was fixed when we got back on the bus. 

Things improved greatly after that with stops at Chan Chan for the Chimu peoples’ ruins of 9 palace compounds, made of millions of adobe bricks, each palace complete with temples, squares, residences, storage, and administration buildings; each one has its own towering walls completely surrounding its complex.  All the bricks and the walls are trapezoidal in shape for stability in an earthquake-prone region.  It is a vast site, pre-Incan, with very complex designs cut into the adobe plaster.  Never heard anything about this society but it was fascinating to learn about.

 We went on to a hacienda for a very nice lunch and brief Peruvian Paso horse show.  The horses are born with the very unique gait they displayed, and these horses were all champions so were very fine examples.  There was also a Peruvian Dance exhibition for us, and we enjoyed all in the shadows of our next stop at the Moche ruins of the huge pyramidal Temples of the Sun and Moon.  Wow, these things are really big!  The Moches are also pre-Incan people; they also built with trapezoidal adobe bricks covered in plaster, and cut and painted even more intricate designs into it.  Like the Mayans, they built temples over the top of existing ones, and the Temple of the Sun had 5 layers of temples in all.  In several places we could see the decorations of 3 layers of temples.   It’s an extensive impressive site with a lot preserved and they are still excavating and learning about the society there.

Now…(drum roll…) Machu Picchu at last!  Well, first of all, the Incas sure didn’t make it easy for anybody to get there, not then and not now either.  The brief outline of our trip there goes like this:  the ship to the bus to the plane to the bus to the hotel to the bus to the train to the bus to Machu Picchu to the bus to the train to the bus to the hotel to the bus to the plane to the bus to the ship!  Yes, it’s complicated but worth it all. 

We flew from Lima to Cuzco and immediately went to the Incan fortress there (Cuzco was their capitol), Sacsayhuaman, where we saw the first examples of their incredible constructions.  Huge boulders abutting others, perfectly sanded and polished to fit their contours to each other, no mortar, and not a slip of paper could fit between.  These are not uniform rectangular or square blocks, but any kind of shape fitted just so to the adjoining ones, largest on the bottom and canted in slightly to form trapezoidal walls.  There are Incan ruins all over the city and many city buildings have been constructed on top of what’s left of a wall or walls, so the bottom portion is perfectly fitted rock topped by any kind of material to complete a house or a shop or a hotel.    Cuzco is beautiful, boasting a large square with 2 very large churches on 2 sides, and 2-story stucco buildings with ornate enclosed balconies lining the other 2 sides. 

The first night we ate dinner at a place on the square, enjoying guinea pig (local delicacy) and alpaca.  Both were very tasty (they don’t taste like chicken), but be careful eating your guinea pig – it’s best to use your hands because there are a lot of little tiny bones.  Yum.

After dinner we heard some band music coming from just off the square so we followed the sound and found a religious festival happening.  Moving ever so slowly, a group of about 20 men and 20 women wearing leather coverings with rows of large jingle bells on their lower legs, performed synchronized movements that caused the bells to sound beautifully.  The band, playing somewhat raucously and discordantly, followed behind the dancers.  Sort of seemed like junkanoo or New Orleans street funerals.

We stayed at the Monasterio Hotel which was a former Jesuit monastery and it was just beautiful – great room and public areas.  Our altitude headaches from being at 11,000 feet were kicking in so we tried to sleep but it didn’t go too well.  Next morning, though, a cup of coca tea and we were pretty good again.

Set out for Machu Picchu through beautiful Andean mountain scenery – wow.  We saw local people wearing woven alpaca fabrics in the patterns of their villages here and there, and agriculture, cows, sheep, and goats, but it was mostly all about mountain scenery. 

The last portion on the train took us along the rushing Urubamba River.  After a last harrowing 30-minute switchback bus ride over the mountain, we finally got to the top and walked to see it –finally Machu Picchu!

Built as the winter residence for the mighty king of them all who ruled from Cuzco, the site was chosen for the pyramidal mountains of the area (pyramidal mountains were revered by the Incas), Huayna Picchu and Machu Picchu, the perfect settings for measuring the solstices, defense, and numerous other spiritual reasons important to people who worship the sun and the moon.  It sits at 7000 feet -- so high!  The agricultural terraces extend from the very bottom of the mountain all the way to the top of Machu Picchu, and Huayna Picchu, which is the mountain you see in all the pictures, has them at the very very top also.  The dirt for the terraces was actually carried on their backs all the way up from the bottom of the mountain.  There is a royal palace with a private toilet just for the king, temple of the sun, governor’s residences, concubines’ quarters with private toilet, irrigation, sewage, and water systems serving the 1000 people who lived there that are still functional after all this time.  One thing it doesn’t seem to have had was any ornamentation like carvings and paintings.  They must have put all their artistic talent into making golden breastplates and collars and such using gold from mines in the jungles nearby.  It’s just a beautiful site.  We had a fantastic guide who took us climbing all over the place, still going slowly because of the altitude.  There’s just not enough air in the air!  Whew, it really took our breath away in more ways than one!  Lots of pictures on a clear sunny day, so guess there will be one for the Christmas card this year.

Part of our return to Cuzco was aboard the Orient Express train Hiram Bingham, named after the man who found Machu Picchu (debatable point).  It was all polished wood, chandeliers and plush banquettes for dining on elegant china and crystal.  There was entertainment in the bar car and later in the dining car again while we ate.  It was delightful and so comfortable after a long hot day!  We were finally back in Cuzco around 10:00pm. 

Short night and long day while we traveled again by bus and plane and bus again to rejoin the ship at Pisco, Peru.   Ginny and Glen Glass and Sandy and Wally Theiss are aboard for the next segment so we found them and had dinner together.  We are looking forward to being with them until Buenos Aires – 3 weeks.

So this concludes the first segment of our trip.  We know the ship by now and have tried all the specialty restaurants and met some nice people.  We’re ready for more!