Geocaching

Part One of Three

We arrived in Boston yesterday the 4th of May. A bright, sunny day with colourful blooms in every direction we looked. Thanks to local geocacher Karen we made it to our accommodation without any hitches and every got to shop at Trader Joe's for our groceries for the week.

I prepared these notes while I was on the ship so will send them now together with some photos and will work on catching up on the rest over the week.

Wednesday the 24th April. I have been up on deck watching the Veendam navigate the first of the locks in the Panama Canal. An interesting process though it happens at about the rate that paint dries. Do not misunderstand me, it is a mesmerizing process watching gravity perform a function to perfection with technology that is nearly 100 years old. It is a 10,000 km short cut for ships so you can imagine how well it is used by cargo and passenger ships. The annual transit being over 14,000 vessels. The cost for our cruise ship of about 1000 people to make the transit is about $100,000. Brucie has been taking photos so we will post those. Later we will be passing through the Gatun locks and there is a virtual cache we can do as we enter into the Caribbean Sea.

Easy to get used to this life and the weather has been near perfect. We get beautiful meals served to us by friendly staff, our bed is made and little choccies are left by our pillows at night. Then there are the deck chairs with the fresh towels available for when I come dripping out of the pool. Entertainment at night. Yes life aboard ship is most pleasant. The Aussies dominate the passenger numbers which is a surprise and quite a few New Zealanders as well.

The port stops have been challenging for independent travellers like Bruce and I and there is always a group of us like minded people running around like chooks with their heads cut off till we have got ourselves organized in these strange and foreign ports.

The ports generally have been a long way out of town and the towns large and spread out. Walking is not an option so then there is the need to bargain with a taxi driver or tour operator in a language we do not speak and in a currency we are not familiar with to try and achieve what we think we want at a reasonable price. Holland America does put on shore excursions but they are overpriced and not that good from what we have heard. Our adventures usually turn out ok but a fair effort goes into achieving that.

Part three of three (oops longer than I thought)

Our next stop still in Peru was the port of Salaverry and it has to be one of the ugliest places you could pull into. Industrial, dry with large mounds of dirt and rocks. However, luckily the day before I had spent time in the library reading up on the nearby town Trujillo and it has some very interesting archaeological sites nearby. After the usual confusion we managed to go on tour with an Aussie couple and a local tour lady called Klara. Klara was passionate about explaining to us about the Moche and Chimu cultures which were once dominant. We visited the Chan Chan site dating between 7th and 14th centuries AD and being the largest pre-Hispanic mud city of 15 square miles. We visited just one of the citadels. We also visited the Temple of the Moon and saw where people were sacrificed and the burial chambers. Some areas were still well decorated. A lot of these discoveries are only recent; they had been covered over and looked like a dirt hill. This site dated back to 300 years AD.

Next port stop was Manta, Equador. We could walk into town and we could even walk to get a cache. Yes this was a good stop. We found a nice little market and spent some of our US dollars. We walked to the local park and spotted some iguanas, fascinating. Before heading back to the ship we went to the beach and being a hot Sunday the friendly locals were there too.

The following day we crossed the Equator. There were some antics on board with King Neptune visiting and a bit of silliness and fun was enjoyed by passengers and staff. Well almost everyone, Brucie boy had a touch of gastro and did not venture too far from our room. Though the ship staff take every precaution and encourage passengers to use sanitizing gel quite a few passengers have become sick.

Our port stop yesterday was Fuerte Amador, an attractive location with some beautiful leisure boats in port. From there it was a matter of crossing a causeway to the wealthy and quickly developing Panama City. When we got off the tender I noticed a double decker red bus advertising a hop on, hop off excursion so we opted for that and got to visit the old and new part of Panama city and the viewing observation platform for the Panama Canal. We also found 3 caches, the one hidden near the Panama Canal being a particularly devious nano that took us ages to find.

Talking of caches, our cache in Santiago has been hit quite a few times by the locals and travellers from around the world including a couple of Aussie teams. Geocachers that we had met at the NSW Christmas party in Dec 2012, so we were pretty happy about that – yes, it’s a small world.