Home again!

I made it home to Maine yesterday, after 3 whole weeks away and who knows how many miles travelled by air, sea and car.It was worth every sun-poisoned blister, and every penny. But what did I learn? It was after all, a Semester at Sea voyage sponsored by the University of Virginia.

I learned that I could live in a tiny space for 3 weeks as long as I could get out of it during the day; I learned how to live with a 90-year old in that same space - albeit a very spry and "with-it" 90 year old. And I learned a great deal about the places we went, and I met a goodly number of new friends, some from Maine in the Road/Scholar program of Elderhostel, lots from California, one in the same position as I am vis a vis dating again at 60,from Oklahoma, and one, a British Ambassador to Unesco.

The stated goals of Unesco, the Paris base of the UN, are called the Millenium Goals, the education portion of which intends to raise literacy standards in the under-developed world. At each stop along our way through Meso-america, we were treated most proudly to a discussion of the literacy levels of Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama. At least it was usually given proudly. There were some differences though that reflect each country's approach to its minorities, usually the Maya.

Mayan history is a proud one; they were after all the dominant culture in southern Maxico, the Yucatan, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, and their cities were larger than Paris before 1500. They had calendars and science, religion and trade. But they shrank dramatically just before the Conquistadors arrived, and no one is sure why or how. The Conquistadors finished them off. It is interesting to speculate whether the disintegration and disappearance of multitudes of Native American communities in New England at the same time, is related.

Today, however, the Maya are the dominant sub-culture in all of the Meso-american countries except for Panama,and they hold onto - or try to - their own traditions and culture. Guatemala approaches them quite differently than the other countries do. In all the other countries, there is required school attendance through the equivalent of our 8th or 9th grades. Literacy rates are fairly high and improving because of that. In Guatemala, the Maya are forgiven for not going to school if they wish. They are allowed to apprentice their children to the trades of their fathers and mothers, and you will see children doing all kinds of things with their father or mother. Often it is selling crafts.

Their crafts are by far the most dramatic and well-done. Their fabrics are more diverse, their patterns more dramatic, and their colors are unbelievably vivid.
Possibly that is because the cocchineal bug, which produces the red dye that is used throughout the world, and was the cause of many a battle between Spain and England, lives there in Meso-america. It is a whole interesting story in itself, the story of the search for the red color that the Conquistadors found and sent back to Europe as treasure. Another time.

I do not mean to suggest that education is not necessary. The Maya that I bought things from were generally very literate, as wellas bi-lingual, and Spanish Guatemalans can be accused of being paternalistic in some sense. But it was an interesting divergence in social pattern, with unique consequences. And it does reflect how deeply the Millenium Goals are affecting development there. My conclusion is that while NYC's UN is mostly the theatre of the big powers, even the G-20, that for the smaller, less developed countries, the efforts of Unesco in Paris remain significant and are the theatre where their voices can most easily be heard. After you subtract the 20 economically large countries of the world, you are still left with 172 (I think). So sticking with Unesco seems to me to be a good thing for the US to do. I hope we do.

The other Unesco presence in Meso-america are the World Heritage sites, protecting in general Mayan ruins: Chitzen Itsa, Coba, Tulum, El Cedral, Quirigua, and in Nicaragua, Viejo Leon, which is not Mayan. Viejo Leon is a ruin of one of the earliest Spanish towns, built on top of a Mayan town and destroyed soon after its building by a huge earthquake. It is located in the shadow of several volcanoes, on the banks of Lake Managua, and is protected in its half-uncovered state by Unesco's World Heritage site program. New Leon is nearby, but Unesco's protection has made Old Leon into a lovely park.

I really did learn a lot, saw a lot, heard a lot and will continue to sort through memories and dig out the good stuff for story-telling. In the meantime, I've got to make some chowder again, before the next snow storm comes!

the back end of a year

One should never get too smug about people being seasick. Just as Aunt Bette started to get better on the way to Santo Tomas de Castillo in Guatemala, I got covered with what looked like bites, but now appear as Poison Ivy or Oak. It is aggravated by being in the sun and wind, which I have been for the last two days - perhaps my favorite days of the trip.

At anchor in Roatan, we went ashore in our first Garifuna commmunities of the visit. Garifuna is the name given to the cultures of the Afro-Caribbean peoples, many of them escaped or mutinied slaves, many of them also pirates. They are a wild and colorful people, and a significant minority along the Caribbean coast of Mesoamerica.

But I, along with several friends, went to 'Fantasy Island,' to swim and snorkel. I had not been swimming until this day, so I looked forward to seeing the fish on this gorgeous Caribbean reef, and to just plain swimming around. It was glorious.

The next day we arrived in Santo Tomas de Castillo in Guatemala, which was also a total pleasure. I went to visit the Mayan ruins of Quirigua, and then on to Rio Dulce, a town at the mouth of Lake Isabel. There, we boarded river boats which reminded me of fibreglass versions of the river boats of the Mekong Delta, except the ones in Guatemala were much faster. On the boats we zoomed down the Rio Dulce, to a restaurant on the waterside. Under thatched roofs and on decks over the water, we ate whole fish and rice and beans, drank beer, and thought about swimming like the little kids that paddled around in their small dugout canoes. But the water was pretty muddy and I don't really like muddy water when I don't know what's in it, so no swimming yesterday.

After lunch, we got back in the boats, and went zooming off again, down through a dramatic river gorge, on past the village of Livingston and out into the sea and back to our ship. It was a glorious day, beginning with ruins and ending with a long boat ride.

Now it is December 31, and I am taking it easy today because my skin is telling me to go home, stop being so much in the sun and wind, that there is a reason I live in the cooler climes. So I'm not going ashore in Belize City to find an old friend Julie Babcock...who lives on Caye Caulker not far from here. I am letting myself recover from the days of sun and wind, getting laundry done, and letting the drugs the doc has given me do their work. I HATE feeling so fragile, but I guess I'd better get used to it.

Celebrating the New Year will go on for a while aboard ship, and I have no idea whether I'll make it to midnight, but I do not regret much of this past year, so I'll be celebrating both the finish of this year and looking forward to the New. In the meantime, HAPPY NEW YEAR!

A Wild Ride!

It's been a wild ride from Panama to Costa Rica and now to Roatan, Honduras. Aunt Bette and John have both been seasick; Aunt Bette was the more serious. But we are now anchored off Roatan, in a calm spot and people are beginning to recover.
For those of us who don't generally get seasick, it's been kind of nice in that the ship is all of a sudden quiet and nice. To ride up in the 7th deck lounge, watching the horizon line appear and disappear, and playing games and reading, is pretty great if you're me, and I have enjoyed this as much as anything else really.
It has reminded me of another time, on another ship, the Queen Mary. Coming home from living in Paris, on the second day out from Southampton, as the Captain said: "Coming out from the shadow of Ireland...", and while everyone else on board got seasick, I bought myself a massage in the spa on board.
The massage itself was one of the better ones, rocking and rolling on the table with hot stones pressed into me. But it was followed by a time in the hot tub, which was really more like a small pool with a waterfall at one end, and a fountain in the middle, which I had all to myself. Swimming about in the hot tub with the water rolling and the jets gurgling, and the fountain spraying was about as luxurious as it gets, and I lasted about 45 minutes.
That will not happen on board here though. This is an adventure trip, sponsored by the Institute for Shipboard Education at the University of Virginia, and has been in general well-run, and fascinating, even after the "Arch" and his family left.Usually at each port we have a choice of going on an adventure expotition, a service trip or a cultural trip. Most of us mix and match, rotate, but there are some who just do one or the other. At the last two stops, in Porto Limon, Costa Rica, and in Cristobal, Panama, the service trips have been cancelled due to the POURING rain, so I've not been able to use my iguana puppet yet, but I will, somewhere...

PS I've had trouble loading images. Google says I have to buy more space in a Picasa album site, buit since I have no idea how to do that, here on board, the photos will have to wait until I get home and can figure this out. Sorry, as the Canal pics are quite interesting.

A Different Sort of Christmas

I woke up at 4 am this Christmas, but not from excitement over the getting of something. I was really excited about going through the Panama Canal. I tried working on some email, as it was really dark still, but the boys from Morehouse, who had been up all night and were tweeting while having drunk a fair amount over the night, kept me distracted, so nothing of import was written.
When it got light I went up on the 7th deck, to watch the approach to the Canal. The geography is very confusing. We were approaching from the Pacific side, but the sun was rising behind me as we came into the channel. As it goes from the Pacific side to the Atlantic, we go east to west with a little jig to the south as we go north. It felt very confusing, but the sun kept rising.
Panama City was another surprise. After the small port villages that we had been going into, in Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, suddenly a city full of significant high rises appeared on the horizon. Panama collects funds from all over the Americas these days and has become a center of finance, hence the excuse for the high rise buildings. Plus they do not have many earthquakes, or any volcanoes like its canal competitor, Nicaragua. An obligatory Frank Gehry building guarded the entrance to the Canal’s channel.
The channel took us about 2 miles past Panama City to the first set of locks, the Miraflores. As locks in the world go, they are big, but so are the boats that go through now, and Panamanians have decided that they would like to build another set of locks that are larger, to accommodate even bigger container and cruise ships than is possible now. Beside the Miraflores locks, you can now see the beginnings of another dig, with new locks planned to be open by 2014. Nicaragua is planning, in conjunction with the Japanese, a’dry’ canal across the old route through Nicaragua. It will be interesting to see which happens first.
So we entered the first set of locks with all hands on deck, and learned that there are webcams beside each set of locks (there are 3 lock sets – two on the Pacific side, the Miraflores and the PedroManuel, and one set on the Atlantic side of the Gatun Lake, the Gatun). To see a video of our boat going through the locks, go to //Fs2.semesteratsea.net/public/panama_canal. It is one of those situations where a picture is worth a thousand words. The brilliant simplicity of the idea of locks is transformative, but hard to explain.
But I will try as it is a real challenge to understand why the French failed to build a canal at sea level, and why the Americans were able to as soon as they decided to build the locks. For several days now, I have been asking the question, “Why is the sea level higher on the Pacific side than on the Atlantic side?” That is the reason for the locks, but it has not been the simplest thing to understand – at least until someone finally said that it had to do with the tides. The tide on the Pacific side has to come way up into a shallow bay, and so is higher than that on the Atlantic side. That, in combination with the huge amount of water that flows down the Chagres River into Colon on the Atlantic side, makes for a more difficult situation than what occurred when the French built a sea-level canal at Suez, hence locks became necessary.
Nearly twenty years ago, I went with my son, David, his father, and some family friends on two small motor boats 20’ long, down Lake Champlain in Vermont, down the Champlain Canal and through small, 175 year old locks to the Hudson River, down the Hudson River to Troy, N.Y., up the ‘Mohawk Stairs’, - 5 locks rising 100’ up the Mohawk River, - out the River which becomes the Erie Canal, through dozens of nearly 200 year old locks on the Canal built for canal-sized boats. We hung a right on the Erie Canal onto the Oswego Canal, went through more locks and came out onto Lake Ontario at Oswego, crossed the Lake and entered the St. Lawrence River. Down the St. Lawrence we went, through the Thousand Islands and the Akwesasne Reservation, to the St. Lawrence Seaway and the locks there and on to Montreal. After Montreal, we continued down the St. Lawrence to the mouth of the Richelieu River at Sorel, went up the Richelieu and through the tiny wooden locks at Chambly, and on up the River to Lake Champlain and home again. Wherever they are, locks operate in the same way – water comes in, gates open, the boat comes in, water goes either up or down with gravity and the boat floats up or down with it, the gates open and the boat floats out – whether the locks are small ones like the ones at Chambly, large ones like those on the St. Lawrence, and medium-sized, ancient ones like those on the Erie Canal.
Locks on the Panama Canal work the same as all the others; it’s just that they are bigger. Water flows into and out of them in the same way; ships float up and down in the same way whether they are 20’ motor boats or 1000’ long container ships. It is size that makes for the drama here. And it is size that is now the problem. As you can see in the photos, I hope, the scale of the container ships sooooo enormous now that they are beginning to dwarf the Canal; one false move by a tug or a hand on a throttle, could doom the whole project –even after 100 years. But the plans for the expanded locks are here. Is there a limit? Can we just keep building bigger and bigger things on our smaller and smaller planet? It is a dilemma. I’ll be watching to see what happens here in Panama. In the meantime, it was a very different sort of Christmas!

Upon editing, and with help from the techno wizard Rita on board, I know have some canal photos to share:

reading landscape

Three days, and three ports later it is Christmas and we are coming into the Panama Canal. These boats were at the port in Nicaragua, the middle stop on the Pacific Coast of 'Mesoamerica,' as I have learned to call the small countries of Central America. But I am up early to see everything to do with the Canal, and am surrounded by the kids from Morehouse who have had a wild and wonderful Christmas Eve apparently. So, I may be a bit distracted.

Guatemala was beautiful, fiercely proud, with extraordinary, colorful crafts...I went up into the highlands to a crafty village and and then on to Antigua, a lovely, old town with lots of language schools. I loved it. The reds of the cochineal bug are fresher and more vibrant here, I think.
Then we sailed overnight to Nicaragua, got on buses and went to Old Leon, protected by Unesco's ICOMOS program, then on to the new city(since 1610) of Leon. I got tired of seeing bullet-pocked cathedrals, but they have had it a bit difficult what with our own interventions. The poverty was dramatic, and everyone was dressed in American clothes.
Then it was onto Costa Rica, which was pretty Americanized, but the landscape is gorgeous - very steep, like Highway One from Big Sur to Carmel Highlands but with 5 times the number of bridges, and another thousand feet on either side of the road.

Reading the landscapes of the three countries suggests that Guatemala is rich in culture but not too much money, Nicaragua in pride and poverty, Costa Rica is rich in pride and immigrants with money.

I meant to be serious here, but I am in the middle of a pretty wild computer lab, so I'd better sign off.

Feliz Navidad!

Porto Quetzal, Guatemala

We have landed - finally - in a little, pretty industrial, fishing port on the west coast of Guatemala. There's not much here, but we will get in a bus tomorrow and go up to Antigua, a lovely city, at the height of Denver. Today we rested and shopped at the little market by the docks, in anticipation of the long drive up and back tomorrow...
We're right on the edge of the sea, and came gently into the dock courtesy of two tugs, just like the Moran tug being built or fitted out right now in East Boothbay. We pulled in just at breakfast time, and could watch and wave at the dockworkers. Cliff went off to a beach, while we shopped.
Semester at Sea does a great job of briefing everyone before we enter a port. Jill, the Academic Dean on Board, gave us a synopsis of Guatemalan history that was as clear and unbiased as one could wish. The US' role in its history is troubling as usual. Where did we get the idea that we should be the guardian of our concept of democracy? The Monroe Doctrine notwithstanding. That was 125 years ago, and our role here was expanded in the 1980's at the request of United Fruit, which did not want to give up its unused land at the price that it had been quoted and wwas paying taxes on. We upset a country that had been under some peaceful politics for a long time, and even now, you are asked not to go out alone, nor ride in an unauthorized taxi. The "banditos" are still very much active,- in rural areas.
But it's pretty peaceful here in port, although I have been frustrated in finding an ATM. We are told not to use any ATM unless it is in a bank, which does not exist here in the little port. So I have gone into debt to Nancy already, and we've only been in two ports.
We did have some fun in the Jade Museum though. We found a young woman with good English, who helped us find our Mayan 'signs.' Bette, and Nancy are the same - Owls, but I am a 'jaguar.' I like being a jaguar, a protector, etc., and have a little charm with the symbol on it....better than being a Bull (taurus). More later... when maybe the blog will import a photo or two!

well, I'm on!

Just when you least expect it, you can get on the Web here on board. And now, I've tried to put on a photo of Tutu, but the only way I can read it, it is in script. So I hope it comes through for you all.
Desmond Tutu gave us a sermon? a talk? on the first morning at sea - a rabble rouser with a very gentle message. It was wonderful, and he is a wonderful, modest man of presence. I have a good photo of him doing his thing, and will post it when I can. In the meantime, I bought his book, A Child's Book of Bible Stories for the grandgirls, and had it signed by not only the "Arch", as he is known by the kids on board, but his daughter, and even his 4 year old grandaughter, who was sitting at the end of the line, signing with crayons! It was fun.
The trip is full of many generations, which seems to energize everyone including the "Arch." Each day brings different interactions, with different people. There is a large group of kids from Morehouse College in Atlanta, beacuase of the Arch, a large group of high schoolers from NH, SoCal, and somewhere else, a group of Elderhostelers called the RoadScholars, and random people like us, all of who seem to have some relationship to Semester at Sea. I don't know how I missed it when I was in college, but oh, I forgot, I worked at Mystic Seaport.
On Dec. 24th, Aunt Bette and I are going on a Bridge tour as we as we approach the Panama Canal. I am quite excited about that as I seem to know a great deal about the Canal, thanks to David McCullough. Other than that, when at sea, I get up in the morning and go to yoga at 7. Yoga is usually on the floor or at most sitting, as the boat does rock and roll a fair amount. Once we tried a kneeling warrior, and the boat rolled and we all went over. Sometimes I go to lectures, other times I read my McCullogh book about the Panama Canal, and other times I stare at the sea and watch the sea turtles, the flying fish, and the sun go down.
We have bypassed Acapulco, "for security reasons," so now, after a brief day in Cabo san Lucas, we are into our second continuous day at sea on our way to two days in Guatemala. I have a day on the beach there, and a day touring Antigua and Guatemalan textiles. I am excited about both.
The last time I was in Cabo, was with David Smith and his friend John Carta. Fifteen years ago, there was not a whole lot of development along the shoreline from Cabo to San Jose del Cabo; now, it is solid development, most of which was empty while we were there. The weather however, was perfect, and taking Aunt Bette on a glass-bolltom boat ride out around the Cabos, or capes, looking at the fish was great fun. Then having her try Mexican food - real cheese quesadillas, was great, too. They went down well, and stayed down!
In the evenings, at sea, we tend to sit in the piano bar and play Scrabble, which I lost at per usual, and last night, I was reintroduced to Cribbage, which I won, unless there is Team Trivia being played. That really is fun, and we are not bad at it, though we haven't won yet.
I hope the photo comes through; if it does, I will post some more photos, now that I have done it. But I'm going off to be briefed about Guatemala right now. Who knows when I'll get on next? ciao