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 Greetings from the Flat World Folks, nearing
the Southern Hemisphere: Our first slide show begins with a view
explaining a little about what it is like to prepare for four months
abroad. The next slides show boarding the QE2 on Pier 91 in New
York Harbor on a cold snowy Sunday afternoon on the fifth of January,
2003. We sailed down the Atlantic Coast to Ft. Lauderdale to pick
up more passengers and thence to the Caribbean. Our scheduled stop
in the historic city of Cartegena, Columbia was diverted because
of some unpleasantness in that area such as rumors about wishing
to take Americans hostage. Instead, we landed at the more peaceful
Dutch island of Curacao, just off the Columbian coast, whose architecture
looks very similar to Amsterdam, only in bright Caribbean technicolor.
An early agricultural endeavor here was growing oranges, however
because of the lava soil conditions and the aridness, the fruit
was too sour to eat. Instead they use the fruit to distill a liqueur
that today bears the island's name, Curacao. (Pronounced cur-a-sau-o)
Even though Netherlands continues to hold considerable economic
interests, the island is now enjoying independence and a parliamentary
government. About 8 hours of Saturday, January11, m 2003, was spent
passing through the locks and channels of the Panama Canal, from
the Atlantic to the Pacific. What an engineering feat to have been
completed in 1914!...despite yellow fever and malaria! If all the
rock and dirt were piled into boxcars, the resulting train would
circle the Earth four times at the equator. Amazingly, the original
design and technology of the canal remains essentially the same.
No pumps are used to fill the lock chambers, simply gravity flow
from man-made Lake Gatun, which is 85 feet above sea level. The
amount of water used by the Panama Canal in one day would supply
the city of Boston for two weeks! On Sunday, we toured the canal
on land, also visiting Balboa and Panama City, where we passed by
the Vatican Embassy from which daddy Bush extracted Noriega in the
1980s. Balboa Bob acquired an especially fashionable Panama hat
to blend right in with the natives! The Panamanians are doing a
superb job running the whole canal operation, which underscores
the wisdom of Jimmy Carter's giving back the canal. How wise of
the committee in Stockholm to recognize the importance of this gesture
in the world of diplomacy. Keep tuned for our next installment,
which will include some shipboard activities, Acapulco and Los Angeles.
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