The First Few Days

Welcome to our first official blog entry. We are on day six of our cruise. The ship is very nice and the food is great. If you are interested in what the ship looks like you can take a virtual tour at the Holland America website. There is a section on ships. We are on the MS Amsterdam.

Up to now our trip has been over familiar territory. We have been to our first port, Grand Cayman, many times. I did a SCUBA dive and Noreen enjoyed the ship and a full day of relaxation. Our second port was Puerto Limon, Costa Rica on January 9^th. This was another port we had visited previously. I choose a very nice Zip Line in the morning. Then Noreen and I spent some time walking around the local area.

As I write this we are transiting the Panama Canal on January 10^th. This is our third visit and second full transit. After we exit the Canal the ship will turn south and head for Manta, Ecuador arriving on the 12^th. In Manta we’ll leave the ship for a three day overland trip to Cuzco and Machu Picchu. We won’t have any access to the internet so you will not hear from us again until January 15^th or 16^th.

An exciting event was our 34 anniversary which we celebrated on January 7^th. This picture was taken at dinner as we prepared for the next 34.

The picture below was taken from a platform during my zip line. If you look just to the left of center you’ll see a sloth hanging upside down. He(?) is light gray and white. Costa Rico has a very active rainforest and we were accompanied by sloths and howler monkeys most of the time.

In the picture below we are entering the first lock, named Gatun, of the Canal. You can see the altitude difference with the ship to the left and the one in front of us.

This next picture shows our ship has risen to the original height of the ship to the left after the lock was filled. We are now ready to proceed from the first lock.

You may have heard of the “mules” that guide the ship through the Canal. In the old days of canals, there were really mules that pulled barges through the canal. You can see many picture of this happening in places like the Erie Canal. The mules were replaced by steam engines and now by modern diesel engines as you can see in the picture below. They have kept the name of Mules. The Mules do not pull the ship through. There are two on each side of the ship, one forward and one aft. They guide the ship and help keep it centered in the lock. Note the cables running from the Mule to the ship in the lower left. The ship moves through the Canal mostly on its own power.

In this picture you can clearly see that we have exited the first lock and the second lock has lifted the ship higher than the ship that was to our left in the first picture. You can also see the next cruise ship waiting to transit and the slope that the Mules tracks follow as the ships rise and fall.

This picture is the ship getting ready to leave the first set of locks and enter into the lakes. There are three sets of locks all following the basic procedure you have seen here.

Finally we exit the Panama Canal and enter the Pacific as we transit under the Bridge of the Americas as seen below. The trip has taken about nine hours and covered 48 miles. It saved a trip of 7,872 miles to get to our point of entry to our point of exit. The weather was overcast with scattered showers all day. This was enjoyable as the Canal transit can be unbearably hot and humid. We found it that way last time and had a much better trip on this transit.

Noreen and I are getting settled in. Here is a picture of Noreen by our cruise logo on the bow area of the ship.

I didn’t realize that Holland America was going to take our itinerary down from the website but it only makes sense. I’m working on an electronic copy and will send it as soon as I get it finished. We’d like to again thank those who are helping to make this possible by assisting us at home and at work. We’re interested in your comments so join in the dialog.