One's destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things - Henry Miller

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Caribbean Sea





























2/08/2010 8:18 PM
Caribbean Sea
A reminder - the Panama Webcam is found at http://www.pancanal.com/ and Dawn Princess can be seen passing though it at thius site.
Tomorrow morning’s transit begins with the arrival of the pilot around 5:00am. We should be in the Gatun Locks between 6:30 and 8:00am (ship’s time - Mexico City, Monterrey, Guadaljara zone). Our HOBOS from UBOBO sign is ready for hanging while we are in the lock. The animals have their spot picked out on the balcony and our champagne breakfast is booked for 7:30am.
Gatun Lock lifts us from the Atlantic into Gatun Lake which we cruise across. Then the Miraflores Locks lowers us into the Pacific. We are on the port (left) side above the second last lifeboat. I don’t know where Centenary Bridge is so don’t know when we’ll be passing there. We should be at the Miraflores Locks between 3:00 and 4:00pm. I’ll try to publish another blog in the morning to update any interested viewers.
Curacao was very colourful and we enjoyed a most pleasant day ashore. It is an island that was once an ancient coral reef that was lifted up from the ocean floor abut 400 000 years ago. The soil is very poor, white limestone much like that on Heron Island – the water is as pretty too!!! Once the houses, built of cement from the island soils, were all white. A Dutch governor decided that this was a health hazard for locals with the glare causing migraines and damage to eyesight. So he encouraged everyone to paint their houses and now we have this bright liquorice-all-sort lolly-coloured housing all over the island...Wayne and Kim Lester would feel right at home there...Any way to continue the story, when the governor left it was discovered that he was a major share holder in the paint company. But the citizens loved their new brightly coloured houses anyway and although the law no longer requires it they keep on panting their houses in these lovely strong, bright colours.
After our onshore excursion, we lunched on this very pleasant deck overlooking the waterway into the Willemstad port. During the tour, we bought ourselves some genuine Curacao Curacao and on our deck after dinner we celebrated another successful day with this delicious but very potent liqueur.
Hope some of you may get an opportunity to spot us on the webcam. If not we’ll have it on the World Tour 2010 DVD. The camera crew are going on shore to photograph us as we go through.

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