SEMINAR AT SEA
CENTRAL AMERICA
Hola—
We boarded the good ship Explorer in Ft. Lauderdale on a windy, chilly day— Dec. 27, 2004. Explorer is Semester at Sea’s new vessel. She is about the same size as Universe Explorer (The Great White Mother), but only 3 years old and FAST. The speediest cruise ship in the world, she can rev up to 28 knots which was the cruising speed of our boat, Grand Finale. Usual speed is about 16—20 knots. SAS picked up Explorer at a “fire sale” partly because of mismanagement and the fact that after 9/11, the cruise ship business tanked and the Greek company that owned her declared Chapter 11. There were many old shipmates on the voyage. One of them was the individual who introduced us to SAS one lazy afternoon on the Cuttyhunk fish dock. Gordon sustained a serious concussion on the trip. Keep him in your prayers.
We hop scotched around Central America for 16 days. The day long stops were superficial compared to the 4—5 days we’d spend in port with SAS. We hit Playa del Carmen and Cozumel in the Mexican Yucatan, and continued south to Belize, San Andres Island, Colombia and the Panama Canal. After transiting the Canal, we stopped at the southwest end at the port of Balboa. Heading north in the Pacific Ocean, we docked at Puntarenas, Costa Rico, Puerto Quetzal, Guatemala, Acapulco, Mexico and finally San Diego. We took trips from the ship at each port. While at sea, we spent the days listening to lectures about the cultures of the various areas —mostly Mayan. I attended 5 Spanish classes which would be fun to continue and 3 art classes—travel sketching, contour drawing and water color painting. Any latent art gene failed to surface…
THE MAYAS The Mayan civilizations in Belize, Honduras, Guatemala and Yucatan sprung up around 3000 BC. The forefathers of these Indians had migrated from Asia and crossed the Bering Strait during the Ice Age. Their way of life lasted until Spanish contact in 1517. It’s the same old story. The Conquistadors brought disease and Christianity which decimated both the population and the culture. The Golden Age, known as the Classic Period, lasted from 250 AD to 850 AD when a drought and starvation wiped out many of the empires in the jungles. But during that period, the Mayans started building pyramids, paved roads and carved stelae (upright, rectangular monuments) and other structures with stone, developed number and writing systems (hieroglyphics) the masses could read, wrote bark paper books and had a calendar with 365 days. The stelae and their accompanying altars functioned as bulletin boards and propaganda for the head guy. The current ruler trashed the previous ruler’s stelae and put up his own. The ruler was considered divine. He knew astronomy and could predict all kinds of things; surely he was in cahoots with their gods. The Mayan diet consisted of the triad—maize, beans and squash. Life expectancy was 26.2 years (I think..), but one ruler lived into his 80’s. There were lots of wars to gain slaves and victims for ritual sacrifices—that’ll bring down the life expectancy numbers!
We flew in a 20 passenger plane from a heavily armed Guatemalan airport to a dirt runway in a field in Honduras to visit Copan, an empire of 20,000 to 25,000 people, from this period. 4,900 structures have been uncovered and you can see many mounds waiting to be investigated. There are also piles of GOK, which stands for God Only Knows how this rubble fits together. We also traveled to Chichen Itza (Chicken Pizza, as we called it), a city/state that developed around 900 AD by Mayans migrating out of the jungle to find food. It is located in the interior of the Yucatan peninsula. These people said, “Hasta luego” to religious rulers and became extremely successful traders. Turquoise from New Mexico and/or Arizona has been found in burial tombs. Honey, tobacco, obsidian and jade were trade objects. They built a 9 story high pyramid out of limestone. There is a large ballcourt, common to Mayan sites, where a game similar to soccer was played. The object was to get a rubber ball through a small stone ring high on a wall. The “winner” was subsequently sacrificed—an honor to be decapitated and reborn. Sounds like what’s going on in the Middle East today.
In 1842 an American was taken to these overgrown ruins. He brought along a painter to capture the discoveries. That was the beginning. What did all those hieroglyphics mean? An early Spanish bishop burned all but three Mayan codices (books). In 1862 a French priest who spoke Mayan discovered a book written by another bishop that showed the Spanish-Mayan alphabet equivalents. This was the Rosetta Stone of Mayan hieroglyphics. It took another 100 years (1953) until a Russian scholar deciphered the glyphs. BUT, that was the era of the Cold War; his work was discredited by the establishment. A young man at Harvard thought this Rusky might be on to something and bingo, the code was cracked. Now archaeologists can read the glyphs and know about Mayan history, alliances, deities, rituals, and who was who.
PANAMA CANAL It took 8 hours to transit the 50 mile long Panama Canal. An interpreter was put on board the ship to explain the history of the Canal and how it works. The Canal was started by the French in the 1880’s with the intent of building a sea level canal as they had done with the Suez Canal. Workers mainly from the West Indies shoveled and died of malaria, cholera, pneumonia and even bubonic plague. They met the mountains of the Continental Divide ¾ of the way to the Pacific Ocean. Hacking through them was too great a challenge and the French quit—1898. In 1904 Teddy Roosevelt convinced Americans that the Canal should be completed. A brilliant engineer, John Stevens, determined that a lock system was needed and William Gorgas, MD took measures to rid the area of mosquitoes. A large river, Rio Chagres, was dammed to make the third largest man made lake in the world. The mountains of the Continental Divide were blasted out to make the 9 mile long Culebra Cut. 600 holes per day were drilled 22 feet down for the TNT. If all the holes were lined up, they would have bored through the planet and 7 miles beyond. In 1914 Woodrow Wilson pushed a switch in Washington, DC and remotely opened the Canal for operation. Since then almost 900,000 ships have transited the Canal. The Canal’s two sets of locks, each of which has two lanes, operate as water elevates ships 85 feet above sea level to Gatun Lake. Heading west the ship continues through the Lake and the Cut and then it is lowered in the western locks to the level of the Pacific Ocean. It takes 52,000,000 gallons of water from Gatun Lake for each of the three uprising locks. The water then drains into the ocean. There are no pumps; gravity does the work.
Jimmy Carter signed legislation in 1977 to hand over the Canal to Panama. This happened 12/31/99. The Chinese won the bid from Panama to control the ports at either end. After a disastrous, disorganized field trips runs by the locals, I wonder about the future of the Canal. On our field trip, I asked a gun toting soldier at a museum if Ramiro Mendoza (an outstanding Panamanian pitcher for the Yankees) lived nearby. He glared at me, asked what tour I was on and looked like he might take me into custody. I left in haste! Our guide said Mendoza is a national hero; she cried when he lost.
ET CETERA The Panama Canal is east of Florida. The Pan American Highwayin Costa Rico is a slow, truck laden, two lane road. Acapulcois a nice place. It is coming back from its downhill skid. We passed the San Francisco de AssisSuper Market on our way to Chichen Itza. Mexico is very Catholic. Mayans are born with a birthmark at the base of their coccyx which fades at puberty. Ahh, the Red Sox—there were lots of sightings of RS shirts and hats on the ship and only one Yankee shirt. At San Andres Island, Colombia, a bar maid was wearing her new Christmas gift—an RS World Championship T-shirt. She didn’t have a clue of its meaning, but some relative in the U.S. must be a fan!
We arrived yesterday (1/12) in San Diego and will stay here until Saturday when we leave for our trip to view the whale migration around Baja. Hope all is well with you. Happy Birthday (almost), Meggie!
Feliz ano nuevo y adios, amigos.
Mom/Anne