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Shipboard

 
We had a cruise presenter assignment from Oct. 16th to Nov. 2nd from Ft. Lauderdale to Santiago, Chile. We were early at the port as usual and cooled our heels in the pleasant October morning. Once on board, Dean took a photo of the hummingbird mural on the port control tower.


The ship was the Zaandam, a new ship for us. In this atrium is a full-on, working pipe organ. Unfortunately, no one played it for a live concert. They just played a recording of its music at 12:15 pm each day.

 
There were cow sculptures on the back pool deck and dolphins at the main Lido deck pool.

 
There was an interesting collection of Egyptian artifacts near the coffee bar...

 
...and other collections artfully displayed.

Our first cruise assignment was back in 2017: the second half of an Inca voyage to San Diego. We've come a long way since that first assignment. I now have nearly 20 prepared presentations, but for each assignment, I tweak them and make them more destination oriented. For instance my rainforest presentation on this cruise included a section on how important the rainforests are in the running of the Panama Canal.

For the last few cruise assignments, we've been showing a series of self-running slide shows that Dean put together called The Nature of Our Travels. Now we have four 500+-slide files. People really enjoy them and it helps to make the point for people to open their eyes to nature as they travel. I have also been selling my "Climate-Wise Landscaping" books. I sold all 16 on this trip.


And several times on this trip the whole 500+-seat auditorium was filled. People come early to see our nature photos.


On this cruise we got to meet Peggy Crane from the HAL Corporate office, who I'd spoken to and traded emails with since 2017. She was only on board for a few days, but we did get to spend a little time with her for general feedback. And she attended some of my presentations.


Here's the itinerary. This was not a usual grand voyage, but basically a repositioning cruise as the Zaandam would be spending the winter months (summer down there) making trips back and forth around southern South America. The ship holds about 1200 passengers, while some stayed onboard for the second leg over to Buenas Aires, 900 disembarked with us in Santiago. The airport was a bit overwhelmed by such a big wad of people all flying out on the same day. More on this later.


Love the spectacular Caribbean cloud formations.

Oranjestad, Aruba

 
We visited Aruba in our 2013 Caribbean cruise so visit that page to see what we did then. This time, we went out on our own in the early morning and came back to the dock because I had an assignment as a ship's representative on a submarine tour.

 
We walked along the shoreline walkway.


Here we are boarding the transport to the submarine.


The safety briefing...


The sub is electric and is towed to the areas where it will dive. Since our group was the first of the day, before we could board it, they had to do a shakedown dive to make sure everything was functioning. It seemed like it took an extra long time doing so...

 


The visibility was not great, but for people who have not dived, it was an okay introduction to life 60 feet under the sea.

 
We took a bus out of town down to the southern end of the island. There was a wild area we wanted to see.

 
By wild we don't mean this local bar with stuff attached to every square inch of wall and ceiling.

 
This guy in the blue shirt led us to where collectives were stationed to take us out to the wild area, Seroe Colorado, which translates to colorful hill. We didn't go to the community or the lighthouse but stayed in the natural area, which was filled with organ pipe cacti, other cacti and succulents.

 

 

 
The cacti aren't the only thorny plants. The acacia trees sport formidable spines as well.

 
Some of the large cacti had faciated heads, which made for an array of unusual shapes. Click the link to find out more, but basically it's caused by a hormonal imbalance that could be due to damage from bacteria, herbivores, or even a lightning strike.

 
Notice how the Tropical Mockingbird is actually standing on the thorns.

 
A fancy, but secure door, but you don't often see the bolt device on the outside of the door.


There were lots of dogs barking in the neighborhood as we walked back to where the collective would pick us up.


An overlook across a wild area toward a beach. We did not have time to walk out that far.

 
Renewal... and the spot where we were to meet the collective.


On the way back to the bus station, several donkeys had stopped traffic. We got out to take some photos.

We made it back to the ship in good time. Next port is just after the Panama Canal.

On to the Panama Canal... >>

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