Day 7, Thursday. January 10, 2008 - Fuerte Amador, Panama

Fuerte Amador photos
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Since we were anchored off Fuerte Amador on the Pacific side of Panama, that is where we woke up this morning. While we planned to sleep in, we had the tender operation on our side of the ship. While it is always fun to watch, it started at 6am and woke us. Surprisingly, tender service stopped last night at 1:30am and we did not hear a thing after we hit the pillow!
We went up to LaVeranda for breakfast at around 8am anyway. Everyone ate pretty light. We do plan to eat lunch ashore. Debbie had raspberries and a chocolate croissant, so it was decided that we were off to a good start. While we were eating, the Dining Room Manager that had come to our dinner table in Compass Rose last night came up and asked us how we like our Special Event last night. This was of course a preemptive strike! Bold move on his part. He knew about the tendering snafu and long lines and long wait. He said that the Deck Dept. was in big trouble and meetings and memos were flying as we spoke. OK. We told him we enjoyed it, thought it was well done and that the bus rides were fine. The only down side and a really bad one at that was the long lines to tender back in the evening. Someone really dropped the ball. Anyway, we still had not received the invitation he asked us about for dinner with "a TV actor onboard"! We told him and Clay or Margie were supposed to ask him who was inviting us so we could figure it out. They both chickened out and Debbie was absolutely not going to ask a third time! Anyway, he said that he got confused. He said he had just rejoined the ship from vacation and had not gotten back into his groove yet. He said the invitation was not until the 12th so not to worry. We are worried since we still can't figure out who he said. He told us that lots of passengers don't like to get invitations, that it annoys them. Other passengers, want to be invited to everything and get upset if they are not. We just told him that we like to RSVP to all invitations and not be thought to be ignoring them! He laughed and said that he would get it sorted out and just wanted to confuse us. Debbie told him, well done then, good job. He laughed and asked us if we were confused, everyone refusing to ask who was inviting, we all confessed to being confused (more than he knows!) and he told us then "my work here is done, enjoy your day ashore". Dang it!
Clay has decided that he wants a chaise chair in exchange for 2 regular chairs on our joined balconies. Margie and Debbie agreed to his plan. We need to get up with Aida to arrange that soon. By the way, Aida may be the most perfect cabin stewardess at sea. She is flawless so far. There when you need her and invisible when you don't. She caught on to our routines right away. We are thrilled to have her.
So, our day ashore. We had a perfectly wonderful day ashore. We were tendering in about 9am. Our favorite thing about Mariner is riding on top of those tenders. What a joy if you have to tender! We are very sad to hear that when we change Captains in the middle of the cruise, that the next Captain will not allow passengers to ride on top. That just makes no sense. We realize that every Captain has total control, but really if it is safe today, how can it be unsafe tomorrow. But, back to today. It seems that everything opens at 10am. Debbie had some information she had assembled from the Internet and guidebooks and had a loose plan and looser backup plan here. Knowing that things change and information can become dated quickly, it is always good to have current info from a source on the ground. We got ashore and the Travel Concierge was under the tent. All the tours had left over an hour earlier. (Oh, they moved our tender dock overnight! Guess they wanted to eliminate any bad vibes from last night! And, keep us on our toes!) Debbie asked him about our plan. He knew nothing. He called over a woman with the local ground operator. The answer to every question was, You should have booked a tour or You can take a taxi into Panama City. OK. Oh, or It doesn't open til 10am. So, Debbie had information on the Punta Culebra Marine Exhibition Center run by the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and a restaurant nearby. The restaurant was called Mi Ranchito. They both should have been on the Amador Causeway near the Flamenco Marina. Part of our uncertainty is that everything here goes by at least a few different names it seems. We had tried to look out for these things on the bus ride in and out last night, but the buses were crowded, we were at the back and it was dark. Anyway, we did not learn anything on the bus rides up and down the Amador Causeway. Debbie showed the woman her printouts about the restaurant and the museum and she told us we didn't want to go there and even if we did that it wouldn't open for an hour. Nothing would open for an hour. Why did all the tours leave the ship between 6:30 and 7:30 then? Debbie asked her then which of theses islands is Naos. She said it was the third one from us and was too far away to see, we would need a cab. Debbie finally told her nevermind. The young woman panicked. Debbie told her to calm down we had an hour before anything opened and we were going to take a walk and figure it out on our own. Debbie finally consented that we would take a taxi if we couldn't make it back on our own. She let us go with a worried look. Geez. So, we crossed to a wide sidewalk on the Panama Canal entrance side of the causeway and set out walking. The woman had said there was a shopping mall at the second island. We were there in less than 15 minutes. Note that there was a Gelato place there! In less than 30 minutes, we were at the third island. It was a level, leisurely strolling pace. The sun was bright, it was humid and fairly hot, but there was a nice breeze. You could see the ships transiting the Canal or waiting on one side and the skyline of Panama City on the other side. This is where it got confusing. The information Debbie had indicated it would be confusing. So, Marine Center had various names and the entrance was said to be near Mi Ranchito. It did not appear to be down the drive for Mi Ranchito, there were signs for several things down that short street, but none for a Marine Center, Exhibition, Punta Culebra, or Smithsonian. So, we walked on. By a chainlink fence and a sign saying this property was the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. Promising. Walked another few feet and turned around to read a sign that had its back to us. It pointed back in the direction we had just come from saying that the Punta Culebra Marine Exhibition Center was ahead that way. So, we turned around and backtrack to the little drive by Mi Ranchito, we wound around bad paving, bad sidewalk, workers in a marina maybe, not sure it was a noisy place on the other side of a chainlink fence across the little street. Finally at what looked like a dirt path or dead end to the road was an armed Panamanian National Police Guard at a small building that said Punta Culebra. Margie and Clay were ready to turn back. Debbie said, no. Kept going until she could read the very small print and see cars down the path. The small print was Smithsonian. Debbie showed him her website print outs. He showed her a sign in Spanish. She pointed down the road, he pointed at his watch! It was now about 10 minutes of 10am! The guard went in and made a phone call and pointed uson down the road. We thanked him and set off. We walked only about 10 feet when we found our first interactive sign. Then it was the attack of the black iguanas! Man, those dudes are territorial and hard to see on broken asphalt. We finally ran them all off through the little barrier of trees and onto the beach. We walked very slowly and read all the signs about the flora and the animals that lived on the beach and looked for them with the scope over the beach. It was posted to keep off the beach without a guide. Finally, we realized that there were some women waiting for us outside a building ahead and we hustled up there. We thought we were killing time til 10 and they thought we got lost! There were 4 other American tourists there before us who decided to leave before the place opened. Anyway, they were very happy to see us and greet us and tell us all about their center and ask how we knew about it, etc. They are not easy to find, but they do have a Smithsonian-linked website so Debbie perservered and that is how we wound up there. That and the restaurant reviews all mentioned the place. But it could really use some street front signage. Anyway, we stayed there almost 2 hours. There were some pretty children-oriented interactive rooms, then a touch pool, then a tiny aquarium out on the point. All along there were signage about the dry forest and the mangroves, and all the animals and other plants. It was information packed and really well done. When the woman who greeted asked what took us so long to get there, we told her about the black iguanas. She told us that on the other side of the building were 2 trails and that one had green iguanas and the other had sloths. Of course, we had to do both trails! We were rewarded with both green iguanas and sloths. Yesterday, Clay thought he saw and photographed a sloth in a tree from the ship transiting the Panama Canal. Today, we are pretty sure that he what he saw was a sloth! Anyway, it was a reasonable walk, not an impossible thing to find and for US$2 was a great way to spend a few hours. We had another visit with the woman on the way out and she showed us a mother and child sloth pair high in a tree down the path from her office and gave us some brochures and we talked more about how she was having trouble attracting cruise passengers. It is unfortunate that the local ground operator really did not want us to go there.
By the way, RSSC's local ground operator told us they were buried in cruise ship passengers for a couple of days with the 2 HAL ships, the Star Clipper and Mariner. The Prinsendam sailed last night while we had our early dinner. The Star Clipper was gone when we woke up this morning. Amsterdam was still there when we left at 3pm.
So, we walked back toward the ship and our lunch at Mi Ranchito. It is under a thatched roof and open air, shady and great breezes. You can see out both sides and it has million dollar views of the skyline of Panama City. Margie had shrimp in garlic with plantains and a soursop shake. We don't know what a soursop is except that it is a fruit. It was very tasty. Clay had a whole fried corvina with plantains and a local beer, Atlas. Then he had another local beer, Balboa. Debbie had boneless chicken in tomato sauce with rice and a Coke. We all thought what we ordered was very good. Except no one loved the plantains. While we waited for the food Debbie pointed out to Margie that there was a little hut selling molas nearby. Molas are indiginous fabric art in Panama. Clay and Debbie bought some molas in 2006, but Margie had not gotten anything when she was last here and had regretted it. Debbie encouraged Margie to go ahead over there and promised to come and get her if the food arrived. Debbie saw a green purse with a mola from the restaurant but could not see the picture it had. When Margie started back with a sack, Debbie looked again and said the purse is gone! Margie got a great purse with a green iguana! It was a steal too at about $8. Now Clay needs a T-shirt and our stop here will be complete. After we ate, we continued our stroll back. We crossed the street to visit the strip mall. All the stores were closed when we walked by the first time because they did not open until 10 and they were all closed at 12:30 for lunch. OK. There were only restaurants open. We stopped at the gelato place and got 2 really big single dip waffle cones for $3 total! They were really good, caramel and Belgian chocolate. Margie did not want one but tasted some of each and Clay and Debbie switched cones have way through. We were back to the Marina area early to look for Clay's T-shirt. He found one pretty quickly, but we checked in all the other shops while we were there. We didn't find anything else. Margie has a rock from each port so far. We spent the afternoon catching up with email and the blog and looking at our photos, etc. Clay went to a port lecture on Manta.
Tonight was Formal night. It was also the Seven Seas Society party. We found a card telling us that we had a 6:30pm reservation for Latitudes. Margie and Debbie went downstairs to check the menu. They thought they could find something to eat there, but Compass Rose's menu was really good. It was a dilemma. Debbie solved it by saying that we would pop in the the society party from 6:15pm to 6:30pm and then go to Latitudes, then go back to the room and order the warm chocolate souffles with raspberry coulis from room service. We wound up with a slight modification to that plan later. We realized that Latitudes is right outside Compass Rose and so we could just walk over there. (We noted that Latitudes had more empty tables than full ones tonight, and yet they turned away walk-ins without reservations.) We all really hated the dessert at Latitudes and just went to Compass Rose for dessert. No one seemed all that surprised and immediately knew that we were there for the chocolate souffle. Finally, a night with calm seas and we found ourselves rested and relaxed and ready to do something for the evening and there was nothing we wanted to do. So, another early, quiet evening. We all plan to take it easy tomorrow because Manta is a long port day. Tomorrow evening about 11pm or so, we expect to cross the equator. It is Margie's first time. We are excited for her that she will cease being a pollywog and become a shellback. Margie asked Debbie if she would notice a difference. Debbie said probably not and when it happens you probably won't feel a thing. For some reason, Margie found that very funny. Oh, on the tender back to the ship this afternoon the couple sitting next to Margie on the tender commented on our Big O t-shirts. The woman's name is Margie, she used to live in NC and now lives about 50 miles from our Margie and she is turning 80 this month! Pretty amazing.
Fuerte Amador photos