Around the World in 113 Days: A Slice of History from the Past

By James Cameron

In the winter of 2007, my wife and I came upon the idea of taking an around-the-world cruise. Our reasoning—most importantly, we were both in good health and were not limited physically from enjoying all the experiences such a trip could provide. We were both retired and could reasonably afford such a trip if we were prudent in selecting among all of the add-on options. We had taken multiple Caribbean cruises over the years and were “ship ready,” and we had great curiosity about the numerous variances in world cultures as well as topographies.

We decided upon a Holland-America cruise upon the flagship Amsterdam. The route was a sleep-friendly west to east, leaving and arriving from Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. Our cruise departed on January 4, 2008, and arrived back at Ft. Lauderdale on April 27, 2008—a total of 113 days, covering 35,936 nautical miles and stops at forty-one ports. An itinerary of our cruise is included as an appendix.

As we concluded the arrangements for our cruise, we promised our friends and relatives to send regular emails of our adventures. We gathered information from various sources to compose our emails as the cruise progressed. The normal course of accumulating historical facts and descriptions of current culture and local customs were gained in advance from highly educated speakers brought aboard ship prior to each disembarkment. Typically, these speakers were natives of the countries or environments they described. We closely followed and took copious notes of these presentations delivered in the ship’s auditorium.

A second source of information along a broad spectrum of topics were the native guides assigned to our groups on shore excursions, be they by foot, bus, or water craft. Without exception, the local guides were invaluable in presenting the realities of their countries, environments, and lifestyles.

Lastly, each of our shore excursions produced vivid and unique impressions of our environments that would be in addition to, and sometimes counter, to our on board presenters and our shore guides. Little did we know that our collection of emails and photos would later become chapters in a book. Our advice to our readers—it is better to experience it live than read about it. Should you decide to take such an around-the-world cruise, we wish you bon voyage.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 29, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524557041

James Cameron

James (Jim) Cameron was born in Arizona in 1946 and grew up in Southern California. He is the single child of Leonard Cameron and Marjorie Wingfield Cameron. His mother was a grade school teacher, and his father was a technician for public water supply companies. Mr. Cameron graduated from Fontana High School as salutatorian in 1964 and served as the high school’s student body vice president and Key Club president. He was voted the school’s top science student in his senior year by the high school faculty. Always a baseball fan, he lettered three times on the high school varsity baseball team and later played on the Claremont McKenna College (then Claremont Men’s College) baseball team, from which he graduated with a BA in economics in 1968. A thrill of his life was playing on a team assembled by renowned Claremont coach Bill Arce, which took his team to play exhibition baseball games in Europe during the summer of 1966, with each player living individually with a family in the Netherlands to teach local youth the game of baseball. After Claremont, Mr. Cameron enrolled at UCLA where he earned an MS degree in business administration in 1970 and had the thrill of watching great college basketball and the arrival of the player then known as Lew Alcindor. In 1974 he married Constance (Connie) Mae Creighton. Over the years, the couple have lived in Southern California, Colorado, North Carolina, and Florida. They currently live in Littleton, Colorado. They have two children—son Clint, who resides in Washington, DC, with his wife and son, and daughter Lauren who resides in Denver, Colorado. Mr. Cameron’s entire working career was in health-care administration. His areas of responsibility included HMO development, medical economics, group physician practices, clinical administration, sales management, and consulting.

Book preview

Copyright © 2016 by James Cameron. 750013

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016918513

ISBN:    Softcover               978-1-5245-5705-8

              Hardcover             978-1-5245-5706-5

              EBook                   978-1-5245-5704-1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 01/09/2020

Xlibris

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

TABLE OF CONTENTS

FIRST WEEK AT SEA

IDLE MUSINGS

TWO MAGNIFICENT ISLANDS

SAMOA AND TONGA

WE COULD LIVE HERE

LIFE ON BOARD

GU DYE MATE

CYCLONE

BALI

BRUNEI

PHILIPPINES

CHINA

VIETNAM

SINGAPORE

INDIA

LUNCH ON THE NILE

TEA ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS

DAS FAHDAWNYA

SANTORINI

VENICE, SPLIT, AND MALTA

GIBRALTAR, LISBON, AND MADEIRA

HOMEWARD BOUND

IMG_20160910_0001.psdIMG_20160910_0002.psd

January 14, 2008

FIRST WEEK AT SEA

A number of you asked if I could provide some description of the ports we stopped in even though I cannot accompany the description with photos. I am sending this along in that context.

We left Port Everglades in Ft. Lauderdale at 8:00 p.m. on January 4. For those of you who have never taken a cruise, ships announce their departures from ports by three long blasts on the ship’s horn. Disney ships are the exception—they play a tune such as When You Wish upon a Star on their speaker systems. Connie and I were on the bow of the Promenade deck when the ship sailed and the deep sound of the horn made chills run up and down our spines. Ships leaving Port Everglades pass several high-rise apartment buildings just before heading to open sea. Upon hearing the horn, people in the apartments began flashing their interior lights on and off, sounding air horns, and waving from their balconies. It was a very moving experience.

Our first stop was Grand Cayman where we anchored and were tendered from the Amsterdam to the pier. Our shore excursion led us to a visit of Pedro St. James, a historic residence owned by generations of a family dating back to when England claimed the Cayman Islands as its possessions. We next visited the Queen Elizabeth II Botanical Gardens where we saw many plant varieties and wildlife, including a blue iguana found only on Grand Cayman. The Caymans were devastated by hurricane Ivan in 2004, and the citizens have done a great job in rebuilding their communities. Many of the structures are new and fresh looking.

Next was Puerto Limon in Costa Rica. We docked and then took a several hour van ride to a remote river (Sarapique) in the Costa Rican rain forest. We passed many banana plantations—the coffee plantations were on the hillsides of the central mountain range that was immediately to the west. We went downriver on a small excursion boat for about an hour, had a wonderful lunch at a riverside hacienda, and then boated back to the van. Along the river we saw howler monkeys, crocodiles, caymans (similar in appearance but smaller than crocodiles), sloths, toucans, iguanas, and many birds we see in Florida such as egrets and herons. Our guide was well educated and an expert on all facets of Costa Rican life and flora and fauna. He warned us in advance that we would be traveling over many kilometers of potholes with a little bit of road bed, and he wasn’t exaggerating. We were about ten hours off the boat for this excursion and returned exhausted.

After a day at sea we began our crossing of the Panama Canal at 6:00 a.m. Except for occasional short breaks, Connie and I were out on that same bow deck from 6:00 a.m. until about 3:00 p.m., leaving after we had passed through the last set of locks and under the All American bridge. It was an incredible experience and one everybody should try to do at least once in their lives. The schedule on the canal is southbound ships (Atlantic to Pacific) take passage from midnight to noon and northbound ships from noon to midnight. Large ships pass during daylight with passenger ships taking priority over freighter/tanker/container ships. Small ships pass at night with a number of ships sharing each lock at the same time. All ships are pulled through the locks by locomotives that run on each side of the locks. There are two rows of locks, three sets of locks, and three locks per set. New locks are now being dug not far from the current ones to accommodate even larger ships.

We anchored at Fort Amador that evening and were tendered to shore the next morning for a tour of Old Town, the San Felipe District, and the modern city of Panama that has grown up between them. Old Town was the first colonial settlement in the Americas (around 1503 if my notes are correct). At its peak it contained about 30,000 residents. In was destroyed by Morgan the pirate in the 1770s. The stones and other salvageable material were moved from Old Town to a new district called San Felipe which was built in the mid-1770s. One of the structures moved was a giant gold altar that had been in the Catholic Church in Old Town. The priests had disguised it from discovery by Morgan by covering it with mud and clay. It now resides in its splendor in Iglesias de San Jose in San Felipe District. You will see it in the slide show.

Mass renovation of historical structures is now under way in San Felipe. It is a unique combination of slums, magnificent old churches and palaces, and new government initiatives such as the National Cultural Center building. The skyline of the downtown section of Panama City looks like Dubai—gleaming high rise everywhere crowned by construction cranes. This view stretches for some miles along the ocean front. Trump has bought property and will be building a 240-unit complex here soon.

We are in day four of an eight-day ocean crossing to the South Seas. Will be back to you in a couple of weeks.

J and C

IMG_1175.psd

Locomotive pulling the Amsterdam through the locks, Panama Canal

Panama%20City%20skyline.psd

Panama City skyline

January 15, 2008

IDLE MUSINGS

The Pacific Ocean covers one third of the earth’s surface. Near the equator this time of year, the Pacific is quiet except for occasional weak weather systems that wander along. It’s been five days since we left Panama and we have not seen land, another ship, or even a distant contrail. One wonders what went through the minds of the early explorers who went months without sighting any object on the horizon.

The sea has been calm today with no waves, only undulations rolling slowly across an endless expanse of water. The only disturbances are the wake from the bow and the churn from the propellers. Although the sea depth around us is thousands of feet, there is a patchwork of varying hues of blue on the surface. Yesterday, a school of perhaps a hundred dolphins joined us to frolic alongside the ship. For almost ten minutes they entertained with leaps and twirls out of the water. Sea birds floated along the bow for the first couple of days from Panama but left us about a thousand miles out. We are now about a thousand miles from somewhere and a lot farther from everywhere else. Hmm, sounds like a Jimmy Buffett song lyric.

Well, so much for idle musings. We can only take so much rich food and sunbathing without trying to be a little creative.

J and C

January 24, 2008

TWO MAGNIFICENT ISLANDS

French Polynesia consists of 118 islands spread over an area of two million square miles, about two-thirds the size of the US. These islands were formed by ancient volcanos millions of years ago. They are characterized by jutting mountain peaks that tower above dense rain forests of many varieties of trees, shrubs, and ferns and waterfalls that drop into cool rivers and streams. They are often circled with fringing or barrier reefs and breathtaking blue lagoons. The centers of the islands are the remains of the volcano beds or calderas—the mountain peaks forming the volcano ridge line.

The three most famous islands of French Polynesia are Tahiti, Moorea, and Bora Bora. The total population of French Polynesia is about 250,000 of which 130,000 reside in Tahiti; 14,000 in Moorea, and 9,000 in Bora Bora. About 90,000 of Tahitis total live in the capital, Papeete.

Tahiti is a beautiful island but lacks the stunning mountain peaks of Moorea or the white sand beaches and turquoise and aquamarine-colored lagoons of Bora Bora. It is actually two islands, Tahiti-Nui (big Tahiti) and Tahiti-Iti (little Tahiti), connected by a narrow isthmus. Tahiti-Iti is comprised of mostly small villages and some private developments. Sadly, Papeete was a disappointment. It is