Panama City, and a warning

 

The following is a warning!!

I will be bitching exclusively this post. Please expect vitriol and anger. There have been too many disappointments and I am at a low. This mood frequently happens to my about this time in a long trip. I know it happens, but am unable to control it.

You have been warned !!

All the days are running into one another. I’m ready to throw in the towel, and the most exciting part is to come. Panama Canal for bragging rights I suppose and Cartegena because I think it it will be cool. That’s it. Two days I want to experience at the cost of an additional 3 days I can give a hoot about.

Before leaving home I joined a Facebook group that was about this particular cruse. I thought it would be a good source of information from more experienced cruisers. I soon found out that it was full of nervous Nellie’s because in 1995 someone had been robbed in Acapulco. They wondered what time the ship was scheduled to leave a particular port, when the information was readily available by going to the web. It had to get better so I hung in with it. Then 2 or 3 days before boarding the ship in Seattle, there was a flood of “I just finished packing”, “My flight leaves in 75 hours” types of posts. I un-joined at that point.

We left our 10 Acres of Guatemala can not remember a lot of what happened for the two days that got us here. There was the daily Needle and stitches group everyday at 10am, that was blocked out in the schedule that ran at least 2 1/2 hours. If it wasn’t for that I would have probably stayed in my room until noon.

If the art auction was happening on that day it happened at 1pm. Again supposed to last 1 hour, and went over two. I don’t know what else there was to do. Play trivia, with no prizes, only the ability to brag to the person st the table across from you. Go up to Melanoma deck and watch the oiled bodies spin on lounge chair rotisserie? Drink? Put the capital D in day drinking. There is always the buffet to get coughed on fried chicken picked up with large metal spoons, handled by how many unwashed hands before you? With options like that the Art Auction seemed thrilling.

One day it was Peter Max day. An artist I knew from the 1960’s, he was BIG on colors and psychedelic. As happens to young hippies, they grow into old bankers. Mr Max wasn’t a lot different. He makes one painting and then Lithographs off a couple thousand of them, grabs a pencil scribbles his name on the edge and “You too can own a genuine Peter Max”. “These are one of a kind, signed by the artist”. “Can only offer you two I have no more. Once these are gone they are gone.” The subtext is that this is going to increase in value, though never stated. The other unstated non-fact is that there is a limited number that are still available. Yes, on this ship there are only 2, but back at the main warehouse there are another 500. “Do I hear $5050? 5100? 5150? Sold! 5100 number 195. Well done! Well played!”. “Congratulations on owning a genuine Peter Max!” Congratulations? Congratulations on buying something? I can just hear the checker at Haggen, “That will be $20, well done, well played, congratulations on buying a steak”

One of the selling points I heard was “If you own three you have a collection”. I think I have three bottles of Tequila in the fridge at home. It seems I have a ‘Tequila collection’, not a drinking problem.

One of the continuing shows in the main theater is a Beatles group. Well they wear wigs and fake mustaches. They play songs the Beatles wrote and recorded. There is just something wrong with their enunciation. Obviously there first language is not English. Asian Beatles sounds like a pest that should not be allowed anywhere. I think they are also the guys who were butchering ‘Mama don’t your boys grow up to be cowboys’ in the sun deck as we left Seattle. I left at the end of their performance instead of blowing my mind out in a car.

Men! If you want a woman cruise ships are the way to go. I’ve seen men who wouldn’t get a single Swipe Right on Tinder out of 100 views, be surrounded by 4 women who would be out of his league on dry land, enraptured by his views on the fine art of brushing the ice in a game of curling. I’m serious, there must be a 4 to 1 ratio of single women to single men on this cruise, and over half of them are not on Social Security.

My room looks out at the ocean side of the southern part of the trip. No land to see, even in the distance. So it was exciting the other day when I saw another ship!! All I had been seeing was sea birds riding the updrafts created by the ship moving through the ocean. These birds are masters of air currents. There are the usual sea gulls and one black and white bird that looks like what a Penguin would look like if it a Penguin fly in the air and not the ocean. I might have caught an image of one on the iPhone. I watched one dive down and catch a morsel from the sea, another was closing from the rear with it’s eye on a free lunch. Closer and closer, and at the last second, bird one just tipped it’s wing leaving #2 with too much momentum to steal the bite. It was a thing of beauty to watch. Way better than Tom Cruise in Top Gun,

Today was no stitching or purling so I had a late breakfast. When I thought the majority of day trippers were off the boat, I disembarked. I was wrong. They may have gotten off before me, but they were still waiting for taxis into town. I joined the madness.

Ocean cruise ships seem to be relegated to as far from town as possible. (Except for Alaska). Panama City is no exception. If you had Jesus shoes and could walk on water you would be in town in 15 minutes. The road takes a huge arc and triples your walking time.

Immediately I was pounced on by two taxi drivers willing to take me to town. One guy soon melted away after I gave my price into town. Another one appeared out of the mist and we settled on the price of a shared taxi to town and then had to wait for every seat to be filled. That too longer than the actual ride.

I am so jaded with travel. I got to the old town and wandered for a couple hours and found caught another shared taxi back to the ship. It was shopping, shopping and shopping. Once in a while an over priced restaurant. One of those ‘if you have been in (choose your country south of Tijuana) you have already seen this old town’. The worst part? Not a single Starbucks! What a backwards old town.

I had to force this, and I’m sure it is obvious. For that I apologize and will close and save you from further suffering.