The Nitrate Story

Tuesday, 7 October – Iqueque, Chile

 

It’s really, really dry here, but it’s a humid dryness. There’s only 0.10 inch of rain per year, and they haven’t had any rain in about 10 years here in Iqueque. Still high 50s, humid, and hazy in the morning in town and witnessed a fantastic sunrise as the sea lions cavorted or maybe swam like hell away from the ship. Seems like most of Peru and Chile so far is, uh, quite dry otherwise. After the long day in the bus yesterday, I didn’t even consider a tour for today. But the lovely setting of Iquique (which means, “I have two Que’s”, according to the guide. More about this, read on) a very prosperous beach resort city with lots of brand new high rise condos or apartment buildings and a quite lovely but somehow looking a bit artificial downtown somehow got me to venture to the Tour Desk on the ship to enquire about the 4 hour tour. 15 minutes later I was on the bus with a number of my fellows from yesterday’s tour (no doubt still glorying in the aftereffects of that herbal tea) who had also booked, “The Nitrate Story – A trip to the Past: Humberstone”. We climbed the cliff on another extremely well kept road and crossed a brand new community that looked remarkably like Henderson, Nevada, even to the 2500 to 3500 foot elevation and of course the desert setting. The guide said, “it doesn’t rain at all, and nothing lives here.” I think he meant outside of town. Hard to say since his English seemed to be very poor. He’s say things like “white topsoil on the bottom floor is salt” and other sentences that took some diagramming. He proceeded to explain during the hour long drive to the ghost town of Humberstone about nitrate. He said that this substance was the cause of many wars, the purpose of the port town of Iqueque which really means “place of rest and tranquility” or “lazy” depending on which authoritative source you consult. Unfortunately, it became clear that the guide didn’t know much when he didn’t know what color the ground deposits of nitrate is, what was the method of mining, or even what nitrate was. This caused me to conclude that his grip of English was perfectly adequate for his knowledge of the topic but we might be not getting full value for the “Nitrate Story”. Fortunately he had an assistant, a lovely middle aged woman who was a nurse in Toronto for 8 years. I hung out at the back of the group chatting with her for the tour and found that asking her questions and getting full and answers from someone whose family still lives in the area and was associated with the mine was a lot more fun and probably more factual.

 

Humberstone (if the truth be known I booked the tour because I realized that my remaining stops in South America would not allow for any more trips into the desert or mountains, my recurred slight cold seemed to be relieved by the dry and warmer temperatures up high, and I really really liked the name Humberstone) turned out to be an upscale and quite complete “company town”. Although the mine closed down in 1959 (or 1960 according to the same guide who might have said “nine T-shirts”), the town has been preserved by the Chilean government as a kind of closed company town museum. The flowers in the town square are well watered, the large theater and church is completely preserved along with the outdoor lighted tennis courts, stores, food market, etc., a even some remnants of their mine railway. We returned to town after a couple of hours walking around the ghost town, then around downtown Iqueque (which included being led in one door and out another of a tourist gift shop, no doubt the proprietor a relative of the guide), and a stop at a restaurant that was a dead ringer for the Alhambra in Granada, Spain for mango sours with snacks of chicken (or some sort of small animal that tastes like chicken) skewers and olives. And olives? The time and itinerary was well worth it, but the cost of tour of $122 will be the subject of a mass protest as no one has yet figured out the cause of the 50% refund from the last cruise. So is the way of the seafarer.

 

OK, I can’t hold it in any more. See, there’s this couple from New Zealand on the ship since Los Angeles. They have the most unhappy expressions on their faces ALL THE TIME. They come to the shows—even sitting up front—have dinner in the upscale restaurant onboard, go on most tours offered, and talk to no one very much. But, my oh my, they are unhappy looking. So, I’ve as well as others have tried to engage them in conversation. It turns out they are the MOST UNHAPPY PEOPLE ANY OF US HAVE EVER MET on a cruise. After comparing notes with a few other guests on the ship, we have discovered that while she might (that’s ‘might’ mind you) respond to a question with a two or three word response, he invariably makes a crack about how whatever country you are from has screwed up the world for everyone. He even complained to me about some trade issue during the American Civil War that hurt England or The Baltic. I forget which. This guy is carrying a lot of grudges. I’ve included a photo of these “dour folks” as a delightful Scotsman onboard called them (but he pronounced the word as “dew-er”. I like this guy, though, a lot) with the shot including one of the Tour Desk helpers, a young woman from Russia who is a few mountain ranges short of the Urals. Don’t ask her if they will load water bottles on the bus for the tour or if you will need to bring one yourself from the ship as she will answer, “Water for drinking is good in hot weather”, and only after a lot, really a lot, of thought. A few of the older women on the ship just shake their heads and say something like “Poor thing” whenever her name is mentioned.

 

Tomorrow I will report on my 3 hour tour of “Antofagasta City & Surroundings.” All I know is Antofagasta was also big in nitrates. By the way, I wanted to jump in when our guide didn’t know what nitrate mining was and told everyone that it is found with glycerin and sulfur. I wanted to say that it’s usually found on the ground wrapped in red paper and has a piece of rope coming out the end. Maybe I’d got the Nobel Prize for being a wiseass. (Get it?) But yesterday, when our ADHD inflicted guide didn’t give any precautions for our spending a few hours at 14,000 to 15,200 feet, I asked for the microphone and warned my fellows to take it really easy and report immediately a splitting headache and also to be aware that they would feel pretty good until that happened. Unaccustomed to lecturing cruise passengers that I am, I decided to keep my mouth shut today. I really must be sick with this cold.

 

Opps. Tea time. Maybe they’ll have that wonderful herbal tea.

 

Back from tea which I missed as I decided instead to watch another local university’s student group on the dock as the kids performed the “devils and angels dance”. This dance, which was performed on around the pool during our barbeque last night, starts out with a group of devils usually played by or signifying the male population taking center stage. Then the “angels” led by a beautiful girl dressed in white (yesterday’s had a led laden orb on her mace, make of that what you will) who leads the other angels into a seduction of the devils. Eventually the music becomes a lot more jazzy than military, all the angels and devils dance together, and then the angels lead the devils out who have now become quite submissive. Make all of that what you will. After we watched this dance and discussed the bearings on modern interpersonal relationships (must have been the lingering effects of the mango sours of this morning) we sailed out of the harbor as the local fishing fleet was coming in. Dolphins and sea lions scampered or is it cavorted, and one of the four of us “younger” folks (actually I’m the oldest of this group of singles who have somehow managed to find each other) waved to the harbor pilot as he stepped gingerly onto the pilot boat. Much to our surprise, the pilot—who had gotten onto Silver Shadow’s bridge for only enough time to watch the lines being released and to point out to sea and say “aqui”—waved back. So we applauded him which resulted in the pilot boat sounding its whistle and then our ship responding in kind in a sort of ad hoc farewell ceremony that we had started. Apparently, we are the only cruise ship to call at Iqueque, Chile is quite a while. Not quite as good as a tugboat doing pirouettes for us, but nice nevertheless. I will remember this stop even longer than the port’s dead fish smell which somehow got into the ship’s ventilation system clears as we head out to sea.

 

The Bolivian Part of Chile or the Chilean Part of Peru

Monday October 6 – Arica, Chile

 

A road sign on the Pan-American Highway, the main street of Arica, says “Western Frontier – 3 km”. That is the border with Peru. 135 miles NE of Arica is the border with Bolivia. The tour guide said that there have been “trouble with the maps for many years”. What he was saying euphemistically was that The Western part of Chile used to be Peru and Bolivia has claimed for the last number of decades the road corridor from their land-locked country to the port of Arica, Chile. So I took an all day tour the 129 miles up this well paved but very mountainous road to 15,000 foot high Lake Chungara in the Lauca National Park. A number of 20,000 foot volcanoes, some active, surround the late along with alpacas, llamas, vicunas, and various other Andean beings apparently sent by central casting. (The only exception was two guys with fur hats playing Simon and Garfunkel’s La Condor Passe on panpipes. We were told they are all busking around the world. Insert laugh here.) We left on one of two buses—one was reserved in case of a breakdown in the driest desert in the world—at 8:30 am and drove for a 4 hours across the 12,500 foot plus high Chilean Altiplano. We did stop for the obligatory quite lovely local church and a roadside restaurant in which we had “herbal tea”. The herb was coca which the guide said would help us to adjust to the altitude. While I am refraining from making fun of my fellow guests for fear of reinforcing the incorrect impression that the experience of this cruise is marred by the other guests—it is not, making fun of some of the say less sophisticated travelers is part of the fun—I have to mention that a few of my fellow tour excursion goers wanted to buy “those wonderful leaves” and bring them back with them to the US. One lady mentioned that she didn’t like the tea at first but found it most enjoyable as she drank it. She said she wanted to buy some of “those fantastic leaves” to take back home to San Diego. She said, “How wonderful this is. I go up to the Palm Springs in the mountains, you know, and the tea is also good for you.” You betcha. Beats the little bags of nitrate from Tuesday’s visit to a nitrate ghost town, but that’s for the next installment.

 

The tour was to one of the most beautiful mountain places I’ve ever been, the guide—who unfortunately seemed to suffer from ADHD (or lots of healthful herbal tea) and was definitely off his meds—was quite knowledgeable when he wasn’t singing to himself or otherwise climbing the walls of the bus, a really nice stop for lunch in a local restaurant in a remarkably pleasant mountain town at 11,750 feet MSL had wonderful epinatas made with meat from don’t ask meat, and a short tour of the town with two buildings designed by pre-tower Eiffel, including a beautiful church, made for a really fantastic day. We had a barbeque on deck while watching a local university’s traditional dance troupe perform. This appeared to be members of a no doubt credit course for some really talented and very young kids who performed beyond their allotted time and got quite unceremoniously disembarked as the spring lines were being released and the gangway was being dismantled. We sailed out of Arica after a striking sunset, still feeling good from that nice tea. This was the day that got me to book the trip. It met all expectations.

 

 

 

 

Now I've Bean to Lima

Saturday, 4 October

Lima, Peru

I failed to mention earlier that I had dinner Thursday evening with Selvaggia and Alessandra. The three of us discussed shipboard life, the travel industry, and living in various countries and had a few laughs. I got a number of thumbs up from some of the other guests upon leaving the dining room. I am having a very good time on this cruise.

Now back to the port journal.

At noon yesterday we sailed into to huge industrial port of Callao (Cay-Yaw), actually more of a district of greater Lima, “The City of Kings”. No huge swells or other nautical issues to deal with, but the ever present tugboat escort all of a sudden started to pop wheelies as we entered the breakwater. After watching about a half dozen rotations, I tested my theory that this was because they were happy to see us here rather than what a fellow passenger intoned was to “clear the tug’s thrusters” by applauding the tugboat captain when he finally stopped his rotations. He immediately waved to me and then proceeded to rotate in the other direction for quite a while until he began to turn green and then slowly stopped. I was told later that our captain was watching and had gone into an uncontrolled giggle fit. Such is life at sea. I later saw the captain in plain dress as a member one of the ship’s excursions. A bet a few of the ship’s passengers on the bus were wondering who that short Italian was. He later told me he was afraid to go into Lima alone.

Having read up on the city, I spent the afternoon taking the four and a half hour “Greater Lima City Sights” excursion offered by the ship. We drove from the port (where the immigration officials checked our landing cards to ensure that we were not trying to enter Peru illegally, which would be very unlikely indeed) through quite a few iffy neighborhoods to the heart of downtown Lima. As it is still winter here, the people in the Plaza de Armas were about to slash their wrists from the 200^th day of 60ish highs and 100% humidity under dense clouds. (It rains only 1 inch a year; so it’s a dry wetness I guess.) Actually, all the Limarians (?) appeared to be seriously considering slashing us tourists’ wrists from the way they looked at us. Fortunately armored police vehicles and riot swat teams were everywhere. But, they were looking morose too. Clearly, Lima is not a rich town even though Peru has the highest GDP per capita of any of the Central and South American countries I am visiting on this cruise according to the CIA Fact Book entries I copied to the laptop before leaving Boulder. You never know when a fellow guest will ask me what the percentage is of men between 25 and 50 in Guatemala or the major crop in the highlands of Chile. Did you know that Ecuador transships half the cocaine from Colombia to the US? At any rate, on our way to the very exclusive Miraflores district we passed a guy pushing a plumbing supply hand cart. Not to sound too negative, I did enjoy the tour quite a bit. We visited the “Case de Aliga”, a fantastic very well preserved colonial mansion that is still used as a residence and a Franciscan run cathedral. The cathedral has cloisters and many architectural features that are very similar to those of Alhambra including intricate Moorish wood carved ceilings and beams and 100s of thousands of hand painted tiles. I also saw the Desamparados Central Railway Station where one of the great rail journeys departs each day to a 15,500 foot high town in the Andes.

We ended the tour itinerary by visiting how the other “1 in 100,000 lives”. Miraflores is lined with high rises, but all of them are capped with barbed wire and electrified fences. The shopping center is underground, no doubt to be guarded more effectively. Machine gunned security personnel were standing (looking morose) in each doorway of each residence, but a park overlooking the polluted Pacific coast had wonderful replicas of the mysterious Nasca Lines laid out in flowers and an exact copy of the serpentine Gaudi bench from Barcelona and the 10 times real life statue of a copulating couple. A nice touch.

Although the ship will stay in Callao Port until 6:30 this evening, I will most likely avoid taking the 1 hour ship’s shuttle bus back to Miraflores and consider this a sea day. I plan to wait until the sun begins to lighten the gray skies a bit and walk around the pier to see the huge container ships being loaded and unloaded. Tomorrow is a sea day and then on to three stops in Chile. I’m looking forward to my all day trip into the Andes on Monday.

There's a llama on the flag

Thursday, 2 October

Salaverry and Trujillo, Peru

The captain stopped me on deck after I returned from nearby Trujillo to tell me specifically that he never wanted to stop here again. This was a high priority technical port call for Trujillo, 8 hours by car north of Lima, so that the 70 or so passengers who had booked the two night $2,674 per person trip to Machu Picchu could get their B-737 charter to Cusco. Of course, these folks are paying a little less, but not much less, a night for their unused suites on the ship. F. Scott Fitzgerald is proved right again. The reason for the confidence from the captain to me was that when he cut the engines at 7 am to pick up the pilot the swell was so bad that bottles of liquor fell from the bars, cups of coffee off tables, and people fell out of their showers. We bobbed like a cork for about 5 minutes as we listed 30 degrees or so right and left, uh, starboard and port. The bottles of Port fell off the bar, too. I was on deck holding on tightly and kind of enjoyed the E-ticket ride.

After we were docking next to a freighter off-loading corn meal (tortillas Heath kits, if you will), I kind of enjoyed the stark desert scenery. The Peruvian coast gets less than 1 inch of rain a year. Nevertheless, it’s still winter here. Think San Francisco winter weather but with no rain, just very foggy and high temperatures approaching 65 each day. I put away the shorts and went to the layer thing for my visit to Trujillo with Larry and Libby Herson. Larry is Professor Emeritus and a former History Chair from Ohio State I believe. Larry and Libby spend most of their time on ships where Larry gives very animated lectures. I’ve gotten to know him over the years and we exchange ship’s lecturer stories. (I had lunch with a guest entertainer from Las Vegas a couple of days ago. Tom is a magician. We had a great time discussing being in “the business”, but my silverware kept disappearing.)

Trujillo is one of the oldest colonial cities in South America, dating back to 1534. The town square is beautiful with Moorish inspired architecture and a fantastic restored original house that is now a free museum. We were assigned a lovely young lady docent and a not so lovely guard with a machine gun, and the four of us had a great tour of the house that has much authentic and some original furniture and art work. Larry’s additional commentary on the town and its statuary made this one day stop very special, with the added bonus of passing through the swell again on the way out until we gained enough speed for the ship to stabilize. This time everything was tied down.

Lost At Sea - I

Kind of chilly on deck as we crossed the Equator and even more so today. All on board are explaining this by lowering their voices and invoking the “Humboldt Current”, a term no doubt one guest heard on the ship from someone in a uniform, probably the Head Housekeeper, and starting a chain reaction of explanation. This is common on small ships about EVERYTHING. In this case it is used in lieu of actually explaining why it’s about 65 degrees out at 4 degrees South latitude. So to come out of the cold I thought I’d relate a few of the incidents of luxury cruise ship life to those who may not have heard some of these stories in my private e-mails. (See, there is an incentive for writing me. You get bonus content.) As with all my postings, to paraphrase the author of “The Incredible Voyage of Jack de Crow” all events are entirely true although I’ve may have taken some literary license with the facts.

The first day after about 110 new guests joined the ship in Costa Rica I met a mother and daughter (70s and 50s or so of age) traveling together in the forward elevator. This lift serves guest rooms on 4 Deck but not the restaurant on the same level. The two ladies were apparently riding up and down, since I found them as I entered on 10 Deck, the highest level, trying to read the labels on the floor buttons. They said they were trying to find the word “restaurant” which surely would appear sooner or later if they just read each text enough times. I pressed the button for 5 Deck which connects through the ship’s reception lobby to the aft staircase and elevators to get them where they needed to go, and when the elevator door opened I pointed them in the right direction and hurried (I needed to hurry) to my room. But 10 minutes later I found them still riding up and down in the forward lift. After exchanging pleasantries, this time I took them to the breakfast place. As we walked through the lobby I made the mistake of saying, “The restaurant is right below us but we are going to the staircase that leads down to the entrance.” One of the woman said, “If it’s below us, why did you take us up here?” I suggested they order the liver omelet.

I failed to mention in my earlier posting regarding yesterday’s stop in Ecuador that I had a nice routine lunch of baby lamb chops and French fries, pictured below. (There’ve been a few inquiries from early readers of the blog about the connection to tuna fishing. There’s none other than I was watching the tuna ships being unloaded as I ate the lamb chops.)

This morning I had breakfast with an Australian woman who beckoned me to join her as I emerged onto the terrace behind the informal dining room Terrace Café (which the ship calls La Terrazza and I call The Cafeteria). The conversation went like this:

Me: May I join you?

Her: I guess, but I’m just leaving.

Me: Oh, I thought you indicated you want company.

Her: Oh, I guess that’s ok.

Me: Did you get to see Manta yesterday?

Her: No, I took an excursion.

Me: Did you see all the armed guards?

Her: No, but it can’t be as bad as in the US.

Me: What can’t be as bad as in the US.

Her: All the firearms that the police have.

Me: Where is that in the US?

Her: Everywhere the police in the States have machine guns. Even cops on the beat have machine guns strung over their shoulders.

Me: I’m not aware of that at all.

Her: All Americans carry guns and automatic weapons wherever they go.

Me: I’m an American and I don’t and don’t have any friends who have such things. Some may go hunting or to sports such as target shooting.

Her: No, you’re wrong. Everyone carries lots of guns. It’s ever since Bush was elected.

Me: What did he do?

Her: His policies, of course.

Me: You traveling alone?

Her: I always seem to.

Just found in the clip by my cabin door a letter from the Tour Manager. (He must have come out of his rabbit hole.) It is addressed to “Dear Guest” and announces a 50% refund for the tour in Costa Rica. It says the $67 credit is “a gesture as a token of our good will and understanding for this unfortunate event.” I have absolutely no idea what this is about. I will let you know if I find out. Of course, I have not yet been successful in getting Andres to slow down for long enough to answer any question before he speeds away saying, “I’m late, I’m late…”

The sun has come out providing warming rays. Time to go back to the pool area and continue to read, “Defining the Wind”, a wonderful book about the Beaufort Scale. Really. A number of you have looked at the few pictures of the wonders of this trip that are posted with this blog but have mentioned only my “suite”. It is nice, and be advised this is the CHEAPEST accommodation on the Silver Shadow. Did I mention the fresh fruit in the living room area each day and the box of lactose laden Godiva chocolate each night? Oh well, someone’s gotta do it.

Happy 5769. More after the Peru port calls…

Ecuador: Who Needs the Galapagos When You Have Manta?

After sailing from the port of Manta in Ecuador last evening it occurred to me that the 3 hour shore tour in my 118^th country was my favorite type of excursion. Learn a little about the country from the full time English teacher but part time tour guide, if possible drive up to the highest local point and take a picture of the ship, maybe visit a local industry, and then take a short walk in an impromptu shopping area which is surrounded by police with sub-machine guns before returning to the ship. The guide managed to cover all important facts about the country including the “amazing phenomenon of eggs balancing on their end only within 10 meters of the Equator Line on 25^th (!) of September and March”. I didn’t know that.

Manta is a small town on the Pacific coast which has three big claims to fame: a military base with presumably American jet fighters loudly flying in circles, the center of production of $800 “Panama Hats”, but it is primarily a grungy port where commercial tuna ships are unloaded laboriously by hand. Tuna fishing is so important that the otherwise very industrial town has its only public art piece in the center of town dedicated to that product. An additional highlight of any visitor’s stay is a tour of the “ivory nut” factory where the nuts of the tugua tree are processed into buttons, hastily hand made knick-knacks, or beads (presumably the rejects from the former production). The town has a lot of police, unsavory looking characters, and street waifs are most evident on otherwise empty streets, and all gas stations and even trunks full of tuna fresh from the ships are escorted by terrorist looking heavily armed guards. We arrived at the only port in Ecuador at noon and sailed at 6:30 pm as a tug continued to ram our ship as if to say, “and don’t come back”.

Today is a sea day. Tomorrow morning we arrive at Salaverry (which most folks onboard are spelling “salivary”, ok spit it out, ha, ha), the first of two ports in Peru, where I have been invited to explore some of the beautiful colonial houses of nearby Trujillo with Larry and Libby Herson. Larry is professor emeritus of and former department chair of History at Ohio State but now spends most of the year traveling from ship to ship giving enrichment lectures. How anyone would want to spend so much time or lecture on cruise ships is a mystery to me.

The Costa Rica Theme Park, But Nice

We sailed out of the beautiful port of Puerto Quetzal, Guatemala the day before yesterday and along San Salvador and Nicaragua yesterday, arriving at Puerto Caldera, Costa Rica early this morning. This is one of the most stable democracies in the Americas—think about that one a moment, will ya—and has become very popular as an eco-tourism destination. That means that most of folks from the USA come here to take very scary gondolas over tropical rain swollen rivers amidst dark green volcanic mountains (if they don’t do the much more scary adjacent zip line descent which seemed to be generating very loud screaming this morning), or observe carefully cultivated “wild” flowers and beautiful foliage along carefully prepared paths after driving modest distances along scenic roads and across rustic one-lane bridges. The line handlers at the Puerto Caldera, the primary Pacific container port where a Doll banana boat was being loaded (really) were carefully sweeping the dock for our arrival this morning. The primary cruise port is a little West of here up the coast at Puntarenas. So we were spared the stalls full of imported arts and crafts and perhaps the sight of another but much bigger big white shoebox by docking here.

But today’s short visit to the Costa Rica rain forest today was very nice, including the buffet lunch of local goodies, fresh corn tortillas, and wonderful fried plantains. Also the Costa Rican “Imperial” beer. Now that I think of it, especially that. I don’t recommend a full vacation as they have now developed this place so well that now it seems the entire country has become a rain forest theme park. But nice.

My camera seems to be working ok. Vodka as well as identifying a bad battery seems to have done the trick. That is, the expensive vodka on the camera’s battery contacts worked well along with taking it internally to help me to diagnose the constant low battery indication I was getting with freshly charged AA cells. We sail in a few minutes for Manta, Ecuador after another very enjoyable sea day. The new cruisers are now being called to “muster” for the life boat drill. I’m exempt as having supposedly done it last week when I got on. I will post this blog now and walk up and back in front of all the new people who in their life vests will look like Teletubbies.