Going Home

Since leaving California, we have traveled down the West Coast of Mexico, stopped in El Salvador, and transited the Panama Canal. We are currently in the Caribbean and will arrive in Florida Sunday morning. I will be back in my house by Sunday night, May 17th. It had been a long journey and after four and a half months, I am ready to be home.

I was very interested in the West Coast of Mexico and El Salvador for its Mayan history and took all opportunities to visit the sites near our ports. The Mayan culture was very advanced and was wiped out primarily by the arrival of the Europeans who brought disease and warfare. Their cultural centers had huge pyramids and large plazas.

Yesterday we transited the Panama Canal. It brought back many memories of our years there. We sailed past our old Army installation (now a center of learning) and I thought I saw the roof of our old house. Panama has thrived since the canal was turned over to the Panamanians and everywhere there is new industry and roads. Many of the places we saw in Panama City were barely recognizable. The city felt safer and cleaner than I remembered.  

                                                                               Onward Journey

I realize I have not written for a while, but I am still on my journey. Since I last wrote, we spent seven days at sea crossing the Bering Sea and the Aleutian Islands to reach Kodiak Island in Alaska. The crossing was cold and rocky, not to mention that two days after leaving Hokkaido Japan, there was a large earthquake right in the area we had just visited!
In Alaska, we made three stops – Kodiak Island, Sitka and Ketchikan. All three towns were small, and we enjoyed some hikes, totem poles, eagles and even a whale.
Our most recent stop was in Seattle, Washington. My cousin has relatives there on her husband’s side who hosted us for the day. Seattle is a beautiful city that is surrounded by water, mountains and beautiful parks.
Today is the first of May and our long cruise ends on the 17th. We will continue South to the Panama Canal, go through the Caribbean and end in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

                                                                            Southern Japan

 One of the attractions of this world cruise for me was that we were planning to stop at five islands in Japan starting with Okinawa in the far south and travel through the island chain to Hakodate in Hokkaido in the far north. Throughout Japan, we have been to memorials and battle sites from World War II but have never felt any animosity towards us as Americans.
In Okinawa, there remains a large US military presence.  We visited a memorial to those lost in the battle of Okinawa, saw beautiful Japanese gardens and walked along a very busy shopping street.  We also visited one of the largest caves in Japan that went on for several kilometers, had a stream and small waterfalls in it.
The next day we arrived in Amami – a small island north of Okinawa. There, it was about nature and the beautiful beaches. We went into a “submarine” boat with windows below the surface of the water. Then we went out to enjoy the coral reef and tropical fish viewed from our windows. .
We spent two days in Nagasaki and there I really started to feel like we were in Japan. We went to a beautiful Japanese restaurant for lunch where you had to take off your shoes before entering and the rooms had sliding screen doors. The lunch was presented in bento boxes and artistically arranged. Then we visited the Peace Park which was very moving. The grounds are beautiful with statues and fountains.  In the park was ground zero, where the A-bomb was dropped – a very solemn place.
While in Nagasaki, our boat was docked next to a large public park. As we were about to leave, the Nagasaki high school brass band came to serenade us as we left. They were terrific and somehow managed to wave goodbye to us as they were playing their instruments. 

                                                                                    Vietnam

Vietnam has grown tremendously since the last time I was here ten years ago. Its population has burgeoned, construction has boomed, and it feels like a different country.
Our first top was at a commercial port about an hour and a half away from Saigon. I decided to visit the countryside that day as I had visited the city before. My tour was advertised as seeing the countryside, but the countryside didn’t exist. There were businesses and houses and small towns everywhere – occasionally one could see a rice field but that’s all.
We then traveled midway up the coast to the city of Da Nang. Once again, I did not recognize the city I had visited 10 years ago. The whole waterfront was built up with huge hotels. While there, we took a rickshaw ride in the heavy traffic and passed by a beautiful new “dragon bridge.” Then we visited the beach where the US marines first came ashore during the Vietnam war. We finished our tour at a temple with a huge Guanyin statue (a female buddha).
Our final stop in Vietnam was Halong Bay. The weather was quite hazy, but the karst mountains were beautiful. We cruised through the bay and stopped at a huge cave that we hiked through.
Ever since Australia, the weather has been extremely hot and humid. We are now traveling north where it should be more comfortable.