Charley & Anet Carlin

We left Huatulco Mexico and headed for Cabo San Lucas, Baja. By now I am feeling like home. We had sailed down the coast of Mexico for a day, passing Mazatlan and Acapulco.

While crossing the ocean to Baja we saw lots of dolphins riding the bow wake. A friend we met on the ship said that he looked down and saw hundreds of dolphins. He thinks we had crossed through the area of a fish ball and there had been a great feeding near where us.

We arrived at Cabo San Lucas in the morning. What a beautiful bay. Here is the playground of California. There always seem to be 5 or 6 parasailers up at the same time. We saw jet skis everywhere, sailboats, tour boats, private boats, yachts and cruise ships everywhere. Beautiful water and beaches and people enjoying them.

What a paradise. We were in port for most of the day. The pier was a commercial one so we traveled by bus to see the country and to get to our tour of the rainforest. Eight of us were carried in each of the open gondolas (think modified ski lift) and as we sat there we were carried up through the rainforest, a second growth forest recovered area, next to the primal rainforest up the mountain.

Now, here is an icon that is known around the world. The Panama Canal! A place that everyone has a picture of in their heads. I certainly had one and I had read about it and seen photographs. We did a show a couple of years back in which it was heavily reported upon, Intimate Apparel by Lynn Nottage. None of the images I had were what it was like in person.

Aruba Trivia from The Happy Island

The Island of Aruba is one of three in the ABC island, the lesser Antilles. The three islands are aruba bonita and curacao. Although now, as of a couple years ago, all are independent, they are part of the Netherlands. The main city Oranestad (sp), get its name from the color orange, the royal color of the Netherlands. One of the very high points (high by island standards, a mere lump by mountain standards) is called Haystack hill. It looks like a pyramid, was man made for communications towers, and gets its name from the trees that grow on the hill, that in the fall have yellow leaves that make the hill look like a haystack. Our guide who told us of the local lore of Aruba noted several times that the names of things are very simple.