Equator Crossing and Guayaquil Ecuador

It’s been a relatively quiet few days. We crossed the equator on Monday with a little pomp and circumstance from a visit by King Neptune and his court. The sea legend is you must ask King Neptune to cross the equator when crossing your first time, or it was just another reason to have a party. Some people are “chosen” from the passengers who have offended the king somehow and must make amends which ranged from a bucket of cold water to kissing a fish, complete with face mask.

On Tuesday, we arrive in Guayaquil Ecuador. The plan was to do a tour of the city, some of the markets and a Panama hat company. Turns out Panama hats are not from Panama but from Ecuador. There were made famous by Teddy Roosevelt at the opening of the Panama canal and became the “panama hat”. Unfortunately, when we arrived and were met by the immigration officials, we were informed that Ecuador had gone to a level red with Covid, so we could do our bus tour but we could not get off the bus. So very few pictures and no new hat (probably saved me some money for another hat I didn’t wear) As we were leaving the port in several buses, we were met by the local and federal police and provided an escort through the city. We were one of the first cruise ships to arrive since things were shut down in 2020 so the city also had a photographer along to take pictures of the buses and us in them to show tourism was returning. That led to a debate on the ship of were the police there really to escort us or to make sure we didn’t get off the bus.

So now a few sea days on our way to Chile where we will have five port stops as we make our way to Antarctica. Also for those of you in the northern climates, it has cooled off a little and was only 72 degrees this morning when I went for my walk.

Some pictures from Guayaquil