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The Cruise gig is confirmed and booked

1/25/2020

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… all the important information here is lifted from www.Wikipedia.com.
It is official. I’m going to draw smiles on another Carnival Cruise. This one leaves San Diego and meanders its way down to the Panama Canal. I have spoken with the Entertainment Director and I have my flight information. I’m ready to go.
The first stop on my upcoming trip Huatulco. A town and municipality in Oaxaca in south-western Mexico. It is part of the Pochutla District in the east of the Costa Region. The meaning of Huatulco or Guatulco Coatulco is, "where they worship the tree", referring to an ancient legend. "Where they worship the tree”. I think I'm already going to like Huatulco.
Location of Huatulco in Oaxaca Huatulco (Spanish pronunciation: [wa'tulko]; wah-TOOL-coh), It is centered on the town of La Crucecita, Huatulco is a tourist development in Mexico. It is located on the Pacific coast in the state of Oaxaca. I already know I’m going to love the cuisine. Huatulco’s tourism industry is centered on its nine bays, thus the name Bahias de Huatulco, but has since been unofficially shortened to simply Huatulco. Huatulco has a wide variety of accommodations from rooms for rent, small economy luxury hotels, luxury villas, vacation condominiums, bed, and breakfasts, as well as several luxury resorts standing on or near the shores of Tangolunda Bay. The Camino Real Zaashila (formerly the Omni Zaashila), Quinta Real Huatulco, Las Brisas (formerly a Club Med), Dreams Resort & Spa (formerly the Royal Maeva then the Gala hotel), and the Barceló (formerly the Sheraton hotel) are examples of the most popular larger resorts in the are It sounds like a place where properties change hands often. Like disposable corporate assets. Whatever makes the world go around, as they say. Huatulco is located in the state of Oaxaca where the foothills of the Sierra Madre del Sur mountains meet the Pacific Ocean approximately 500 km south of Acapulco, Guerrero.[1] The population is 50,000. Interesting. Legends say the Toltecs (an interesting archaeological Mesoamerican culture) and Quetzalcoatl (even more interesting with their Feathered Serpent God) came from this area. Quetzalcoátl, according to a later legend, set an enormous and indestructible cross. Various people have passed through this area, including the Chatmon, the Zapotecs, and the Mexicas.[1] After the Spanish Conquest, Huatulco thrived as a port under Hernán Cortés's control serving as a vantage point for Spanish galleons and a distribution center for supplies on the Pacific coast. The latter half of the 16th Century saw Huatulco attacked by Francis Drake and Thomas Cavendish—both of whom left their prints on the region's history and legends that continue to this day.[1] A very polite way to refer to massacres, pillaging and pirating. All that activity of discovering a “new world”. The resort development began in the 1980s, Huatulco was little known except as a coffee-growing area.[1] In 1984, FONATUR (Fondo Nacional de Turismo), a government agency dedicated to the development of tourism in Mexico, acquired 21,000 hectares of land to develop a tourism center, similar to that in Cancún. I’m guessing that came about due to the NAFTA agreement. Seems plausible. Did anyone get anything on that idea? The existing population was relocated to Santa María Huatulco.[2] The plan resulted in the improvement of roadways and other infrastructure. It also has populated areas mixed with "green zones" to make the area ecologically friendlier.[1] So, it's a new development with a heart. Now I get the “where they worship the trees” thing. In addition to the beaches, there are small communities of Bahias de Huatulco, such as Santa Cruz, La Crucecita, or old Santa María Huatulco (the municipal seat). Transportation between the communities is available by bus or taxi. The entire area has a "small town" feel about it and is rarely crowded with tourists except for the Christmas and Semana Santa holiday periods.
Huatulco's Cacaluta Bay About 80% of all tourism in Bahias de Huatulco is domestic in nature. Only about 20% of Huatulco's tourism is foreign, mainly because international air access is limited. Bahias de Huatulco has a small international airport just 20 minutes from the main resorts in Tangolunda Bay. This airport has recently increased tourism and helped to popularize the Pacific Coast backpacker route through Huatulco, Zipolite, Mazunte, and Puerto Escondido. Okay, that sounds like a fun group of people to visit with. I have got to find more information about that trip hiking the lower Pacific Coast. The peak season for foreign tourism is typically from December through April. Huatulco was declared a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in 2006. Well neat. I think I’m really going to like this first stop on the trip. I’ve got my little watercolor travel kit and sketchbooks. I can’t wait.

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The Panama Canal Cruise ... getting ready.

1/13/2020

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*Stolen from Wikipedia, for the most part…

The Panama Canal (Spanish: Canal de Panamá) is an artificial 82 km (51 mi) waterway in Panama that connects the Atlantic Ocean with the Pacific Ocean. The canal cuts across the Isthmus of Panama and is a conduit for maritime trade. Canal locks are at each end to lift ships up to Gatun Lake, an artificial lake created to reduce the amount of excavation work required for the canal, 26 m (85 ft) above sea level, and then lower the ships at the other end. The original locks are 32.5 m (110 ft) wide. A third, wider lane of locks was constructed between September 2007 and May 2016. The expanded canal began commercial operation on June 26, 2016. The new locks allow transit of larger, neo-Panamax ships, capable of handling more cargo.[1 And modern times cruise ship novelty. The construction of the Panama Canal is where the expression "Another Day, Another Dollar" comes from, as the workers were rumored to be paid a dollar a day for their labor.[1] Very much similar to the pay of the cruise caricaturist.
France began work on the canal in 1881 but stopped due to engineering problems and a high worker mortality rate. The United States took over the project in 1904 and opened the canal on August 15, 1914. There was a world war happening at the time. There was a priority strategic need for such a shortcut. One of the largest and most difficult engineering projects ever undertaken, the Panama Canal shortcut greatly reduced the time for ships to travel between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, enabling them to avoid the lengthy, hazardous Cape Horn route around the southernmost tip of South America via the Drake Passage or Strait of Magellan and the even less popular route through the Arctic Archipelago and the Bering Strait. My cousin and I were just talking about this the other night. I love history humor.
Colombia, France, and later the United States controlled the territory surrounding the canal during construction. The US continued to control the canal and surrounding Panama Canal Zone until the 1977 Torrijos–Carter Treaties provided for handover to Panama. After a period of joint American–Panamanian control, in 1999, the canal was taken over by the Panamanian government. It is now managed and operated by the government-owned Panama Canal Authority.
Annual traffic has risen from about 1,000 ships in 1914, when the canal opened, to 14,702 vessels in 2008, for a total of 333.7 million Panama Canal/Universal Measurement System (PC/UMS) tons. By 2012, more than 815,000 vessels had passed through the canal.[2] It takes 11.38 hours to pass through the Panama Canal.[3] The American Society of Civil Engineers has ranked the Panama Canal one of the seven wonders of the modern world.[4]
And in a couple of weeks, I’ll be going through this engineering wonder of the world. As a caricaturist on a cruise ship. Once again, I have the opportunity to draw people from all over the world and spend little time with them on one of their life highlights. I relish the opportunity. I draw smiles, its what I do. It’s all I want to do. Well, there is another motive to the trip

I’ll be with very little internet service on the cruise, something I think Space X is actually working on these days. Anyway, I’ll be offline and disconnected and to me, that is the best part of these trips, forcefully unplug. I will also be traveling alone. This automatically forces me into an instinctive observation mode. It’s an artist thing. We are trained to look at our world in a way that most people do not see. It’s a wonderful gift to have. Sketchbook and journal is the greatest way to exercise this skill. I can’t wait, it’s like a musician practices or an athlete trains, an artist with time in the sketchbook alone in a new place with new people and new experiences…. oh I just can't wait.

This time between here and there is the equivalent to a marathoner working up to a race coming up. I’m on a routine. I’m remembering old things and trying new things and fiddling with gear and supplies and techniques. Speed drawing. A quick sketch is my instinctive method on trips. It comes from decades of quick sketching caricatures. Watercolor is my medium of choice on these trips. It’s easy to travel with. Compact. A little goes a long way. It’s versatile. I can apply to sketches later when I’m alone in my crew bunk.

That’s right, I’ll be in a crew bunk. Not a stateroom, No towel animals on my bed. No lavender or pleasantly scented lotions and soaps. Just a bunk. An RV size shower. Most probably in the front hull of the ship. Just about wave crashing level. I can’t wait.

More as this develops.

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Ty, the Rambling Artist

The Cruise gig is confirmed and booked

The Panama Canal Cruise ... getting ready.

From Ty Walls:

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