Full Moon in the Tropics

Sunday, Dec. 7, 2025

Aboard the Orion, en route to Portobelo

Lexie took this photo of the full moon behind clouds. It annoys her that it looks so much like daylight, but I think this photo is excellent. All mine were too blurry since the camera said "stay still for two seconds," which only works if you aren't on a ship bounding over the waves...

The “expedition” we’re on is the only Lindblad cruise that takes place entirely in Panama, so I’m not going to say that we’re going to Portobelo, Panama; we must simply assume the nation.

And why are we on an only-Panama cruise? Because my son the future lawyer was INSISTENT that we were all going to be abducted and held for ransom and he thought the American history in Panama might give the diplomatic corps a slightly better chance at ransoming all of us. This entertains me mightily…but we went for the all-Panama trip anyway.

I texted Rusty this afternoon. This is our conversation.

We had a peaceful late morning, all of us sequestered in our own hotel rooms. I actually took a blissful nap—astonishing, after my deep, deep, restorative night’s sleep—and it was heavenly. A Lindblad cruise doesn’t leave a great deal of idle time; it’s part of their thing, so discovering a nap while on vacation was an utterly delicious treat.

Lexie and Scott found a little hole in the wall where we had lunch. It was half a step up from a street truck, and consequently absolutely delicious. Not pretty, but so what?

Then we lurked in the “hospitality lounge” at the hotel an oversized room where anyone who had gotten there early had stretched out on the few comfortable sofas for a blissful nap, which is a lot ruder when others are wandering around hoping to find more than a wooden folding chair to wait in. Twig and I wedged ourselves very obviously into a tiny space and smiled sweetly at the old guy who’d stretched his black socks across the sofa so he could read the library book on physics he’d brought with him. Grudgingly he sat up at last. We expanded into the space like oozing jello (there’s probably something about that in his physics book) and eventually found room for Lexie and Scott too. We’ve marked you, black socks. You are known.

Among the four of us we’ve identified the tendency to hit a wall, emotionally. Twig’s wall looms large in Rusty’s legend because throughout Rusty’s childhood, he watched open-mouthed in admiration when Twig would get up at the end of Thanksgiving dinners at my mother’s and say “Okay—I gotta go.” (This is what we’re putting on Twig’s tombstone. Lexie’s will say “It will only disappoint me.” They haven’t admitted to me what my signature statement is yet.) When Twig finds she’s done, she wants to leave RIGHT NOW, and it comes on her very fast. I have a much longer fuse, but I too hit the wall.

By the time the Lindblad people clapped their hands and got us moving, we’d ALL hit the wall. Been sitting here too long. We gladly got on a bus for the ride across the isthmus to Colon. (A pause, please, to admire the glory that is the word “isthmus.” Isn’t that a honey? Can you think of a more difficult word to pronounce cleanly? I mean, you have to admire that.)

Having hit the wall, Twig did an “Okay, I gotta go” and was the first person on the bus. I was watching bags for Lexie and Scott who went for a final hotel pee, which meant I got to lounge around watching people line up on the sidewalk, yet when I finally got on the bus, I had the premier seat—front row on the aisle. My view of Panama was exceptional.

And there was plenty to see. The city was huge and crowded and built like every old city, with roads that did not at all make a neat or orderly grid. Crowded with people who were fascinating to ogle. Filled with road signs and billboards and stores in Spanish that I could only sometimes understand. Endlessly fascinating. The local guide on the bus (magnificently named Gilberto) told us that a semester at the public university in Panama is $35. That’s it… and yet most people can’t go because they’re needed at home to earn money for the family. There’s a lot of money in Panama, but it ain’t evenly distributed…

Once on the highway, the countryside was beautiful and odd and not at all like northern Virginia. (HOW could the world be ANYTHING different from my world?? Ain’t travel grand?) There were a few houses tucked into little coves in the hills, but mostly it was the low forests that would certainly seem like jungle if you were on foot. Lots of palm trees. Lots of strange grasses. Lots of rivulets. Gilberto seemed entirely proud of the oversized population of crocodiles. “On Gatun Lake, they can get to eighteen feet long.” He’s a metric kind of guy, ol’ Gilberto, so maybe he did his meters-to-feet conversion wrong. Because I believe the technical description of that would be a Big Fucking Crocodile.

Gatun Lake is the vast artificial lake that flooded a huge percentage of a tiny country when the canal was being built. We’re not just going through it when we go through the canal; we’re stopping overnight there so we can tour the Smithsonian’s Tropical Research Facility. (It’s on an island called Barrio Coronado that was NOT an island before Gatun Lake was created; it was the top of the largest mountain in the area, and is now considered a perfect microenvironment to study the tropical world. Cool as shit…and how big are those crocodiles again?!

Where was I? On a bus. We drove into Colon, which as far as I could tell is a large port and more shantytowns. To get to the Orion (no, wait—we’re on the Quest), we had to get out of one bus and into another. Then THIS bus driver drove us through serious port roadways where we pulled to the side to let the cranes pass. And not just little back-of-the-truck cranes; I’m talking about the structures that are hundreds of feet high. I’m here to admire nature, no doubt—but watching this port in action left me open-mouthed in amazement. We got on the ship and I suppose I was supposed to be all excited about that—instead I stood on the little balcony of our stateroom and watched huge shipping containers fly through the air on hoists and lifts that could easily fight off alien attackers. I stood there and took videos, knowing that I couldn’t post them in my blog. And regretting it.

The unloading of shipping containers. SO fucking interesting. (No--really!)

(The crash when one of those long arms finally descends to connect with a shipping container is RIVETING. It sounds like the sound they used for the T Rex in Jurassic Park. Then the arm lifts up and brings an entire massive shipping container with it. Whee!) (Wait—let me regroup: Orange-billed parakeets. Tanagers. Frigatebirds. Eighteen-foot-long crocodiles. Okay. I’m back.)

Although it’s a tad petty, I’ll say that Twig and I have decided that our week on the Quest must be regarded as a sort of summer camp experience, since our stateroom is more like a county-room…absolutely tiny. It’s quite un-Lindbladian, in my opinion, because usually they’re aware that only very well-heeled old white people can afford their journeys and they accommodate them accordingly. Never mind. Quibbling seems petty.

We’re underway and the ship is rolling gently; it’s dreamy. The best part of the evening’s pre-dinner recap was the expedition leader, Mau, telling us that the difference between a pirate, a buccaneer, and a corsair was the seas they sailed—and as we are now in the Caribbean for the next 24 hours, we are to consider ourselves buccaneers. This amuses me.

(Corsairs were pirates on the Mediterranean. I didn’t hear where he said pirates were, but I’m assuming it was the Atlantic—but maybe the Pacific. Since we’ll get to the Pacific once we’re through the canal, perhaps that distinction will be made again.)

We’ve learned that this is Lindblad’s very first all-Panamanian expedition, and the expedition is staffed entirely by Panamanian locals. We all appreciate the fact. But the guides are all sitting in the lounge right now in front of the library area with its plush leather sofas…I’m writing from the opposite corner on (admittedly) an entirely comfortable banquette. They’re hooting and laughing and having a hell of a time…which I mildly resent but mostly really like. They’re clearly happy to be here…and so am I!

Twig has gone to bed and I’m caught up. I’m going to post this now and go to bed myself. Morning stretch class is at 6:30 in the morning, which would have been impossible for me back in the days when I always slept like a Disney princess…now that my iWatch says intensely dismissive things like “OK” about my sleep, I figure I might as well get up and enjoy the coolest part of the day while conducting an inept downward-facing dog…

The bartender is now playing Sombr at my request; we’ve bonded over how much we like his music. Makes me feel JUST a little younger than my old-lady years!