Slow, quiet and big city day

We arrived at Fuerte Amador in the early morning and by 8:30, Al had left on an expedition to view the inner workings of the Canal and its expansion. This is the longest port stop we’ll make, because we aren’t entering the Canal proper until 6 am tomorrow morning, so we’re here for almost 24 hours. I suspect the crew are pleased – they get shore leave and don’t have to be back on board until 11 pm, for the last tender run.

The reason for the long stay is simple. The point of this cruise is the Panama Canal, and if we leave at any other time to go through, we’ll miss some of it because it’ll be dark. So, for today, we’re anchored in the bay just off the marina, and we’re tendering into shore.

The marina – just behind the marina is the approach to the Canal.

My original idea was to go to shore and walk the causeway, since the guidebook said it was a walking, jogging and biking path linking four small islands (where the marina and cruise terminal was located) to the mainland and the city proper. It was made of material excavated from the Canal and was designed to keep the Canal entrance from silting up.

Part of the causeway – the bright coloured circus tent like thing is the Bridge of Life Museum of Biodiversity.

However, the cold had really gotten a good hold, and instead I just stayed inside and was quiet – spent much of the day napping. On his return, Al said that it was just as well, as there’s major roadwork being done on the causeway and it’s walking appeal is virtually nil. Also that it’s lined with restaurants and not much else. So probably not a big loss.

Panama City has an amazing skyline, and looks like a completely modern city that we’d find in Canada or the US. I remember hearing somebody say that it reminded them of Hong Kong, and it’s huge. 50% of the country’s population lives in two cities – this one, and Colon, on the Caribbean, at the other end of the Canal.

When the US took over in 1904, they redesigned the canal, keeping what they could of what had already been done, but taking into account the actual conditions they were dealing with. They decided the best way to tackle the project was to dam the Chagres river and flood the centre of the Isthmus to create a huge lake, which cut down the amount of excavation that had to be done. Locks at each end raise ships from sea level to the height of the lake.

They also tackled the health issue and dealt with the malaria and yellow fever that had killed so many of the workers during the French attempt. They completely revamped the infrastructure needed to support the work and the workers – sewers, water supply, repair ships, housing, cafeterias, hotels all the way along the planned route. The US basically built a series of temporary cities to house the workers they brought in from the US and other areas.

They also tackled the malaria and yellow fever problems, along with the other health issues. To their credit, the French hadn’t ignored the situation, but they also had no idea what caused the illnesses – remember, this was in the 1800s and it wasn’t until 1881 that the idea that they might be transmitted by mosquito was even proposed. Once it was proven, the US took measures to reduce the risk of transmission by draining swamps and spraying to kill the larvae that grew in the boggy areas.

Once the Americans got moving, it took ten years to complete the Canal, and it opened for business in 1914. There were all kinds of political issues that had to be dealt with, which included the US assisting the establishment of the nation of Panama (until 1903 the isthmus was part of Columbia) and problems both in the terms of the treaty that was signed, and in the authority of the man who negotiated the treaty for Panama (he was not either Columbian or Panamanian, he was French, and he wasn’t authorized to sign treaties for the country, but did anyway). I’m not going into any of them, just because there’s no room here, and because none of the books and talks really discussed them in any depth, so anything I’d say would be less than useful.

Suffice it to say that it seemed to take more time to work out the politics around the Canal than it did to actually build the thing, since negotiations and talks continued off and on through the entire 20^th century until the final handover in the late 1990s. Eventually the US and Panama agreed that the US would have sovereignty over the Canal Zone for 99 years, after which they handed the land back over to Panama.

The Canal is not just the canal – it’s a 10 mile wide strip of land on either side of the actual waterway known as the Canal Zone and it’s the lake joining the two cuts. It’s a protected area, both in terms of international treaties, and in terms of who is allowed in the area. As such, it has proven to be a real biodiverse treasure for Panama.

Today, the Canal is owned and operated by Panama, but with an international board, and the 10 mile wide swath of land is covered by international treaties to keep it neutral and open.

Tomorrow we enter the Canal.

And just because I got the photo – a visitor from the mainland.

Oxen, goats, monks, and world wide wine

Today we’re at sea, heading toward Panama City/Fuerte Amador. I want to finish up the coffee talk with one small story about the origins of coffee and about the oxcart, then we’ll talk about the New World vs. Old World Wine Tasting.

It seems there was a goat herder in Ethopia, many centuries ago. He noticed that his goats, when they ate the red beans off a particular set of bushes, would get really frisky. Now this herder was attached to a monastery and he mentioned this to the brothers, who then decided to try the beans and see if they could eat them. They thought it might help keep them awake when there were those night long vigils and very, very long services. But the beans were  bitter. They tried roasting them, but they got hard and difficult to chew, so they tried grinding them and boiling them to soften the seeds, turning the water into a fragrant brown liquid, which we know today is coffee. And sure enough, it did keep them awake for the long, long middle of the night services.

And that, according to our guide, is the origin of coffee. It’s a folktale, of course, and factually there’s not much evidence of its existence before the 1400s. It is known that its first appearance was in Yemen, and that the beans had come originally from Ethiopia – so its not beyond the imagination that its discovery could have happened in a way similar to this. Ethiopia was Christian, and there were major trade routes that went through the Holy Land to just about everywhere, so it’s indeed possible that the monks may have sent coffee back to Jerusalem and it made its way from there to Yemen. To quote a really bad movie line, “It could happen!”

In Costa Rica, people used to move the coffee beans for export from the mountains to the markets and the ports using oxcarts. They’d decorate them beautifully, and if I remember right, it’s the national symbol of the country. There was an absolutely huge one on display on the trip to the plantation, but I got the photo of one that was on the plantation itself – Al got ones of the big fellow (I was feeling too punky by then to want to get out of the bus – the cold was tightening its grip) and if I can find his photos, I’ll post them later.

 

The wine tasting was not as good as I had wanted, but not because the wines were bad or because it was a poor experience. Tasting anything with a cold is not nearly as much fun as when you’re healthy, and I was still battling the virus, so was feeling achy and logy, and the nose and tastebuds were shutting down. Even so, I got enough flavour to enjoy what I did taste. Two from the New World, and two from the Old – France, to be exact.

We started with a Pouilly Fume (AOC) from Michelle Redde in the Loire Valley in France, moved to a Sauvignon Blanc from Marlborough New Zealand for the whites.

 

The Puoilly Fume (2011) is made from Sauvignon Blanc grapes, and it’s grown in flinty soil, has a pale straw/yellow colour with complex odours. There’s a metallic undertone, some lime/citrus odours and flavours, and some alkalai notes in it. Those metallic/minerally flavours are a feature of old world wines, regardless of the varietal or the colour of the wine. It’s crisp and fresh on the tongue, and paired well with goat cheese and strawberries, but with the strawberries, the minerality comes forward at the expense of the other flavours in the wine.

 

 

 

 

The New Zealand (2014) wine, also Sauvignon Blanc was layered, but more straightforward than the Pouilly Fume – I forgot to note the colours, but it’s more full bodied than the French white, with more acid and alcohol, as well as a more grapefruity flavour. It also did well by the goat cheese, but not as well as the French wine.

 

 

 

The reds were a Perrin Cotes Du Rhone (2010) (from the Rhone Valley) which was a Shiraz blended with other varietals. An intense ruby colour with dark fruit, floral and liquorice flavours. It was spicy with fairly high tannins. Not so good with the goat cheese, but nice with the Gouda, and Al says it went well with a camembert. (I find soft cheeses very bland, and I couldn’t even taste the cam with my cold, so he had to provide the assessment).

 

 

 

And the 2013 Footprint Shiraz from South Africa was also an intense ruby, with smokey, warm red meat odours (Cecelia also noted that it held animal sweat notes, so maybe my nose was interpreting animal sweat to red meat. Or the nose was just off in bed trying to beat the virus.) We both got the earthy and mineral old world flavours. It was not a good pairing with the goat cheese, because of the lack of acidity, but it went not too badly with the gouda.

So, enough for today – tomorrow we reach Fuerte Amador, and since my day there was full blown cold with attendant exhaustion, I’ll spend the time telling you more about the city, the Fuerte and the Canal on a catch-up.

Cofffffffffffffeeeeeeeeeeeee!

I’m a coffee addict. Love the stuff, and can’t get enough of it. When we were trying to decide which excursions to go on, it was a really tough toss up between this one and the chocolate one, but the coffee won out. And it was well worth it. The plantation was amazing. It’s a cooperative that came about because after the German family who originally owned the land gave up and moved away, the local people mostly grew and sold their own, and realized that if they combined forces, they could grow, process and market a lot more than they each could individually. So that’s where the cooperative came from. The Espiritu Santo name came from the fact that there’s an active volcano less then a kilometre away and the local people used to pray to the Holy Spirit to keep them safe. The German family who originally owned the plantation took the hint and named it for protection, I guess.

There are 2500 members of the cooperative, and they grow, as does all of Costa Rica, Arabica coffee beans. Costa Rica couldn’t compete with Columbia or Brazil for quantity so decided to go for quality. (I’m quoting here – I have no personal opinion on the superiority of various strains of coffee bean). When you buy Starbuck’s coffee, you’re buying Costa Rica coffee, and the plantation we visited sells most of their export harvest to Starbucks. What they don’t do for the export trade is roast the beans. Well, they do, but not completely – they give them a ten minute roast and then ship them north, and the companies that buy them finish the process to their own standards. For their own consumption, they roast for up to 20 minutes to get a full expresso roast. What Francisco said (and this was repeated by the plantation coop guides) is that the quality of the coffee is determined in the roast. Which explains a lot about Starbuck’s coffee.

In case you didn’t know, coffee beans need to be grown in the shade, so the plantations have been experimenting with different kinds of trees. They’re just now realizing that the eucalyptus trees they imported from Australia aren’t working out as planned.

Eucalyptus tree

Eucalyptus bark – sort of like the Arbutus bark.

The initial rationale was that the trees added acidity to the soil, but then someone figured out that a) volcanic soil is already very acid and b) the trees were sucking all the nutrients out of the soil, and damaging the coffee plants. So now they’re trying banana, which might turn out to be a good thing for them, since they might end up being able to diversify into both coffee and bananas. What they’re also doing is playing with what, in wine terms, is called ‘terroir’. The coffee masters figure that the trees add something to the soil that is absorbed by the coffee plants and will be passed into the beans, and will affect the flavour of the coffee. Both our guides admitted that they were taking it on trust that this was true – their palates couldn’t distinguish eucalyptus flavoured beans from banana flavoured beans.

The other thing is that they’re very ecologically committed – they use every portion of the bean – the red shell is composted to go back into the ground, the parchment covering the actual bean is burned for the drying process (those beans that aren’t air dried), the plants are put back into the soil when they’re done (every 25 or so years), and they’ve moving to a partial solar power base along with the electricity provided by the government.

We saw how people used to grind and make their coffee:

It’s a general purpose mortar and pestle, used for grinding coffee beans, corn or any other foods that needed grinding.

They used a simple cotton bag to put the beans in and filter the water through. The stuff he ground (not in the old pestle) and made for us (using a wood stove and old kettle) was really weak, but was not bad at all.

So, a quick tour of how coffee gets made. The plants are replaced every 25 years, and the seedlings are placed in the plantation when they’re two years old.

The beans are picked beginning in November, and the ones here aren’t even beginning to ripen yet.

Beans don’t all ripen right at the same time, so only ripe ones get picked by hand, so that each “street” as the rows are called, have to be picked over up to three times. Then they’re dumped in water, in ten pound lots

The green pit is where the beans are dumped, and a log is kept on the abacus just behind the water bath.

Yep, the abacus is old and big and clunky, but it works, and the general attitude is “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” The advantage here is that you can tote up the amounts quickly and easily – you don’t have to look at a screen, power outages don’t matter and the workers dumping the beans can also see that you’re recording the right amounts.

The floating beans, leaves, twigs and other debris are raked off the top to be composted and returned to the earth. The beans that sink are treated (gently rubbed and shaken) to remove the red shells, then treated again (same way) to remove the parchment from the actual bean.

Bottom to top: raw bean, red outer shell, inner parchment.

Normally there are two beans (seeds) per seed casing, but in some cases, as in the photo above, there’s only one. That’s called a peaberry and has half the number, twice the flavour and caffeine. Sometimes there are three beans in the pod.

They’re either placed out in the sun for up to 21 days, and turned every 20 minutes, or they’re baked in an oven to dry them, which takes less than three days.

Apparently the coffee tasters, who are like wine masters and assess various coffees for flavours and scents, haven’t resolved which process is the better one – the argument is not expected to be finished this century. Once again, both our guides said that they couldn’t tell the difference, but the coop guide said he preferred the air dried simply because it’s traditional, and he likes old fashioned, traditional things. (Later note: I couldn’t tell a difference either – either at the plantation or at home with coffee I bought at the plantation.) Sounds good to me.

Then they’re roasted, and as I mentioned before, the quality is determined by the roasting process. The longer the roast, the stronger the flavour.

Beans on the left aren’t roasted at all, on the right are ready for export – that’s what Starbuck’s gets.

Beans on the left are fully roasted and on the right are ground, ready for packaging for sale in country.

The plantation has two roasters – one takes 45 pounds of coffee at a time, and the other 90 pounds. Which doesn’t seem like much until you realize that it’s only a ten to twenty minute process, it’s all automated and you can get a lot of coffee roasted in a day even when you’re only doing 45 or 90 pounds at a time.

This is the 45 pound roaster.

After that, they’re bagged, tagged and shipped out. We tasted some of the product that stays in Costa Rica, and I’m sold – it was amazing stuff – very chocolatey and rich. Starbucks has a lot to answer for, that’s all I can say.

The cooperative had won, last year, the Golden Cup award for best coffee in Costa Rica, and the barrista who won the international barrista competition did it using Espiritu Santo coffee.

After that we hit the coop store, where there was coffee, coffee and more coffee (we got a whole bunch of different kinds of roast, as well as sunblessed and peaberry. FWIW, I can’t tell the difference between peaberry and regular), some amazing coffee liqueur, and a couple of small wooden presents for people.

Then it was back into the bus and drive the hour and a half back to the ship, with more information about Costa Rica.

One final thing I noticed about the security. While there was almost no police or armed forces presence anywhere near the docks, and we only saw two or three pairs of police on the entire journey (and they were very clearly doing normal patrolling type duties or shopping for dinner), we did notice one police boat patrolling around the ship. But every one who came onto the pier on foot was not only checked for ID, they were wand scanned before they were allowed to proceed. And the ID check was not cursory – they looked at the ID, at the person and checked the ID to be sure it was legit. None of the Mexican ports have had that amount of surveillance – while the presence had been very notable, with armed soldiers, dogs, cops and boats and cars in prominent and obvious locations, the actual security has been anywhere from lax to non-existent. So while Costa Rica doesn’t have a lot of noticable security, (10,000 cops for several million people), they take it seriously.

Except for the humidity, and the heat (and the snakes) I’d move down in a minute – it felt a lot like home, oddly. But their snakes are deadly – snake venom antidotes are one of their largest exports and they provide 90% of the snake venom antidotes used in South and Central America. So, I may go back and visit, but doubt I’ll live there.

Tomorrow is another at sea day, with a wine tasting, and a bit more about coffee and the canal.

It’s hot, humid and there are snakes, but it sure feels like home.

We arrive in Puntarenas at 8 am, thereby confusing brain fogged me again. I thought we were headed for Puerto Calderas, but apparently something changed and instead we landed in a place called Puntarenas.

It seems that Puntarenas and Puerto Caldera are two major ports on the Pacific side of the country – they’re very close and Puerto Caldera is the container port – where all the exports and import products come and go. Puntarenas is a city, long and narrow, and dedicated to shipping, fishing (commercial and tourist/recreational) and tourism.

We land in whichever one has room, and if both do, then by choice, Puntarenas. The port has far less visible military and police presence than any of the Mexican ports we were in.

Part of this is because Costa Rica doesn’t have a military. In 1948, they did away with it, and applied the 25% budget apportionment to education, health and social services. Canada, the US and Great Britain provide protection for them. France, Italy, and one or two other countries voluntarily joined the group later. Canada and the US provide coast guard patrols, although we didn’t see any naval vessels at all in the port or on the approach.

We’re going on another long excursion, this one to a coffee plantation in the interior of Costa Rica. The excursion was an hour and a half ride up to Espiritu Santo (Holy Spirit) Coffee Plantation Cooperative with a stop at an artisan’s outlet and was designed to give us some information about Costa Rica in general, as well as show us a coffee plantation.

The people of Costa Rica are, like Canadians and Americans, immigrants from elsewhere. The indigenous people are no longer the majority of the population and have been moved from their original homes in the centre of the country to the coastal regions. We were told on board ship that the coastal regions were populated by immigrants, and that the cities there seemed more threatening because of that, but if we were to go inland, we’d meet the “real” Costa Ricans. I’m assuming they meant that the coastal regions, are being populated by recent immigrants from South America, since our tour guide, Francisco, told us that his Italian grandparents settled here just after World War II, and his wife is Chinese.

A good proportion of the people we saw looked less Central American/Mexican than they did Russian, German, British, Spanish, Italian, French, Afro-Caribbean and Asian.

Costa Rica is a democratic republic, but with leftist leanings. Education, including university, is state supported, medical care is state supported, they have an excellent infrastructure of roads and electricity – even the poorest houses we saw had power and usually, TV antennas or satellite dishes and cars or motorcycles.

I’ve seen towns like this in BC and Washington State.

Their senior citizens have some amazing benefits, including free public transit both within and between cities and towns (which includes a traveling companion, regardless of age). They’re welcoming just about anybody into their country, and are dedicated to equal rights for all (whether this included the Indian population and women, I’m not sure.) In order to receive all the same rights and benefits of a Costa Rican citizen, you basically have to open a bank account, keep it open for six months and show an address that’s somewhere in Costa Rica. Their unemployment rate is 4%.

Looks so much like home, I want to move in!

What they don’t have is a welfare state. You don’t work, you don’t eat. Unless you’re a wife who’s been deserted, and even then, you get a roof over your head and the government makes damn sure your ex-partner pays half of his earnings as support, but anything over that you have to go out and work for. But the idea of welfare because you’re unemployable doesn’t seem to exist. I don’t know if that extends to medical disability or not.

What they do have is a fierce taxation system. Income tax is 9% across the board, but sales and services taxes can be up to 30% – but it seems to be working. People pay it because they get the services – free education and health care, low cost electricity (state owned and run) of around $50.00 a month, low cost water ($5.00 a month), and well maintained (or as well as can be in a tropical rain forest and earthquake prone zone) roads. The phone system is user pay.

They’re dedicated to an ecologically advanced state that is concerned with sustainability and preservation of the environment, while trying to balance employment and industry at the same time. I don’t know how successful they are, but they’re definitely dedicated to protecting the environment in several areas. But they are also trying to diversify their economy, so they have a major interest in the manufacture of microchips and call centres (Francisco, our tour guide, told us about phoning the Amazon call centre for some reason, and confusing the telephone operator when he spoke to her in Spanish and then told her her work place was only five blocks from his house). They grow coffee, tobacco, pineapples, bananas (Costa Rica is apparently the origin of the term “banana republic”), dairy production (including buffalo dairy and meat), mangos and mangas (if you want what we call a mango at home, in CR, you have to ask for a manga – mangoes are extremely bitter and eaten the way tequila is drunk: lemon and salt on thin slices.) They have an exporting fishing industry and a massive tuna factory – if you’ve ever heard of Bumblebee Tuna (I hadn’t), then that’s where it’s caught, processed and packed. Tourism is their fourth largest industry, after the microchips, call centres and coffee.

We saw a huge variety of housing on the trip – poor houses, made of scrounged material, with corrugated tin roofs and sometimes walls, yes, but also small, neatly made and kept row houses, and what I’d term middle class and upper middle class houses – lawns, driveways, neatly kept extensive gardens.

More of the latter – working class and middle class – than the absolute poorest. Everybody had a garden – even the poorest and smallest houses had plants in pots and a tree or two in the courtyard, and even the poorest houses had fences and gates and bars on the windows.

(That’s as much to keep curious critters out as it is to keep unwelcome people out – although the barbed wire and the glass topped walls I suspect were for the human critters. Nasty looking stuff, and not just on government property and commercial and industrial property. I saw a lot of it on residential places too.)

The cities and towns had lots and lots of scrub growth, and the villages were fighting a constant battle against the forest. (So were the towns: stuff here is growing in a lush, wet, warm climate on amazingly rich volcanic soil. The problem isn’t growing things, it’s trying to stop the growth from taking over).

Costa Rica is, we were informed, on the tectonic break between North and South America – it straddles the plates, and we apparently passed the break point on the way to the plantation (I’m taking the guide’s word for it – I wouldn’t know.) (Later addition: I did some research on arriving home. He’s right – Costa Rica is on a fault, but it’s not the the one that divides North and South America – that doesn’t exist. There’s about three plates that converge either on Costa Rican soil or right next to it. Costa Rica is on the Caribbean plate and the North American plate. The Cocos plate butts up against both of them just off the Pacific coast). Because of this, earthquakes are a daily occurrence in the country, and consequently, buildings tend to be low and single story – two or three at most. Buildings are cement by and large, with big window spaces and cooling vents under every roofline. Gutters, interestingly, are attached to the houses in two ways – the usual manner and with extra support nailed to the roof. When it rains, during the rainy season, it doesn’t kid around.

The center of the country is mountainous, with either two or three ranges running down the middle of the nation. North and south the land tends to flatten out, also to east and west – the Pacific and the Caribbean. Most of the agriculture is in the central part of the country and that’s where we went to see the plantation.

They have the same problem that North America does in terms of its agricultural workforce. A generation ago, most of the agricultural workers were Costa Ricans. During coffee harvesting especially, it was the pattern for families to move from the city to the country and spend the harvest picking berries – at that time, a 26 pound basket earned $1. Francisco said that as a kid, that’s how he used to earn his Christmas money – picking coffee during November and December. Like us, their “summer” holidays coincide with the harvest – so school doesn’t start until February and stops at the end of October, which is when the coffee harvest begins. Entire families did it as a seasonal job. But with the advent of education (so said our guide), nobody wants to do it anymore, and so they have to import workers from Nicaragua, where they get paid twice what they earn in their home country. (The rate is now $2.00 a basket, and one worker can harvest up to 20 to 25 baskets a day. Families pick together and between them can earn hundreds of dollars a day if they combine wages). The plantations provide housing, water and power, so the migrant workers only have to pay for food and whatever entertainment they choose while they’re picking.

How true is all this? I have to admit, it sounded a bit rah-rah – after all, no place is free of problems and social issues, but I know, independently, that recently and for a couple of years, Costa Rica has been rated by a couple of international organizations as on of the best places to live on the planet. So obviously, despite whatever problems they do have, they’re doing something very right.

Tomorrow, we get to the plantation and learn about how coffee is made. Advance note: one of the best things about the plantation is that the tours are definitely a sideline – they make their money by growing and selling coffee – we’re just the icing on the cake, which feels a lot better than knowing somebody’s rent money rests on whether I buy their goods or not.

Port, Chocolate and a Foggy Head

I mentioned two or three posts ago that I was coughing a lot on the way to the mangrove reserve – so were a lot of other people, and it seems that something was in the air, because I woke up the morning after we left Puerto Chiapas feeling achy and brain fogged. Not to mention stuffed up and phlegmy. Until we were past the Canal, I didn’t keep the daily blog posts up very much. Puerto Caldera was written right away, as was the Super Premium Wine Tasting. The rest of the posts will be after the fact, I’m afraid.

We were late for the Port and Chocolate tasting, and I forgot to bring a pen, so I didn’t take any notes. Al made some, and I’m cribbing off his, but since I’m now writing this a month (almost to the day) after the tasting, there’s not much I remember about it (another problem with brain fog – you don’t remember stuff very well.) Much of the information here comes from good old Wikipedia, with some detours into my Wine Atlas (thank you Don and Monica!) and the little bits I do remember Cecilia talking about.

Port is a fortified wine – they stop the fermentation process partway through, so there are some sugars left, and add distilled wines to them. “True” port is produced only in the Douro Valley in Portugal, even though it’s actually made in all kinds of other places in the world. Think France and the wine names there. Same sort of thing – the only wines that can be given a particular name are the wines produced in that area. So in France, sparkling wine produced in Champagne is called champagne. A sparkling wine produced in Burgundy using the same grape varietal is called a sparkling wine. In Europe, only fortified wines from the Douro Valley can be called port.

Most ports are sweet, because fermentation was stopped before all the sugar was consumed by the yeast. Aging and vintages are different for port than for other wines because, for one thing, they’re always blended. (Even if they only add the fortifiying wine, it still means its a blend.) If you run across a bottle of port with a vintage on it, it’s a superior product. The grapes used in that port are all from the same year, and the product has been sampled by the port governing body and approved for a vintage designation. It’s usually when the growing year turns out a spectacular harvest, and there may only be a couple of those in a decade.

There are a couple of kinds of port – ruby, which is the most common. It’s aged in concrete or stainless steel or glass to keep it from oxidizing, and it generally costs less than the tawny port. This is aged in oaken barrels and the oxidation causes the red of the original wine to darken to a browny-red or golden brown. They can be sweet with nutty flavours. There are other kinds of port, but we didn’t talk about those, and I’ve never tasted or even seen them.

We had three different kinds of chocolate and a strawberry to pair with these – light, milk chocolate, dark chocolate, and white chocolate. So . . . we tried:

 

 

Warre’s Warrior Reserve, Ruby Port from Portugal. I don’t remember anything of the taste of this one, except that it was okay and Al’s notes say that it worked with the milk chocolate.

 

 

 

 

 

DOW’s Late Bottled Vintage, also from Portugal, also a ruby/red port which was very nice, and went very well with a dark chocolate. Late bottled vintage port is port that’s been left over after a vintage bottling because demand wasn’t as high as expected. The port is all from a single vintage, and is bottled between four and six years after fermentation.

 

 

 

 

Warre’s Optima 10 year old Tawny Port, again from Portugal. This was my favourite, and it worked amazingly well with the white chocolate. It worked well with all of the chocolates, but it really made the white sing, and vice versa (and I’m not a white chocolate fan). I remember from another wine course we took that if you want to really impress your significant other on Valentine’s day, don’t get chocolate and champagne – get chocolate and port – and this tasting bears that out. While all of the chocolates worked well with the ports, Al’s notes indicate which ones paired the best.

 

 

 

 

Finally, we had some (sigh) Harvey’s Bristol Cream Sherry, from Jerez, Spain. Sigh because even after the education my palate has undergone, it’s still awful stuff! The cellar master agreed with me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oh, and for Poe fans: Amontillado (As in The Cask of Amontillado, one of his best ever stories) is not a port, it’s a sherry (which may explain why the villain got bricked up. Yuck.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

And, for Flanders and Swann fans, Madeira is a fortified wine, neither port nor sherry (but it’s really, really good!), made on the island of Madeira, just north of the Canary Islands.

 

 

 

Each day draws us closer to the Canal, so I’m going to start including little bits and pieces about Panama City, the Canal and its construction and expansion. This is also partly to take up some slack, because the entire experience was so amazing that I’d end up spending five or six full posts on it if I don’t start scatting bits and pieces through other posts. So tomorrow is bits and pieces on the Canal and Panama.

Of termites and raccoons and birds and memories

Just as our disgruntled fellow passenger was really getting tuned up, we entered the reserve. I don’t think anybody ever said exactly where we were. I’ve looked since we got home and the only place we could have been was the Reserva de la Biosfera La Encrucijada. Biosphere Reserve Crossroads.

We pulled up right near the water. As we offloaded, a lot of us took time to tell the guides how much we’d enjoyed the drive and the information they’d given us on the way out. I was glad to see that (yes, we did too), because the one person who’d been complaining had really made her feelings crystal clear.

We loaded into the boats after a biffy break (in which we discovered that toilet paper was in plentiful supply) were off into the swamp, which isn’t really a swamp as we understand that term here in Canada. It’s one of the names for a mangrove biome. Al and I ended up in the boat our principal guide, Luis, was in charge of.

Nice guy and very knowlegable – and what he didn’t know, he wasn’t afraid to ask of the boat’s pilot, who lives and works in the reserve, and knew a whole lot more – but didn’t (or couldn’t, I’m not sure which) speak English, so Luis had to translate for us.

In this reserve there are three kinds of mangroves – red, black and white (or grey). All of what you see in the photos is red mangrove, which according to our guide has the greatest tolerance for salty water – the black mangrove needs fresher water than is found in the areas we were in, and the grey, or white needs even less saline than the black. We did see black mangroves, but because we were moving quickly at that point, I didn’t get any photos of them.

Mangroves don’t have roots the way we understand most trees have roots.

Mangrove roots. And no, the water hasn’t receded – this is the way they grow.

The roots of the mangrove – the part that absorbs nutrients and feeds the tree, grow down from the branches of the mangrove, into the water, which is what gives the mangrove biome its distinctive (and somewhat spooky) appearance:

The “branches” at the top of the photo are actually the roots growing down from branches above us.

 The mangrove reserve here isn’t set up primarily for the trees. A huge variety of birds make their homes here, and rest here on migrations, and in conjunction with Canada and the US, Mexico has agreed to set areas aside to provide a sanctuary for the birds. This is one of them. And we lucked out big time!

The first part of the ride was in a shaded tunnel and there were no birds. Lots of red mangroves and termite mounds.

This termite mound is a mid-size one. There were many which were much larger than this. The dark lines you see on the trunk in the foreground are actually covered trails the termites build to reach food supplies. The other fascinating bit of information Luis gave us about the mounds is that parrots (not sure what kind) will lay eggs in the mound, and the termites will care for the eggs until they hatch. The baby parrots then eat the first things they see (or sense), and that, obviously, are the nurse termites. At some point, they break out of the mound, but I’m not sure exactly what happens after that.

Raccoons were also in plentiful supply. Same kind as at home, but thinner, and more overall brown. Ours are a browny-grey with black paws and a noticeable ringed tail (and the mask) and are more heavily built than the ones we saw (not just fatter – these were overall smaller, sleeker and less densly furred than Canadian raccoons). Their markings were muted, and the fur was a much more homogenous brown, to blend into the bark of the trees. And it worked – because it was daytime, the coons were sleeping, and until they moved, they blended in so well that it was hard to see them. I wasn’t able to focus quickly enough to get a photo of any of them. They live mostly on the tiny crabs that cling to the mangrove roots. I tried to get a photo, but they also move too quickly, are very well camoflaged and the camera took too long to focus on the zoom. By the time it got focused, we’d moved further along. (And the photos I did get were too blurry to use).

In the mangrove “tunnel” it smelled like rich, dark mud and fresh water (which was odd, because it wasn’t fresh – brackish at best) and the particular gas/oil mix I remembered from my childhood, up at the cottage.

Then the water way widened, the canopy opened up and we began to see egrets.

 

Click on the photo to see 10 egrets.

First one, then as the boat moved further away from the narrows, more and more and more. At first all we saw were the egrets, but as we got closer to the ocean, herons and eagles

and pelicans (looking kind of pterodactyl-like)

and all kinds of other birds that I couldn’t identify and don’t remember the names of (Luis told us, but I wasn’t in recording mode – I was too busy looking and enjoying).

We were passed by boats with supplies and people in them – all busy going the way we were, but very obviously not tourists, either Mexican or from the ship. When the land was set aside as a reserve, people lived and worked here – they hunted, fished,

scavenged and generally did what people do wherever they live. The government didn’t insist they leave, but they had to refrain from hunting – they could fish and shrimp, make and sell food and artwork, guide and earn their livings however else they wanted, without having to leave their villages.

And their only means of transportation is boat – there are very few roads in the reserve, simply because it’s a swamp – kinda hard to lay asphalt or gravel when it tends to sink as you lay it down, or don’t have any real land on which to grade a road.

They also have schools in the reserves. One of the other guides told us that in here, before the schools here were built, the kids would have to get up at 3 and 4 am in order to get to a 7  or 8 am starting time on the mainland. (High school starts an hour earlier than elementary school). They’d have to boat into the shore, then take buses to the closest elementary or high schools, which wasn’t all that great for them, and then do it all in reverse at the end of the day. That makes for a very long day for little kids. Now they have a school in the reserve, it’s much easier for them.

The wide channel eventually opened up into an enormous lagoon that was linked to the ocean. The water was clear blue (in the waterways, it was very brown), and very salty.

 

 

 

 

 

 

From the maps I saw later, this is the only open connection to the sea in the entire reserve – but that doesn’t mean it always will be the only one or that this won’t eventually close up.

That’s all sand, between the ocean and the lagoon, and even though things are growing on it, one good hurricane could wipe it out. And that’s apparantly, another function of the mangrove biome – the mangrove forests stand up to hurricanes amazingly well, and can mitigate the winds to an significant degree – there was very little damage in the last hurricane in the reserve and in the areas on the land edge of the biome because of trees.

That was as far out as we went, and we turned around and headed back to the bus.

The boat trip felt partly like a trip back in time – the smells, the distant foliage and the water reminded me strongly of the channels and boat routes where I spent my summers. We too had to use boats, since there weren’t any roads to our area of Georgian Bay near Beausoliel Island. I reveled in the feelings and memories. The cottage was always a special place for me, and it was amazing to see such similarities amid the differences.

When we returned to the landing site, the mainland, we noticed that the tide had risen – there were four steps we climbed down to get into the boats, and when we returned, two of them were underwater. Three quarters of an hour travel away from the ocean, and the water is almost fresh, but it’s still experiencing tides.

We got back on the bus and while the guides did give us a bit more information about the area and the reserve, most of the trip back was quiet. We were tired! But it was a wonderful excursion, and to see the trees, water and native life was amazing.

Another at sea day tomorrow – with a port and chocolate tasting. And then Puerto Caldera, in Costa Rica. And the clocks go back one hour – I am assuming that’s because Costa Rica isn’t on daylight savings time, since it’s in the same time zone as Mexico.

And, have you identification out and ready for inspection please.

One thing that did stand out  about the drive from Puerto Chiapas to the Mangrove Reserve was the number of checkpoints on the roads. We weren’t stopped, except at one, which looked like a cross between a federal prison and a modern bus station: lots and lots and lots of bare, flat ground, with grass and low bushes and flowers but no trees. That was unusual for what we’d seen on the drive to this point. There were trees everywhere, and not just because these were mango and banana plantations. Trees were grown as windbreaks between fields and along the property lines next to the road, and there were forests every once in a while.

High chainlink fences and rolls and rolls of razor wire and guard towers (complete with guards with big guns) surrounded the property, protecting long, low buildings set in an ocean of asphalt, with bus bays making a jagged edge to the otherwise mathematically straight lines and hard angles. Brilliant sun on whitewashed walls and lots of bright metal reflecting the sunlight. Clean, cold looking, and sterile.

It was immaculately landscaped and maintained, which was unusual – I didn’t see, even in the plantations, anything like this level of obsessive gardening care – the place looked manicured. No dead leaves or even dying leaves or dead blossoms cluttering up the plants or the ground, close cropped grass, perfectly edged along the paths and beds. (It looked rather forbidding, quite honestly, I much preferred the more relaxed gardens and vegetable plots and plantations we saw elsewhere – those looked friendly and as though real people looked after them.)

The checkpoint wasn’t for us, the people. All we had to do was get off the bus, walk through the building, show our ID (they barely even glanced at it) and then get back on the bus. While we were doing that, the bus was being inspected for illegal immigrants. There is, it seems, a kind of underground highway beginning in South America and extending all the way up into the US and Canada. But this isn’t the same kind of railroad as helped the runaway slaves in the States find their freedom. This is desperately poor people taking a chance on their own, or being bled dry by people purporting to move them safely up to the US or Canada. I’ve known about Mexicans trying to get into the US and Canada, but I wasn’t aware that the problem extended all the way down into South America, but apparently it does, and I suspect it’s a lucrative business moving people along the route.

And because we aren’t far from the Trans America highway that extends all the way down both continents, and because we’re near the border, the checkpoints are numerous and frequent if you don’t happen to be as privileged and coddled as we are. There is also another reason for so many checkpoints, and that is typical bureaucratic stupidity, which is a feature of life anywhere you live. There are a huge number of police forces in Mexico. There are the federal police, the state police, the city police and the municipal police and there may even be a regional police force. There are the branches of the armed forces: the army, the navy, the marines and the air force. And none of them trust any of the others, so you get five times more checkpoints than you need.

Fine by us – but not with most of the rest of the bus – people were quite nervous about having to get off and file through a building and climb back on the bus – I’m not sure why. If we’d been traveling alone, or not on an excursion organized by the ship or a local company, I could see it, but Chiapas is trying to encourage tourism and I’m sure they’re not going to go out of their way to enrage a bunch of spoiled North Americans and Europeans who will then complain bitterly to the cruise line about what a nerve wracking and horrible time they had been subjected to by the authorities of said area. Even so, people were unsettled for quite a while after the absolutely boring and completely uneventful walk through a hot, shaded building.

Soconusco is fairly flat, but it’s bounded by mountain ranges. Al and I had a great time listening to the guides talk about the area and tell legends and stories about the landscape – there are some notable features on the sides of the mountains that have had stories and legends associated with them, some of them dating back far beyond the arrival of the Spanish, and some which grew up after the Spanish arrived. Some have Spanish embellishments on older legends, and I can’t for the life of me remember any but one – about a bell shaped rock halfway up a mountain that a local strongman wanted to put up at the top of the mountain for some reason, but got tired, put it down to rest and either fell into a magical sleep or died.

We drove for a long time (I didn’t have a watch or my cell phone with me, so no idea how long) but eventually noticed that the ground was getting wetter – the ditches on the side of the road were full of water, there was ground water standing in depressions, but it was dry and sunny. I figured we were probably almost there. I also started noticing egrets in the ditches, and sitting by the cattle in the fields. Egrets are lovely birds. Photos of them tomorrow.

That was when people – well, one person, really, but she was very vocal about it – started complaining that we’d been traveling for two and a half hours and when were we going to arrive. I’m normally one of those “tied to the clock” people and I’ve been missing my watch and a way to check the time whenever I wanted, but now, I was soooooo glad I didn’t have it – I had no idea what time it was or how long it had taken us to get as far as we had, and once again, maybe its my naiveté showing, but I wasn’t in charge here, and if we were late, there was nothing I could do about it, so I wasn’t going to worry. I figured the tour company probably knew what they were doing. Had I had my watch, I’d probably have been fretting as much as our vocal traveler. She was also very worried about the chances of there not being toilet paper in the washrooms at the reserve. Apparantly, on another cruise, with another line and tour company in another country, she had been subjected to the indignity of a bathroom with no toilet paper. (Pardon me if I’m less than sympathetic, but there are worse fates to befall tourists.)

It wasn’t much after her complaints that we drove onto the reserve, and it was another 20 or 30 minutes before we arrived at our destination – about which more tomorrow. (With enough photos to make up for the lack of the last two days.)

Puerto Chiapis or when a city isn’t a city.

Apparently, Puerto Chiapas isn’t the name of the town we stopped at. Puerto Chiapas is the Port of Chiapas. Chiapas is the name of the state in which the port is located. I plead confusion, because some of the places we stopped were place names (Astoria, San Francisco, Cabo San Lucas), one is just totally confusing – Huatalco, since it’s not really the name of either the port or the town, and others aren’t named for the towns at all, like Puerto Chiapas, Puerta Caldera which is coming up, Fuerte Amador near/at Panama City (which is a fort just to really confuse everybody) and Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale. They’re the names of the ports (or forts) near or in cities. So, this is a port designed to welcome cruise ship tourists to the state of Chiapas. It’s nice – it’s brand new, spotlessly clean, obsessively gardened and interestingly architectured.

 

              

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So, on this stop, we had an excursion. It was advertised as a trip to a mangrove biome,  to see the trees, the birds and whatever wildlife we could spot. We were warned that seeing anything other than water and trees was not guaranteed, and that the part of the excursion actually in the lagoon would be an hour and a half. It was also very clearly stated that we would have an hour and a half drive on the bus (air conditioned) to get to the lagoon/swamp. So this was just going to be a nature wildlife trip. But we got so, so, so much more than that.

There was a team of guides who took turns talking to us when the microphone worked (it cut in and out, sounded like a short, and they couldn’t quite fix it). They took us through the city of Tapachula, which is the capital of the area of Soconusco, which is a – county? district? region? in the extreme southwest of the state. The city is about ten or twenty minutes drive from the port, and we traveled through a portion of it on the way to the lagoon – on purpose, to give us an idea of what Chiapas and the area around Tapachula is like.

It was a bit confusing because there’s the city of Tapachula and the municipality of Tapachula, which isn’t exactly a municipality in the way I understood it – it’s more like a county – a large area governed by the city that is mostly rural, that is within the region of Soconusco. Chiapas is the southernmost state of Mexico, and Tapachula is right next door to Guatamela, which means there is, again, a massive police and armed forces presence.

The area is predominantly agricultural, and mangos, bananas and coffee are the main products along with papaya and other tropical fruits and vegetables. They are, if I remember right, also starting palm plantations, for palm oil. The entire area we drove through looks very poor, and most of the residential areas were like small apartment buildings, or shacks, in fairly poor repair, and looking amazingly unfinished, even though people were living in them. Rebar stuck up from the tops of most walls, walls ended abruptly and for no apparent reason. It also wasn’t unusual to see bars on windows, razor wire or broken bottles stuck into the tops of walls (wicked, wicked, looking things – not the small bits of broken glass, these were 6 inches high, with three inch spears of glass sticking up. You’d need serious medical attention if you tangled with these things). Walls were everywhere – even the poorest houses had walls and courtyards, and most of them had razor wire and/or broken bottles on the wall tops.

Most of the residences had electricity (the giveaway wasn’t the hydro lines, it was the satellite dish). Roads in the villages were unpaved, unmarked and the cars were older, and looked rattletrappy. We got a lot of information about the area that I didn’t write down and so don’t remember.

Corn grew by the side of the road. It wasn’t quite our corn – the leaves were larger and broader, with different markings – they were piebald in various shades of green and the tassels at the top were broader and shorter than the kind we grow. The plants looked like ancestors of our cultivated corn. I’m not sure if it was wild or not. There was enough growing that it could have been cultivated, but it wasn’t, generally, in rows, or looking really “planted” the way we plant crops (although the mangrove, banana and palm plantations were definitely rows and rows of trees). The “plots” of corn, if that’s what they were, also grew in varying sizes – from a few scattered plants, to what would be a good size garden plot for a family of 4 or 6.

What was also odd was the reminder that we weren’t, so to speak, in Kansas anymore. Corn at this time of year (very early October) is done – the stalks are dead, brown and skeletal, rattling like noisy ghosts in any wind or breeze, and we saw that, but we also saw corn in all stages of growth – just sprouted, half grown, ripe and ready for picking. It took a while to remember that growing season is all year round here – close to twelve hours of daytime year round and no real cold weather season, although there is a rainy season. So no reason not to have several crops of corn at varying stages all year round. Sometimes in the same plot, which was another reason I wasn’t sure if the corn had been planted or was just let to grow.

Education is apparently a big deal down here (or maybe it’s just because our guides were all teachers). School is mandatory, and it’s uniformed. It starts early – 7 am (which is a problem for some kids, about which more later), and finishes early. It’s similar to ours – elementary up to grade 6, then “secundia” which corresponds to our junior high school, and “prepetoria” which is senior high. It’s free up to citizens of Mexico through high school, but I’m not sure about university.

Lots and lots of coughing and sneezing on the bus, including me – not sure if that was the air conditioning or a cold making the rounds of the ship. We’ll see.

The police presence that we’ve seen at here and at the other Mexican ports continued inland – but more about that tomorrow.

Hiding towns and confusing poor tourists!

Today is a port day. We arrived in Huatalco at 8 am, and were off the ship shortly after that, and set off for what we naively thought was Huatulco, Mexico. The map in the guide book provided by the ship was not great, and it looked as though the town was tiny. On returning home, and doing some research, I realized that the actual town layout is complicated. There are three or four areas to the place, and the area is set up as a resort town – the original inhabitants were moved some 20 K inland to another place – Huatalco Santa Maria. The areas around the pier have been dedicated to tourism and resorts. Set back from the harbour by a little way is the area of Crucecita, and slightly further inland is La Crucecita, which, from the write up in the ship’s brochure sounded like a “made village” to show tourists how Mexicans are supposed to live. Had we gone a short way inland, we probably would have found Crucecita and gotten a lot more enjoyment out of our rambles. As it was, we ended up wandering along the streets closest to the water, into Santa Cruz Huatalco, which is mostly hotels, homes for wealthy Mexican and then in the afternoon, along the very, very edge of Crucecita,  which was almost exclusively condo and resorts.

The conventional wisdom is that Mexico is friendly and welcoming. That wasn’t the impression I took away from Huatulco at all – although to be fair, we didn’t see a whole lot of people other than tourists and people from the ship. But those we did see looked either unfriendly or puzzled by a pair of odd looking North Americans wandering around their streets or were busy trying to get us to buy their wares or sit in their bar or restaurant. When we passed working groups, they fell silent and just stared at us until we had gone by. We got one taste of home, though – there was a Bank of Montreal on the main street of this area! Closed but still kind of homey feeling.

It was hot and humid. The ship’s newsletter said it was going to get up to 33 C, 88 F, but with the humidity, it felt a lot hotter than that. And we didn’t acclimate to it very well at all while we were on land.

Around the pier there was the market, and there were beaches and lots of swimming areas – I almost decided to swim, and still am not sure why I didn’t. It may have been the aggressiveness of the vendors. Al and I aren’t used to the way shopkeepers solicit custom, and we’ve never been comfortable with a hard sell or aggressive sales techniques, and that seems to be the norm. Restaurants and bars were set right on the beach, with the owners pushing for us to come and sit in their places. For me, it was questionable as to whether the beach was private or public and I didn’t want to risk swimming without permission if it was private, and I didn’t feel like eating or drinking.

One thing we noticed was the number of abandoned construction sites as well as the amount of ongoing construction. The area we were in was clearly for the tourists – both North American and from other parts of Mexico, and several of the condos targeted Canadians in particular. But new construction would be going on right next door to a partially completed and obviously abandoned site. It gave a really odd feel and look to the area.

Police presence was not as massive as in Cabo San Lucas, but was still overt and there – naval vessels patrolling near the ship and army and police on the pier. But the actual security checks when you return to the ship are cursory – I had both the ship key card and my photo id out, and as it happened, they are the same size. When I went through the “security” check point, the key card was in front of the driver’s license, and there was no attempt to examine either of them – the guard barely glanced at them before waving me through. Now, yes, I am very obviously a North American tourist, and not somebody from Mexico or points south trying to stow away. But it wouldn’t have been hard to get drugs or other contraband at least onto the pier (getting them onboard was another matter – the ship’s security was tighter and your belongings were scanned every time you came onboard). Kind of makes me shake my head about security, but what do I know? Maybe he was just so experienced he could tell? Dunno.

We went back to the ship for lunch and went out again after we’d eaten, but the temperature had climbed even more, and we didn’t get far before I felt done in, so headed back to the ship and spent the day being cooler and drier.

In fact, I probably could have walked further, but was feeling very uncomfortable and uneasy being in a town I didn’t know, didn’t understand and couldn’t figure out at all. Lesson for the next time we travel – research the places first!

Tomorrow is Puerto Chiapis and the Mangrove boat ride. That I’m looking forward to.

 

 

A touch of home, at sea.

This is an “at sea day”, and the walking continues – inside the ship now, since it’s so hot and humid, even early in the morning.

One of the (very minor) disadvantages to our cabin is that big gorgeous deck. It traps the heat, unless the wind is blowing, and since we’re as far aft as you can get, and have the entire ship between us and the moving air, that’s not easy to find. But this is where the wraparound comes in handy – the wind can almost always be found there. And if it’s not there, which is rare, then it is on the main part of the deck, and the wind, no matter how humid, is cooling. (And it’s humid!) It’s drier today than it was yesterday and the day before, but that’s because we’re out of the shadow of the tropical storm, finally. It headed north east, while we’re heading south eastish. But there’s more humidity than we have at home, even now. But we’ve been warned it’s going to get worse before it gets better, so I’d better get used to it!

I’m also learning about the drawbacks to cruising. And it’s nothing to do with the ship, the staff or the events and excursions. The staff is phenomenal – friendly, professional, caring and personable. The ship was commissioned in 2002 and some aging shows, but it’s still spotlessly clean, elegant and beautifully decorated, but comfortable. Big enough to wander on, not so big you feel as though you need a map and supplies to get around. Excursions – well, one so far, and the problems with that are things we have to tell the line about – they do, I’m sure, the best they can, and I’m sure they check up on the companies who put the excursions on. I’ll have more opinion after more excursions, I’m not going to let one so-so event cement an opinion about all the others.

No, the problem is with the other guests. By and large, I’m completely unimpressed with the people who are my fellow guests. Of the few we’ve spoken to, most can’t find anything good to say about anything, and a lot of them seem to want to hold the cruise lines responsible for absolutely everything that happens, whether that’s reasonable or not. There was a lot of grumbling about the rough seas at Cabo San Lucas. I got the impression that the captain and crew should somehow have been able to magically calm the waters (I have news for them – it’s not the Captain of the Zuiderdam who calms the storm!), or simply magic the storm out of existence. There are complaints that we aren’t stopping in a port every day (I’m not sure these people have looked at a map recently. There aren’t a lot of towns on the Baja peninsula to stop at!), and this isn’t the Mediterranean or the Baltic Sea where there are cities and towns much closer together. There are complaints about the internet access, even though it’s made very clear that connection is dependent on satellites, and is sporadic and subject to interruption and slow. Apparently, people don’t read signs or understand that we can’t have the best of all possible worlds. It’s not an issue for us, since we didn’t sign up for internet access. And hearing the complaints, I’m very glad we didn’t. Yes, some things haven’t been as we expected them, and some things have gone wrong, but we haven’t run aground, the power on the ship works, and there are no hurricanes threatening imminent destruction. Nobody’s fallen overboard, and of the illnesses and medical crises that have happened, they’ve been taken care of quickly, efficiently and quietly.  Perspective, folks, get some perspective.

Today was the Pacific Northwest Wine tasting. I was hoping for more Canadian wines, but we got one – a chardonnay from Mission Hill, two wines from Washington State and one from Oregon.

Again, two reds and two whites and some food pairings with this. We sat by ourselves this time, because we were late for the tasting, so no interesting people to talk with or about.

  

 

The first wine we tasted was a 2013 Eroica Riesling from the Columbia Valley in Washington State. Al really liked this one, and I was impressed as well. It’s a pale, almost clear yellow-green, not aromatic at all, very delicate green apple scent with fresh citrus (limey) notes and a very little mineral scent. Medium body with citrusy flavour, a moderate finish. Works well with salads, smoked salmon, tuna, gazpacho and strawberry type fruits. It also worked well with the goat and creamy cheeses we had. The cellar master suggested that it be paired with simply prepared foods that don’t have cream or sauces in them.

 

 

 

 

Next up was a 2012 Mission Hill Reserve Chardonnay from the Okanagan Valley, here in BC. I get points here because I recognized it as a chardonnay, not from the label on the sheet, but by the taste – first one I’ve been able to identify as “yes, that’s this type of wine.” Yay for me – I’m learning! It was nice – nothing to go out of our way for, but a nice one to have for meals and maybe on a hot day. It’s a darker yellow than the Riesling, but still very light, a medium scent with buttery and oaky notes, and a hint of cinnamon. Lovely and smooth on the palette, with some oaky flavours and a longer finish. It works with the cheddar we had, and, as I know from personal experience, with creamy sauces, pasta and poultry.

Chardonnay was (personal note here) the first wine that really taught me that food and wine could enhance one another. Deb and Glen Wright gave us (I can’t remember why – some favour we’d done for them, maybe) a bottle of Cupcake Chardonnay, and one night when we had dinner with the kids, I took it over. Mark had made his trademark Chicken Al Fredo, and it paired beautifully with it. The meal is a creamy pasta sauce, and I don’t usually like creamy sauces, but when I had it with the chardonnay, it was really, really nice and the two enhanced all the positive qualities of each other. Quite a revelation. So, I have a soft spot for chardonnays, and the Mission Hill was nice.

 

The second last type we tried was a 2013 Willamette Pinot Noir from the Willamette Valley in Oregon. Pinot Noirs aren’t my favourite because they tend to be too thin, and I really like full bodied reds. But this wasn’t bad at all. It was a light to medium ruby with orangey/brick coloured edges, a liquorice and cherry odour, with a warm fruity flavour. Strong tannins on the finish, but nice. It’s good with fatty proteins. Cheeses worked well with it, but the acidic and sweet strawberry didn’t at all! It’s low acid, but high tannins, so maybe that’s why? Not sure.

 

 

 

A 2012 Chateau St. Michelle Canoe Ridge Merlot from Horse heaven Hills in Washington State was a nice surprise. It was a medium dark ruby colour, lighter on the edges, which should mean it’s aging – but it’s only two years old. If I remember right (and if I don’t, please remind me), the aging with reds tends to move the colour from red/ruby/garnet to a more orangey/brown shade – so this may not be indicative of aging at all? Leather and tobacco notes is what the wine master said – I got the leather, but a plain smoky scent, not specifically tobacco. Dark berry as well. Full body – nice and full for my liking, with dark berries in the first seconds, then a smoky middle and a long finish. Medium tannins, so not overpoweringly dry but noticeable in a good way. It works with sweet, dry fruits. Surprisingly, Al likes it. This is the second merlot we’ve tried that he’s enjoyed. Most of the time, Merlot isn’t one he likes and we’ve tended to avoid them. I’m neutral on them – they’re nice, and I’ll happily drink them, but they’re not in my top three to five.

 

 

There must have been a number of British Columbians at the tasting because Cecilia, the Cellar Master, apologized for not having more Canadian wines both on the lists, and on the tasting – she said she hadn’t been able to get up to the wine country yet to do her exploring and tasting. I’m tempted to gather some of the wineries and send them to her for when she can get there.

Tomorrow we are in Huatulco, Mexico – we don’t have any excursions booked so we’ll be wandering around the town, seeing what there is to see. It’s a pier, with gangplank in this port, so no worries about crazy tender operators trying to sink the ship!