At sea, cross the equator later today. After breakfast, O watched part of the port talk (SRO). Looks like a slow day today.
Did lunch in the Lido. Read books on our deck with a glass of wine in the afternoon until time for Lightning Trivia. Won't even mention the score O got. Went off to dress for dinner.
Dressy dinner in the MDR, some book, and to bed.
The four-hour tour this morning turned out to be interesting, in the main.
The order of our tour bus (#10) visits was: Museum, Palm factory, Bombesas (Panama Hats), and Tagua manufactory.
The little museum downtown was rather interesting with a series of full-size dioramas, showing house, work, fields, etc. You'll have to look at the photos to see them. Lots of old stuff as well, like a 1955 S-38e radio and a pedal Singer sewing machine.
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Stop 2 was where items were made from palm leaves. The palm leaf is reduced to thin fibers and dried. Various things are made from those threads like towels, bags, and mitts to use in the shower to scrub skin. We bought some.
On a nearby wall I found a painted religious scene (R) which happens to be the verse given me at my confirmation in 1953 by Pastor Ruhlig.
Stop 3 was the Panama Hat factory, where the palm threads are boiled, stripped, and woven into the hats. Terribly hard labor doing this. The price depends on the length of work put into the hat. D picked a "fine" one up for $105. We tipped several of the workers.
Stop 4 was the Tagua factory. Tagua seeds fall from trees when mature. They're gathered and place on a concrete floor for a month to age. Then the meat can be removed from its shell. It is very hard and called "palm ivory". It can be and is machined into small figurines and so forth.
The locale is very dry. It rains about three months of the year. The cold current coming up the coast from the south keeps the place cool even though it's at 4*S. Today was almost total cloud.
Another trade here is fishing - it's a tuna fishing mecca. The bay is full of fishing boats because they're only allowed to go fishing so many days a month. The one long pier we're tied to has nothing on it, but it has a large terminal building at the shoreline which is new and nice. Today it's full of vendors of all sorts.
With the fishing come the frigate-birds. When the boats come in, they try to steal a fish. The fly beautifully, but they're pests.
When the tour ended, D bought little things in the market. Then we came to the Dive-In hamburger stand for food; then to the cabin to put up our feet.
The bed animal was a cute little squid.
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