Panama 2008

Commentary

This trip is a bit different for us. It is the first cruise we have taken since 2001 when we were on a roundtrip cruise from Vancouver to Alaska with two of my Israeli cousins and their wives. The other different element is that we are traveling with five other couples.

We left New York for Fort Lauderdale early on Thursday morning and spent a few days with our friends, Fran and Mel, at their home in Tamarac, FL. Mel and Fran are one of the couples traveling with us on this cruise. Thursday night was a surprise birthday party for Mel who is now eligible for Medicare. We spent then next couple of days lounging at the pool and generally doing nothing... practice for the cruise.

We had planned to upload pages daily via satellite uplink. On arrival on the ship I learned that the uploading would be only double that of dial-up so that uploading each page could take several minutes (depending on the number of pictures). The cost for uploading by satellite is also somewhat high... 50 cents a minute. As I learned during the cruise, these costs mount rapidly. I had a billing problem that had to be resolved that would take only a few minutes at home and required nearly half an hour to complete the task on the ship. My only consolation was that the airtime cost was less than the penalty for late payment.