At Sea … Port of Callao, Peru

Our enforced day at sea — docked in Callao — was supposed to start with a 10:00a arrival. It was a little after 12:30p by the time we docked.

I’m guessing that the pea-soup fog — a wet one that soaked everything on the veranda — was the reason behind the delay. Throughout last night and into much of this morning, Insignia was blowing its foghorn to alert any other vessels that might be in the vicinity to our presence. Luckily, the weather cleared up beautifully by the time we arrived in port.

We arrived at our berth to see vendors holding up a welcome banner in front of stalls filled with this, that, and everything else. Though this was to be a technical stop, by special permission of the Port Authority, passengers, crew, and officers were allowed to disembark into a roped off area on the pier to “do damage to their wallets.” Masking was required to go shopping. Mui went off after the crowd dissipated … and I am now the proud recipient of some jewelry to add to the pieces I picked up when we were in Peru in 2009.

Controlled chaos reigned on the pier throughout the afternoon as provisions were unloaded from 40-foot containers … three of them sat next to the ship. More was brought in by trucks. Forklifts buzzed around, loading pallet after pallet through an opening in the hull … mini forklifts driving into the containers to add to the stacks. We lost some milk, but that’s the only mishap we saw. Once all of the shoppers were back onboard, the “people gangway” was also co-opted for cargo loading to speed up the process.

On the starboard side all was calm and quiet as the bunkering process continued throughout the afternoon.

It’s now getting on towards 5:30p … we were supposed to depart half an hour ago. I thought we might be delayed at least as long as we were delayed arriving this morning, but shortly after 6:00p, Insignia moved out of her berth.

Bravo to all who were involved in the logistics of this provisioning exercise. It was amazing to watch it all unfold.Read more