Cruise Ship Diaries Part 12

As had been established Panama was the longest day of the cruise, not bceause you would be working the whole time but because of the sheer amount of hours you would be off the ship. My old roommate Raj and my new roommate Morne were mates who had worked together before and this time the schedule rotated for all 3 of us to be ashore in Panama that day.

Apparently there had been some concern onboard that putting us all on the same team for the day might lead to some kind of international incident as the deck 9 photogs corrdior was still having regular visitors from the ships night manager to tell us to be quieter.

The original plan for the day was the usual shoot the first locks go to the hotel for a few hours then drive to take shots at the next locks. Morne asked me 'have you got enough footage?' while we were at the first locks, and I did as the decks had been packed and we'd already covered both sides of the ship. 'What if we didn't come back?' I had a slight worry thinking Morne was suggesting we all jumped ship! But no he was suggesting that we simply skip filming the ship a second time, as he was a really experienced photog (and assistant manager at the time) and Raj was fast as well we decided to just get drunk and stay at the hotel all day.

The guy above in all white was our driver / bodyguard for the day and as usual he was supposed to take us back to the 2nd set of locks and then drop us at the terminal for the rest of the afternoon while we waited for the ship to come in. At some point the idea was floated 'can you take us into Panama City?' 'Sure, boss wherever you want to go' was the reply, and I'm pretty sure we tipped him fairly well on top of the his free food and drinks at the hotel as well.

Our driver had a swanky all white 4x4 with (life saving air-con) and tinted windows so we definitely felt cool riding through the streets, it was also at this point that my new stills camera bought for this contract died so the rest of the much better pictures you'll see here on in are from Raj & Morne.

The area we were passing through was slightly dodgy we'd been told so many times our driver would simply slow down and roll down his windows so Morne & Raj could do some drive by shooting.

This was a real eye opener for me as mostly everywhere I'd been so far on this contract had been safe and very touristy (Cartagena, not withstanding) yet here you could see the real signs of poverty and dilapidated buildings.

It was a shame to see such formerly great buildings and archtiecture in disrepair, and after an hour or so our driver deemed it safe enough for us to get out and stretch our legs.

This was acutally turning into more of an interesting day than I'd originally envisioned as I just expected us to get hammered drunk and spend the day at the pool, instead we were getting to see the real parts of a city and the very non tourist side of Panama.

We were definitely too chicken to try the street meat (this time at least) but we were also full from the all you can eat buffet back at the hotel, we'd also lucked out as there was some kind of local parade taking place that day which meant more chances for some great shots

It was also surprising to see armed police on the street as being from the UK it was rare to see, but in the city centre things seemed fairly safe and we were able to watch the parade for a while. On the way back Morne saw a group of kids playing football down an alleyway and persuaded them to us take their pictures.

This was one of the first days where I really started to appreciate how great this job was and the how rare these type of opportunites were, yes we could have spent the day drinking (like most of the crew) but here we were getting to see the 'real local' side of a port of call.

We'd had a great day but we just had to get out stories straight if we all got interrogated seperately when we got back to the ship. When we got to the port area some of the other photogs were having a beer and said 'so you didn't shoot the 2nd locks then?' 'how did you know?' and it transpired that one of the photogs had literally been looking for us the whole time and went and reported it to the manager right away.

So we were expecting a bollocking, however its strange that a photogs success rate for a shoot is mesured by their rollcount onboard. It doesn't matter how few pictures you sell but as long as you took an absolute shit ton of pictures. Raj and Morne had hit their roll count for the day at the first locks which is why Morne checked with me that I had enough footage before we decided not to go back.

Our manager Raf was a pretty chilled guy but I was still expecting us to get a grilling at the very least, but Morne went and spoke to Raf and we got away with it. I think the trick in that situation was to not view it as we did something wrong, Morne sold it as 'we hit the rollcount' so we didn't need to go back, but with a different manager we would have definitely copped a bollocking!

Next time on the cruise diaries! Banana Plantations and Costa Rican rainforests.