Panama Canal 2015 10 Mar. Day 19

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The plan for today, our last day in San Diego, is to see as much as possible of Balboa Park. Originally known simply as City Park in the 19th century, it was selected as the site of the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition to celebrate the opening of the Panama Canal and renamed in honour of the Spanish explorer. Over the years, other exhibitions were held there and other buildings built. Many were turned into museums and gradually the park became the city's museum centre.

We take a taxi from the hotel to the park. We buy a package that allows us to enter up to five different museums during the day. First pick is the Air and Space Museum. It's similar to other museums of its type, with a variety of aircraft on the floor and suspended from the ceiling plus informational exhibits on the history of aviation. When the ticket-taker hears that we are from Canada, he says "Oh, you'll want to see Billy Bishop's medals." And, indeed, this is the place where all of Bishop's medals are on display. Kind of a shame...

The space exhibits are always a highlight for me. They have a Mercury capsule and the Apollo 9 command module. I love looking at these man-made machines that have been to space and back, now dented and scorched. Other highlights include an exact, flyable replica of the Spirit of St. Louis and both Mustang and Spitfire fighters from World War II.

We pick up a cute T-shirt for Freddy and at the cash the salesperson snags me: a commemorative coin for Apollo 11 (first moon landing) that includes a bit of metal from the lander! It's a must-have.

Next museum is the Museum of Man. Exhibits include casts of Mayan stellae from Guatemalan sites and a great section on human evolution. The focus of the museum is clearly educational and, indeed, there are swarms of students moving through on class field trips. The last section we visit is devoted to mummification. They have about a dozen actual mummies from different periods of history, including, of course, Egyptian. Fascinating and a little creepy.

Next up is the Natural History Museum, commonly known as "the Nat." Again, it is primarily a teaching museum and great care has gone into making the exhibits engaging and educational. Some of the dinosaur skeletons are encased on one side only with a reproduction of their presumed actual appearance, so that on one side you see the skeleton and on the other what the beast looked like. Clever. We're happy to meet another Canadian there: an Albertosaurus. The museum also has a remarkable collection of animal skulls, hundreds of them arranged in cases by family: reptiles, snakes, birds, cats, etc. Did you know a chameleon's skull looks like a miniature Triceratops?

On to the Timken Museum of Art. Their most precious treasure is a small painting by Raphael called the Madonna of the Pinks (la Madonna dei Garofani). It gets a whole room to itself. And it is remarkable, with such beautiful shading and careful perspective that it looks almost three dimensional. Its history is interesting. For years, it hung in a duke's castle in Northumberland, considered to be a copy of a lost Raphael. But later it was determined that it was in fact an original.

The other collection that resonates with us consists of 15th- and 16th-century Russian iconostasis. The items are in terrific condition considering their age. I amuse myself trying to decipher the old Church Slavonic inscriptions. I can actually read some of them.

Time is not on our side. It's getting near 4 pm. In addition, Vi is not doing well. We decide to call it a day. We are intending to take the 4 o'clock shuttle back to the hotel, but through a combination of misinformation, misunderstanding and missed opportunity we end up waiting two hours for our pick-up. I learn some lessons about asking questions and making sure important information is correctly understood by all parties.

By the time we get back to the hotel, there are only a couple of hours before we need to leave for our flight. We snag a dinner of enchiladas and tacos (with rice and beans, of course) at a local takeout about five minutes' walk from the hotel. Then it's time to go.

Our route home is an overnight flight from San Diego to Dulles in Washington DC, then a connecting flight to Ottawa. Everything's goes smoothly and we are back in Ottawa about 9:30 am, tired but safe.

Finally, I share some preliminary impressions of this trip. I am very happy to have transited the Panama Canal. It is certainly one of the outstanding engineering achievements of modern times and I now have a better understanding and appreciation of it. I am also pleased to have had the opportunity to visit, albeit briefly, four fascinating countries that I have never visited before: Colombia, Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Guatemala. Costa Rica stands out not only for its natural beauty (which is obviously shared by the other Central American nations) but also and notably for its political stability and its efforts to preserve its unique environment. I also have a better appreciation of the long and rich history of Central America before the arrival of Europeans. And, lastly, I love San Diego. In three days we barely scratched the surface of what this amazing city has to offer. Want to go back.

But it is so good to be home.

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