February 19, 2025 The year was 1704. Alexander Selkirk, a Scot sailing on a British privateer didn’t like the way the ship was being run. He thought it was dangerous and would founder (turns out he was right) and he demanded to be let off the ship. The captain obliged marooning him on the Juan… Read more

February 17, 2025 Today’s port was San Antonio, about an hour or so from Santiago, the capital of Chile. Until about five years ago, cruise shops docked in Valparaíso, a city with much more to offer tourists than San Antonio – such as walking right off the ship into town. Labor disputes resulted in the… Read more

February 13, 2025 We have left Peru and continue our voyage visiting eight ports along the long coastline of Chile before reaching Ushuaia, Argentina commonly referred to as “the last place on earth”. Ushuaia received its nickname because it is the last port before crossing Cape Horn and Drake Passage notorious for its extremely rough… Read more

February 11, 2025 When one thinks of the desert the familiar ones come to mind: Saraha, Gobi, Namib, the Great Salt Flats in Utah and the Arctic Desert. Yes, not all deserts are hot! More about that when we get to the Arctic. Today we visited The Paracas National Reserve a stunning ecological reserve located in… Read more

February 9, 2025 Of the thirty-three million inhabitants of Peru, over one-third (12 million) live in the capital city of Peru. The rest are sparsely populated throughout the rest of the country. The most sparsely populated area is The Highlands represented in the green areas of the map above.  The two major indigenous groups are… Read more

February 7, 2025 Chongae and I really like to take off on our own when we come to a new port, but Salaverry was about 45 minutes from our intended destination of Trujillo, so we had to take a bus. In December, in Cadiz, Spain we visited The Royal Andalusian School. (see blog of December… Read more

February 5, 2025 Manta is known as the Puerta del Pacífico, or the Tuna Capital of the World. If you have eaten Bumble Bee tuna, it was probably caught in Manta, they have a large tuna processing plant here. Canned tuna is a good business. Recently, Taiwanese tuna trader FCF Co. acquired Bumble Bee Foods… Read more

February 3, 2025 I have been to Panama numerous times both for pleasure and business. Some years ago, I invested in an organic mango plantation. You may not know this fact, but the mango is the most widely consumer fruit in the world. Because of its many variations, dried, juice, purée (used commercially in deserts… Read more

February 2, 2025 Over the span of a decade a little more than a century ago, tens of thousands of workers drilled dynamite holes, drove steam shovels and labored withpickaxes, all the while fighting malaria. While the French builder of the Suez Canal ultimately gave up in Panama, American crews persevered and createda route allowing… Read more

February 1, 2025 When you have sailed around the world inevitably you are going to visit ports you have been to before. So, it is with Costa Rica for us. Yet, there is something very comforting about the familiar. Sailing into Costa Rica, you pass sparsely inhabited islands, but Port Limon has a population of… Read more