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

January 31, 2025 As gold from the Dominican Republic significantly helped replenish the coffers of Spain in the 15th Century, the Spanish conquistadors now set their sights on the northern part of South America, now known as Colombia. This gold exploration, or rather, exploitation was one of the three contributing factors that shaped the history… Read more

January 29, 2025 Christopher Columbus had some trouble with financing and that fact alone determined who controlled the western hemisphere and how the first European settlement in the Americas would be established. That story unfolds in our first port of call Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Some people believe that Christopher Columbus, known as Cristobal Colon… Read more