Tag Archives: Honduras

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JANUARY 2018. VIKING SKY TO THE PANAMA CANAL AND THE CARIBBEAN

By Corey Sandler

Welcome aboard. I am happy to share some of my photographs taken aboard Viking Sky on our journey from Miami to the Panama Canal and back. 

Viking Sky at anchor off Key West, Florida

All photos by Corey Sandler, 2018. All rights reserved. All contents copyright Corey Sandler and Word Association; this website is not produced or endorsed by Viking Cruises.

MONDAY, JANUARY 8, 2018: Key West, Florida

A bird’s eye view of a Viking Sky tender
An ancient lock on a shipwrecker’s warehouse in Key West
Instituto San Carlos, the headquarters of the post-Independence, pre-Castro Cuban community in Key West
The files of the former Consulate of the Republic of Cuba in Key West

To send me an email,  click here: www.coreysandler.com/contact-me/

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 10, 2018: Belize City, Belize

All photos by Corey Sandler, 2018. All rights reserved.

Altun Ha, first built about 900 B.C.E.
Altun Ha, near Belize City
The ruins of the ceremonial site were only rediscovered in the 1960s
Altun Ha near Belize City. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of cities and ceremonial sites of the Mayans and other ancient peoples in Central America and most are still covered by earth and hidden within forest. Archaeologists say they are probably safer that way, since there is not enough money to protect and preserve them all once they are uncovered.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 11, 2018: Carambola Gardens at Coxen Hole on Roatan Island, Honduras

All photos by Corey Sandler, 2018. All rights reserved.

Emerging from the shadows of the forest
A tiny hummingbird flits into view

To send me an email,  click here: www.coreysandler.com/contact-me/

SATURDAY, JANUARY 13, 2018: Along the Tortuguero near Puerto Limón, Costa Rica

All photos by Corey Sandler, 2018. All rights reserved.

A two-toed sloth, just hanging around
A common basilisk hidden in the green forest. The creature is better known as the Jesus Christ Lizard because of its ability to run across water when necessary
Shadows in the water
A blue heron observed us from the shore

All photos by Corey Sandler, 2018. All rights reserved. All contents copyright Corey Sandler and Word Association; this website is not produced or endorsed by Viking Cruises.

SUNDAY, JANUARY 15, 2018: Colón to Panama City on the Panama Canal Railway

We arrived early this morning at Colón, Panama on the Atlantic Ocean and spent the afternoon in Panama City on the Pacific. Although I have made the transit of the isthmus more times than I can remember, this was the first time I did so by rail.

The Panama Canal Railway was begun in 1850 and completed in 1855 as the first mass transit across the isthmus of Panama, replacing the very difficult trails through the jungle. And then the railway became an essential part of the construction of the Panama Canal itself, when work was begun first by the French in 1881 and then redone and completed by the Americans in 1914

The American effort required the rebuilding and relocating of some of the track because the American design was based on damming the Chagres River and creating a manmade lake as the means of transit between the seas. The track today includes some of its 1850 route and some of the 1914 relocated path which parallels the Panama  Canal.

Today the railway serves mostly as a “dry canal”, carrying freight from the Atlantic to the Pacific in containers mounted on flatbed train cars, but it also runs a few passenger trips for tourists each day.

A modern diesel-electric locomotive powers the Panama Canal Railway today on a 48-mile crossing from the Atlantic to the Pacific
Containers and flatbed railcars, part of the “dry canal”
The railway track parallels the canal, here crossing on a trestle over the Chagres River which is the source of the water for Gatun Lake and the engine for the operation of the locks
At Gamboa, near the midway point of the canal, stands “Titan”, one of the largest floating cranes in the world. It was built in Nazi Germany in 1941 to service U-boats in Kiel. After the war it was seized by the U.S. as war reparations and brought across the Atlantic and through the Panama Canal to Long Beach, California where it served for nearly 50 years at the shipyard there. (Its local nickname was “Herman the German.”) In 1996 it was moved once again, this time to Gamboa where it is used in the maintenance of the locks of the original canal
An old piece of railroad equipment on a siding near the train terminus at Balboa on the Pacific side
Modern Panama City as seen through a thicket of pleasure boats at the Pacific end of the canal

To send me an email,  click here: www.coreysandler.com/contact-me/

MONDAY, JANUARY 15, 2018: Partial Transit of the Panama Canal

We arrived early this morning at the Gatun Locks of the Panama Canal and then rose up three locks to Gatun Lake, which today was at its maximum level of 86.7 feet above sea level.

Once we reached the lake, we made a U-turn and then made our way back down to the Atlantic Ocean. In modern cruising language, this is known as a “partial transit”, which sounds like an oxymoron to me.

I have been through the Panama Canal more times than I can remember, and it is always a thrill. I spent the day up on the navigational bridge offering commentary about our partial transit. Call it an up and down excursion…

The view from the navigational bridge as Viking Sky climbed the stairs at Gatun
One of the electric locomotives, or “mules” of the Panama Canal. The mules (the name is derived from the original means of moving barges along the Erie Canal in upstate New York) do not pull the ship; instead their function is to keep a ship centered in the lock chamber
In the early morning, we passed below the nearly completed bridge at the Atlantic end of the canal

To send me an email,  click here: www.coreysandler.com/contact-me/

All photos by Corey Sandler, 2018. All rights reserved. All contents copyright Corey Sandler and Word Association; this website is not produced or endorsed by Viking Cruises.

TUESDAY, JANUARY 16, 2018: Cartagena, Colombia

Cartagena in Colombia is one of the best preserved old Spanish colonial cities in the new world.

We had a lovely day in Cartagena, although we were not alone: four cruise ships in port, thousands of tourists in the streets, and painful traffic jams.

The best time to visit: after hours, when the vendors and the selfie-sticks have gone home.

The old city of Cartagena
The dome of San Pedro Claver Church in Cartagena. Claver was known as the “slave of the slaves”, begging in the streets to help the poor Africans brought by the tens of thousands to Colombia
A golden display of indigenous art
A work by Colombian artist Fernando Botero, champion of a style known as “Boterismo.” He obviously thinks large.

SATURDAY, JANUARY 20, 2018: Nassau, Bahamas

So, we weren’t supposed to be here in Nassau, Bahamas this morning. But a combination of bad weather and other factors in the Western Caribbean caused us to cancel calls scheduled for Montego Bay, Jamaica and then George Town on Grand Cayman Island.

We sailed two days eastward along the south side of Cuba and then turned north toward Nassau for a final port of call.

Nassau is an interesting place, mostly because of its history as a British colony somewhat similar to Bermuda and the Turks and Caicos. It was a place of plantations (and therefore slaves), and its success drew in pirates and privateers and attacks by the Spanish who contested some of the same waters.

Today, the English are still here with a Royal Governor and the police force look more like British Bobbies than the ones in London. The Spanish and the pirates are gone, and in their place hordes of tourists. Many of them arrive by cruise ship at the huge port which can accommodate five and sometimes more large ships.

One of our favorite places to visit is Christ Church Cathedral, an Anglican/Episcopal church at the corner of King and George streets. The structure is handsome, with the current building dating from 1841 on a base that dates back to the mid-1600s.

But it is the collection of plaques and other remembrances that line the walls of the church that fascinate. Any one of them could generate a novel, or at least a lecture for me.

Small, medium, and large at the dock in Nassau. Viking Sky sits between the luxurious private yacht Turquoise and the huge and loud Disney Dream

A Viking long boat on the Viking Sky’s funnel catches the morning sun

Christ Church Cathedral in Nassau

A bit of old Nassau, hidden in plain sight

Echoes of Colonial Britain at the Governor General’s house on the hill

Safe travels to all.

To send me an email,  click here: www.coreysandler.com/contact-me/

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23 January 2016
Roatán Island, Honduras: In the Depths

By Corey Sandler, Destination Consultant Silversea Cruises

Roatán Island is the largest of the Bay Islands of Honduras; the group stands about 30 to 50 miles off the coast.

It is, in many ways, one of the shining hopes of an otherwise grim nation beset by violence and other troubles mostly related to the northward traffic in drugs from South America to the market in the United States.

Roatán stands far enough offshore to be out of the way and also isolated enough to allow for the cultivation of what the Hondurans hope will flourish as a small version of Costa Rica, a green and relatively safe paradise.

Roatán is close to the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef, the largest such natural reef in the Caribbean Sea, and indeed the second largest in the world after Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.

Off the island, parts of the ocean floor are carpeted with stars.

The mainland of Honduras is bordered to the west by a small neck of land that gives Guatemala its only port on the Caribbean at Puerto Barrios. To the southwest is El Salvador, and to the southeast Nicaragua.

A tough neighborhood, across history and even now.

Honduras spans an area of about 112,492 square kilometers or 43,400 square miles: a relatively small country about the size of Cuba or Iceland, or the American state of Ohio.

In that area is a population exceeding 8 million, with about a quarter of that number in and around the nation’s capital, the answer to a trivia question: Tegucigalpa.

Honduras is not wealthy, although it is rich in natural resources: Minerals like gold, silver, copper, lead, antimony, coffee, tropical fruit, sugar cane, a bit of coal, and fish and shrimp.

The place we now call Trujillo was the first place Columbus touched on the Central American mainland. Prior to that, on his four voyages, he had only landed on islands and at the top of South America.

He never landed on the mainland of North America.

Columbus named the place “Punta de Caxinas”. Caxinas is a port in northern Portugal, above Porto.

And Columbus named the deep waters of the area the Golfo de Honduras, the Gulf of the Depths.

In 1524, shortly after the conquest of Mexico by Hernán Cortés. the first city of Honduras–Triunfo de la Cruz–was founded near where modern Trujillo stands.

It was used briefly as a port to send silver and gold back to Spain

About 50 to 60 percent of the population is considered below the poverty line. On the plus side, the economy has grown 3 or 4 percent in each of recent years, which is good, although the increases were building from a very low level.

In the late nineteenth century, Honduras became one of the Banana Republics” dominated by United States-based fruit companies granted substantial land and privileges.

Thousands of workers came to the north coast to work in the banana plantations and the other industries that grew up around the export industry.

The industry was dominated at first by the Cuyamel Fruit Company, then the United Fruit Company, and others. Labor difficulties in Honduras led to American military or police actions seven times between 1903 and 1925.

The fruit companies also encouraged immigration of workers from the English-speaking Caribbean, notably Jamaica and Belize, who introduced an African-descended, English speaking and largely Protestant population into the country.

And about that term, “Banana Republic?”

The American author William Sydney Porter—better known today  under his pen name of O. Henry—spent about a year living in Honduras, primarily in Trujillo.

About 1904, he wrote a series of short stories set in “Coralio” in the fictional Central American country of “Anchuria”, based on Trujillo. And in those stories, collected in his book “Of Cabbages and Kings,” he coined the term “Banana Republic.”

Text and photos Copyright 2016 by Corey Sandler.