By Corey Sandler
I expect no sympathy whatsoever from much of the northern hemisphere. We left frigid New England in early February and spent most of the month in the tropics: the Gulf of Mexico and down the coast of Central America to a passage through the Panama Canal.
And then we did it again, this time from Panama with stops in Costa Rica, Honduras, Belize, and Mexico.
I work aboard luxury cruise ships as a speaker all around the world. Someone has to do it.
Winter is a bit more than halfway gone, but we returned to patches of snow and a drop in temperature of more than 50 degrees Fahrenheit.
I’m seeking a bit of warming by reviewing some of the photos I took.
The Icebox
Not long before we flew south, we drove north for a bit of skiing in New Hampshire. It’s been a good season here in New England. We had no January Thaw, which is good. Instead we had a January Deep Freeze, which is…cold.
Cozumel, Mexico: Muy Caliente
We boarded the lovely Viking Mars in Fort Lauderdale. Our first port of call (and our last on the return cruise) was the island of Cozumel, off the coast of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, one that nation’s most popular tourist ports. Handsome beaches, crystal water, shopping malls (or so I am told), and a bit of history.
We visited San Gervasio, a small Mayan site once the center of worship of the goddess Ix Chel, the deity of childbirth, fertility, medicine, and weaving. Before the Spanish descended on Mexico, Mayan women would make pilgrimage to the site they called Tantun Cuzamil, Mayan for Flat Rock in the Place of the Swallows.
Living Beneath the Waves
On our second cruise, headed back from Panama to Fort Lauderdale, we returned to Cozumel and this time I went with guests for a trip beneath the waves on a submarine that descended about 100 feet below the surface.
The Altar of Masonry…and Beer
The small nation of Belize (the former British Honduras) was not a primary target of Colonial powers, and remains to this day a less-visited part of Central America. That said, it possesses some impressive places to explore and recreate.
North of the port of Belize City where our ship docked is Altun Ha, an ancient Mayan city that was only explored and excavated in 1963. The oldest structures there are from about 900 to 800 BCE.
The largest of its pyramids is the “Temple of the Masonry Altars.”
The Sun God’s Tomb is flanked by a pair of super-sized carved heads now believed to be a representation of the Jester God. A version of the same deity is seen on Belize’s national treasure, a carved jade head kept under lock and key at the national treasury.
Animal Kingdoms
Our next two ports of call heading south down the coast of Central America were Coxen Hole on Roatán Island in Honduras, and then Puerto Limon.
Roatán is a coral island, sitting atop an ancient exposed reef that rises to nearly 900 feet above sea level.
The original peoples of the island, 48 miles long by 5 miles wide, included the Maya, the Paya, and Lenca. Nearly all were gone not long after Christopher Columbus visited nearby and the Spanish began trading in the Bay of Islands. The Spanish–as was the case in Mexico and much of the region–brought in devastating infectious diseases including smallpox and measles that killed most of the indigenous people.
Coxen Hole, the port we visited, was a stronghold of pirates and privateers.
The island was later repopulated with people from the Cayman Islands.
The local beer has one of the best names I know of for libations in the tropics: “Salva Vida.” Lifesaver, cold and wet.
On one of two visits to the island in February, I went to a small animal sanctuary that gave me my closest encounter with the shy and usually upside-down three-toed sloth. The ones we met were quite acclimated to humans, holding on like infants.
We moved on next to Puerto Limón, the Caribbean port of Costa Rica. The port was developed to serve the trade in coffee, bananas, and pineapples. Most of the agricultural areas are up in the highlands along the cordillera; the first agricultural products were sent by oxcart westward to the port of Puntarenas on the Pacific Ocean, but that was the wrong side for trade with the United States and Europe.
An American developer installed a narrow-gauge railroad to the Caribbean, and eventually Costa Rica became one of the “Banana Republics” that were essentially ruled by trading conglomerates.
Today Costa Rica is an exceptional–independent–nation with high levels of education, health care, and reasonable stability. It gave up its military in 1949, relying instead on a national police force and overt and implied promises of defense from the United States.
On one of my visits I went by boat into the Tortuguero Canals, surrounded by creatures great and small, friendly and threatening.
The Path Between the Seas
I have made a transit of the Panama Canal dozens of times and learn something new and exciting each time.
On this contract, we made a full transit from the Caribbean to the Pacific on one day, discharged our passengers in Panama City and took on a new group to head back through the canal two days later.
The canal is one of the few places on the planet where the ship’s master is not in charge, but instead is given orders by the extremely knowledgeable local pilots. That’s a good thing, for although the mechanism of the canal is quite simple the navigation into and out of the lock chambers and through the Continental Divide is quite complex.
All text and photos are by Corey Sandler, all rights reserved. Copyright 2025. If you want to obtain a copy of one of my photographs for personal or commercial use, please contact me using the link on this page.
If you’d like to order a copy of my book, “Henry Hudson Dreams and Obsession” you can obtain a Kindle or PDF version by clicking here: HENRY HUDSON DREAMS AND OBSESSION
Or if you would prefer to purchase a printed book in hardcover or paperback (personally autographed if you’d like) please send me an email for details. Click here to contact me.