Tag Archives: Around the World with Corey Sandler

Corey Sandler is a bestselling author of more than 250 books on travel, cruises. sports, business, computers, and high technology. He travels about half the year as a Destination Consultant for Silversea Cruises, giving lectures about ports of call around the world. In his blog, “Around the World with Corey Sandler” includes photos and commentary.

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5 June 2015
Kotor, Montenegro: The City in the Hill

June 6, 2015 Corey Sandler

By Corey Sandler, Destination Consultant Silversea Cruises

Montenegro is a nine-year-old nation with a thousand-year back story.

The nation, carved out of what was once Yugoslavia, is one of the smaller countries in the world: about 14,000 square kilometers or 5,300 square miles.

It’s smaller than The Bahamas, a bit larger than Qatar or Jamaica.

Montenegro’s coast line is on the Adriatic Sea, at its south-west border.

A KOTOR ALBUM

Photos by Corey Sandler

Croatia is to the west, Bosnia and Herzegovina to the northwest, Serbia to the northeast, Albania to the southeast, and Kosovo to the east. That’s a pretty rough neighborhood.

Montenegro, of course, means Black Mountain.

And the region has had a version of that name for centuries, but not always in a Romance Language.

As far back at the 14th century, the hilly area was called Tsrna Gora, which means…Black Mountain.

Today its name is an adaptation of the Italian-Venetian translation. Modern Italian would be montenero.

Today, the official language of Montenegro is Montenegrin, which is nearly the same as Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian.

Some people have called the Bay of Kotor “Europe’s southernmost fjord.”

That’s an interesting description. It has the feeling of a fjord in Norway or Chile.

We sailed a deep, twisting watery path from the sea about 17 miles into the interior.

But in technical terms, it’s not a fjord at all. A fjord is a long, narrow inlet with steep sides or cliffs, created in a valley carved by glaciers.

Nearly all of the earth’s glaciers are at or near the poles, with only a few way up high in mountains near the planet’s mid-section.

Kotor is at 42 degrees north, which is slightly closer to the equator than it is to the North Pole.

Instead, what we’ve got in Kotor is a drowned river valley. The river was long ago covered over by a rising sea level in the region.

On our sail-in, around the last bend ahead of us lay the Old City of Kotor.

The map of Kotor looks to me like a ski mountain: a city in the hill.

The city walls were built by the Republic of Venice when Kotor was an important trading port.

On this visit, I went to the ancient town of Budva, a seaside resort begun by Illyrian Greek tribes and then enhanced over the millennia by Romans and then local Slavs and Montenegrins.

It is also the home of a very exclusive (and expensive) resort on Sveti Stephan island.

A BUDVA ALBUM

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4 June 2015
Corfu, Greece: It’s Complicated

June 5, 2015 Corey Sandler

By Corey Sandler, Destination Consultant Silversea Cruises

Corfu is a little piece of Greece, the seventh largest of the country’s islands.

But its status is a lot more complicated.

The history of Corfu includes a long period of domination by the Venetians, a bit of French, and a few decades of British rule.

It was the occupation by the Venetians, though, and the strong fortress structures they erected that was one of the main reasons why Corfu was the only significant part of Greece never conquered by the Muslim Turks, the Ottomans.

A CORFU ALBUM

Photos by Corey Sandler

The island, along with a few smaller islets, forms the northwestern frontier of Greece. The island’s north-eastern coastline is just 3 kilometers or 2 miles away from Albania.

I said that the island was never taken by the Ottoman Turks, but that was not for lack of trying.

The Siege of Corfu in 1537 landed 25,000 soldiers from the Turkish fleet of Suleiman the Magnificent. They pillaged parts of the island and took 20,000 hostages.

But in the city, the castle held and the Turks withdrew because of lack of supplies and an epidemic.

The second great siege of Corfu took place in 1716, during the last Turkish-Venetian War.

On July 8 the Turkish fleet of 33,000 men was encountered by the Venetian fleet off the channel of Corfu and was defeated. Despite repeated assaults and heavy fighting, the Turks were unable to breach the defenses and were forced to end the siege after 22 days.

The 5,000 Venetians and foreign mercenaries, together with 3,000 Corfiotes, were victorious.

Once again Venetian castle engineering had proven itself once again against considerable odds.

The repulse of the Ottomans was widely celebrated in Europe, Corfu being seen as a bastion of Western civilization against the Ottoman tide.

Back in Venice, hometown composer Antonio Vivaldi wrote an oratorio: “Juditha triumphans.”

Today Corfu city looks very different from most Greek cities.

The Venetians set the tone for architecture, and also created a culture more open and diverse than existed in many other places.

Today I made a visit to one of the remnants of the many other cultures that touched Corfu: Achilleion Palace, built for Empress Elizabeth of Austria-Hungary in 1890, named (and decorated) in tribute to her hero Achilles. After her death (by assassination in one of the complex steps that led up to World War I), it was purchased by Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany.

Wilhelm, who also had a thing for heroes and large statues, had a huge version of Achilles installed in the garden, with the inscription “To the Greatest Greek from the Greatest German.” Humble, no?

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3 June 2015
Messina, Italy: Up From the Ashes

June 3, 2015 Corey Sandler

By Corey Sandler, Destination Consultant Silversea Cruises

Early Wednesday morning, we sailed south from Sorrento and Amalfi through the Tyrrhenian Sea into the funnel-shaped Strait of Messina.

Arriving at the Strait, on our left was the bottom of the mainland of Italy. To our right was the large island of Sicily, the football being kicked by the toe of Italy’s boot.

Entering the strait, the passage is as narrow as 2 miles, or 3 kilometers.

At its exit to the south, the strait is nearly 10 miles or 16 kilometers wide.

Almost anywhere the sea funnels into a strait, mariners expect strong and sometime treacherous currents.

That’s only one problem.

The Eurasian plate is moving down, or south, toward the African plate.

And one of the hotspots, where the plates grind against each other, is southern Italy.

Here, in a relatively small area, we have Mount Etna: the tallest active volcano in Europe, nearly constantly bubbling over like a bowl of Arrabiata sauce left on the burner.

Silver Spirit came to the dock in the once-handsome classic Sicilian city of Messina.

I say Messina was once-handsome, because on December 28, 1908 the city was all but leveled by a terrible earthquake that killed as many as 100,000 people.

Today, Messina is the third largest city on the island of Sicily; about 250,000 in the city itself and 650,000 in the surrounding area.

A MESSINA ALBUM

CHIESA DEI CATALANI, MESSINA

Messina reached a peak of splendor in the early 17th century, under Spanish domination. In 1783, an earthquake devastated much of the city, and it took decades to rebuild and rekindle cultural life.

Destroyed again by the earthquake of 1908, during World War II Messina was subject to massive aerial bombardment by Allied forces.

So, between the earthquakes and the wartime bombing, what you see in Messina today is almost entirely rebuilt. Handsome, interesting, but mostly no older than about 70 years.

There are some ancient remnants, though.

Parts of the Cathedral of Messina date from the 12th century. Contained within are the 13^th century remains of King Conrad, ruler of Germany and Sicily.

The sculptures and details of the exterior are phantasmagorical, well worth a visit on their own.

But the biggest draw of the cathedral is its bell tower. The tower holds one of the largest astronomical clocks in the world, built in 1933.

Be there at noon and watch the show.

PATRON SAINT DAY IN MESSINA

As luck would have it, we arrived on the day of commemoration of one of Messina’s patron saints: Madonna della Lettera.

According to local legend, when Saint Paul visited Messina seeking converts, he took back with him to Palestine some new followers who made a visit to meet the Virgin Mary.

May is said to have written a letter, in Hebrew, to bestow her blessing on Messina.

We stood by the cathedral and watched part of the procession.

MOUNT ETNA

And of course, there is Mount Etna, one of the most active volcanoes in the world; the tallest in Europe and the highest mountain of Italy south of the Alps.

Etna is about 100 kilometers or 62 miles from Messina.

It is very much awake, rumbling and spurting.

Etna stands about 3,329 meters or 10,922 feet tall, although every time it erupts it grows or shrinks. That makes it about two-and-a-half times the height of the next tallest Italian volcano, the one we saw recently in the Bay of Naples: Mount Vesuvius.

There are several very interesting small towns and villages in the shadow of Etna.

The most popular is Taormina, which occupies a former Greek settlement and still holds a remarkable Greek Theatre.

Its acoustics are exceptional: a stage whisper can be heard in the last rows. And behind the open stage, framed between columns, stands Mount Etna, a character in every play, opera, and concert presented there for millennia.

Another extraordinary sight is the tiny town of Castelmola which floats above Taormina.

About a thousand people live on the tippy-top of the hill, with cobblestone streets within ancient walls and spectacular views of Taormina…and Mount Etna.

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Now available, the revised Second Edition of “Henry Hudson Dreams and Obsession” by Corey Sandler, for the Amazon Kindle. You can read the book on a Kindle device, or in a Kindle App on your computer, laptop, tablet, or smartphone.

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Henry Hudson Dreams and Obsession: The Tragic Legacy of the New World’s Least Understood Explorer (Kindle Edition)

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2 June 2015
Amalfi, Italy: Hugging the Coast

June 2, 2015 Corey Sandler

By Corey Sandler, Destination Consultant Silversea Cruises

Around the corner and below Sorrento is the Amalfi Coast, the Costiera Amalfitana.

This is an especially beautiful stretch of coastline in a beautiful part of the world.

And it is a lot more relaxing to visit on board a luxury cruise ship than by car or coach.

The alternative is to go down the Amalfi Drive. I’ve driven the drive, and lived to tell the tale, although the experience aged me greatly.

The road winds back and forth, hugging the sheer cliff walls on one side and edging up to the sharp dropoff to the sea below on the other.

Oh, and the road is also heavily populated with…how should I say this?….Italian drivers and tourists. The locals drive with what seems to be total abandon. The visitors, like me, clench their steering wheels in a deathlike drip.

The most famous towns are Positano, which hugs the cliff walls, and Amalfi. Past Positano is the city of Salerno.

AN AMALFI ALBUM

Positano was a relatively poor fishing village during the first half of the 20^th century.

It began to attract large numbers of tourists in the 1950s.

John Steinbeck may have helped. In an essay in Harper’s Bazaar, Steinbeck wrote: “Positano bites deep. It is a dream place that isn’t quite real when you are there and becomes beckoningly real after you have gone.”

The church of Santa Maria Assunta features a dome made of majolica tiles as well as a 13^th Byzantine century icon of a black Madonna.

According to local legend, the icon had been stolen from Byzantium and was being transported across the Mediterranean by pirates.

A terrible storm blew up near Positano and the frightened sailors heard a voice saying “Posa, posa!” (“Put down! Put down!”).

The precious icon was unloaded at the fishing village and the storm abated.

And so today, I came back to Positano. I skipped the beach, the ships, and the granita stands and climbed the hill on a photo safari.

A POSITANO ALBUM

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1 June 2015
Sorrento, Italy: Beauty and the Beast

June 1, 2015 Corey Sandler

By Corey Sandler, Destination Consultant Silversea Cruises

Campania is one of the most beautiful, dramatic, and dangerous regions in all of coastal Italy.

Silver Spirit at anchor off of Sorrento, with Mount Vesuvius in the background

On the mainland, it stretches from Naples south to Sorrento and down the Amalfi Coast.

The wide Gulf of Naples is framed by three major islands: the most famous is Capri just west of Sorrento. Offshore of Naples is Procida, and further out Ischia.

And from almost everywhere you can see the hulking threat of Mount Vesuvius: one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world.

ON TOP OF OLD VESUVIUS

Photos by Corey Sandler

Directly connected, of course, are the famed ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum, mute witness to the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 C.E.

There is no dock for ships at Sorrento, and so we put down our anchor outside the harbor.

Why do I say this place is so dangerous? Because the beast, Vesuvius, is most certainly not extinct. It has erupted numerous times before and after the major event in the year 79. In recorded history it has lost its head roughly every 80 years or so.

Over the centuries, most of its eruptions have been sudden and explosive.

It is the only volcano on the European mainland to have erupted within the last century. (The two other volcanoes in Italy are on islands: Etna on Sicily and Stromboli which is an island by itself.)

Campania has a population of about 5.8 million people, making it the second-most-populous region of Italy after Lombardy (in and around Milan.)

When was the last time it erupted?

In an almost-forgotten event in World War II, Vesuvius erupted in 1944 as American troops and other Allied forces moved north up Italy.

That would be a bit more than 80 years ago…

A POMPEII ALBUM

CAPRI

OPLONTIS AND NERO’S WIFE

We have been to Sorrento so many times that the street vendors call us by name.

Sorrento, Naples, Capri, Paestum, Pompeii, Herculaneum. Been there, done that, enjoyed it very much thank you.

On this trip we decided to do something a bit out of the ordinary, a visit to one of the newest ancient sites of Campania: Oplontis, which includes the huge, spectacular Villa of Poppea, which may have been the seaside resort of Nero’s wife Poppea. That’s not certain, but whoever owned it was quite wealthy.

And whoever owned obviously never came back after it was buried under tens of metres of ejects from the eruption of Vesuvius.

Like Herculaneum, it was hidden in plain sight beneath the fields and strrets of modern Italy, in this case the town of Torre Annunziatta.

Here is some of what we saw:

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31 May 2015
Civitavechia to Venice

May 31, 2015 Corey Sandler

By Corey Sandler, Destination Consultant Silversea Cruises

Welcome aboard.

We are embarked on a voyage that circles down and around Italy, from the ancient port of Rome on the Tyrrhenian Sea through the Strait of Messina to Corfu in the Ionian Sea and then north into the Adriatic Sea.

This cruise ends in Venice, once one of the world’s most dominant military, economic, and political powers, a thalassocracy of maritime colonies and trading partners that includes much of our itinerary as well as further east into the Aegean Sea to Constantinople, today’s Istanbul.

Here’s our plan:

I’ll be posting stories and photos from each port.

I hope you’ll follow along on our voyage.

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4 May 2015
San Francisco: Heading Back to the Atlantic

May 4, 2015 Corey Sandler

By Corey Sandler, Destination Consultant Silversea Cruises

We have reached the end of our journey that crossed from the southeast of the United States to near its northwest corner. From Fort Lauderdale, Florida to San Francisco, California making great use of the shortcut of the Panama Canal.

I’ll be heading home for a few weeks.

Next stop for us: Silver Spirit from Civitavecchia (the port of Rome) to Istanbul, then back down and around to Venice.

I’ll you’ll join me here (or there.)

Safe travels.

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2 May 2015
San Diego, California: The Deep South of the West Coast

May 2, 2015 Corey Sandler

By Corey Sandler, Destination Consultant Silversea Cruises

San Diego has a bit of a second-city complex.

A beautiful setting, a great year-round climate, a natural deepwater harbor, great beaches, and an economy based to a great extent on the U.S. Navy and tourism.

Sailing into San Diego

It is, in fact, the second most populous city in California after Los Angeles.

In my opinion, L.A. gets all the attention but San Diego—and San Francisco—deserve all the praise.

San Diego encompasses about 200 deep canyons and hills separating its mesas, creating small pockets of natural parkland scattered throughout the city lots of hills.

Most of the homes and businesses are on the flat mesas, with the canyons left relatively wild.

We arrived on May 2, but in San Diego’s Old Town, it was Cinco de Mayo for the weekend, a celebration of the Mexican heritage of many San Diegans and the city itself. Here is some of what we saw today:

CINCO DE MAYO FESTIVAL

DOWNTOWN SAN DIEGO

Our cruise from Florida through the Panama Canal to California followed the path of some of the celebrants who came to San Diego for the Panama–California Exposition in March, 1915 as part of the celebrations of the opening of the Panama Canal.

The exposition was held in San Diego’s large urban Balboa Park.

At a time when many architects were celebrating the over-the-top Beaux-Arts style, in San Diego they chose Spanish Baroque, which includes some Moorish Revival elements, and a bit of Spanish Colonial design.

The fair was decorated with more than two million plants of 1,200 different types. Philadelphia’s Liberty Bell made a three-day appearance in November 1915.

Some of the Exposition’s permanent buildings are still standing, including the Botanical Building, originally home to a collection of rare tropical and semi-tropical plants, the 200-foot-tall California Bell Tower, in the form of a Spanish ship, the Chapel of St. Francis of Assisi, and the Fine Arts Building , now part of the Museum of Man.

As impressive as Balboa Park is, for many the most important and most lasting remnant of the fairs is The San Diego Zoo, home to more than 3,700 animals of more than 650 species and subspecies, including the Giant Panda.

The second half of our long day in San Diego was a night game at Petco Park, which is not a place to walk your dog but rather the home of the San Diego Padres baseball team. The modern stadium is nestled within downtown San Diego near the Gaslamp District, a great way to keep a city lively. Petco is not quite Fenway Park in Boston, but it is of a similar atmosphere.

A NIGHT AT THE BALLPARK

ALONG THE WATERFRONT

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29 APRIL 2015
Cabo San Lucas, Mexico: Land’s End

April 29, 2015 Corey Sandler

By Corey Sandler, Destination Consultant Silversea Cruises

Cabo San Lucas is at the bottom of the peninsula of Baja California, lower California in Mexico dangling off the bottom of Alta California, the state of California in the United States.

Cabo San Lucas: Saint Luke’s Cape.

It was given that name by Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, a Portuguese who served with the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés before taking his own expeditions on behalf of the Spanish crown.

From about the mid-16th to the mid-18th centuries, the harbor at Cabo was a regular hiding place for English pirates and privateers who would venture out to attack Manila Galleons, the Spanish vessels hauling treasure from China, Japan, and the Philippines back to Mexico for transshipment up and over the mountains to the Gulf of Mexico and from there eventually to Spain.

Once the piracy business came to an end, Cabo was not all that valuable. It was difficult to get to overland, and there was little fresh water available.

But Cabo came back to life at the end of the 19th century when the locals found an industry exporting the bark of the palo blanco tree, a form of Acacia. The “white stick” was an ingredient for the tanning of leather.

From pirates to tree bark, next came tuna: lots of the large fish just offshore.

A CABO SAN LUCAS ALBUM

Today, we are the big fish: Cabo is one of the most successful resorts of Mexico, a truly beautiful place with all sorts of sports. Fishing, swimming, parasailing, shopping.

ONSTAGE ABOARD SILVER SHADOW

Sailing from Acapulco to Cabo San Lucas, we were honored to be joined by George Sakellario, one of the world’s great guitar masters.

We have known George for years, always looking forward to meeting like ships in the night somewhere in the world.

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27 APRIL 2015
Acapulco, Mexico: Conquistadors, Pirates, and Elvis

April 27, 2015 Corey Sandler

By Corey Sandler, Destination Consultant Silversea Cruises

Spanish Conquistadores used the region in and around Acapulco and Ixtapa-Zihuatenejo as a point of departure to explore the Pacific coast, as well as a port in 1527 for the first ships to sail to the Philippines.

With the disappearance of the native population, fields and forests were worked by Spaniards.

This was different from much of Latin America where the Spaniards established colonies of local labor and sometimes slave labor.

As important Spanish assets, the Mexican ports also drew the attention of the pirate and privateer Francis Drake, as well as Henry Morgan and Thomas Cavendish.

For more than 256 years, the annual trade known as the Manila-Acapulco Galleon or the Nao de Chine took place.

Key to the Manila Galleons was the discovery of the northern Pacific tradewinds which allowed ships to sail back to Acapulco from Asia.

Traders in Acapulco bargained for spices, silks, porcelain, ivory, and lacquerware. After the fair, much of the treasure would be carried up and over the Cordillera to Veracruz on the Gulf of Mexico.

ACAPULCO’S HANDSOME CATHEDRAL

FUERTE SAN DIEGO

Some of the treasures of Asia brought to Acapulco, and the Fort built to fend off pirates

The five-pointed stone Fuerte de San Diego was completed in 1617. Some old guns are still in place.

After the end of the Manila Galleon, Acapulco fell into decline.

Like Panama, it recovered during the California Gold Rush that began in 1849. Many ships stopped on their way to California or on their return trip to Panama for the land crossing there.

More than a few passengers were so taken by the natural beauty of Acapulco that they decided to settle there.

A peek through a window at an old hotel in Acapulco

And then in 1920, England’s Prince of Wales—the future King Edward VIII—helped launch Acapulco as an international tourist destination.

Then came the celebrities: John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Bouvier honeymooned here in 1953. Elizabeth Taylor chose Acapulco for one of her weddings, to Mike Todd in 1957.

Brigitte Bardot posed on the beach. Frank Sinatra was a regular, and even sung about it in one of his signature songs, “Come Fly With Me.”

Since 1934, Las Clavadistas de La Quebrada have lured tourists. The cliff divers work their way out onto ledges in the rock, make the sign of the cross with great drama, and jump into the quebrada or ravine below.

This is a situation where what looks quite dangerous actually is dangerous.

Las Clavadistas de La Quebrada. At right, a diver plunges toward the sea below

Speaking of danger, the king himself, Elvis Presley, starred in “Fun in Acapulco” with costar Ursula Andress in 1963. In that film he played a former circus worker who—because of a woman—gets trapped into a dare to dive at La Quebrada.

Elvis did not visit Acapulco for the movie, which was shot almost entirely in Hollywood. And he certainly did not jump off the cliff.

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25 April 2015
Puerto Quetzal, Guatemala: Rebirth of the Resplendent Quetzal

April 25, 2015 Corey Sandler

By Corey Sandler, Destination Consultant Silversea Cruises

Guatemala is a place of resplendent beauty, terrible poverty, great history, tragic bloodshed, vibrant culture, and a tentative rebirth with a still uncertain future.

It has balanced on a knife’s edge for centuries.

One of the symbols of Guatemala is the Quetzal, its national bird.

The Quetzal is a reminder of defeat at the hands of the Spanish and a yearning for liberty.

Today it also symbolizes a hope for enduring peace in a place that has seen terrible suffering.

A street vendor in Guatemala La Antigua

The Resplendent Quetzal—to give its full name—is native to Guatemala, with a close cousin in Costa Rica.

About 14 inches or 36 centimeters in length; the pretty males add a tail streamer of as much as 25 inches more.

A big guy, then, might stretch 39 inches—or one full meter—from stem to stern.

They have a green, iridescent body and a red breast.

Guatemalans describe the Quetzal’s song as a “whimpering pup.”

But there is also a legend that says that the quetzal sang beautifully before the Spanish conquistadors arrived, and he will sing once again when the land is truly free.

At the heart of the country is La Nueva Guatemala de la Asunción: Guatemala City, very much representative of the nation.

It is a wild and somewhat dangerous city—the largest in Central America; some four million people live in and around it.

A bit further inland is La Antigua Guatemala, the old city, begun in 1543.

La Antigua

The city served as the capital of the Spanish Kingdom of Guatemala, which for more than two centuries stretched from Mexico City to Peru.

All in one place we see vestiges of the Mayans, the ruins of the Spanish and above it all…the volcanoes.

I have visited La Antigua many times and it never fails to thrill. On our approach this morning La Volcan Fuego erupted, just for us. Not a big explosion…just a boom and a cloud of ash. A welcome back to a special place.

LA ANTIGUA, 25 APRIL 2015

COREY AND THE VOLCANO

The author, on a previous visit, midway on a climb of the Pacaya volcano

The remnants of its Spanish colonial architecture have been preserved as a national monument.

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If you would like to purchase an autographed copy, please see the tab on this page, “HOW TO ORDER A PHOTO OR AUTOGRAPHED BOOK”

Here’s where to order an electronic copy for immediate delivery:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IA9QTBM

Henry Hudson Dreams and Obsession: The Tragic Legacy of the New World’s Least Understood Explorer (Kindle Edition)

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23 April 2015
Puntarenas, Costa Rica: Living La Pura Vida

April 23, 2015 Corey Sandler

By Corey Sandler, Destination Consultant Silversea Cruises

We arrived at our first port in the Pacific on a steamy morning in Puntarenas, Costa Rica. And then it got hotter: 92 degrees, and if there is such a thing as more than 100 percent humidity, this must be what it feels like.

We have been here many times, up in the mountains, along the rivers, tothevolcanoes. Today we stayed local, slowly making our way around the town of Puntarenas, a place that does not see all that many tourists. But we know we can count on friendly times amongst the Ticos.

Pura Vida, no matter the heat.

23 APRIL 2015, PUNTARENAS

Costa Rica means “rich coast.”

Yet another thing that Christopher Columbus got wrong.

First of all, Costa Rica has two coasts: Atlantic and Pacific.

And secondly, Columbus was a guy who believed in wishful thinking.

As we know, he was looking for India when he landed in the Bahamas, and so he called the islands there the West Indies.

And when Columbus sailed through the Caribbean to the dead end of Central America, he was looking for the Panama Canal…or a natural strait through the isthmus.

On September 18, 1502, Columbus set anchor offshore of Costa Rica, and Carib Indians paddled out in canoes to deliver a peaceful greeting.

Columbus was looking for gold, and that’s the “rich” part of the name: there just had to be gold somewhere.

Costa Rica has managed to survive the Spanish Conquistadors, the American filibusters who came south in hopes of annexing Central America, corrupt or venal politicians, United Fruit and its “banana republics” and various other indignities.

Today, the gold in Costa Rica is green. To their great credit the Ticos have decided their future lies in gently making use of the vast ecological treasures of the nation: rain forests, estuaries, mountains, volcanoes, and wild life.

A PUNTARENAS ALBUM

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21 APRIL 2015
Our Passage Between the Seas: The Panama Canal

April 22, 2015 Corey Sandler

By Corey Sandler, Destination Consultant Silversea Cruises

Early this morning, about 6:30 a.m., we arrived in Limon Bay in the Atlantic Ocean.

At 4 p.m., we sailed out of Miraflores into the Pacific Ocean.

Silver Shadow in the Miraflores Locks, 21 April 2015. (From Panama Canal Webcam)

I have made the transit of the Panama Canal more times than I can remember; it never ceases to impress and excite me. Sign me up for a return trip.

The desire for a passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific was a driving force for four hundred years: from the time the Spanish first arrived in the dead end of the Gulf of Mexico in what today in Panama.

The alternatives were not good: a months-long sail down and around the bottom of South America at Cape Horn, or an overland passage up and over the cordillera mountains and through torrential rain, raging rivers, and deadly threats from disease and killer creatures of just about any description.

Ferdinand Marie de Lesseps was a national hero, “Le Grand Français,” the Great Frenchman.

He had successfully led the project to build the Suez Canal in Egypt, in the process enriching thousands of French investors.

De Lesseps was a promoter, an entrepreneur, but not an engineer. He was very good at building companies.

But he declared: “The canal will be built.”

And notwithstanding the rain, the rivers, the mountains, and disease, de Lesseps said his project would be en niveau, sans ecluses. On the level, without locks.

APRIL 21, 2015: FROM THE ATLANTIC TO THE PACIFIC

The French project began January 1, 1880. It was immediately obvious they were not in the dry sands of Egypt.

By 1885, extravagance, graft, and the unrealistic design for the canal had emptied the company’s treasury. After eight years, the canal was only about 40 percent complete, and work on dams and locks barely begun.

And now the United States, led by the charismatic president Theodore Roosevelt was ready to reassert itself. The Americans bought the assets of the bankrupt French effort.

The first challenge for the Americans was not one of engineering but instead conquering disease. Clearing Cuba and then Panama of malaria and yellow fever was one of the great accomplishments of medicine and made it possible for massive effort by the United States to build the canal.

A PANAMA CANAL ALBUM

Today, the canal is nearing completion of a major expansion.

At each end, the final touches are being put on new sets of locks that will allow much larger ships to take the watery elevator up and over the Continental Divide.

On board ship, I give three lectures about the canal and the politics of Central America.

You’re welcome to join me next time.

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19-20 APRIL 2015
Cartagena, Colombia: La Heroica

April 20, 2015 Corey Sandler

By Corey Sandler, Destination Consultant Silversea Cruises

We arrived in steamy Cartagena in the afternoon and overnighted, catching our breath in one of the most handsome old Spanish colonial cities of the New World.

Cartagena was the Fort Knox, the Las Vegas, the Tower of London: one of the principal offshore gold repositories and warehouses for the Spanish.

And for that reason it came under attack many times.

Colombians call Cartagena “La Heroica.” The Heroic City.

Here are some photos I took on this visit to Cartagena:

CARTAGENA, APRIL 2015. All photos by Corey Sandler

La Popa Monastery

FUERTE SAN FELIPPE

Within the Walls of the Old City of Cartagena

In 1533—35 years after Columbus sailed nearby and almost a century before Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth Rock in 1620—Spanish explorer Don Pedro de Heredia founded a settlement he called Cartagena de Indias.

Cartegena of the Indies, to distinguish it from Cartagena on the Mediterranean in southeastern Spain.

In 1513, Vasco Nunez de Balboa and his men walked across the Isthmus of Panama and became the first Europeans to see the Pacific Ocean from its Eastern shore.

The Spanish soon got into the business of conducting trade with Asia from what is now Mexico and California as well as pillaging Central and South America.

Traders brought back spices, silks, porcelain, ivory, and lacquerware. And there was gold.

Much of the Asian treasure was carried up and over the Cordillera to Veracruz on the Gulf of Mexico, then reloaded onto galleons through the Gulf of Mexico…the home of the real Pirates of the Caribbean.

Cartagena became the central warehouse for the treasures that came from Asia and much of the gold and silver taken from the Americas.

And it also became one of the principal targets of the real pirates of the Caribbean.

Spanish King Philip II, known as “the Prudent,” did not like losing his stuff to pirates and privateers. And so he hired Europe’s foremost military engineers to design and build Fuerte San Felipe.

The massive network of seven forts and defensive walls average 40 feet high and 56 feet thick. It became Spain’s largest fort in the Americas.

Today the heart of old Cartagena is a labyrinth of narrow cobblestone streets that open onto broad formal plazas. Street names change from block to block.

It might remind you of Istanbul, or Mdina on Malta. But instead of Muslim calls to prayer, it’s salsa and vallenato music all the time.

Cartagena’s history includes the sad story of slavery, the cruelty of some of the Spanish including a branch of the Inquisition, and more recent devolution into narcoterrorist chaos.

A CARTAGENA ALBUM

After many years of neglect, Cartagena—the jewel of the nation—has been reborn.

For those who have a bit of money, the city is a Caribbean playground: A wild party in a place of great culture. They call it rumbeando.

“Partying, dancing all night, getting drunk, waking up early to go to the beach, then doing it again.”

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16 APRIL 2015
Fort Lauderdale, Florida: California Bound

April 16, 2015 Corey Sandler

By Corey Sandler, Destination Consultant Silversea Cruises

California, here we come.

We begin a new cruise today, headed toward the north coast of South America at Cartagena, Colombia and then through the passage between the seas to the Pacific Ocean.

I’ve been through the Panama Canal more times than I can remember, and I look forward to the trip again and again. Especially coming from the Atlantic side, the sight of a large cargo or cruise ship sitting 80 feet above you on the top step of a watery ladder is something you do not forget.

After we reach the Pacific, we will turn north and make calls in Costa Rica, Guatemala, Mexico, and then arrive in California: San Diego and finally the spectacular city of San Francisco.

Welcome aboard.

Here’s our plan:

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14-15 APRIL 2015
Nassau, The Bahamas: A Bit of Everything

April 14, 2015 Corey Sandler

By Corey Sandler, Destination Consultant Silversea Cruises

The Bahamas is an independent nation whose name may have come from a Spanish phrase.

The name of its capital, Nassau, derives from a German city.

They drive on the left side of the road, and speak the Queen’s English—more or less—because it was an English colony for 255 years.

Their closest major neighbor is the United States, as near as 55 miles away from the westernmost of the Bahamas islands, and their currency—the Bahamian Dollar—is directly tied to the value of the American buck.

Oh, and it is also the site of the lost city of Atlantis—at least that is what the owners of the large hotel, water park, and casino on Paradise Island across the harbor from where we will dock—want you to believe.

We arrived in early evening on 14 April and will overnight here, departing on Wednesday evening.

To our guests who are leaving us tomorrow in Fort Lauderdale, I wish you safe travels and look forward to sailing with you again somewhere in this wonderful world.

A NASSAU ALBUM

CHRIST CHURCH CATHEDRAL

THE QUEEN’S STAIRCASE

For more about Nassau, see my blog entry from earlier this year when we visited aboard Silver Cloud. http://blog.sandlerbooks.com/?p=2779

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10-12 April 2015
Hamilton, Bermuda: Bermy in Shorts

April 12, 2015 Corey Sandler

By Corey Sandler, Destination Consultant Silversea Cruises

We have successfully completed the eastbound leg of our Bermuda Triangle, arriving in Hamilton in the Islands of Bermuda for a three-day stay. Friday and Saturday were nonpareil days, a rich blue sky and near-summer temperatures; Sunday was merely beautiful with a few showers–enough to remind us that Bermuda is real and not a dream.

Bermuda consists of about 181 islands and islets, some not much more than sand dunes. In total, about 53 square kilometers or 21 square miles of land. All of the major islands are aligned on a hook- or claw-shaped axis, connected by road bridges.

But e pluribus unum: out of many, one.

The archipelago of Bermuda consists of the high points of the rim of the caldera of an underwater volcano, part of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.

HAMILTON

Photos by Corey Sandler

THE DOCKYARDS

Photos by Corey Sandler

The top of the seamount has gone through periods of complete submergence, during which its limestone cap was formed by marine organisms, and during the Ice Ages the entire caldera was above sea level, forming an island of approximately two-hundred square miles.

Bermuda is on the western edge of the Sargasso Sea, an area of that collects surface-floating sargassum seaweed in a gyre or circular current bounded by the Gulf Stream on the west, the North Atlantic Current on the north, the Canary Current on the east, and the North Equatorial Current on the south.

GIBBS HILL LIGHTHOUSE

Photos by Corey Sandler

Without any significant manufacturing and not much in the way of agriculture, Bermuda nevertheless has one of the world’s highest GDP per capita: Number 6 or 7 on the World Bank and United Nations lists.

That’s not to say that everyone you meet on the street or the beach is fabulously wealthy.

Bermuda’s economy is based on offshore insurance and reinsurance, and on tourism.

We eat so well aboard ship, but somehow we all become peckish when ashore.

Among Bermudian favorites: The traditional Sunday breakfast of salted codfish, boiled with potatoes.

Or, Hoppin’ John, a simple dish of boiled rice and black-eyed peas.

Shark hash is a delicacy; better to eat the shark than the other way around.

You’ll also find traditional British Pub fare.

Bermuda Bananas are small and sweet, often eaten on Sunday mornings with codfish and potatoes.

Bay grapes were introduced as a wind break, and now bay grape jelly is a delicacy.

Local fish include tuna, wahoo, and rockfish.

Fish Chowder seasoned with sherry pepper sauce and dark rum is a real treat.

And Bermudians are rather fond of mayonnaise: on their hot dogs, their beef pies, their peas and rice. They put mayonnaise on their mayonnaise.

It’s almost impossible to avoid, so I’d suggest you just go with the flow.

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8 APRIL 2015
Norfolk, Virginia: Sailing Into the Story of the United States

April 9, 2015 Corey Sandler

By Corey Sandler, Destination Consultant Silversea Cruises

In the early morning, Silver Shadow entered into the outer reaches of the largest bay in the United States.

Chesapeake Bay is an estuary surrounded by Maryland to the North and Virginia to the South. To the east, the long finger of the Delmarva Peninsula serves as a protective barrier from the Atlantic Ocean.

The protective barrier forms a “roadstead” or “roads”, a body of water sheltered from rip currents, spring tides or ocean swell outside a harbor. The barrier acts like a natural breakwater, allowing ships to lie reasonably safely at anchor.

One of the gems of the region is Colonial Williamsburg, a 300-acre town brought back to life in the 1930s. In peak season about 15,000 interpreters work in the former capitol, governor’s palace, and other structures.

I’ve been there many times, and never lack for new experiences and insights. I went with a group of guests for the day.

Here’s an album of photos from Williamsburg.

A COLONIAL WILLIAMSBURG ALBUM

WIthin the capitol:

At the Governor’s Palace

Around Colonial Williamsburg

All photos by Corey Sandler

THE CITY OF NORFOLK

The city of Norfolk is in the outermost harbor of Chesapeake Bay.

Navigable for nearly its entire length, oceangoing ships can reach as far as Baltimore. Its widest point is just south of the mouth of the Potomac River, about 30 miles or 50 kilometers away.

More than 150 rivers and streams flow into the bay’s 64,299 square mile (166,534 square kilometer) drainage basin.

The headwaters of Chesapeake Bay are about 200 miles or 300 kilometers away, in the Susquehanna River which transects the state of Pennsylvania from its source in Central New York State.

The word Hampton honors one of the founders of the Virginia Company of London, Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton.

The first colonists arrived in 1607 when English Captain Christopher Newport landed at Cape Henry along the Atlantic Coast in today’s Virginia Beach with three vessels: flagship Susan Constant, the smaller Godspeed, and even smaller Discovery. They moved on, seeking a more sheltered area.

The Virginia Colony, which took hold at Jamestown on the banks of the James River in 1607, was the first permanent English colony in the New World, basically the first English colony anywhere.

To some historians, this was where the British Empire began.

The second English colony was at Bermuda, where we are headed next. One of the relief fleets for Jamestown, including the ship Sea Venture, was forced to seek shelter there in June of 1609 after running into a strong storm offshore.

The bones of that story lie within William Shakespeare’s play, “The Tempest.”

Jamestown was rescued when a new group of settlers and supplies, some from the relief fleet in Bermuda, arrived in 1610. Jamestown Settlement is about an hour north of Norfolk by car, not far from Colonial Williamsburg.

The Virginia Colony began to sustain itself and grow. In 1640, the English had begun the import of slaves to the colony; by 1660 it was at the heart of the plantation system there and elsewhere.

By 1775, Norfolk was perhaps the most prosperous city in Virginia, an important port for exporting goods to the British Isles and beyond.

When the American Revolution was fully underway the next year, Norfolk was a strong base of Loyalist support.

Lord Dunmore, the Royal Governor of Virginia, fled from the colonial capitol of Williamsburg and attempted to reestablish control of the colony from Norfolk.

On New Year’s Day, 1776, Lord Dunmore’s fleet of three ships shelled Norfolk for more than eight hours. The damage from the shells, and fires started by the British and by the rebels destroyed more than 800 buildings, almost two-thirds of the city.

Dunmore was eventually driven out, ending more than 168 years of British colonial rule in Virginia.

The American Revolutionary War essentially came to an end in 1781 at the Battle of Yorktown, less than an hour north of Norfolk, short of Williamsburg.

A combined force of American Continental Army troops led by General George Washington, marching together with French Army troops led by the Comte de Rochambeau defeated a British Army commanded by Lieutenant General Charles Cornwallis.

This was the last major land battle in North America.

I am in NO way making an excuse for slavery. But the end of the import of Africans combined with crop failures from overworked lands brought about the collapse of the economy.

In early 1861, Virginia voted to secede from the Union.

In the spring of 1862, offshore of Sewell’s Point Peninsula, the USS Monitor and the CSS Virginia engaged in perhaps the most important naval battle of the Civil War, the first conflict between ironclad vessels.

The battle was part of the Confederate effort to break the Union blockade, which had cut off Virginia’s largest cities, Norfolk and Richmond.

The Virginia had been built on the reclaimed hull of a former Union ship, the Merrimack.

And so the Battle of Hampton Roads is often also referred to as the Battle of the Monitor and the Merrimack, using the original names of the two vessels.

A NORFOLK ALBUM

The Chrysler Museum of Art, and the battleship Wisconsin in the harbor

In 1907, the tercentenary of the Virginia Colony was celebrated in Norfolk with the Jamestown Exposition. By 1917, as the U.S. built up to enter World War I, the Naval Air Station Hampton Roads was constructed on the former exposition grounds.

The largest Navy base in the world, Naval Station Norfolk, is also one of NATO’s two Strategic Command headquarters.

A SHOUT-OUT TO MOREHEAD CITY

Our original itinerary had Silver Shadow making a call at Morehead City, a not-often-visited port on North Carolina’s Crystal Coast The tourism and business people there, and in neighboring Beaufort, were excited at the prospect of our arrival. It might have been the most significant event since the killing of Blackbeard the pirate just outside of the port at Topsail Inlet.

Alas, the night before we had a minor technical problem before departing Charleston and the wait for repair and certification forced a cancelation to the Morehead City call. We hope for a second chance some day.

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6 April 2015
Charleston, South Carolina: War and Remembrance

April 6, 2015 Corey Sandler

By Corey Sandler, Destination Consultant Silversea Cruises

After years of arguments, threats, and political maneuvering the American Civil War started here.

On this visit to Charleston, I went with a group of guests to visit the fort in the harbor. The import of the fort is huge, but its size is surprisingly small, one of a number of installations on islands and sandbars in the Cooper River.

Scenes of Fort Sumter. Photos by Corey Sandler

On December 1860, South Carolina was the first state to secede from the Union. On January 9, 1861, cadets from The Military College of South Carolina, also known as The Citadel, opened fire on the Union steamship Star of the West entering Charleston’s harbor.

The Chapel at The Citadel

The ship was carrying relief supplies for the Federal garrison at Fort Sumter. The captain got the message and left in a hurry: the first organized shots of the U.S. Civil War.

South Carolina, like most of the Southern States, had an economy that was fully dependent upon slave labor.

The first settlers were mostly from England, and England’s colonies of Barbados in the Caribbean and Bermuda in the Atlantic.

A CHARLESTON ALBUM, Part 2

By the mid-18th century Charles Towne had become the hub of the Atlantic trade for the southern colonies.

Mostly because of the lucrative slave trade, it became the wealthiest and largest city south of Philadelphia, the fourth-largest port in the colonies, after Boston, New York, and Philadelphia.

Colonial landowners had experimented with cash crops ranging from tea to silkworms.

Once British colonial planters in the American South discovered rice would grow in that region, they sought enslaved Africans from rice-growing regions of West Africa because of their skills in irrigation, dams, and earthworks.

About 40 percent of the 400,000 Africans transported and sold as slaves in North America landed at Sullivan’s Island in the harbor.

The Gullah are descendants of African slaves who live in the Lowcountry and islands of South Carolina and Georgia. The Gullah people and their language are also called Geechee, which may be related to the Ogeechee River near Savannah.

The Gullah influenced local music and eventually the rest of the country, especially in the early development of jazz.

The geechee dances that accompanied the music of dock workers in Charleston followed a rhythm that inspired Eubie Blake’s “Charleston Rag” and later James P. Johnson’s “The Charleston,” which launched the dance craze of that name in the 1920s.

In 1925, DuBose Heyward, a white Charlestonian, wrote a novel called “Porgy”, based on African-American life in the fictitious Catfish Row based on Charleston’s Cabbage Row on Church Street.

Dubose and his wife Dorothy made the novel into a Broadway show of the same name in 1927.

And then DuBose Heyward collaborated with George Gershwin and his brother Ira Gershwin to turn his novel into the opera, “Porgy and Bess.”

George Gershwin spent the summer of 1934 at Folly Beach outside of Charleston learning about Gullah and Geechee.

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5 April 2015
Savannah, Georgia: Sherman’s March to Forrest Gump

April 5, 2015 Corey Sandler

By Corey Sandler, Destination Consultant Silversea Cruises

Photos by Corey Sandler, 5 April 2015

Silversea Silver Shadow at the dock on the Savannah River today

The Talmadge Memorial Bridge in Savannah

The Waving Girl, memorializing Florence Martus (1869-1943), who greeted arriving and departing ships from the shoreline here.

The Old Savannah Cotton Exchange, from 1887.

The former home of the Savannah Morning News, where Joel Chandler Harris, the paper’s associate editor began writing the Uncle Remus tales.

Along the river

Spanish Moss in the morning light

General William Tecumseh Sherman concluded his infamous March in Savannah.

Sherman’s troops arrive in Savannah

Johnny Mercer picked up some of the rhythms of the descendants of West African slaves who began their work as slaves when they landed here; on some isolated islands and backwaters the Geechee dialect survives.

The founder of the Girl Scout movement came from here.

Paula Deen began her culinary cuisine with a home business called “The Bag Lady” and progressed from there to fame and a bit of disrepute.

And Forrest Gump (or Tom Hanks, to be more precise) sat on a park bench in downtown to recount his memorable but decidedly fictional story for a cinema classic.

Also happening here, and memorialized in a bestselling book and a strange, mostly true film was a notorious murder that involved a cast of characters stranger than anything Hollywood could concoct. The book and movie were “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.”

A SAVANNAH ALBUM, Part 2

Photos by Corey Sandler

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SEE THE “How to Order a Photo or Autographed Book” TAB ON THIS PAGE FOR INSTRUCTIONS

Cruise Photos and Stories by Corey Sandler