Commonly known as Easter Island, it was so named because the European sailors who discovered the island arrived on the scene on Easter Sunday. Recently it has become  customary to refer to the island as Rapa Nui and the native peoples as the Rapanui people.  The name roughly translates as “Big Rapa” which references the […]

The west coast of South America, where part of Ecuador is located, is an extraordinarily fertile area for commercial fishing. Manta, located on Ecuador’s central coast, is the largest fishing port in Ecuador. Also known as San Pablo de Manta, the city is the largest and most populated city in Manabi Province.  We stopped in […]

17 January 2023 As our itinerary changed due to civil unrest in Peru (and the cancellation of our planned visits there), we had the opportunity today to visit Guayaquil, Ecuador, a city we first saw in 2018.   Guayaquil is a large port city, home to over 3 million people.   It has a cosmopolitan […]

The joke the locals tell in Cartagena, Columbia is that the city has two types of weather: Hot and Hotter. It was certainly hot (and humid) on January 12 when we docked there. Then again, it beats 4 degrees in New Jersey.  Originally known as Cartagena de Indias, Cartagena was an important Spanish colony that […]

We are finally on our way. We set sail from Miami on Sunday afternoon and we are scheduled to dock in Cartagena, Columbia on Wednesday morning. This far everything is first rate—the service, the accommodations, the food and entertainment—not to mention the 7 bars around the ship. We do have very slow internet (along with […]

Well, it’s 2023 already, and it’s going to be a big year—a very big year—for travel photography. Mary Anne and I will be leaving shortly to go on a long cruise that will take us to Australia, India, Africa, Japan and Indonesia to name a few of the places we will be visiting.   A […]