For many Australians, a flight to a holiday island destination in the Pacific means flying to Fiji – a flight of around five hours. But for North Americans, Fiji is 12 hours or more by plane … whereas Hawaii is only 5, and has the benefit that you don’t even need a passport. 6.45…
See that boat through the rock arch in today’s picture? That’s bobbing about in the Pacific Ocean. Whereas the boat in the foreground is in the Gulf of California – and the arch marks the end of the Baja Peninsula – or Lands End. The point where a sea, or gulf, meets an ocean…
The old saying goes “Red Sky at Night, Sailor’s Delight, Red Sky at Morning, Sailor’s Warning” .. Apparently, it’s all to do with moisture (or dust) concentration in the lower atmosphere which blocks the shorter blue light-waves, but allows the longer red light-waves through. At sunset, red rays mean that there’s probably a high…
We recently went on a Mexican Riviera cruise (now, I know that sounds like I am showing off, but there is a point to my story, honestly!) Anyway, while chatting with other cruisers (almost all of whom were North Americans), I said that we had cruised to the South Pacific 4 times. One of them said how…
Our final image in this series is of the Norwegian Jewel, the cruise ship we sailed on in October 2016. This particular shot was taken from on board a ‘tender boat’ as we disembarked for the day in Cabo San Lucas, our final port-of-call on our Mexican Riviera cruise. I’d like to say that we…
Martinique is a lovely French island in the Caribbean – with stunning black beaches, and quaint little fishing villages, and a tragic past. Twice, in the past 250 years, nature has tried to wipe out Martinique (or at least the human habitats on it). The Great Hurricane of 1780 produced a storm surge which killed…
Odysseus (he of the Odyssey) was a complex character – but it was fair to say that he was a man of his time, when women were expected to stay faithful but men were granted a more … flexible morality. But his relationship with Nausicaa was even more complex than most. The story goes that Odysseus…
Imagine a town of just a few thousand people in the 1930s, quietly ekeing out an existence from fishing, and fruit-growing, and not much else. Then imagine that in 1945, the first ‘tourist trade’ begins – with DC3s carrying 20 passengers at a time. For another decade or so things are still quiet – although…
C’mon lets cruise we’ve got nothin’ to lose … As part of our road trip around the North American west coast, Shirley and I have left the road – in fact, we’ve left the land, and are on a cruise ship sailing down to what’s euphemistically known as the Mexican Riviera. Remember the Love Boat,…
This week, our Travel pics series is F for Fort-de-France. We were in Martinique’s main port for just one day – on April 9, 2015 – while on a 25 night cruise from the Dominican Republic. We were travelling on the MSC Musica, on what I thought was an exceptionally good deal – a ‘re-positioning cruise’ that…
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