Last blog post on Costa Rica and Cuba

Alas, this will be my last day posting on my Cuba and Costa Rica blog. Moon will roll out a new website in the coming weeks that will include some changes. One of these changes will be to the blogs featured on the website. Moon is going to roll out more travel-specific blogs, replacing the current destination-based blogs currently written by myself and fellow scribes Laura Martone, Wayne Bernhardson, Joshua Berman, and Michael Sommers.

For the past four years, I’ve enjoyed penning twice-weekly missives. Fortunately, these will be archived and still available for viewing.

Even when traveling, I did my best to ensure one weekly post on Costa Rica and a second on Cuba.

I admit, I slipped during the past two months, for which I apologize....a hyper-hectic travel schedule the past ten weeks is no excuse. more >>

Cuba’s Mariel port readying for Panama Canal expansion

Yesterday I completed my tenth Panama Canal passage aboard the National Geographic Sea Lion. As we passed through Miraflores Locks, we gained a great perspective of the $5.25 billion Panama Canal Expansion—construction of two huge new lock complexes (one on the Pacific, the other on the Caribbean) to permit passage by today’s elephantine Post-Panamax ships.

The completion of the new locks, scheduled for early 2015, will permit passage by vessels carrying as many as 12,000 containers—three times the volume of today’s Panamax vessels (those built to pass through the 110-feet wide, 1,000-foot-long existing locks, which first opened in 1914). more >>