If time were no object, I would like to make my next Pacific crossing by sea. Unfortunately time is a very scarce commodity for me these days, but perhaps a halfway compromise between a stateroom on a container ship and the boring old HKG-YVR or HKG-SFO direct flights (perhaps with a 6-8 hour layover in Tokyo as a small bonus) would be an island hopper flight like in the good ol’ days.
Although I am too young to remember clipper flight ads myself, this was the picture that got me to start dreaming of them, advertising a hopping itinerary from Miami to Rio.
A hop from Asia to America would of course be a bit longer than one from North to South America, although the Micronesian and Hawaiian islands are quite a different culture than the Caribbean. The Federated States of Micronesia advertises this map as the hops going from Guam to Hawaii:
Guam has regular enough flights to Manila or Tokyo, but is still not quite the “gateway” to Asia in the same way as Puerto Rico is from Lat Am to the US, except maybe as WWII buffs might appreciate in this map:
Since this Friday photo post is going into not just one but four photos, the last one hopefully shows a point that these are trying to bring together – for the 250 years ending only about 200 years ago, there was a very active connection between Latin America and Asia in the form of the Manila-Acapulco galleon, which shows up today in some of the names and dishes in the Philippines, but perhaps more importantly points to a more granular variety of trans-pacific trade all too easily missed by those focusing on only the US and China.
