{"id":1069,"date":"2003-03-27T23:00:00","date_gmt":"2003-03-27T23:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/globetrotters.co.uk\/newsletter\/2003\/03\/27\/henry-travels-on-the-atlantis\/"},"modified":"2026-03-13T06:37:41","modified_gmt":"2026-03-13T06:37:41","slug":"henry-travels-on-the-atlantis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globetrotters.co.uk\/newsletter\/henry-travels-on-the-atlantis.html","title":{"rendered":"Henry Travels on the Atlantis"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The following is an extract from Henry from Hawaii&#8217;s website which<br \/>\n has lots of interesting links and provides much background to this memorable<br \/>\n trip to Molokai.  To find out more info, take a look at:\n <\/p>\n<p>The research vessel Atlantis<br \/>\n is a state-of-the-art oceanographic ship, delivered in 1997, which launches<br \/>\n the well-known deep diving submersible Alvin.<br \/>\n I was invited to join the 14 Nov voyage departing Puntarenas, Costa Rica<br \/>\n for an area in the rift zone northeast of the Galapagos Islands.<br \/>\n This deep-sea<br \/>\n odyssey, configured to retrieve borehole information from both the<br \/>\n rift area northeast of the Galapagos and the deep trench area west of<br \/>\n central Costa Rica, was essentially to help more precisely determine the<br \/>\n <a href=\"http:\/\/www-odp.tamu.edu\/publications\/prosp\/205_prs\/205toc.html\">subduction<br \/>\n mechanisms<\/a> of <a href=\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20060220142842\/http:\/\/pubs.usgs.gov:80\/publications\/text\/dynamic.html\">plate tectonics<\/a>.<br \/>\n Incidentally, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.whoi.edu\/what-we-do\/explore\/ships\/ships-atlantis\/ships-atlantis-tracker\/\">daily<br \/>\n location<\/a> of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.whoi.edu\/what-we-do\/explore\/\">R\/V Atlantis<br \/>\n (AGOR-25)<\/a> can be viewed online along with its recent track.<\/p>\n<p>I flew from Chicago, via Mexico City, arriving very early in the morning<br \/>\n and stayed at the Posada Aeropuerto near the airport for a relatively<br \/>\n few hours until I started exploring the Poas volcanic area and later in<br \/>\n the day driving to the capital, San Jose, for an overnight stay.  The<br \/>\n next day was spent visiting the city sights such as the National Museum<br \/>\n and the evening was given to travelling some sixty miles west to Puntarenas.<br \/>\n As usual, the wet season afternoon showers were heavy but nothing large<br \/>\n enough to impede any plans.  Incidentally, the wet or green season as<br \/>\n they like to call it there, ends just about mid-November and the rest<br \/>\n of the time the weather was excellent. <\/p>\n<p>In Puntarenas, I stayed at the recommended Hotel Tioga with a good view<br \/>\n of the beach looking south to the sea. It was a much welcomed stay and<br \/>\n very quiet compared to the constant noise of San Jose. I even enjoyed<br \/>\n all two stations on the local television scene and the big and inclusive<br \/>\n breakfast.  At first light from my balcony, I could see the m\/v Atlantis<br \/>\n riding at anchor almost due south of the hotel.<\/p>\n<p>Puntarenas is both<br \/>\n a fishing port and a resort centre on the west central coast of Costa Rica. It is<br \/>\n situated on a four-mile-long spit that extends east-west from the narrow<br \/>\n waist of Costa Rica. Its <a href=\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20150721080509\/http:\/\/www.puntarenas.com:80\/puntarenas\/activities.html\">tourist activities<\/a><br \/>\n consist primarily of water-related attractions; however, excursions to<br \/>\n the cloud forest at <a href=\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20200201175439\/http:\/\/www.monteverdeinfo.com:80\/monteverde-area-maps-facts-and-links\">Monteverde<\/a> and to San Jose,<br \/>\n for example, may be accomplished as day trips. This is not the case for<br \/>\n the volcanic areas of Arenal<br \/>\n Volcano, Poas Volcano<br \/>\n and Irazu<br \/>\n Volcano inasmuch as the distances to these areas generally are too<br \/>\n great when starting from Puntarenas.<\/p>\n<p>I caught a water taxi to the Atlantis and was introduced to the ship<br \/>\n by its most hospitable captain, George Silva. The research vessel is a<br \/>\n remarkable self-contained workshop of the deep with a most competent staff<br \/>\n of high-calibre people. Later in the day the scientist in charge, Dr Keir<br \/>\n Becker of the University of Miami, embarked with his group of sea-going<br \/>\n scientists. It was a most impressive group.<\/p>\n<p>The first two days at sea were involved in heading almost due south some<br \/>\n 600 miles to the first dive site at 1*14&#8217;N\/83*44&#8217;W. The next day was taken<br \/>\n up with Alvin diving to 11,500ft to two boreholes to retrieve information<br \/>\n pertaining to physical conditions within the wells. In addition, sampling<br \/>\n was made of the water content for evidence of bacteria that have been<br \/>\n residing in the deep areas beneath the floor of the ocean. NASA apparently<br \/>\n is interested in these results as they will also be attempting to retrieve<br \/>\n evidence of bacteria that might have resided on such remote areas as Mars.<\/p>\n<p>The following two days were spent travelling north northwest to a second<br \/>\n dive site at 9*39&#8217;N\/86*11&#8217;W where Alvin was sent down 14,000ft or almost<br \/>\n three miles to retrieve data from the deep trench that parallels the western<br \/>\n coasts of both North and South America. On the outside of Alvin, we attached<br \/>\n a bag of Styrofoam cups with various messages and logos only to see them<br \/>\n shrink to inch-high thimble-sized curiosities due to the huge pressure<br \/>\n exerted at those depths.<\/p>\n<p>The last leg of the voyage covered approximately 100 miles as we headed<br \/>\n east around the Nicoya Peninsula back to Puntarenas. Incidentally, during<br \/>\n the cruise we saw dolphins. turtles and pilot whales. Overall, it was<br \/>\n a most successful and enjoyable voyage.<\/p>\n<p>The fifty-mile drive from Puntarenas to the San Jose international airport<br \/>\n took two hours on the narrow two-lane Pan American Highway and, after<br \/>\n another overnight at the Posada Aeropuerto, an early flight to Chicago<br \/>\n completed this portion of the trip. The flight track brought us over Guatemala<br \/>\n City and the view to the west at the string of coastal<br \/>\n volcanoes, some of them smoking, was marvellous. Lake Atitlan was<br \/>\n clearly visible in the early morning and I took an awful lot of pictures.<br \/>\n Even smoking Popocatepetl<br \/>\n (18,000ft) and snow-covered Ixtacihuatl<br \/>\n near Mexico City presented calendar-quality photo opportunities.<\/p>\n<p>The entire trip was rewarding and I would hope to accompany the Atlantis<br \/>\n on some future research voyage.<\/p>\n<p><b><i>If you would like any further information, please contact Henry<br \/>\n by email: <\/i><\/b><a href=\"mailto:&#078;&#111;&#119;&#105;&#099;&#107;&#105;&#064;&#119;&#101;&#098;&#116;&#118;&#046;&#110;&#101;&#116;\">&#078;&#111;&#119;&#105;&#099;&#107;&#105;&#064;&#119;&#101;&#098;&#116;&#118;&#046;&#110;&#101;&#116;<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"forum\">Discusss this article in our new forum<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The following is an extract from Henry from Hawaii&#8217;s website which has lots of interesting links and provides much background to this memorable trip to Molokai. To find out more&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"css_class_manager_body_classes":"","css_class_manager_use_in_post_loop":false},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[46],"class_list":["post-1069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive","category-main-article","tag-march-2003"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Henry Travels on the Atlantis - eNewsletter<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/globetrotters.co.uk\/newsletter\/henry-travels-on-the-atlantis.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Henry Travels on the Atlantis - eNewsletter\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The following is an extract from Henry from Hawaii&#8217;s website which has lots of interesting links and provides much background to this memorable trip to Molokai. 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