By the time Tony co-founded Lonely Planet Publications in 1973, he already had the travel bug. And ever since, travel and discovery have been at the heart of his life and career.
I’ve recorded several podcasts, interviews, conversations recently.
At London Business School Maureen and I recorded Journeys, a conversation with Rajesh Chandy the Professor of Entrepreneurship in the Developing World at the Wheeler Institute. People seemed to enjoy it, someone suggested that we ‘looked like two teenagers our to start an exciting adventure,’ not business like at all.
With Tyrel Cameron Eskelson I talked on his Interlocutor podcast about my travel life, starting in Pakistan when I was a small child right up to travel in recent weeks and for the rest of 2025.
My recent travels in Central America (Panama) and the Caribbean (Cuba) started with a visit to Guatemala. Wearing my Global Heritage Fund archaeology hat I flew by helicopter to El Mirador, the remote Mayan site south of Flores and Tikal and close to the border with M...
The Panama Canal is a huge part of the Cuban economy and will become even more important when the expanded locks open next month and even larger New Panamax vessels can take that handy shortcut between the Atlantic and Pacific, paying up to US$376,000 for the trip. Th...
My principal reason for visiting Panama was, of course, to see the Panama Canal. A quick history: A French team led by Ferdinand de Lesseps constructed the Suez Canal linking the Mediterranean with the Red Sea. Originally 164 km in length it took 10 years to construct...
My Panama City visit featured the new skyscrapered financial centre and the original Spanish city Panamá Viejo, until it was sacked by the English pirate Henry Morgan. But I started my Panama visit by staying in Casco Viejo, the newer ‘old city’ which replaced the ori...
◄ We followed this taxi flying a pirate flag from an aerial. ‘Ah, il pirata,’ my driver commented. And then, somewhat ruefully: ‘Morgan.’ You can’t get away from Sir Henry Morgan, the English pirate who comprehensively sacked Panama back in 1671. Nearly 350 years l...
After my visit to Cuba – last gasp centre of fast-fading Communism – I travelled to Panama just as it became the worldwide symbol of greedy grasping Capitalism. Yes, the Panama Papers story broke just a day before I arrived in Panama City. So I looked up where ground ...
Wearing my Global Heritage Fund archaeological hat once again – as I did when I visited the National School of Arts in Havana – I looked at a number of churches in Santiago de Cuba with Stefaan Portmaan (GHF’s Executive Director) and archaeologist Santiago Giraldo (GH...
If those old American cars are one of Cuba’s most iconic images then music has to be the other one. ▲ You can search it out, as we did at the rooftop bar of the Hotel Casa Granda in Santiago de Cuba. Grahame Greene came here in planning to interview Fidel in the 19...
Havana is a great city for people watching, whether they are Cubans or visitors. ▲ Lounging in Plaza de la Catedral beside the statue of flamenco dancer Antonio Gade lounging against a pillar. There are lots of statues like this one around Havana – variously loungi...
◄ There’s lots of it and you encounter it everywhere you walk. Like the Casa Particulares – a Cuban B&B, Airbnb without the internet – where I stayed on Calle Concordia in Central Havana, a few blocks back from the Malecón. My room has one of those balconies up to...
© Tony Wheeler’s Travels 2013