{"id":180989,"date":"2014-10-06T04:00:07","date_gmt":"2014-10-05T18:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=180989"},"modified":"2014-10-06T04:00:07","modified_gmt":"2014-10-05T18:00:07","slug":"cruise-line-makes-historic-visit-pagan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/cruise-line-makes-historic-visit-pagan\/","title":{"rendered":"Cruise line makes \u2018historic\u2019 visit to Pagan"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Northern<\/a>
Northern Islands development planners Herman B. Cabrera, Jerome Aldan, and William Torres welcome the captain of the cruise liner Silver Explorer, Capt. Adam Boczek, during the vessel\u2019s port call on Saipan last week. The cruise line also made stopovers on Pagan and Tinian. (Contributed Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nAccording to the Northern Island Development Planning group for the Northern Island\u2019s Mayor Office, the Silver Explorer that just visited Saipan this week after its \u201chistoric\u201d trip to Pagan was arranged as part of economic development plan to bring \u201chigh-end tourism\u201d to the Northern Islands, especially Pagan.<\/p>\n

According to group chair Herman B. Cabrera, the idea of a cruise liner visiting Pagan sprang up in a September 2012 Frontier Summit conference on Saipan, which examined economic development alternatives for the Northern Islands.<\/p>\n

He called the Silver Explorer visit an \u201chistoric undertaking\u201d of two years, with Pacific Development Inc., the tour guide of the trip, recently telling them there was a good possibility of eventually having four cruise liners passing through Pagan in the future.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the beginning,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The group notes the importance of redevelopment that is consistent with the \u201cnatural beauty\u201d of the island, and is looking for tourism that will leave \u201cno heavy footprint.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t want to have a lot of indiscriminate kinds of tourists,\u201d he said, adding they are looking for tourists who are sensitive to nature and the \u201cfragile ecosystem\u201d of the island.<\/p>\n

The group was at the Silver Explorer\u2019s brief port call on Saipan and urged the captain to make the trip \u201cthe first of many more\u201d to come.<\/p>\n

The group believes the economy the island is capable of sustaining would deal with agriculture, fishery, and the use of small cottages.<\/p>\n

Silver Explorer\u2019s Pagan visit on Sept. 28 took tourists on a trip to one of the island\u2019s most recent lava flows and abandoned World War II runways.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

According to the Northern Island Development Planning group for the Northern Island\u2019s Mayor Office, the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":181018,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[541],"class_list":["post-180989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","tag-northern-islands"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180989"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180989\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/181018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}