Around the world at Christmas at Christmas

Since the fifteenth century, when the great European expansion around the world began, navigators and conquerors faced a new and unknown world.

Each place they arrived at, each settlement they founded, had to be named for it to really exist.

One of the easiest resources was to convert the festivity that the Church celebrated that day into a place name.

And since the explorations did not stop even on December 25, the world was filled with places and towns called Christmas, Natividad, Natal or Christmas.

Now we can go around the world following his trail.

Fort of Christmas (Haiti)

December 25, 1492 was not the best for Christopher Columbus.

Before dawn, the ship

ran aground off the northern coast of present-day Haiti, rendering it completely useless.

The crew was saved and with the salvaged materials they built the first Spanish settlement in the New World: the La Navidad fort.

There were a few cabins and a tower in which 39 men stayed.

However, when Columbus returned to the site during his second voyage, in November 1493, he found no one alive.

Interior of the Laferrière citadel (one of the largest fortresses in America), built by order of King Henri Christophe in northern Haiti.

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No material trace remains of La Navidad, which stood on one of the arms of land that close the bay of Cap-Haïtien, right next to Bord de Mer de Limonade, a village with a name of those that only exist in the Caribbean.

About 20 kilometers away is the National Historical Park, which includes the remains of Sans Souci, the palace of the King of Haiti Henri Christophe;

the citadel Laferrière (one of the largest fortresses in America) and Ramiers, the only Haitian sites on the Unesco world heritage list.

KwaZulu-Natal (South Africa)

Sign warning of the presence of crocodiles in the iSimangaliso Wetland Park, in South Africa.

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On Christmas Day 1497, Vasco de Gama was sailing on his voyage to India along what is now the north-eastern coast of South Africa, calling the bay where he landed Rio de Natal.

The city that arose in that place, Port Natal, is the current Durban.

The Portuguese name remains in that of the province of KwaZulu-Natal, which is the homeland of the Zulus.

The coastline in this area has two different faces.

South of the Tugela River we find the beach destination for local South African tourism.

On the other hand, to the north appears the most isolated in the country.

The jewel of this area is the iSimangaliso Wetland Park, a set of beaches, marshes, coastal dunes, reefs, salty and sweet lagoons, swampy forests and wetlands that stretch for 280 kilometers.

The variety of fauna is incomparable.

Barra de Navidad (Mexico)

Boats at the dock of Barra de Navidad, in Costalegre (Jalisco, Mexico).Alamy Stock Photo

On December 25, 1540, Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza was traveling along the coast of the current State of Jalisco and we can already imagine what we have now: the population of Barra de Navidad is located on the sandbar that separates the Bay of Navidad from the Christmas lagoon.

At that time, its excellent conditions as a port were valued and the explorers who arrived on the California coasts for the first time left here.

Legazpi and Urdaneta set out from Barra in 1564 on one of the fundamental expeditions in history, the one that led to the colonization of the Philippine islands and the discovery of the return route to America, which until then had not been achieved.

This finding made it possible to establish the line of the Manila Galleon, which often arrived or departed from Barra de Navidad and not from Acapulco.

Natal (Brazil)

On Christmas Day 1599, the city of Natal, the current capital of the State of Rio Grande do Norte, was founded on the northeast coast of Brazil.

People don't come here to visit museums but for other reasons.

At the beginning of December the Carnatal is celebrated, a carnival out of season.

The main attraction of Natal are its beaches, which can now be enjoyed in the city itself, especially in the Ponta Negra neighborhood.

But it is better to move a few kilometers.

To the north, all you have to do is cross the Potengi River and continue to Genipabu, where the dunes are 50 meters high and are the highest on the entire coast.

An SUV on the cliffs of Praia de Pipa, near the Brazilian city of Natal.Getty Images

However, the best beaches are to the south of Natal.

Those of Pirangi do Norte, Pirangi do Sul and Búzios are the image of paradise with a mixture of dunes, palm trees and ocean.

And if you continue a few more kilometers to Tibaú do Sul, there you can swim among dolphins at the foot of the cliffs.

Puerto Natales (Chile)

Cueva del Milodón, near Puerto Natales, in Chilean Patagonia.

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Until a few years ago, Puerto Natales was only a stage on the journey between Punta Arenas and Torres del Paine National Park.

But now travelers stop to learn about the life of this population with a border atmosphere that emerged next to the Natalis estuary, named after some German pioneers at Christmas 1894. In the Historical Museum one mentally confronts the pumas and becomes Get on the canoes of the Yagans who used to navigate these icy waters.

In the surroundings, you can eat a barbecue in a ranch with the descendants of the pioneers or go horseback riding with gauchos as guides who later tell you stories while they prepare a mate over a campfire.

Literary travelers follow the pages of

, by Bruce Chatwin, to the Milodon cave.

Cruise ships depart from the port to visit some of the loneliest places on the continent and travelers disembark next to glaciers, intact forests and beaches that are washed up with blue ice floes carried by the currents.

Christmas Island (Australia)

Although it is located only 360 kilometers south of Java, Christmas Island is an Australian territory with the nearest coast being 1,500 kilometers away.

This remote corner, lost in the Indian Ocean, was sighted by Captain William Minors on Christmas Day 1643, but there were no attempts to settle it until the 19th century.

Two thirds of its territory is protected as a national park and the attraction of a visit is to enjoy intact nature.

A boy watches red crabs during their annual migration on Christmas Island, Australia.Getty Images

In addition, this island is the scene of one of the most amazing spectacles in the animal world: the migration of tens of millions of red crabs from the inland forests to the coast to mate and lay their eggs.

It is a synchronized process of the animals with the phases of the moon and the tides.

To avoid human interference, some roads are closed to traffic.

In addition, they have built tunnels and the only bridge for crabs in the world.

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