Our Travel Blog

Disaster struck on the last day! Normally on the days with early starts we order a room service breakfast. As today was our earliest start, up at 0600, it would have been perfect. It turns out that on the last day of the cruise there is no room service!

We survived! We headed off for a quick buffet breakfast then headed down to the theater to wait for the disembarkation message. After clearing customs our large suitcases were whisked away to the airport to be stored for later pickup.

Our tour today was pretty much a repeat of our ranch tour in Uruguay, with a couple of exceptions. There was even more BBQ meat!! I also got to ride a horse!! We also wet for to ride in an old horse and cart, and last but not least, it didn’t rain!

We got back to the airport and retrieved our bags, only to find that check-in didn’t open for a couple of hours! We finally got checked in and through security, then we had to pass through “migracion” where they checked the passport took our photo and fingerprints. I thought that big country to the south of us was bad, but I think Argentina has them beat.

We finally made it to the lounge, which is surprisingly quiet. I managed to grab a a shower and Lyn grabbed some shut-eye.

This is pretty much the end of the trip, we arrive in Houston around 0530,then connect to Pensacola, Florida around 0930.

Was the trip worth it? Yes. Could it be improved upon? Certainly; in my mind, the Machu Picchu trip would have benefited by being less busy or extended by a couple of days. Most everyone was pretty tired at the end of the trip.

We were very impressed with the organisation associated with the Princess Cruise, the staff were very friendly, polite and helpful and the food excellent. So much so we are considering a Panama Canal / Central America cruise with them next year,

For this year we have another 5 weeks in Alabama before taking an indirect route home via Paducah, Kentucky. Evidently there are quilt stores there!!

In the fall we have a S.E. Asian trip planned for Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and Singapore. Stay tuned!

Today we moored for the last time, this time in Buenos Aries, Argentina. Our tour today was a short one of the city. This is probably the most modern of the cities we have visited.

There were only two stops, plus we chose the wrong side of the bus to sit so there aren’t too many pictures!

Like many of the cities we visited, murals were everywhere

Also prevalent was Eva Peron, below is a statue

and a sculpture, for want of a better word. It shows her with a microphone in her hand and it is on the building where she made her final public broadcast. I suspect it is lit at night.

We passed another sculpture, this time a flower. The petals used to open at dawn and close at dusk, but if you look at the photo you may notice the left most petal has fallen. This was due to a very rare tornado that hit the city a few years ago. It also damaged the cruise terminal.

On the tour we passed through the richer parts of the city, which was nothing spectacular. Many of the old waterfront warehouses have been converted into up-market condos.

To balance things out we also went to the poorer part of the city. As usual these areas have far more character and colour than the “posh” areas! Some pictures below to illustrate the point! Some are a little blurry as they were taken inside the coach.

In the picture above you can see the houses are built from corrugated sheets. These houses were build in the early 20th century by sailors from the ports. The materials for the houses were found in the waste areas of the ports and brought to the area to build with.

Much like Ushuaia, there is a massive cemetery in Buenos Aries, just a couple of shots from this one.

The last two photos show the mausoleum of Eva Peron

Tomorrow will be a very long day, we depart the ship at 0700, but don’t fly out until 2200. We have booked an all day tour, which will be similar to the one we did yesterday in Urugauy, but at least it will help pass the time.

I’ll try to do a final blog from the lounge, if not it will be later in the week when we get back to Alabama.

After a full day at sea yesterday we arrived at Montevideo, Uruguay this morning. It was tet another early (for us) start.

Today’s tour was to see the city of Montevideo and then travel out to a working ranch about an hour outside the city.

Some pictures of Independence Square in the city. The statue below is to honour Artigas who started the movement to free Uruguay from the Spanish

Below is the first concrete building in Montevideo, built in the 1920’s and hated by the locals. It was built as a hotel, but as no one liked it it was a failure. One hundred years later, the locals love it and it now houses offices and condominiums.

We travelled about an hour on the coach to a working ranch

At the ranch we toured on hay waggons drawn in some cases by vintage trucks and a couple of people managed to get a ride in an old Ford car!

It was a hot, humid amid oppressive day, and once we got amongst the eucalyptus trees the mosquitoes considered us fair game !

At one stage we drove through a field of bulls, they weren’t happy, and a few of them made threatening moves against us! Unfortunately I forgot to upload the pictures.

We headed back to the main part of the farm for food and drink with thunder rumbling off in the distance. As we got closer to the shelter, the thunder got closer to us. The thunder won! The heavens opened, the lightning was very close and we drowned!

Once in the shelter we had lunch of beef, chicken, piglet (sorry Catriona!) sausage, potatoes and veg. This food had been cooked over a large wood BBQ.

After lunch there was a drum and dance demo by some local dancers

Lyn got roped into dancing, I ran and hid.

By now the rain had stopped so we went outside so some people could try their hand at milking a cow.

Unsurprisingly the cow was not amused!

Once the humans had finished terrorising her, her calf was let out of it’s pen and ran full speed towards her for its lunch. (Not doing well tonight, another photo I didn’t upload)

To make up for the missing calf here’s a 2 week old foal.

The final demonstration was how they saddle a horse, Uruguayan style and also how they prepare the horse for carrying loads when they ride around the ranch for a few days.

The blog was a little rushed tonight, sorry. Tomorrow is our last stop, Buenos Aries for two days.

A day at sea today, before we arrive at Montevideo, Uruguay. Overall we have been pleasantly surprised with life aboard the Sapphire Princess, there are plenty of activities organised throughout the day if you wish to participate.

The ship has been brought into the modern electronics era with their “medallion” that I mentioned before. This little gizmo has a multitude of uses. It can unlock your door as you approach, it is used to register you when you leave or rejoin the ship at a port. There is an associated app for phones which allows WhatsApp like messaging between people who have set themselves up as a group, it also allows you to locate any members of the group and will give you instructions on how to meet up with them.

All around the ship are large (50 inch plus) screens that you can interact with to get information about activities, restaurants etc. You can also present the medallion to the screens and they will act very much like the phone app.

The medallions are used by the ships staff if you wan to order food or drink. The staff have cell phone devices that can “read” the medallion from a few feet away, so often they will approach you and say “What can I get you Mr Barry” All very easy.

Another pleasant surprise we had was the quality of the internet, whilst maybe not quite good enough for streaming movies at certain times of the day, it worked well for eMail , browsing, WhatsApp etc. Even better was the fact that out upgrade package gave us unlimited internet on one device each; however you could easily swap devices between cell phone and tablet and back again! I am not sure why anyone would buy the $400 upgrade for multiple devices.

Dining on this ship is different to others we have been on. Rather than there being one large main dining room, there are 5 dining rooms around the ship. There is one dining room that is much larger than the rest and has open seating so that reservations are not required. They all have the same menu, but 4 of the 5 are smaller and quieter than one large one. When we first got on the ship we were under the impression reservations were needed for the 4 smaller restaurants. We tried making reservations, but none were available until the last 2 days of the cruise, and these were for 5PM sittings. We were not impressed. On the second or third night we decided to try our luck and went to one of the smaller restaurants to see if we could get a table with no reservation. “No problem, sir” was the answer, ever since that is what we have been doing. On a couple of nights we felt like a break from all the “posh” eating and just went to the buffet.

In the evenings we would go to a bar for pre dinner lubrication before heading off for food. I am glad we got a booking for this cruise that offered a “free” upgrade to a plus package which included amongst other things, free booze (up to 15 drinks per person per day with a maximum value of $15 per drink). These drinks included pop, coffee alcohol etc. Some days it was easy to blow $60-$80 as alcoholic drinks were $10-$12 each and coffees at $5. The package also included gratuities, which if you follow the companies guidelines could easily work out at $450 -$500 for each of us. I wish they would do away with this tipping mentality and just build it into the price, and up wages accordingly!!

After dinner we went back to one of the bars for coffee and a night cap. This was one occasion where the medallion caused us “problems”. One night we ordered coffee and our drink, and somehow the waiter talked us into a double for the drink. For the next few nights we kept getting doubles!! There was often entertainment in the bars, and there was one particular guitarist/singer we kept meeting up with. For those of you at Anchors Aweigh his music and singing were very much like Jimmy.

Like all big ships it is easy to get lost, medallion app not withstanding. A couple of days ago I made a discovery that I am sure seasoned cruisers already know. The carpets on each side of the ship, although appearing identical in design have one subtle difference. Those on the port (left) side of the ship have a small red design in them. Those on the starboard side have a green design. Problem solved.

Lyn particularly likes the idea that we can go to breakfast and on our return the the cabin has been miraculously cleaned and the bed made. The same thing happens on a smaller scale in the evenings!Hopefully I won’t have problems when we get back home

Today the temperature is around 27C (81F) with clear blue skies and a fairly calm sea. Balcony weather!

We’ll start off with a couple of sunset pictures from last night, unfortunately they could be better as they were taken through a salt stained window.

I think the “double” sun in the top picture is caused by the angle the photo was taken through the thick glass.

We arrived in Puerto Madryn, Argentina some time before the sun (and we) rose. Although we docked at a pier, said pier was 1km long! We had originally planned another penguin viewing trip for here, but we cancelled it about a week ago as it was a 9 hour round trip, with about 7 of those hours travelling.

As it turns out, we were ok as we had our fill of penguins in the Falklands. Being the lazy type we are, we were happy to discover that there was a free shuttle along the pier, so we jumped on it. The guide on the shuttle said that the service was provided by a co-operative of tour companies and if we were interested in any of the tours…………….

As it turns out one of the tours was just right for us, a tour around town then out to a cove to see sea lions and other wild life. The tour was 2.5hours long and probably half the price of the shipboard ones.

We were put on a coach of Spanish speakers with a guide who did not speak English…. uh oh! Then another guide said she’s come with us to translate, looking better. Finally they took us off the the bus and introduced us to a young guy who was to be our guide. Off we went to his new car and started a private tour!!

We started with a tour around town

The town was founded by Welsh settlers way back when. Some of the streets still have Welsh names. There is a village about 60kms away where Welsh is still spoken. Not a good picture, but there is a statue to the Welsh women (I guess the men didn’t deserve one) along the water front, thats our little boat in the background!

The city has just over 100,000 inhabitants, about 3000 of them are employed by the towns largest industry, the aluminium smelter. The raw goods are shipped in and aluminium bars are shipped out. Employees there are amongst the best paid in the town at $1000 US per month. The average wage is $300 per month. However there is free medical care, schooling and University plus some subsidised housing. The second largest industry is fish processing with exports to Europe and China, followed by tourism.

Below are a couple of murals painted after the end of the Falklands Islands war. It shows Argentinians who were evacuated from the island arriving at Puerto Mandryn. On that day, the city ran out of food.

Below is a view from the lookout, behind the large caves is a bay, that’s where we went to next.

We drove for about 20 minutes on gravel roads, luxury compared to the Falklands! On the beach at the bay we were met by a number of sea lions. Most of the ones in the pictures were born in December.

On the way back we passed the now defunct railway station.

As we walked back along the pier (yes we walked this time) we saw a couple of guys out with a large net fishing.

On the other side of the pier there was a tractor towing a fishing boat out of the water.

Below is a “selfie” of Lyn and I. It’s actually our shadow cast on the sea.

So all in all it turned out to be a pleasant and relaxing tour. The skies are blue, the air is clear and the temperature is around 30C (86F).

Tomorrow is our last sea day, then we dock at Montevideo, Uruguay.

Well, we came to see penguins and we weren’t disappointed. We moored about 1.5 miles off Stanley in the Falkland Islands some time while it was still dark! As before, it was easier to get room service for breakfast, we ordered ours for delivery between 0700 and 0730, it arrived at 0645!

Once ready we headed down to the tender for a 20 minute ride to the dock. We were told ahead of time that the transportation wouldn’t be up to the usual standards and that there would be no A/C (AirCon) available.They were right!

Our ride for this tour was an ex- British Army 2015 Land Rover Defender. We would shortly find out why we were using this vehicle.

The scenery on the Island was quite bleak, very similar to Rannoch Moor, in the Scottish Highlands. Even the weather was similar with mist turning to thick fog at times.

We drove out of Stanley on a nice smooth road, which then transitioned to a reasonable gravel road. We pulled off this road, opened a gate and proceeded onto the moor. We were to be driving over rough land for the next hour. Our driver gave us the good news that it would smoother on this leg than on the return as we had 250litres of water in a tank in the bed behind us. This would be empty on the return allow more “bounce”.

Towards the end of our bone shaking hour I saw a lot of vertical white stones in the distance on the moor. Jokingly I said, look there are the penguins. The driver said they were indeed penguins!! These penguins had climbed the cliffs and waddled about 1.5 miles in land. No one is sure why they would do this, other than to escape sea loins and otters. This particular species were Gentoo Penguins.

We continued along for another mile or two until we reached the cliff edge and met up with hundreds more penguins and some king cormorants. The king cormorants look very much like penguins from a distance, they even waddle the same BUT they can fly!

The penguins in this area were the Rockhoppers with the “fuzzy” head

By this time our group of seniors were ready for a restroom break, no chance we figured, given the remoteness. Wrong, the tour company had thought of this!

This is the reason we brought along the 250 litres of water….. to fill the tank for flushing and hand washing. All very modern!

Back into the Land Rover for a few more minutes to descend down to the beach. There were a few small puddles in our path.

On the beach we discovered ……… more penguins. This time there were 2 new species for us to view.

The first were the Magellanic Penguins, it may look as there is snow on the ground but these are feathers from the moulting penguins. In the first picture you can see a penguin that is in the process of moulting nearest the camera.

The second new species to us was the King penguin.

After a lunch of a delicious home made tomato soup, cheese sandwich and cookie it was time to start the journey back to Stanley. Our driver was correct, it was bumpier on the way back! We had about 10 cars, with around 30 passengers, there was only one case of car sickness, which given the ride was quite remarkable!

We arrived back in Stanley with about 30 minutes to spare for a quick walk around and a little souvenir hunting. Below are a couple of shots taken in Stanley, and one taken from the tender on the way back to the ship.

Although it was misty throughout the day there was no rain and the temperature was forecast to rise to 18C(65F), which is bordering on tropical for the Falklands.

Today is another overcast and cool say at sea, but we are assured the temperature is climbing and should be around 23C(74F) tomorrow when we arrive at Port Madryn, Argentina.