Our Travel Blog

Today’s trip was a long and arduous one, think 3 hour full body massage in a Land Rover (Jeep). Today’s blog will be written tomorrow!

In the meantime I’ll post the writing on the drivers key chain and see if you can work it out, the Brits should have an unfair advantage here:

H982FKL

Clarkson pissed off more argies than Thatcher did

Clue H982FKL is a British licence plate on a car! Answers on a postcard please!!

We woke up early this morning to see Cape Horn at Sun rise. Imagine our disappointment when we looked out of the cabin and saw nothing! In my mind there should have been gale force winds and heavy seas. Instead the water was as flat as a mill pond, and there wasn’t enough wind to fly a kite!

We got dressed and went out to the balcony, when we looked towards the bow we saw Cape Horn. The weather was so calm that the ship had been placed bow on to the Cape and only a few hundred yards off shore. According to the Captain, this is a very rare occurence.

The captain slowly rotated the boat around to give everyone a good view of the Cape. Below are a couple of pictures of the lighthouse station there. That’s what I would call an isolated posting!! The first picture is not “zoomed” so you can see how close in we were!

We were very fortunate with the weather, just a few hundred yards along the coast there was thick fog. We went anti clockwise around the island but the Iconic South Face (as the Captain called it) was fogged in.

Although we were lucky to see the views that we did, part of me was still wishing for some playful seas!

Talking of seas. Below is the view of the sea from our cabin, the plate glass on the balcony wall is blue tinted, making for a very nice sea view.

In reality, the sea is far more grey (gray) as you can see in the photo taken over the balcony.

We took a stroll around the rather cool 10C/50F promenade deck, then went back inside to warm up. It just so happened there was a towel folding demonstration. Below are some of the results!

Tomorrow we should be at the Falkland Islands for the day, off penguin hunting!

Just a note for you Alabamites:

DON’T

JUST DON’T

This morning we woke up at a little more civilised hour (for us), to find the ship slowly cruising through some fairly narrow channels with snow covered mountains either side. In fact we were just about to enter the Argentinian port of Ushuaia.

With a population of 82,615 and located around 54 degrees South, Ushuaia claims the title of the Southernmost city in the world.

We had a leisurely breakfast and then took off for a walk around the town. For once we were tied up alongside the main pier and did not need a shuttle.

We wandered around the town for a while, and even tried to find a geocache, we failed!

We headed back to the ship for lunch as we had an afternoon tour booked. We were hoping to meet a friend of ours from Ottawa who is a guide and Antarctic lecturer on a ship leaving from Ushuaia in the next day or so, but it wasn’t to be.

In the afternoon we boarded a coach to “The end of the World”. In reality “The end of the World” is the end of Argentinian Route 3, which is part of the Pan-American Highway, which runs from Fairbanks Alaska to Ushuaia Argentina.

As usual, pictures will be more interesting than my ramblings!

Our first stop was the worlds Southernmost Post Office (according to tourist info!!)

Which of course has to have the worlds Southernmost Post (Mail) box!

We then came across this family of Geese.

There may have been a lot of Argentinian flags around, but there appears to be no pride in ownership!

I haven’t got Google Lens to identify the birds yet!

Likewise this has yet to be identified, it was on a lot of trees.

The end of the Pan American Highway marked by wooden posts

Although we are in Argentina and the ship has now left the port, we have to stop off in Port William Chile to clear Chilean authorities before we can proceed. Seems like bureaucracy at work!

Tomorrow is a sea day as we head around the Cape at sunrise (0645) and then onto the Falkland Islands for a day.

I’ve started to run out of titles! Sometime overnight we arrived in Punta Arenas, however as we didn’t wake up until 0900 I have no idea what time that was! I say we didn’t wake up, we were actually woken up by a repair crew who told us our shower was leaking! First we had heard about it! Although we can set a “Do not disturb sign” on the panel at the door it seems crew members are not instructed in its meaning, we have been disturbed a few times.

Obviously we (our ship) are either special or dangerous as we looked out to see a Navy vessel not too far away.

Below are a few more pictures from where we are moored. Some how the view is constantly changing, as though the boat is rotating around its anchor cable.

Around lunch time we headed down to the bowels of the ship to catch the tender to go ashore. We had and afternoon trip around Punta Arenas. The temperature climbed up to 14C / 58F. So far we have had dry weather for our shore excursions, which has been a little unusual according to the locals.

Once on land we boarded our coach and off we went. Our first stop was a lookout point with a view out to sea and over the town. On the way there we passed a few murals and colourful houses

Next stop was the city square, unfortunately when it came to Spanish names and words, she fired them off at breakneck speed, so I wasn’t able to catch them. Around the square were a number of buildings owned by prominent members of early settlers, beyond that I am lost!!

The centre of the square has a statue honouring Hernando Magallanes, a Spanish / Portuguese explore of the 1500’s who sailed around the southern tip of south America, discovering the Magellan straight in the process.

Note the foot to the left of centre on the statue.

We visited a museum which showed the history of Punta Arenas from its inception to the preent day, but filming was not allowed.

Out next stop, believe it or not, was a cemetery! Not just your ordinary church cemetery but a LARGE one. It encompasses 4 hectares / 40,00 sq. metres / 430,000 sq feet / 10 acres! It has many mausoleums as well as conventional plots in a well maintained area.

Our final stop was a “pioneer” style village, dating back to the late 1800’s, displaying original equipment and dwellings.

Of course we had to see some penguins!!

Tomorrow, we are off to Ushuaia in Argentina.

We set the alarm to get up at sunrise!! We had arrived in south western Chile where there are a number of inlets and fjords along the coast. Going out onto the balcony it was obvious it was cold (5C/41F), raining and dark. We didn’t sign up for this!

The object of this rash behaviour was to view the Amalia Glacier in the Bernardo O’Higgins National Park (got to love these S. American names!)

The glacier is 3kms (1.8miles) wide where it enters the water, about 220ft thick and 32km (20miles) long. It changed from dark to light fairly quickly so we got to see more of the surrounding area. As we got closer to the glacier there were many small “icebergs” in the water, probably the largest was around 4ft x 8ft and only a foot or so above the water. We were lucky, as we were in Alaska, to see a small amount of the glacier breaking away and falling into the water. The colours in the glacier varied from blue through white to a dirty brown.

As usual, I’ll just put a few pictures up to give you an idea of what we saw.

We spent the rest of the morning cruising back out of the fjords to the ocean.

Shortly we will exit the calm waters and back out into a rough Pacific Ocean for a few hours on our way to Puntas Arenas.

Somehow, today has become delayed, maybe because we went back to bed after the glacier! 1000 breakfast, 1400 lunch! After lunch we felt “obliged” to take a turn around the deck (as they say in the old movies). It was windy, cool and the ship was back to pitching and rolling. I took a couple of pictures on our way.

There was also a fruit/vegetable carving demonstration on board by a couple of the ships chefs.

The ship has been moving around a fair bit these last couple of days, making walking an interesting exercise, not is it just rolling and pitching, every so often there is a large”thump” as though a couple of ginormous sledge hammers had hit the ship. All this is to provide a further excuse for typo’s. The keyboard kept moving!

This another restful sea day, unfortunately it is quite windy and cool outside (15C/59F) , so not really Gin and Tonic on the balcony weather!

As of now, I think I have the blog sorted out and up to date with both words and pictures!

Thanks to Lyn for helping to identify some of my more glaring errors!!

Our first tour on the cruise! Unfortunately this involved a 0615 wake up call! We were debating whether we needed to get up earlier, but then had the smart suggestion of room service! This would save us having to head down to the restaurant, find a table and wait for breakfast!

We were ferried from the boat to shore in the ships lifeboats, remind me never to be on a ship that needs to use lifeboats for real!

On shore we got on our coach and got underway towards Vicente Perez Rosales National Park, Chile’s oldest national park. Specifically we were going to Todos los Santos, known as Esmeralda Lake for its brilliant emerald colour. On our way we were lucky enought to see snow-capped Osorno volcano. Evidentally the top is often shrouded in cloud, but not today. The volcamoe is 8700ft high and is classed as dormant as it hasn’t errupted since the mid 1800’s.

Once in the National park we boarded a catarmaran for a short trip on the Emerald lake. Unfortunately the “brilliant emerald colour” described in the glossy brochures appears to be the figment of some PR guys over active imagination!

The area has a large numbe of German immigrants from the late 1800’s and there are still German schools in the area today. The architecture in places is also very German.

After our cruise within a cruise we boarded the buses again for Petrohue Falls. These falls were famous, not for their height or volume of water, but for the stunning turquoise colour of the water. Hopefully it wasn’t the same PR guy writing this brochure.

After this stop we headed to Puerto Varas for lunch, where we had a typical Chilean meal, with a beautiful piece of fresh salmon as the main course. After lunch we had about 45 minutes free time to wander around the town and market. Lyn managed to find some items in the market that were screaming at her to take them to Canada!

Into the town square next where a family of musicians were playing.

That was pretty much the end of the tour. We had been very lucky with the weather as the forecast was for heavy showeres all day. It wasn’t until we got to the port that the rain started.

Today was a day at sea, we could get up when we wanted and do what we wanted when we wanted!

It was a day of discovery, we had to find our way around the ship, how things worked etc.

I mentioned earlier that we had a “Medallion” , this is a small device slightly larger than a quarter that originally hung from lanyayard around our necks. This got annoying so we sprang for a couple of watch like wristbands.

This is quite an an amazing little device. All the bar orders can be made through this. At the bar we order our drinks and the barman checks his terminal and confirms I am Mr. Barry and pours the drink! This purchase is now entered into the ships accounting records. Luckily we have a “free” drinks package, which allows us 15 drinks a day up to a value of $15 per drink

It also serves as ID and automatic check-in check-out when going on shore excursions.

One of it’s functions had me worried until it was explained. Every time we got to the cabin we found that the door was unlocked, which was disconcerting! Not an issue, the door lock can sense the medallion approaching from about 10 feet away and unlocks the door automatically!

The medallion also works in conjunction with a phone app to allow us to make dinner reservations, check out the entertainment and activities etc. We can also order a drink with the app and then it will be delivered to where we are sitting! If Lyn “loses” me she can find my location on the ship, and if need be get directions to my location. We can also “message” each other. We have a “free” WiFi package each that allows us 1 device each on the internet, which are our tablets. The phones work on the ships intra net which is internal only.

Speaking of internet, the connection on board is fine, not as fast as home, but way better than many hotels we have stayed at on land, and good enough to upload pictures to the blog.

Time to rest!!!