This is a quick version of our 16 day cruise (January 10th to 26th). Be sure to check out the picture page.

Tuesday:

We flew from Los Angeles to Washington DC on Tuesday, January 8th (5 hours). Then took a larger plane to Buenos Aires, Argentina, arriving about noon (10 hours). We were able to use United miles for business class seats which really gives a lot more room (fully lying down on the long flight) and also allowed us to the use the Red Carpet Clubs at the airports (food, clean bathrooms, and space to spread out).

Wednesday:

We almost lost one of Katie’s bags at the Buenos Aires airport because someone mistook it for theirs!  Pete caught it just as it was being wheeled out of the baggage area on some guy’s cart!  Katie now has agreed to put some distinctive BIG markings on her bag as Pete has 6” high initials on his.

We checked into the Intercontential hotel using the transfer that the Princess Cruise Line provided, not the fastest method but we now had a great room.  Pete had to have his internet so we paid the $14 (all money amounts will be in US dollars, the only one we can keep track of) for 24 hours of service. Using the connection, we were able to check the webcam at home just in time to see Beau playing ball around the pool.  Sure is great to be able to watch and hear him, next we’ll start talking to him too!

During the checkin process we were told of a great shopping area called Florida Street.  We took a cab and were dropped off at a pretty fancy small mall.  They still had their Christmas decorations up, including a huge tree in a dome area (see the pictures) with a full sized Santa, Reindeer and sleigh flying around. Seasons are reversed this far South, so it was funny seeing Santa in the summer.

Heading out a side door took us to the actual street which was for pedestrians only (which was a good thing, considering the crowd).  Everywhere you looked somebody was hawking some item. Beggars of all ages in the middle of the “street”.  We had some guy come up and try to sell us leather coats. When we declined, he showed us a “steak” restaurant a couple of blocks away on a side street. We spent about 30 seconds there before escaping - was pretty run down and appeared to be more of an Italian place. We ended up at a halfway decent place for dinner but found out later that there were a lot better.

Thursday:

The next morning we took the Princess bus to the harbor and boarded the ship.  We had a great cabin, C620 on the port side with a balcony.

We were part of the lucky ones, we had luggage.  We found out that there were 48 people who boarded without their r luggage.   It was over 10 days before they finally received their bags.  Our super cabin steward was Dexter. He always seemed to have our cabin spotless for us, although we never had any towell animals waiting for us at night..

At our early dining time (5:30) we met our table companions, Dorothy, Betty, and Elaine. Our waiter and assistant waiter.

Friday:

We had an “at sea” day.  Mostly getting up late, eating at the buffet. Exploring the ship, Katie entering the Trivia contests, dinner, showtime and heavy gambling after t (the 1 cent Lucky , Lemmings slot!)

Saturday:

Another sea day. Katie won the morning trivia contest from yesterday’s “good morning Star Princess” TV show.  She had to pick up her prized luggage tag from the Purser’s desk

Sunday:

This was our first port, Stanley, in the Falkland Islands. Because of the size of the harbor we had to “tender” from our ship to the port (this is using the lifeboats, not a lot of fun but at least we can see some ports that would be otherwise unavailable.

Stanley has to be the cleanest city we have ever visited.  The houses, businesses, and fences all appeared to have been painted the day before. As many of you can remember this was the place that Argentina actually took over in 1982. The British took it back very quickly (the whole
war lasted less than two months)

We took a bus (on our own) trip to one of the Penguin nesting areas (several pictures are from here.)

Monday:

Headed South, at 2 PM passed over the Antarctic Convergence Zone.  The sea temperature drops rapidly from this point on and the chance for Ice bergs increases.

Tuesday:

We saw our first icebergs today, including one with Penguins along for the ride. We also saw a Whale but didn’t get any pictures of her (must be female because of the camera shyness).  We cruised off Elephant Island from 9 AM to Noon.  The air temperature was 32 degrees F.

Wednesday:

Some huge Penguin colonies seen on some of the islands. We cruised toward Esperanza Station, but on the advice of the ship’s Ice Pilot we turned around because of heavy ice on the route.

We were visited by workers from the Polish research station, Artowski. They talked to us about their life.  We found out there are some 28 members on the station during the summer now, including some women.  But wintertime there are only 8 men.

At 4 PM we headed back into Bransfiel’s Strait headed further South toward Neumayer Channel.

Thursday:

More cruising along the Gerlach Strait to the Neumayer Channel arriving about 11 AM. We passed many icebergs. Saw some humpback and fin whales.

At 11:20 AM we reached the Southernmost point of our voyage at 3,898 nautical miles South of the Equator.  We then set the course toward Deception Island.

Friday:

Around Deception Island, we passed the Europa, sailing passenger ship and another smaller (didn’t get her name) passenger ship.

We saw lots of Penguin colonies

As we left Deception Island (around 10 AM) the fog came in reducing visibility to almost zero (and the fog horn was sounding - good thing our cabin was toward the aft end - horn was not too loud).

At 7:30 PM the visibility cleared.

Saturday:

Passed Cape Horn at 6:42 PM and the Chilean lighthouse station.  We entered Picton Canal and at 11 PM we were in the Argentinian/Chilean fjords.

Sunday:

At 03:30 AM we dropped anchor to allow customs and immigration officials onboard at Puerto William.  After an hour we pulled anchor and with the help of the Canal Pilots we headed along the  the Beagle Channel.

Docked at Usuaia, Argentina at 06:50 AM. We took the tour bus to “the end of the earth” Saw people playing golf at the Southernmost golf course in the world I’ll bet one of the research stations might dispute that claim). Drove into a national park that had very bouncy roads (all dirt) and it was a lot warmer than normal, especially with no air conditioning on the bus. Couldn’t open the windows because of the road dust.

Monday:

Tendered in at Punta Arenas, Chile.  We had an early (08:15 AM) tour to the Penguin colony about 30 miles out of town.  Very long bus ride over rough roads again.... Interesting sights on the way, one a huge open pit coal mine (we just saw the very large tailing pile). It was presently closed because of low coal prices.

The Penguin colony was a privately run business with an admission fee. We had to hike a mile out and back over sometimes dirt and sometimes board slats.  It was mostly very narrow and it was very hard to navigate because people were always stopping right in front of us to take pictures.

We did see a lot of Penguins up close and some didn’t use the underpasses going right across our path.

We were back on the ship in time for lunch but some of our fellow passengers weren’t so lucky. The winds picked up in the afternoon and the tenders couldn’t dock with the ship. Eventually at 8:15 PMy (after over an hour) the wind died down enough to complete their duties and they were pulled back onto the ship.

Tuesday:

At 03:30, we left the Magellen Strait into the open waters of the South Atlantic and headed toward Uruguay.

Wednesday:

Headed North Easterly all day.

Thursday:

More North Easterly progress.

Friday:

In the channel to Montevideo, there was only 9 feet under the ship before the bottom of the bay, if they left the channel it would have gone aground.

We docked at Montevideo, Uruguay.  We had an 11 AM highlights tour of the city.

An interesting old city but we saw the same thing we had seen in most of these South American cities - larger buildings all appeared to need major cleaning and painting on their outsides.  Its possible that they spend all of their money on interior improvements and not the outside.

We visited a very nice Parliament building with lots of young guards holding rifles with fixed bayonets! Some very nice houses in the city (in certain areas) including the President’s (that seemed to have very little security - maybe he was out of town).

They have a huge soccer stadium that hosted the word games a few years back and they are hoping to attract them again.

Saturday:

We were due to dock back in Buenos Aires at 7 AM, but we woke up to find we were anchored off a few miles (along with lots of other ships).  The captain came on the intercom, THE INTERCOM that goes to all areas and is usually only used for emergency announcements, to tell us that there was too much wind to chance the narrow channel to the harbor.

Three hours later, we finally docked and people with early flights were a little worried about missing them.  We used the airport transfers that we bought and ended up in a downtown Buenos Aires hotel for about 7 hours. We spent the time talking to Dorothy and Betty along with some other people we had met on the cruise, the time went pretty fast.

Arriving at the airport we had to find our baggage, check in, clear immigration, pass the security checks and find our gate.  We actually found United’s Red Carpet Club and checked in.  The club was jammed but we found some seats - 30’ apart. Pete found free wifi and was able to download his 325 messages and check out the Beau-cam at home (didn’t see Beau, though).

Our flight finally left at 11:15 PM, dinner was served at midnight, we both slept pretty well and woke up a couple of hours before landing at Washington, DC.

Sunday:

We deplaned and had to stand in a super long line for US immigration then find our checked baggage, another line for customs and put our baggage in its own line to be put on our next plane. We found the Red Carpet Room a super clean, and LARGE one, unfortunately we only had about a half-hour to enjoy it.

With the time changes, we arrived in Los Angeles about 11 AM and Ricardo met us for a great ride home with Beau and the heavy rain greeting us.