Shees, where does the time go!

Well, last time I was talking about our cruise around the tip of South America and stopped at our visit to Punta Arenas, Chile.  It was a nice little town (with about 125,000 people!) with plenty to see but out tour guide was an idiot.  In fact we turned around and walked back to the ship on our own letting the rest of the group wander around.  My wife's Fitbit was telling her she'd done her 10,000 steps so we were happy enough to relax and sit around!

The next day started out as a sea day in the fjords so we got lots of photos and relaxed.  We were supposed to land in Ushuaia, Argentina about mid-day but the sea gods had a surprise for us.  We got there and the spot at the pier where we were supposed to land was still occupied by another ship.  Well, it wasn't that they were slow but the winds were so strong that they couldn't get off the dock.  They were being blown into the dock and even with a couple tug boats they couldn't get off.  So we got to hang around out in the middle of the bay looking at the other ships.

This ship is one of the new Viking ships built to go to explore the Antartic - I'm thinking this is the Viking Octantis.  This 665 foot ship has room for 378 guests and 256 crew!  That's quite a crew to guest ratio.  By comparison our ship, Viking Jupiter, is 745 feet long and has 930 guests.  The web site didn't cough up the number of crew on our ship but I imagine it is in the 300-350 range.  

Anyway, the bottom line is that this is what we saw of Ushuaia:

We were scheduled to go on a tour to see penguins and sea lions but in the end all tours were canceled.  No tours.  The ship was supposed to get additional supplies in Ushuaia but all they got was a couple small boats coming out to the ship!  Happily they kept on feeding us but I'm sure there were some modifications to the menu.  

Our next view point was to be Cape Horn.  It's funny how I've always heard about Cape Horn and always assumed it was on the South American continent:  wrong!  It is on the southern most island of the Tierra del Fuego archipelago called Hornos Island.  We got to see the lighthouses that are on the island which is part of Chile.  Just to be sure it is Chilean, the navy has some poor lighthouse keeper who spends an entire year at a time on the island.  To be sure he doesn't go crazy, he has to be married and have children AND take his whole family with him!  

In the center of this photo you can see the lighthouse and residence.  That is on the northern part of the island.  The actual horn, in the next photo, is on the southern side.

Having seen the exciting island, now we are headed for the Falkland Islands.  We always like 'at sea' days; nothing to do and all day to do it.  Unfortunately my wife wasn't feeling well; lots of nose blowing was her main symptom but we figured give it a day or so.  At dinner we figured out what we'd missed at Ushuaia:  wine!  We had purchased what they call the Silver Beverage package.  It gives you access to tastier wines and whisky, etc.  Now of the 8 red wines from Chile only 1 was on the Silver Beverage package; the rest were $50-500 a bottle.  Grrr!  But what can you do?  

Anyway, we woke to the sound of the tender boats being lowered in the bay outside Stanley, Falkland Islands.  Stanley, the capital and only real city, has a population of something like 3,500 people.  We had a tour booked and were looking forward to finally seeing penguins!  This tour guide was driving a 14 person van and talked a lot of life on the island.  It is EXTREMELY rocky so most of the farm animals seem to be sheep.  The tour was 2 hours long but only about 20 minutes away so we would have plenty of time to see the birds.  It turned out to be way too much time as it was about 35 degrees with a good 25 mph wind.  The birds were all down by the water just hanging around.  

There are gentoo and king penguins.  About half of them seemed to be sleeping.  Once or twice we got to see an egg which was being kept warm by being under the parent.  There was a little cafe where a coffee and a biscuit were included in the price of the tour.  They also had heat so it was SRO in there!  

When we got back to the ship my wife was feeling worse and worse so we made an appointment to see the ship's medic - in this case a nurse.  He gave my wife the COVID test and sure enough, she tested positive.  So they looked at me and of course I took the test as well, yep, two for two.  What Viking wants you to do then is take the medicine they sell you and quarantine yourself in your cabin for five days.  So there we were.  We got to order room service and it was actually stuff from the restaurant and cafe.  That was ok but I must say I was missing my scotch.  Maybe they would have brought some but I didn't really need it.  I wasn't feeling bad but my wife spent a lot of time sleeping then waking herself coughing.  In the mean time we watched all kinds of old, weird movies on tv.  

Our next port of call was Puerto Madryn, Argentina.  We had a lovely view of the city but that was about it.

We had talked about taking a tour from Puerto Madryn but hadn't really decided on one so we didn't even have to cancel our plans!  Talk about an exciting place.  My wife slept quite a bit and I watched foolish tv.  

The next day was to be at sea heading for Montevideo, Uruguay so we weren't expecting much excitement.  However about mid-morning we noticed ourselves turning into a bay.  I went out on our balcony (it had gotten warm enough to go out) and asked the guy in the next balcony what was going on.  Turns out someone had a medical emergency and the ship came in to off-load the person to a local Coast Guard aid vessel.  How's that for exciting?  As my wife said, at least it wasn't us!  

We managed Montevido the next morning and we are really sorry that we didn't get to go off and visit.  Our quarantine was over so we could have gone but my wife wasn't feeling up to it so we stayed onboard.  At least the steward was allowed into our cabin so we got clean bed linen, fresh towels and a clean carpet!  

One of the weird things on the ship was that they kept our passports during the cruise.  All we had for id was the little room key thing.  Anyway, now that we were headed to our last port of call, we could get the passports.  The city was right on our doorstep!

We had a 4 hour tour of Buenos Aires scheduled.  It was pretty dumb but we got to see some of the tourist stuff.  The cathedral then buildings where all the leaders live.  Not exciting!

The last 'day of our cruise' is one where they want you off the ship by 08:00 but in our case it was 07:00 because of where we were going.  To make it worse, our flight for Houston didn't leave until 10 pm!  Viking had made plans for us though.  They gave us a free tour!  This tour goes out to a river that is used by local folk as kind of a weekend retreat.  

 

There was a tourist trap too!  Anyway, it was a pleasant way to spend a couple of hours and to see a bit more of Brazil.  Then we got to go spend some time in a room in the Hilton.  That was just silly!  It was a huge conference room filled with folks waiting for their trip to the airport.  Anyway, they finally took us to the airport and we were normal passengers again.  Finally our flight took off.

A nice little 9 hour flight back to the states; what's not to like!  We made it to Houston and hopped our next flight to Las Vegas.  It looks more like home already.

So that's the tour.  We've already booked another one but only to Hawaii this time.  It will be a while though.  For now we are going to just hang around home.  Thanks for stopping by.  Keep washing those hands!

Another month absence!

At least this time I kind of have an excuse.  We took a trip!  It was kind of a combination of good and not so good.  But it was certainly interesting.  It was another Viking cruise; this time around southern South America.

We took a flight from Las Vegas to Houston and then to Santiago, Chile.  We got on the plane just before 2 pm local time and it was 08:30 the next day when we landed.  Usually Viking does ok with the airport transition, this time is was AFU!  We got to stand in this huge line of passengers then wander around the parking lot in groups of 30 or so to find a bus to take us to the ship.  That was a 2+ hour bus ride to the port of Valparaizo.  All of that was ok but tiring, of course. The port in Valparaizo isn't small by any stretch so when you got off the bus at the port entrance you got to get on another bus to take you over to the ship.  What a deal.  Anyway, we finally made it on and our luggage arrived only a couple hours behind us.  

Viking ocean ships are all the same so even though we'd never been on the Viking Jupiter, it was exactly like the Viking Sea or any other.  The expedition ships are probably different and, of course, the river ships are very different.  Anyway, we wandered around, got comfortable and had a nice night.  

The next day we had signed up for a visit to Santiago.  At the time we signed up we either didn't realize it was a 2 hour bus ride there and 2 hours back or we didn't realize how dumb we were being.  There are mainly small towns and agriculture between Valparaizo and Santiago; our guide talked about all the grapes that are grown along the route.  That's when he wasn't talking about how the upper classes take total advantage of the poor.  Anyway, let me just say that it takes a lot to make up for 4+ hours on a bus and the Santiago tour didn't provide it!  I don't even have a photo to share that is worth the pixels.

Of course having spent the whole day busing around we didn't see much of Valparaizo.  This would be the view from our balcony.

I think it is really interesting that there are a few high rise buildings down near the water then it turns instantly into much smaller buildings.  Valparaizo is one of several cities around this part of the coast.  We missed out on them as well! 

The map up above shows the route of the ship going out into the Pacific Ocean and, yep, it was fairly rough going.  Especially where you have a whole shipload of people who just got on board.  The crew must get a few laughs at the clumsy old folks who don't have their sea legs yet.  But it didn't last long, only about a day.  Then we were sliding into Puerto Montt.  There wasn't much in the town (well, no tours anyway) so we went up to Puerto Varas where we were supposed to check out the lake and and the volcano on the other side of it.  Happily this bus trip was only 12 miles so it didn't take long at all.  We got to see the lake but the volcano was kind of a no-show.  It was just cloud covered.  The town was kind of cute but small and filled with tourists.  Our guide on this trip was an older lady who thought things were going pretty well in Chile so that was a nice counterpoint to the previous guide.  

We had a good helping of more rough seas the next day but then somehow the ship found calm water heading for the fjords.  The weather started to get a bit gray and moist though and that would follow us the rest of the journey through Chile.  The fjords are amazing though!

We have lots of photos of  this sort of world.  No tours but amazing views.  That photo shows the snow/ice on the mountain tops but there were plenty of places where it was right down to the edge of the fjord.  

The star of the show is supposed to be Amalia Glacier.  And what you could see of it was pretty impressive.  

The ship has a little putt-putt golf area on the top deck and this photo shows people lining the fore area to check out the glacier.  The ship just stayed there for maybe half an hour so people could get some photos.  Then we saw this little boat out there next to us.  It was from the ship!  The guys on the little boat were trying to get some ice that had broken off the glacier so passengers could see it.  Later it was on display in a public room.

Of course the lighting was a little on the dramatic side but I do believe that it was actual glacier ice that we were admiring.  

The next day we were headed for Punta Arenas, Chile.  It is a fairly large city for being so far south!  Here we managed a guide who was an idiot.  He started out walking us around the port so we could admire the bird life.

Yep, the birds like it here.  And, of course they have some statuary to honor those folks who founded the area.

Then the stupidity started.  First he kept getting his centuries wrong; like the city was founded in 1848 and he said 1948.  Then he started crossing streets against the traffic lights!  Jeez!  He started us on a march at top speed up a hill so we could see the entire city.  Nah!  My wife especially wasn't feeling like it so we turned around and found our way back to the ship.  

I'm going to stop for today.  There is plenty more of our trip.  Thanks for stopping by and keep washing those hands!