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!
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!
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