Antarctica

First thing in the morning, we cruised "Glacier Alley", a channel where 5 different glaciers make their way to the sea. Below are some pictures.  This is a hanging glacier with it's cascade of water as it melts on the bottom. The next two are of Holland Glacier. The glaciers were named for countries. I did not get pictures of all. This one is Holland Glacier. These are all in the Beagle Channel which we will explore more later on today.  We ported at Ushuaia. This is considered the southern most port in the world. This is the port as we approached.  Our shift to the back and another cruise ship in port.  The red encircles the veranda of our cabin. We are right on the corner and we have a wrap around veranda with views to port and stern. We left the ship and walked nearly 3/4 mile to get to our catamaran for our afternoon cruise down the Beagle channel. The plan was to cruise to a cormorant rookery, see some seal lions, and a lighthouse at the end of the earth.  ...

So, today we went out of our comfort zone. Instead of ship excursions, we took a private excursion arranged by someone we didn't know, but met here on the cruise. She was part of an online group of people taking this cruise. We were going to the World Heritage Site, The National Park, Torres del Paine. The trip to get to the park gate was going to be 4 hours each way and we were supposed to be in port about 11 1/2 hours.  Despite our nervousness, we were first off the boat   ship at 6am playing gangway lice until they opened. Got right to our tour van and were off. And the trip was wonderful although the drive was long. The guide was always looking for wildlife and would stop the bus for interesting animals. We saw: Rhea - like Emu's the male incubates the eggs and cares for the chicks.  Vicunas - We either saw them singly (probably male) and in big herds (probably females with one male and many babies).  Grey fox - This is not my picture. We saw one that was running...

 We actually set the alarm to get up for our first scenic highlight and it was a doozy.  This is the El Brujo glacier which comes down from the mountains and ends in this fjord. We were there for quite a while and could hear the booms of the glacier breaking, but we did not see any calving. It was another cloudy day, but who cares when you can see sights like this right from your room balcony.  A few more highlights of today: A closeup view of Brujo. Mini icebergs in the fjord from the glacier moving relentlessly toward the sea. From Summer passage. Weather improved a bit, but was still overcast and rainy. Sharing the passage with another cruise ship. The little lighthouse guards a small rock island.  At then end of the day, with the sun trying to peek out,  we were greeted with a rainbow, perhaps the promise of weather  to come. 

This was pretty much our sea day. Fog, fog and more fog.  We had a scenic cruise day where we were supposed to see Wager Island and learn about the history of the shipwreck there as one of the day's highlights. We heard about Wager Island, but could not even see the shoreline. They never did guarantee us the weather; instead they have made a point to highlight the possibilities.  So a little bit about our days at sea. We usually arise sometime before breakfast, served in the dining room. While occasionally we use the buffet, we really prefer the dining room. Then a quick review of the happenings on ship. The kinds of offerings are lectures, cooking demonstrations, all kinds of ways they can part cruiser with their money, games of various sorts, trivia contests, shopping things, casino, art things (seems to be a big part of this ship with it's own art room), and music. We generally gravitate to the lectures (there have been some good ones on the places we will visit, history, t...

 We made our way to Puerto Chacabuco for our next stop. They moved up our excursion by an hour which we did not realize until waking up in the morning for what we thought would be a leisurely breakfast. Another dreary day awaited us, but it was not too cold as we were taking an excursion through a fjord to a hot springs. Again, the pictures will be pretty dark as there just wasn't a whole lot of light.  Conditions for the excursion gathering were much improved over yesterday. As a tender port, they were trying to put us all on the same tender. In port, our catamaran was at the same dock, so a very short walk.  A few images as we made our way down the fjord.  Our catamarand: On board, people changed into swim suits and put on bathrobes or other coverings for the short walk to the springs.  And then it was into the pool. There were three pools. The two on the ends were about 38 deg C or about 100 F. The middle one was about 40 deg C or about 104 F. We started in t...

 Day 2 was a sea day, a day to explore the ship, get on schedule and generally chill. We sent out a load of laundry to be done; I brought warm weather clothes for the beginning of the trip and pretty much maxed those out. Nice that we get unlimited laundry service and could pack lighter.  Our entertainment was a comedian, Steve Soelberg who was funny and a storyteller. We enjoyed his show. We went to another club for 60's music. It was amazing how good they sounded with some of the music and how bad with others (they should not have picked Elvis songs; just no). And it was a day of seeing lots of the sea. We're in the Pacific and running toward the south where the interesting stuff is.  Day 3 was a port day. We arrive early to Port Montt. We had an excursion planned: "Volcanoes and Lakes" which would take us into the interior. The excursion disembarkation process was horrible. No one new where to go; there was a crush of people outside of the gathering place and I lit...