On the first weekend of March I officially kicked off my spring hiking season. It was exceptionally warm, and whereas I spent February acting as a hermit, as I normally do in January, I felt it was time to start getting outdoors again and leave the city. The problem is everybody else thought it was a great day to get out as well and Harper’s Ferry is one of the closest “outdoor places” to the DC Metro area.
Usually when I head out of town for a day to go hiking I start thinking about it on Tuesday and Wednesday. I try and figure out how much energy I will have on the weekend and how early I want to get up. Saturday is a better day to rise early and head out of town than Sunday not because the morning is easier (it’s actually easier on Sunday), but more because the return drive is easier. And that was the case.
I chose Harper’s Ferry because I did not want to make a full, long day of it. And because there are a handful of hiking opportunities where I do not have to plan ahead. The most popular hike from Harper’s Ferry is Maryland Heights – a hike I have never done as it’s steep and crowded but not long so it doesn’t seem as if it would be satisfying other than the view.
Amother popular hike is to walk across the trestle, shown above, as if you’re going to climb up the rocks to Maryland Heights and instead walk a mile or two down the C&O trail to the southeast and follow the Appalachian trail up a mountain to a similar viewpoint.
A third option is to walk up the mountain on the right – either walk straight out the Appalachian Trail to the south as far as your heart desires and then turn around and return, or to try and find Loudoun Heights and the overlook on the forested bluff on the right.
I tried to do this a few years back and failed. The map and phone show the trail to the overlook to be a mile up the mountain and then it shows a loop trail. As I was trying it before on a day where I was time-constrained (I think I had three hours to walk), I gave up before I reached a view, and as the trail kept heading downhill into dense trees I gave up.
So, for this particular adventure I did not rise early Saturday. I woke up at a reasonable hour, had a reasonable breakfast, did some reading and caught up on life a bit, and then sat down with the map to figure out where to hike. One thing I have now that I didn’t have the last time I was out there was the Avenza Maps app. It permits you to download topographical maps which then work offline making navigation easier even without the aid of a large printed map. Perusing the map I noticed a similar loop trail. So, while sitting at home drinking coffee around 11am I decided, hey, I’d better get going so I could have five hours to walk in daylight rather than three.
A little before 1pm I was parked in Harpers Ferry in the upper town walking down to the lower town. Lower town was a zoo; every suburbanite in the world came out here. Normally when i come down here I walk out over the trestle and back before continuing other adventures but this time I simply walked to the base of the bridge, stopped to watch a freight train go past, and then followed the AT up the ridge past a historic church and behind the Storer College campus. That in itself is a nice walk – rising several hundred feet from the valley floor and clinging to the side of a ridge overlooking the valley where the Shenandoah River cuts south isolating Harper’s Ferry from the wooded valley where the AT climbs the Loudoun Heights ridge.
If you ever walk this hike, from town it is perhaps a mile following the white blazes over the U.S. 340 bridge. Then as you leave the bridge there are steps down to pass under the bridge and then start switchbacking up the side of the Blue Ridge. More than a mile up the mountain you encounter one side of the former loop trail to the overlooks.
My first time past this sign I did not elect to go out the Loudoun Heights Trail. I kept going up the mountain to see if I could find the other side of the loop, following the park service’s map. Spoiler alert – it shows to be half a mile, measured and labeled, on the map, but I walked a mile and did not find it. I was acttually following behind someone else who appeared to do the same. He actually sought out the topmost point of the ridge by the looks of it and looked around and turned around to go back. I eventually turned back as well and followed the trail to Split Rock.
At the end I was nicely rewarded, nearly a mile and half down the mountain. The view shows Maryland Heights on the right and Harper’s Ferry at the end of the railroad trestle in the center. The Potomac goes off to the right forming the border between West Virginia and Maryland; the Shenandoah goes to the left headed southwest through the West Virginia panhandle to return to Virginia maybe 30 miles upstream.
At this point I had walked seven miles. Directly from the car it would have been about three miles.
The view of town from here is phenomenal. My car is parked beyond that bald spot on the top of the mountain.
This is the view from the other side at the top of the ridge in town. It was beautiful as the light was going down. Golden Hour had arrived and I caught some decent shots of the white birches in the valley contrasted with the gray on the hillsides.
Cutting back through town I walked across the former Storer College campus.
Storer was for many years an early HBCU but for the past several decades has been a training campus for the National Park Service instead.
So with life getting in the way I’ll miss some prime hiking opportunities but hopefully I can get some in this coming weekend – probably not anything significant though. Now I’m off enjoying the glamorous world of business travel.
And we continue with our January adventures…. As they rolled to a close! It’s time to catch up as now there have been more adventures.
So, Holland America has as an excursion option on disembarkation day the choice of having a private car and tour guide for eight hours – ending at the airport. For a solo person the car for two would be great. It’s likely a car the size of a Toyota Corolla I suspect. As we have six pieces of luggage with us (two checked each plus carry on) we realized we needed something bigger so we booked a “private minivan” which is supposedly large enough for three or four couples. I tell you, the van that picked us up this morning was big enough for about 12 people with 22 days of baggage but there was only ourselves in it.
Ours was listed as “Buenos Aires Private Touring – Full Day (Minivan) Ending at the Airport.” I suspect you’d want “Buenos Aires Private Touring – Full Day (Car) Ending at the Airport.” I’ll describe now how it worked for us. We think it was worth it and I’ll explain way, but also use this as an excuse to describe the experience.
The cruise port in Buenos Aires is pretty chaotic. So, from beginning to end.
As is the case for all disembarking passengers luggage goes out the night before by midnight. They haul your “checked bags” down, you bring down your carry-on. You have to carry your carry-on down in the morning to the cruise terminal shuttle and then carry it to the terminal. For these private touring transfers you are in the last group to disembark – at 8:30 for us. They give you enough tags for your bag and they call you when it’s time.
Upon arrival from the terminal you get off of the bus and go into the terminal and find your other luggage, which if like us would be Blue group C, a fairly small section towards the near end of the baggage claim area. Then you take your baggage (there are no carts) out through customs. At customs you must put everything through an X-ray machine (they will put it up for you but really didn’t help taking it down). In general there were not luggage trolleys available.
For us, this was a matter of maneuvering, between The Boss, myself, and my mother, one 76 pound rolling bag, one 65 pound rolling bag, one 40 pound rolling bag, a couple of fairly heavy duffel bags, a rolling carry on, a few shoulder bags and one backpack out through a fairly good sized building.
Then you spill out onto a wide covered apron near the street where a HAL person will direct you through a crowd to a corner of the building where there were numerous people carying signs with your name on them.
Pro tip – pack less than we did. Take advantage of the unlimited laundry offer.
So, we found our guide and he directed us across a dip in the concrete to a van that was luckily waiting on the best patch of curb available. The driver loaded our luggage and we were on our way.
Logistically, the way it works is on embarkation day the HAL excursion desk leaves you an envelope with a form for you to fill out regarding anything you may want to see on your private tour. In reality, our guide had a list of eight main areas he shows to everyone but if we had anything special we wanted to see it should go on the list. I was looking at something that wasn’t steak for lunch so I researched, and we wanted to see the Evita Peron Museum, so I researched that as well. Otherwise, he covered the five main areas we wanted to see including the cemetery and Plaza Mayo along with Recoleta and Palermo neighborhoods, We also added Ateneo Grand Splendid Bookstore which was also among our favorites.
So as I was saying, they picked us up and we were on our way. We spent the morning heading towards the central and then the more southern part of the close-in city and then after lunch we headed towards the northern part of the city. Finally, we went to the airport.
We stopped by Teatro Colon which unfortunately was closed except for the main hallway due to some electrical work being done. We could have done a tour here for forty five minutes in English but it would not have happened anyway.
One note – our guide, and most of the guides, are fully licensed and many of them have college degrees for being tour guides. With his badge our guide was able to visit most attractions without paying a fee, although we had to pay the international rate. he also seemed to know somebody on every single block. Martin was approached many times for the typical Argentinian kiss on the cheek greeting. Oh, but one other thing – even though he has free admission everywhere at attractions where they sell an electronic guide or otherwise he is often forbidden from providing his own commentary. More on this later.
We spent a bit of time in the square behind the theater talking about the buildings in the neighborhood including the palace of justice. Then, back into the van.
I snapped this photo of The Obelisk on our way to our next stop, Plaza Mayo. Santiago and Punta Arenas both had Plaza de Armas; Buenos Aires has the same thing, Plaza Mayo. Most Spanish colonial cities have something similar.
This heavily-touched-up photo I took of the pink house – their presidential mansion. It sits on Plaza Mayo along with the national bank and the cathedral and a number of other buildings.
This is the inside of the cathedral on the square. As it was Pope Francis’ seat when he was in Buenos Aires there is now a small Pope Francis museum attached apparently but we did not visit it. There is actually a bit to see here including The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier of the Independence. If anybody is curious I’ll look it up when I get around to reviewing my notes.
Back in the van. Let me tell you, it’s nice to only wait for two others climbing into a van. Martin wanted to take us to the San Telmo neighborhood but as we visited it yesterday we suggested moving on. Instead, he took us straight to the La Boca neighborhoodwhere we drove past the very famous soccer (futbol) stadium. Every building in La Boca seems to be painted in its colors. Here we got out of the van and went for a coffee in what I would call a “coffee speakeasy.”
This was my cafe cortado. Mmmm. Anyway, the entrance to the coffee shop was through a souvenir shop behind a painted door and up some stairs in the back. You would not know it was there.
La Boca is a neighborhood that was settled first by Spanish immigrants and later by Italian immigrants in the late 1800s. Along the port there there is a walking street, Caminito, leading to the small port where today many artists sell their wares.
Caminito is actually a combination between an outdoor market, walking street, and outdoor gallery.
Our guide Martin highlighting one of the artworks.
The back of a meat-selling restaurant.
After this part of the tour it was time to say goodbye to the South and head north. Along the way we passed the new port district along the eastern side of the district, much better than the cruise port neighborhood. It reminded me of the newer parts of Baltimore’s Inner Harbor district or some of the developments along the Chicago River in Chicago.
Martin insisted we stop at this – it was not on our radar at all. Two years ago, long time Cruise Critic readers will remember, around the time of one of the January Antarctic sailings there was a tornado that hit this part of Buenos Aires collapsing part of the roof in the cruise terminal. In addition to collapsing the cruise terminal it did some damage to this, Floralis Genérica. This has only been reopened for the past two weeks. Prior to 2023, it opened in the daytime and closed at night; now it is just… open, but hopefully it will soon return to its opening and closing status.
After the flower we visited Recoleta Cemetary where Evita and her family are entombed. Of course, our guide told us the story about this as well. She was not actually entombed there until years after her death of course and there are many many mausoleums that are more grand than hers. If anybody is interested, please let me know and I will share more photos.
And then finally we visited Ateneo Grand Splendid bookstore.
This bookstore is great, obviously. It’s like a large Barnes and Noble if you speak Spanish. If not, then it’s just pretty. The English language section is on the ground floor on the left. There is a gift and merchandise section in the lobby. On the third (top) tier for a fee you can see an exhibit regarding the history of the museum and they will serve you snacks. Or you can pay for a coffee and sit on the stage.
I bought a dual-language cookbook here, it was on sale in the lobby. We also somewhere along here stopped for lunch.
I’m not going to say lunch was a mistake, but it certainly was an adventure. I think our guide’s intention was to take us to one of the market restaurants or somewhere similar, but prior to the day of the tour when we provided our list I gave him the name of Niño Gordo – “Fat Baby” in English. This had the potential to be a legendary lunch except for two factors – one, we had eaten ourselves to death on the few days prior and two, halfway through the meal the power went out!
Our guide was actually a young guy – in his mid-twenties, and perhaps when I assessed him as an adventurous recent college graduate in a cosmopolitan city I was wrong :-). We took him to an Asian – Argentine fusion spot. As you can see above, we were seated in a section that had low seats, near the floor, with light spilling in from the tabled area and from the bar area. We ordered several dishes to share including kimchi, an Argentine-Asian beef dish, and a fish dish. It was going great, but around the second course the power in the kitchen goes out and half the restaurant goes dark. Not long after that, the air conditioning above us starts dripping on us – because it was off and no longer blowing the condensation elsewhere. So, surprise.
We finished our lunch and then made our way to the airport. The airport is a bit crazy though. The key here that worked out well for us is with the private car or van our guide snagged us a luggage trolley, walked into the airport with us and showed us where our check-in counters are, and showed us where the security desk is.
One thing I’m going to note now –
EVEN WITH PRIORITY STATUS EZE IS A FOUR HOUR AIRPORT IN THE LATE AFTERNOON AND EVENING. UGH.
Delta’s check-in opens at five. American opens at six as does United (I think). Delta has fewer people staffing check-in but the same number of planes as American. American opened early. We arrived at 5pm and my mother got in line for check in right away whereas the two of us sat and had coffee for ninety minutes as we had several hours to wait. With priority our check-in was 20 minutes; my mother’s was 90 minutes. The security line was I think 50 minutes, passport control was 20 or 30 minutes. Okay, so maybe with priority it’s a three hour airport. However, as we arrived so early we had time to kill. We enjoyed a light meal at Le Pain Quiotidien along with some wine and beer prior to running the security and passport gauntlet. And then? The best thing ever. We visited the Admiral’s Club lounge where, after spending a hot summer day touring Buenos Aires, I was able to take a shower! We finally boarded for our 11:59pm flight and were happily able to sleep on the plane as well.
And all of the bags on the right (the four) made it on the plane to Miami. When we landed in Miami it was barely above freezing and there were gusty winds which slammed our plane to the ground twice. I figured we’d be in for the same at home but it was a more typical landing. Even so, brrrrr.
On approach the Potomac was full of ice. And then we spent the next week clearing snowcrete from our driveway and walks…. Back to normal.
Okay. Buenos Aires. We were in Buenos Aires on January 30 and 31. So, buckle up.
Before we left for South America Buenos Aires seemed as if it would take some logistics to handle. Instead, we learned it was similar to visiting New York City, London, Paris, Washington, Atlanta, or Montreal. Yes, there is traffic, but it is not crazy traffic. We thought it would not be easy to find places where it would be safe to walk around. We were wrong – much of the city, much of the center city, seems safe, safer than Santiago – and before we arrived in Santiago it seemed more approachable. So, arriving in Buenos Aires. Let me describe it to you.
When we planned our South America and Antarctica journey we had realized that one of us would be marathon training and mostly on a treadmill. As we planned to be out the evening we were in Buenos Aires (Friday the 30th), and as we had to fly home on Saturday night arriving on Sunday to be back at work on Monday, we decided Saturday would be a relatively easy day. It was. We slept in a bit, one of us spent the morning on the treadmill while the other got organized to fly home and walked some laps on deck, and we enjoyed some of the solitude of a ship in port for a while. Let me describe to you what this was like.
The view from the ship in Buenos Aires is lovely – not. It’s a view of a port and parking lots. At least unlike some other ports you don’t drive through huge stacks of containers to get to the cruise port. Instead, you come off the ship, you board a bus and drive past containers, and then you drive across parking lots for trucks and containers to get to the cruise port. It’s not a scenic cruise terminal. Two years ago the cruise terminal itself was struck by a storm during cruise season and nearly demolished – it has now been rebuilt which is pretty amazing.
Is it a nice terminal? I guess so? But it’s chaos outside. There is not much space for pickup; we attempted to get an Uber across the street but the terminal area has 3G signal rather than 4G or LTE so it’s hard to catch an Uber, and beyond about three blocks from the terminal it really is not a good part of town to walk as there is a tightly packed South American neighborhood-that-was-built-without-authority where as a tourist you do not want to pass. But beyond there, get about a mile or a mile and a half from the terminal, you are in a beautiful cosmopolitan city. Ignore the news about Buenos Aires’ currency catastrophe. Ignore the threats you hear; it’s like being in a Spanish-speaking Brooklyn in my opinion.
Similar to Montevideo we aimed to have a market lunch in Buenos Aires. This was another grill open to the bar in the middle of a market – this time it was Mercado de San Telmo and forgive me I do not have the name of the restaurant within the market. We actually brought my mother along for this. Afterwards we explored the neighborhood. Two blocks away there is an outdoor art market which we explored.
As was the case with a lot of other places we visited we saw street dancing in the park.
And then we enjoyed a wine tasting in a wine shop! This was another thing I specifically sought out and one of the reasons we visited San Telmo as there were another of wine merchants. We actually brought a couple of bottles home from here (no surprise really), one of which can be purchased locally here. Interestingly the shopkeeper used Google Translate to speak out his descriptions of the wines and play them back. Honestly I could have done without that.
We saw interesting sights on the streets in San Telmo. And then we moved on back to the ship for a short siesta before heading out for the evening.
As is the case with a lot of tourists we ended up at a tango show. Our destination, courtesy of a Holland America excursion, was the theater stage at Cafe de Los Angelitos.
At the theater we were offered a cafe or dessert. Still working off lunch we focused on the pavlova which seems to be the national dessert of Buenos Aires (yes, I know Buenos Aires is not a country, but with many places it seems like there’s Buenos Aires and then there is the rest of the country). This was followed by an hour tango show with a mix of modern and traditional tango dancing.
The dancing was spectacular.
As was the singing.
This was well worth it. I think I’d see tango once a week if I were spending a summer in Buenos Aires.
And then we were done. Back on the bus for a ride to a closed door restaurant.
Apparently Buenos Aires has a number of closed door restaurants – relatively small restaurants focused on serving privately. Basically they are the speakeasy of restaurants. Ours seated I think about 30 people, so two thirds of a tour bus. I didn’t take any pictures at the restaurant. I think I would have enjoyed it more if we had not had a large lunch. As it was, the wine was great, the appetizer was good, but the steak dinner was the same as the others we had in South America – and I don’t remember what my partner had (she does not eat beef). It made for a long day. I think if I were to plan it again I would have planned my own tango stop followed by a more avant garde dinner somewhere, maybe even modern sushi.
We were back on the ship around 11:00 in the evening, so very early by local standards, ready to sleep for eight hours before waking up to be off the ship at 9am. And more on that tomorrow.
Normally I would want to blog about my travels as they happened, but as I fell off the wagon a week prior to the end of our January journeys I’ve been occasionally playing catch up instead. I find that this has actually been an enjoyable pursuit. I was writing a lot on Cruise Critic about our journey much of which I was transferring here, but revisiting it later instead gives me a different perspective. I also find that, with the aid of modern photography, I still am able to remember details effectively. So we will see how this goes today.
Montevideo appears as a city on the sea, rising above the flatlands just a tiny bit.
Montevideo of course is the capital of Uruguay, a surprisingly impressive country on the eastern coast of South America. Uruguay feels to me a bit like Argentina with similar culture and similar gaucho lifestyle but a little more laid back. It is also a little cheaper than Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires, which I will review later, seems to charge American or New York prices for anything that remotely resembles a luxury good. In other words, date night there is still a $200 proposition.
Our ship, the Oosterdam, chooses Montevideo to provision rather than Buenos Aires. My initial guess was Buenos Aires is avoided for this purpose because the Uruguayan currency is stable and HAL buys enough that transacting in U.S. dollars becomes unwieldy. The Argentine Peso is not a stable currency so individuals carry on a lot of transactions in dollars. In theory Argentines are to report larger dollar transactions and then be taxed on them in pesos, but in reality they do not and wait for a tax amnesty before depositing larger amounts of money in banks and using them in the official economy. Instead, they participate in an unofficial economy. Now, a cruise line cannot choose that approach, can they? They buy from local wholesalers and it is taxed and the government chooses what currency to use (always the peso, which is not stable).
But my secondary guess is because it’s more practical. The Port of Buenos Aires is a monster and they can get everything they need, or more, in Montevideo.
Also, about ten percent of the ship’s staff turned over that day. Our waiters from the Main Dining Room went home as a number of housekeeping staff, but not ours (we asked). The last port with a large crew turnover was Ushuaia I believe. They also provision in Ushuaia. What do these two ports have in common? It’s easy for trucks and buses to drive straight to the ship. In Buenos Aires everything is offloaded and switched to shuttles and the dock workers have their own thing going on of course.
Anyway, enough about that. Montevideo is nice because you can walk right off the ship and you’re in town. I wasn’t too sure about Montevideo before we joined the cruise. I wasn’t certain how well developed it would be as I have ended up in a number of places where there’s a nice downtown core but then there’s a vacant no-man’s-land or an unsafe-to-walk-area outside of the downtown core, but Montevideo wasn’t like this. You walk off the ship and you’re in town. The only challenge was there were two other ships in port that day so there were a total of six or seven thousand tourists flooding the streets. Fortunately we had a longer stay than either so the impact on us was spread out. I feel bad for the folks on the MSC cruise who had perhaps a six hour stop in Montevideo – in my mind barely long enough for a massive ship to empty out and then reload again (our ship, for the record, carried perhaps 35% the number of passengers, and it really does make a difference).
Our first stop was the Mercado del Puerto mainly for two reasons – to walk through and browse shops and find a hat but also to scope out to see if it works as a lunch stop. As you can see above there was at least one place that fit the bill. There were actually several, and this is where we began the practice of dining at the bar at a wood fired grill. Why didn’t we do this sooner in our voyage?
Our journey from this point took us through pedestrian streets lined with shops and cafes to multiple squares, some tree lined and some not.
Along the way we passed the Plaza De La Diversidad Sexual. The Plaza was dedicated more than two decades ago now with a monolith. The monolith features the following inscription: “Honrar la diversidad es honrar la vida: Montevideo por el respeto a todo género, identidad y orientación sexual” (Honoring diversity is honoring life: Montevideo for the respect of every gender, identity, and sexual orientation). On a random weekday afternoon it was a quiet and peaceful place just a block off busy streets where there were only a handful of people hanging around – mostly some boys riding their bicycles up and down the ramp.
We had vague plans to visit the leather factory off of Plaza Independcia (shown above), but the leather factory was a floor above ground level and more oriented towards tailoring to fit with 24 hour turn around than tourist browsing, so instead we took a wander back to the ship. I wasn’t permitted to wander the ocean front around the peninsula as this had resulted in a five mile walk for us in Punta del Este…
Like many South American cities there was a large classic theater, the above perhaps skewed a bit by me using the iPhone on fisheye mode.
This residence or business had some delightful sculptures climbing on the railings. And by the way the street scene was interesting to watch. We would not have happened upon this on an official tour.
We did actually make our way back to the market for lunch. As I said it was bar seating with food prep going on in front of us. Wine and beer here was the usual situation – nearly always they sell you the whole bottle of wine and they encourage you to order two beers at once by only providing liter beer bottles.
You can see the jamon serrano I ordered as well as tortilla de patata set for wait staff to slice off a quarter for anybody who requests. Reminds me that I should cook some up at home sometime soon; the challenge is it’s designed to be served room temperature at your leisure and I’m the only one who will have it that way so I make a plate full and serve off two slices and then it’s just me. But it’s oh so good.
This was the best beef I had enjoyed in two weeks at this point. There are about half a dozen of these places within the market as well as the fresh food stalls, tourist shops, and other artisanal shops. Also it didn’t seem to be air conditioned. I imagine it isn’t heated in the cooler months either. We were there around 2 or 3 in the afternoon. With Uruguay being the same longitude as us roughly as well as being two hours ahead of us this tells me the summer time hottest part of the day comes around 4 or 5pm in the afternoon, and the locals have lunch between 2 and 5, so I am thinking we timed things fairly well. It was warm to hot but not what I would say is Virginia hot, and it was fine inside in the shade.
Since our visit to Montevideo I have read additional travel reports regarding the city and the country and it all sounds fascinating – a great place to visit and base yourself for a week or two if not longer and travel around the Uruguayan countryside. Also, based on our experiences as well as these travel reports it almost sounds as if it is a better place to end a long haul flight than Buenos Aires. The airport is smaller and better run than the airports across the estuary in Buenos Aires. Between the two of us I think we both want to re-visit Montevideo and Punta del Esta as well as Buenos Aires. I know I would add on Argentine wine growing regions, the Argentina side of Patagonia and the Andes, and some hiking in the rain in Chilean Patagonia, but more on this when I write up Buenos Aires.
Eventually we made our way back to the ship. The night prior had been our final night in the main dining room. As our wait staff departed in Montevideo and we had a large lunch we opted to “stay in” and prepare for our travels home even though it was still two nights out. Also, it was our final night at sea.
Lovely skies. We packed up and prepared for two days in Buenos Aires.
Meanwhile at home a few days prior a thick layer of snowcrete had fallen which would plague us for half the month of February before it was no longer a nuisance…
Our first visit to Uruguay, and our second to last port stop before arriving in Buenos Aires, was Punte del Este.
Punte del Este appeared over the bow as we were both on the treadmill. Overcast skies with a marine layer which promised to burn off. Puerto Madryn was warm and Puerto Madryn was a beach town, but Punte del Este was more of a modern beach town in the style of a mini Miami Beach. This was also a port where we arrived relatively late – at 10am.
There are even cars from Miami here.
The way Punta del Este is set up is such that there is nowhere close to the walkable city for a full pier large enough to take even a small cruise ship and it does not look as if this will change. But once you navigate a 25 minute tender ride it is a great port for a walking tour. Both Lonely Planet and the ship had maps that included a decent map towards walking the peninsula. In theory you could walk the whole thing in about 90 minutes; we took three hours. It looked shorter on paper. Towards the end we learned we walked close to five miles – something which came back to haunt me the next day as a five mile walk impacts marathon training if that’s what you’re doing (I am not).
This tour took in sights such as:
La Mano de Punta del Este, the local answer to Washington’s “The Awakening” which is sadly now out in Maryland.
A funky modern art sculpture in a median. In the photo above it looks larger than it really is. Honestly, not necessarily worth the walk.
Our Lady of the Mercedes Benz church, or at least that’s what I call it. This is a nice looking church, a century old so I suppose it is old as far as Punte del Este is concerned, but otherwise not immensely notable, although it is across from the lighthouse in a very tony single family home residential neighborhood.
The first true tourist site we saw after leaving the port was this lighthouse, in the center of the peninsula rather than on the edge.
But the first interesting site we saw leaving the port were these smashed up cars. At first we thought there had been a rather significant accident right there and the city had merely pushed the vehicles aside, but in Uruguay and later Buenos Aires we realized that the local practice is to tow and deposit smashed cars next to the police station. There were probably a dozen or so here and we saw even more in Buenos Aires.
Punta del Este has a great shopping street with upscale brands as well as more common brands. Montevideo, the next day, turned out to be similar as well. Prices for every day, non-name-brand goods are reasonable, but prices for items sold on the global market for most of us were less expensive at home. I think, for instance, we saw Hoka shoes here on sale for about $250 USD whereas at home we would pay half that.
As it is a supposedly laid back beach town with some money we also saw a number of classic cars and jeeps.
This was merely parked on the street.
Another one, for example. This isn’t Santiago, or even Buenos Aires, where something such as this would get stolen pretty quickly.
We saw this beautiful early 1970s Ford pickup truck walking the promenade along the Atlantic from the point up to the hand.
But the upscale vehicle of choice seemed to be the Range Rover Velar. This example, and several others, had made the journey either via road (nine hours) or road and ferry (six hours) from Buenos Aires and were likely here for the summer.
We bought some wine here in Punta del Este. It didn’t turn out to be cheap, but we focused on upscale wines we could not get at home. It was more of a purchasing experience than a tasting experience though. And now it is sitting downstairs in the rack waiting out “Dry” February.
By this point in our travels, with Buenos Aires approaching, we neither wanted another plate of seafood nor did we want the culinary investment of a steak (spoiler alert – I ate three steaks over the following three days). Pizza seemed to be the meal of choice.
This time I was the one who enjoyed the very large local beer.
We visited our waiters Muis and Tri for the final time this evening and wished them well on their journeys home to Southeast Asia – a journey that involves four flights.
Now that I have been home for six days it’s time to catch up a bit. I figured I would spend some time chatting a bit about our vacation and travel philosophy, or rather why we do certain things that most people do but ignore other things. It makes sense to chat about this now as the next day after Puerto Madryn was a sea day.
We woke up on January 27 to fair seas and warm air – warm enough to sit in the sun but maybe not quite lay there as if you are at a beach. As we had had a bit of sun in Puerto Madryn this was fine with us anyway. And one of the things I enjoy most about cruising is watching the sea change as the weather changes. The nice thing about this north to south and then south back north again cruise is the weather, temperature, and sea conditions changed noticeably day to day.
Our philosophy when on vacation is to start the day early, often with the sun, and not stay out too late. This is mostly because we both like to get some fitness or reading in early in the morning before we go out and do things. We happened upon this approach during the covid shutdowns and have essentially stuck with them. So, January 27 was typical of this, but to a degree we made an exception – we went to the ship’s show that evening.
Oosterdam’s main stage production was a show called Move. As one of my fellow cruise passengers described it the only thread holding the story together was dancing. Fortunately these productions on ship only last 45 minutes. By the time you’re no longer impressed by the dancing and looking for something more substantial it’s time to get up and go to bed – or go to the casino.
Early in the cruise it felt like we would frequently have dinner every evening and then sit through a band set for forty-five minutes. Later in the cruise it felt like instead we would have dinner and then play in the casino a bit. We do typically call it a night before the ship does, but we have dinner later than most on the ship do – starting at 7:30pm – so our evenings are short.
Wait, we made a second exception. I think this was the night we stayed late at the casino – past 11pm. Or that may have been the night before as we were leaving Puerto Madryn.
Sea days are important on a cruise. It’s the down time you take to take a nap, organize your baggage to go home several days later, figure out how port transfers are going to work, or spend a couple hours walking in circles on the Promenade Deck working off the steak you ate the night before. It’s also good down time for wandering around the ship taking photographs of all of the artwork, to decide if you’re ever going to do something with them.
We always found the lady in the red dress as a way to find our cabin door. Turn towards the lady, walk left, and then walk right to the end.
When we have a sea day we wake up early (6:30 or 7am), have a sit-down breakfast, read or go to the treadmill or otherwise exercise (this is where I chose the promenade rather than the treadmill), skip lunch, play a board game (we played Carcassonne with my mother and her friend four times during this cruise), get organized (laundry, throwing out the detritus of paperwork collecting on the desk in the cabin), and attend a fancy dinner if available.
January 27 was also our final dressy night. We dressed in our finest and even had pictures taken.
We also learned that night that our waiter and assistant waiter were going home and we only had one more dinner with them. We’ve gotten to know them fairly well over the course of three weeks; we actually found our waiter better at organizing different cuisine for dietary preferences elsewhere in the ship than the Neptune Lounge concierge was.
There really was not much else to this day. Our last sea day disappeared before we even knew it. The next four days – five actually – would be spent relatively flat out.
So, in a few different places I’ve asked after port safety in Montevideo, especially around the port / Mercado area and in general the advice is “we were there a few days ago and it was fine but as usual in a big city…” etc.
In Buenos Aires of course the advice is different – do not walk from the port area. The recommendations are to get a taxi or Uber to where we are going or at least as far as Plaza General San Martin, but much of Buenos Aires is still safe for people who look like better targets than Julia and I. Generally, but not always, we’re not the first target, especially on a Holland America cruise. Until recently neither of us wore jewelry or watches worth stealing either.
One of the things I end up doing every time we travel is I try to figure out if it’s safe for myself or a marathon runner to run outside. There is a fun little assessment I do regarding local weather conditions, traffic assessment, and comfort level. You’d be surprised where people aren’t comfortable running outside! For instance, sometimes places like Avignon, France, are lousy places for runners even in the wee hours of the morning because everybody is calling out for you!
So far, Puerto Madryn was one of our favorite places anywhere we’ve traveled for running (with obvious exceptions like Boston and New York City). Puerto Madryn has La Rambla along the sea which continues in some form or another more than three miles out to the point and to the ecological center.
An obvious turn around point for most guests when they walk or run from the ship is Monumento Indio al Telhuelche on a point of land at the end of the main beach.
This is a monument to the labor movement of the indigenous peoples in Patagonia several decades ago. It also has a lovely view.
View from the ship from three miles away.
The view beyond. I would have loved to keep going, but there was plenty to do. We turned around and ran back the other direction where I stopped near the pier for a large beer while waiting for The Boss to double my mileage.
This was a prelude to some souvenir shopping followed by lunch at Náutico Bistró Del Mar.
This was officially Mariscos de Golfo Nuevo with Golfo Nuevo being the gulf around Puerto Madryn. I’m not totally certain all of it was directly from the gulf itself but it certainly seemed fresh, cooked as appropriate, and seasoned with lemons, onions, and vinaigrette appropriately.
Perfect as we were planning to attend the Cellar Master’s dinner yesterday evening, a lunch to share with papas fritas and more large beers.
Eventually after some shopping we returned to the ship. Our original plan was to run, have a beer, return to the ship, and then head back out, but Puerto Madryn is the type of place where when it’s summer you walk around casually as you are. We felt comfortable in our fitness wear in open-door souvenir shops as well as dining outside.
We returned in time for the tango sail away!
Last night we attended the Cellar Master’s dinner. This appears to be focused on wine but is also one of the best meals available on an Oosterdam cruise. Food and beverage staff spoke at length and we were introduced to the entire Pinnacle Grill team – although we’ve met them all at some point.
The menu was great. Somehow we had a mix-up and two of us had scallops instead ofthe foie gras but we were both fine with that especially after yesterday’s bonus lunch.
The Pumpkin Sage Cappuccino is a delightful cream of pumpkin soup paired with a flavor-forward Pinot noir to offset it’s sweet and spicy nature.
For us the warm lobster salad was the star of the show. If it were twice the size of us then it would be perfect for a meal on a day like yesterday. This was paired with a rosé which actually wasn’t the greatest in our opinion, but we do think we would have enjoyed it better as stand alone on a sunny summer day.
The filet with the beef tenderloin and grilled shrimp was the best beef I’ve had on the ship so far but the shrimp were even better. This was nicely paired with the same MTC Syrah I had with dinner a few nights ago!
Dessert was decidedly not a tuille BUT it was the perfect size! Not huge! And Graham’s Six Grapes was a perfect accompaniment.
We both enjoyed this meal better than the Konigstafel but I actually think that’s the point. Konigstafel is to display a variety of what the king wants, Cellar Masters is to share food to pair with wine in more of a best-of. We also dined by ourselves. We’re at the point on a 22 day voyage where we are happy to not socialize as much.
One complaint?
Often it seems as if HAL glasses have spots on them. They need rinse aid of some sort.
So, a few other things to talk about:
We’ve spent a fair amount of time playing table card games, mostly blackjack, and a little bit of craps. We haven’t lost a ton of money – essentially we are even aside from an hour where I played about twelve days ago where I lost several hundred dollars and stepped away from the casino for four days as a result. In the meantime, we’ve gotten to know the casino staff really well especially while playing craps.
Last night we decided to curtail our visits to the casino as we’re winding down the trip. We spent a couple hours with our casino staff friends and gambling buddies playing craps. It was actually the latest we’ve stayed “out” on this trip so far (we’ll likely stay “out” later on the last night when we go to a closed door restaurant). It was a lot of fun.
Yesterday I mentioned running in port. I’ve largely curtailed my treadmill activities although I may pay a visit tomorrow morning. Instead, I’ve been walking an hour or more on the promenade. I’ve had some interesting step totals –
Yesterday – 21,589 (Puerto Madryn)
Sunday – 11,468 (Sea Day)
Saturday – 16,519 (Falkland Islands)
Friday – 7,991 (Sea Day)
Thursday – 15,334 (Antarctica Day 4)
Wednesday – 16,212 (Antarctica Day 3)
Tuesday – 17,667 (Antarctica Day 2, with treadmill time)
Monday – 16,944 (Antarctica Day 1)
I had planned to do a number of yoga and pilates classes, but early in the cruise after my first class I couldn’t get motivated to attend because I didn’t enjoy the instructor’s style, so I never went back. I’ve practiced yoga on Carnival and Cunard cruises, the last time being back in 2017, but I haven’t found any on this or my past two cruises that I truly enjoyed. I almost think decent fitness classes were a casualty of the Covid era.
One thing they mentioned last night which I never would have known – HAL canceled their bottle stewards after Covid. They still have a sommelier around and they have one full time in Pinnacle Grill, but not so much visibly; they just have a beverage runner in the MDR, at least on this ship. You order through your waiter. I wonder if HAL pushed bottles of wine versus elite beverage package more prior to Covid. This, by the way, is one thing I like more about Cunard; HAL has a decent wine list and I think it’s better than our experience on Celebrity nearly four years ago now but you have to ask for it. Cunard is a little more forward with their wine list. And we enjoyed (again, this is four years ago, right before all of the cuts) Celebrity’s beverage service in Blu a bit better.
But again, especially in the dining room, Pinnacle Grill, and with food in general, HAL has surprised us. The variety of food and drink available is stellar. The MDR menu isn’t as generic as we had on our Celebrity Silhouette cruise a few years ago – and thus we didn’t dine in the main dining room. Here there are often more interesting dishes offered. When you get to know the system and get to know your dining room staff, things are really in your favor. And the Pinnacle Grill breakfast experience is top notch; to think we almost missed it because our goal had been to skip breakfast every day.
Now, speaking of the Lido Market buffet – we still haven’t returned for buffet dining, even though today is Cake Day (it’s hard to handle Cake Day after a few days of a lot of eating). We’ve learned that they do not have an Asian corner on this ship as they do on Noordam and Westerdam (someone please correct me if I’m missing something regarding info and availability this winter please).
Also, today, without eating breakfast, I was craving a typical sandwich, something like a club sandwich, so we ordered room service lunch. They warned us it would be a 45 minute wait; it was a ten minute wait and the sandwich was great.
Friday was a fairly chill sea day for us, but it sure did fill up quickly. It had been two wakeups since we visited our friends in the Pinnacle Grill. Friday night we visited our friends in the Main Dining Room instead.
Crossing the Drake northward was generally a bit bouncy but nothing fell off the counters and none of us tripped or anything. The biggest tragedy was the champagne flutes acting like bowling pins in the cabinet overnight. Nonetheless, we woke up to bouncy seas, room service coffee, and a pretty chill morning. Neither of us left the cabin until 10:30. The Boss decided it was calm enough to have some treadmill time and I ventured forth to complete a number of errands.
On the to-do list –
Get our itinerary straight for our private airport transfer and tour leading up to airport drop off in Buenos Aires; I picked out a few different neighborhoods to visit and some major sites. This also meant I lined up what we wanted to do the day before more independently. I ran this through the concierge but I’m going to check with ShoreEx to see if it’s set up properly.
Have The Boss’s preferences set for Konigstafel. I actually have a photo coming on this. It’s a set menu of something like six or seven courses, but there are a handful of dishes they can sub out for a handful of fish or vegetarian courses. I tried to work this through the concierge but they were attempting an approach where they get us the menu and then menu with options (which I don’t think the dining room will get us) and then we return it during the day tomorrow (today) when we are off the ship so it gets turned back through them (the concierge) prior to dinner tomorrow night (it’s at 6, we get back on board around 4:30 today, so how is that going to work). We ended up talking to our MDR waiter Muis about this and while we were dining two tiers of leadership came over to our table to work it instead.
Do the same for the Cellar Master’s dinner in a few nights (this has not been handled yet).
Arrange appetizer delivery for yesterday afternoon.
So that was handled. Then I tried the Dive-In burger (it was good to great, fries were okay, I wouldn’t write home about it if people didn’t rave about it).
And then I joined my mother for a private behind-the-scenes tour.
Let me tell you, folks. This was something really special. I expected they’d spend an hour walking us through various parts of the ship with a little bit of talk, but instead they spent nearly THREE HOURS walking us through various parts of the ship interspersed with leaders of said area telling us about their jobs, responsibilities, and themselves for 15 or 20 minutes at a stretch!
The person who led us – this was her first tour. We were actually one of two tour groups. Each was supposed to be twenty people and they NEVER do two tour groups but I think because this was a rather long itinerary and there was good demand with a lot of sea days they set a second up. The cruise director kicked us off, and then we met:
The laundry manager and his staff.
Captain Kevin in the flesh in the bridge who then delegated his talk to another.
The provisions manager (runs the mini “warehouses” for food on board)
One of the dancers backstage during an actual production!
The chief engineer; he spoke at great length regarding all of the systems on board. I found this to be the most interesting and asked a number of questions!
The executive chef on board. He walked us through one of the three large kitchens for the main dining room as well as the Pinnacle kitchen (I bet you didn’t realize these are actually adjacent to each other and attached).
Finally, the hotel manager.
All of this was incredibly interesting. They provided us a lot of detail and allowed us to take photos everywhere but reminded us to ask in each area (there was one person on duty who declined and with good reason).
After this tour, they fed us small appetizers and sparkling wine. Then The Boss and I capped off our afternoon with a viewing of Evita (her) and a nap (me), and we enjoyed a pleasant MDR dinner.
Drake passage views
The linen press machine. This can press four sets of napkins at once and they come out the other end fairly well folded!
The view from the bridge. While in Antarctica, they had three spotters on constant rotation looking for whales. They noted 103 whales during the three days where we were sighting whales there. They claim this is an all time high but they’ve said that about so many things now I don’t believe it.
Bourbon storage. They also had a lot of beer and wine and a single case of Chimay.
The engine control room was my favorite part of the tour, possibly from my history of working in network operations centers with similar alert panels on the walls.
A happy breakfast and room service chef. I have more to come on the dining room tour. Spoiler alert – I repeated it yesterday (Friday) with our Friday evening dining experience!
On the left is the 22 day meal rotation for this cruise. Top right is the bread rotation. The right is the Koningstafel.
Yesterday we were in the Falklands. I wore three layers and a raincoat. Our truck was warm so ended up stripping to two for most of the ride. After the excursion we visited the local brewery which was popular with cruise passengers, the entertainment and dance squad from the ship, and locals dressed in shorts and t-shirts just getting out of work (it was 3:30 on a Friday after all). It was a glorious summer day! Aside from the 30 knot breeze…. That of course made return tendering a challenge but all in all it was a good day and lengthy enough for us to work up an appetite for Konigstafel!
Yesterday was what I’ve been looking forward to the most on this cruise – visiting the Falkland Islands, particularly the offroad excursion to Volunteer Point. Supposedly this is the crown jewel of excursions here in Stanley, and with good reason as far as I am concerned.
View through the windshield was often sideways
My recommendation is as follows –
If you are planning this excursion and you’ve booked for December 2027 through February 2028, go ahead and buy it now. For this coming Dec 2026 through Feb 2027 cruise season it may be “too late.”
There were two groups for this excursion, and that’s why I say it may be “too late.” The first set filled I think about seven SUVs, and I believe the second set was similar. You want to be in the first set. Departure time is 8am, immediately upon arrival in Stanley; meeting time is 7:45 (and you know that means that even though there is no real reason on HAL maybe you should be in the World Stage by 7:35). The second group has an 8:30 departure time.
The reason why you want to be in this first group – purely logistics. Both have the same amount of time at the rookery, but realistically the second group leaves the port area around 9:15 meaning you‘re back to Stanley sometime between 3:30 and 4:15. We were back at the port a few minutes before 3pm and sitting outside in the sunshine at the brewery enjoying a beer at 3:08pm, just as the line formed to be thirty people long on this glorious Friday summer afternoon (more about that later). We had time to chat with our cruise mates, enjoy our beer, and visit two souvenir shops. Then it was time to line up for the tender. There was a short line – 1 1/2 tenders full of people – but they were stalled, which is not too unusual for Stanley (more on this later). After waiting on line for about 20 minutes there were then about eight tenders full of people just standing there in the port car park.
Land Rovers at work
Anyway. The penguins are fascinating, but I was just as fascinated by the journey to get there. It seems as if half the vehicles in the Falkland Islands are Land Rovers – not necessarily late model (in fact, most are not), many heavily modified. The majority are Defenders. We saw Defenders driven by teenagers, adults, soccer moms, and old men and women who appeared as if they were long retired.
In the peat
Our squad to transport us to the beach consisted of half a dozen vehicles from Bagley‘s 4×4 Tours (if you want a private tour, go ahead and look them up on Google). Their fleet for this tour consisted of four Defenders, one Nissan Patrol, and I think a Toyota (not too sure on that, I wasn‘t concentrating on photographing it). If you’ve been reading recent Live threads for HAL or other lines you will read “somebody will get stuck” on many of them. So, we ended up in the Nissan and I asked the driver, “does this get stuck more than the Defenders?” At first he wasn’t too amused 🙂. But he did open up a bit. Turns out our driver Nathan has his own business and is an auto mechanic. He’s an interesting guy – originally from St. Helena. The other passengers in our car were put at ease after hearing about his mechanical abilities. “See that Defender? I built that.” He went on to explain that six years ago one of the better looking Defenders was assembled from multiple vehicles and new and used parts from him for one of his friends, and clearly it was still running and not getting stuck.
Rear view
He also explained to us that the Nissan Patrol rides better and is more comfortable than the Defenders (it is), something that was also shared by a couple of our beer drinking buddies at the brewery – the Fords they have are also more comfortable. However, as the Nissan weighs more (three tons instead of 2 1/2), it does get stuck more easily. When did you get stuck last? Once this year so far, in December. He explained how he managed to get stuck when alone with nobody to pull him out so I’m certain there’s some hilarity there, and now he has a two way radio as cell signal doesn’t cover everywhere!
They look like they’re in deep sometimes
So the drive actually really, really does require a good 4×4 – as in, a really good 4×4. My Range Rover Sport at home with street tires, although Mud & Snow, won’t cut it. It would have gotten us two thirds of the way there.
Garage princess
The first quarter of the drive is on dry pavement on what is called a licensed road (you need a license). Then after I think 15 miles you turn off the paved road for a gravel road. At the 27 miles point you turn off that gravel road for another gravel road. That’s the second quarter of the drive. I think around the 35 miles point point you come to a private ranch. This is the rest stop – you stop, you get out, you take a few pictures, you pee.
Typical Falklands Street vehicles
The next quarter of the drive is clearly worse, and until a few years ago it was entirely overland. The ranch is building a lower-quality gravel road across their property little by little. I feel it stretches halfway, as far as distance goes, from the ranch house to the sea. This is probably the worst road I would take The Boss’s Subaru on and not expect to break something. I’d probably take my ancient Mini on it and not really care.
Typical Old Man’s Car in Stanley
The final quarter of the drive is the most rugged.
So, as a farm kid I have memories of driving across dry corn fields at harvest time, or on hay fields. You could do this with a Chevy Vega station wagon, or our later Chevy Cavaliers. For a pasture, you’d need proper four wheel drive and an awareness of where it gets swampy (that’s where you need the tractor).
All of this final quarter is tractor-land. It’s scrubland and peat bog, constantly. The trucks are driving over peat bushes that stand almost to your knees in spots, and they have to go over them because as a path gets used it becomes boggier and boggier. There are numerous small banks to mount, many where the driver takes a 25 or 30 degree angle sideways (my seat-mates thought it was 45 degrees, but no) and many where you see the sky through the windshield. Nathan did show us exactly where he got stuck in December, too, and I can see how it happened.
Anyway, our drive there – and back – occurred without incident. If you have a sore back or otherwise, you may consider not doing this tour. Obviously as the ranch extends the gravel road the tour will become easier, but my hunch is it will take them a few years to complete – and if there’s a change in finances then this activity may change or cease.
Upon arrival you are asked to get out of the truck and walk through a foot bath, then climb back into the truck and you go park. HAL advertises a box lunch which is provided by Bagley’s in this case – one truck has sandwiches in the back, another has thermoses of coffee and hot water and cold water. The sandwiches are designed to feed you. They’re good but not gourmet. They fed us after the penguin viewing.
It’s penguins all the way down
The penguins are amazing. I believe we saw three kinds, but when I post my photos I’ll let you inspect them and correct me (if you’re impatient to wait, check my Instagram link). We saw an abundance of King Penguins, a Gentoo nesting colony, and Magellanic penguins.
Flappy Flappy
The main point of visiting Volunteer Point is to visit the large King Penguin population. This mostly consists of a large squad of penguins hanging out in a stone circle half the size of a football field occasionally squawking and flapping flippers at each other. You’re not permitted to enter the circle but they can come and go as they please. They generally won’t come too close to you but they will follow you if you’re walking where they’re planning to go.
You have to look closely to see the hatchlings!
As of this January there were some still hatching eggs and there were some youngsters hiding under their parents. I didn’t notice this on our first pass through here where we spent ten or fifteen minutes watching them.
Gentoo Jackson Pollock
After the King Penguins, we wandered down into a mini-valley to visit the nesting Gentoos. The Gentoos were really, really smelly even though they were not there in huge numbers (I’m guessing there were fifty or a hundred). They had a larger percentage of youngsters, though. They had painted their whole nesting circle (similar stone henge around them) like a Jackson Pollock painting. This is where we learned that youngsters who are rather large and just fed by their parents flop out on their bellies looking dead as they digest and grow. Hilarious. Anyway, I guess at this point they’re large enough to appear full sized but not at the point where they are ready to take to the seas.
Then we decided to wander out to the beach. The main attraction here seemed to be mainly King Penguins going in small groups (three or four or five) to and from the sea or just wandering aimlessly. There was, however, a seal terrorizing the area. The seal apparently occasionally comes out of the surf and kills a penguin for sport – the guides told us it’s the same seal that has been hanging around for a while now and he doens’t actually eat what he kills.
Penguins having a beach day
So, we saw a group of penguins wandering up the beach to the no-go zone. Then we saw the seal in the surf. I didn’t get a photo of the seal when it came out of the surf, but what happened next is he came out of the surf, the group of penguins took off at a high speed run towards the dune, a ranger yelled at a lady taking photos to “get back” because the seal would bite her too, and then the seal went back into the surf (note this is all anecdotal – I was looking elsewhere when this happened).
Seal
Then we started walking up the beach towards the rocks. Nothing interesting there. Then we started wandering back over the dunes. Then we realized what we weren’t seeing – the Magellanic penguins nesting in burrows in the dunes! In most of the borrows there was a parent penguin standing guard with a younger penguin behind. They were really cute.
Baby Magellanic penguins!
Anyway, we eventually returned to King Circle and watched parent penguins feeding their babies discretely. You really had to pay attention to see them – mostly it looked like there were fat penguins with an extra set of flab just above their feet, but often you would look closely and see the parent leaning down and sharing a tasty morsel.
Hatchling and parent beak!
This was a ninety minute stop at Volunteer Point. Then we set out for the two hour drive back in the glorious summer sunshine…
On return from Volunteer Point the driver dropped us at the “cruise terminal” and we walked to Falkland Beerworks where it seemed as if everybody in town in addition to every cruise ship passenger and the entertainment staff from Oosterdam had decided to throw back a pint or two. Falkland Beerworks has authentic hand-pulled cask ales and in my opinion they are good. IPA fanatics will ask for a bottle of the Iron Lady IPA instead which seemed to be a little toasted like it had been aged in peated scotch barrels and then may be slightly disappointed.
A lot of people also recommend Victory Bar in Stanley which we did not visit. Supposedly they have excellent fish and chips. Instead, after sitting in the sun with cruise friends and observing the locals in shorts and t-shirts we made the observation “it’s very windy; we’d better return to the ship sooner rather than later!” And we left. But not without visiting a couple of souvenir shops.
When we arrived back at the “cruise terminal” there was a line on the dock for tenders and a line through the 20 foot long “cruise terminal” building ending in the glass shed (20’ by 10’) behind it. This is where we joined the queue…. As the line was paused others joined behind us, snaking out into the parking lot. A few minutes later they announced, “tendering operations are paused while the captain repositions the ship to accommodate for worsening conditions.” I later learned that the captain was very frustrated because the harbor master had allowed numerous Asian squidding vessels to drop anchor throughout the bay and harbor around Stanley and they had very long anchor lines limiting the number of safe places for Oosterdam to drop anchor andprovide shelter for tenders. End result, tendering was a game of bumper cars.
By the time tender operations recommenced, the line snaked through the parking lot, out into the street until the constable came around (which they do because there’s nothing else to do), and down the dock adjacent to the tender dock.
Tendering in the rough
It was pretty rough out there. I wouldn’t say it was scary, but the boats were throwing up considerable spray and of course it was dripping in through the hatches. When we arrived back at the ship it was with a sudden crash against the gangplank.
Arriving back on board we had time to rest, shower, and change for the Konigstafel experience! Now this I will write up in real time as I refresh myself by looking at the photos.
Konigstafel is a concept introduced by HAL over the summer last year where once per cruise they offer a “king’s table.” I will note that it is not a chef’s table which implies that the chef gets creative with whatever they have available and / or is fancy or neat. Instead, it’s a set menu throughout Holland America. From the reviews I read last August and September it has not strayed far. Accommodations for dietary restriction are limited; they only have set plates created for vegetarian modifications.
I took this photo from the behind the scenes tour I attended on Friday and on the right you can note the Koningstafel menu. Like I said, they stick to this.
We went through considerable effort to check on getting my partner’s meal changed to exclude beef tartare and lamb because she is pescatarian. They were actually willing to accommodate her, but she said if she had to do it again in the future, because there is so much food, she would probably accept the cauliflower they subbed for the steak tartare and not the modification they made to replace the lamb; she was just not hungry at that point.
The setup for the whole situation begins in the Ocean Bar where there was a jazz band playing (I think this was purely coincidence as the whole bar was not roped off for the event). They make you sign a medical questionnaire as you end up going into crew areas where they check to ensure everyone is healthy (this tells me the entire crew signs the same sheet every single day under threat of not lying and that, in part, is how they maintain a healthier ship). Then, they served us a cocktail.
The cocktail, coincidentally, consists of a sour cocktail similar to a Pisco sour! Some guests were guessing we would actually be served a Pisco sour, but we were not; it was the same menu in September elsewhere.
Update – after checking the menu, the name of the drink was not actually noted! Anyway, this is served with two canapés – crabmeat, caviar, and mint croissant which was to die far as well as caponata.
After the cocktail and canapés we decamped for a full galley tour – identical to Friday’s behind the scenes tour! It was a good refresher, but it did give me the opportunity to skip the food digester section. Also, this is where I noted that it does interfere a little with the kitchen flow and they start to use up some extra resources to make the dinner happen – perhaps this is why they schedule on a busy port day? Less lunch service, more time to prepare, and everybody heads to the Lido instead?
We sat down to an intro from dining room section heads and a bread course which consisted of sesame challah loaf including poppy seed braids. This was served with four butters – plain butter, coconut butter, Thai red curry butter, and blueberry thyme butter. My favorite was made by blending the coconut with the Thai red curry butter 🙂. Poppy seeds were everywhere of course.
An Amuse-Bouche of Asian Wagyu Steak Tartare was served. What a great use for this. The beef was soy-mirin marinated and it was heavily saline. The tempura shiso leaf was a great touch.
This was served with a smoked champ agne cocktail (there is a typo on the menu so it’s now champ agne).
Seafood starter was a Butter poached lobster tail with lemongrass coconut foam made of vanilla, champagne, and orange.
Although diminutive as it should be, perhaps my favorite course. Such good flavor. This was served with a Tattinger Brut Prestige rose.
One thing I’d note – in the reviews I read in September the sparkling rose was served in a champagne flute whereas the smoked champagne was served in a teacup style champagne glass. I think the smoked champagne was better in the flute, as Oosterdam did last night, with the Prestige rose in the teacup style champagne glass.
The one dish which surprised me was the spinach ricotta malfatti which was served with truffle garlic butter, shaved seasonal black truffle, and parmesan foam. The truffle was not overpowering like it sometimes is, and the ricotta did not form a pile of gloop as sometimes happens.
It was quite nice. However, when I see “parmesan” I think “Wisconsin,” rather than Italian equivalents, so I wonder if this could potentially be upgraded? I believe the red is a dehydrated tomato peel. This was served with Pascal Joliet Sancerre Blanc Sauvage from France (basically a white French wine that is good).
Then came a mid-dinner dessert.
Sour cherry granita with vanilla lemon sorbet. Mmmm.
Many guests would say they have happily dined up until this point. Well, folks, buckle up. This is where lamb turns controversial.
The main is a cannon of smoked lamb with pistachio crust served with date purée, lamb jus, and “Mediterranean” vegetables. I put Mediterranean in quotes because I didn’t know carrots are Mediterranean and I think after nine days without fresh provisions and two weeks without full replenishment you probably get what you get on Oosterdam.
They also really started pouring the wine at this point.
And that’s how I found myself sitting there with three glasses of wine.
The Figgins Figlia Merlot / Petit Verdot from Walla Walla is certainly a combination I would definitely seek out again. The port and Amari were there to complement the cheese course and then the dessert course.
Cheese went great at this point in the evening. As did dessert.
This is where it started with sweets galore.
Dessert was interesting – I liked the honey cremieux with lemon curd served with bergamot gel, honeycomb guile (what is that?) and lavender honey. The croutons seemed a bit like cereal. It was good for sampling. The sweets that followed were a bit much.
I couldn’t goad The Boss into eating more than one of these but they were as expected and well presented.
When we arrived in our cabin macarons were waiting on our coffee table. Again, I was a solo diner for these.
Overall, it was a good experience. It was really enjoyable sitting and talking to our table mates, but four hours can be a long time if you are accidentally assigned seats incorrectly (we were not, I had the chance to get to know a couple of folks who have posted on Cruise Critic!). I think if I were cruising HAL again this year I wouldn’t repeat the performance, but if they were doing a different menu every year I certainly would.
It’s great after a day in port where dining is limited (our lunch yesterday consisted of a sandwich on white sandwich bread). Knowing the lamb is coming I may have held off on my Pinnacle lamb a few days ago, though.
And this morning for breakfast – we weren’t hungry; we shared a carafe of coffee and then had nothing until 1pm.
There have been soooo many good experiences lately that it’s almost been overwhelming, and now we’re winding down for the last week of vacation.
Looking ahead – what the guide says about The Falkland Islands:
“Many ships call into the Falkland Islands on their way to or from Antarctica. These stops usually turn out to be a pleasant surprise for those on board. Located 477 km (296 miles) east of southern Argentina, the Falklands are a rare mix of wildlife hotspot and delightful inhabited outpost. Comprising over 700 islands, the archipelago has a human population of around 4000, and a sea-bird population that dwarfs that. For wildlife lovers the Falklands are a fantastic destination. Unlike other subantarctic islands, they can be visited independently by scheduled flights.”
The archipelago is slightly larger than the area of Jamaica including water. Theya re around 51 degrees south latitude, the equivalent to Southern Labrador, London, and Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula in the north. They are, however, much colder and are constantly raked by strong winds. There are no naturally recurring trees. Temperature in the summer tends to be around 9 degrees Celsius / 48 degrees Fahrenheit and the sun shines more often than not.
The book talks about literally millions of petrels, albatrosses, penguins, gulls, and cormorants. Black-browed albatrosses, rockhopper penguins, giant petrels, white-chinned petrels, Antarctic prions, Magellanic and blue-eyed cormorants, kelp geese, upland geese, crested ducks, flightless steamer ducks.
There are mammals including Commerson’s and Peale’s dolphins, killer whales, Sei whales, elephant seals, South American fur seals, sea lions, etc.
We’re looking forward to it. We have a Volunteer Point excursion planned.
We’re also reading up on our next stops in Puerto Madryn, Punta del Este, Montevideo, and finally Buenos Aires.
I’ve been using Peter Carey & Craig Franklin’s Antarctica Cruising Guide for information on Antarctica as well as the surrounding islands including the Falklands; this includes the quote above.
For ideas on what to do in ports as well as Santiago and Buenos Aires, I’ve been using the latest version of Lonely Planet South America. This helped me give our private guide in Santiago a list of neighborhoods and sites to visit as well as for me to identify what was good for us to see on our own. I’m also using it for a similar guide in Buenos Aires. And it helped me with the museum in Ushuaia and to find Isabel Cocina al Disco in Ushuaia.
So yesterday I had a pretty amazing men’s facial, shave, and haircut, not necessarily in that order.
The original plan was for us to arrive at Deception Island around 6:30pm. As it seemed we were running late, I went up to the spa and asked if they could smash my two appointments together and begin at 6pm, and they accommodated.
It was great. I pre-booked these appointments over a month ago following on someone’s advice – Antarctic nights tend to be fairly calm and the expedition team and Captain go off duty so it isn’t a horrible time to book services as they are discounted. My appointment dragged on a while though. We were done at 8pm so our options for dinner were room service or wait for late night dining to open or take advantage of the Neptune Lounge. We chose the lounge option as we are now on the “two meals a day” plan anyway.
I still managed to snap a few photos. I barely went outside in the evening, though.
Panorama view.
Others did go outside.
Today’s two meals are Pinnacle Grill breakfast (asian congee) and Pinnacle Grill dinner. Hopefully the boat doesn’t rock too much.
Anyway, I captured a handful of photos of Deception Island during and after my spa appointment. I wasn’t going to go outside for long, though, as there was an incredibly strong wind. Deception Island seems very desolate, and now that we were away from the peninsula where less precipitation falls it didn’t necessarily seem the same. I think Deception Island is a place where you need an expedition ship to enter the caldera and hopefully get off the ship a bit to see properly.
We spent the night moving from Deception Island to King George Island. Before we went to bed, we went out on our veranda and realized the waves were coming from behind; this made sense as there was a 30 knot wind from the southwest and we were moving to the northeast. End result was there were occasional thud noises as waves hit the flat stern of the ship.
Blue in the morning!
More penguins!
Leaving blue waters behind
This morning was our final scenic touring which started in one arm of Admiralty Bay and moved around considerably. Again, like last night, at 7am conditions on the bow were rather inhospitable, but this didn’t stop me from catching some photos of the blue waters of the bay.
Eventually we moved on from our first stop and caught some sunshine and conditions improved – we spent probably an hour parked at the base of a very large glacier where we were witnessed to a decent sized calving of a glacier followed by a couple hours of slow sailing through the bay past multiple research bases –
the Peruvian,
Uruguayan,
and Brazilian research bases, and then to return. By noon we were leaving the mouth of the bay and heading to sea.
So how do I rate our Antarctic experience? Honestly, I do think it was better than expected. Even though there were three days where half the day had absolutely miserable weather, the rest of the time the weather was fairly decent. We saw most of our penguin wildlife early in the stay. We saw a lot more whales than I was expected (perhaps into the hundreds if you were out there for most of it). We saw fewer seals and sea lions than I expected. And there were more ships and boats down here than I was expecting.
Conditions on the Drake headed south were reasonable. On the north remains to be seen but doesn’t look as if it’s going to be apopalyptic. Internet connectivity has been good, and there have been things to do.
We finally hit our groove as far as getting enough sleep and attaining a healthy groove of dining and fasting and exercise. I’ve replaced some of my workouts with walking the promenade instead of using the treadmill. One note – I tried the fitness classes; I don’t really like them here.
