So we’re leaving for Santiago in a few days to join a cruise to Antarctica returning via Buenos Aires. This is a big deal – it’s something we started to dream about a few years ago and started to book 16 months ago. We’re in our mid-fifties; we started planning this when we were younger. This is our third cruise together. The shortest was 12 nights so we have certainly discovered that we are a younger demographic on longer duration cruise!
Questions I want to ask others are as follows. How did you decide to go to Antarctica? Why did you book on Holland America? When did you decide to go? Was this a long held dream or was it recent? If you have done it before, does the Drake Passage compare to other seas-of-drama? I’ve cruised the Bay of Biscay a couple of times and have touched a Cat 1 hurricane off the coast of North Carolina so I’m confident I will be fine – can it be that much worse?
For us, the story begins with a walk.
When traveling and away from home we spend more time talking about things we enjoy. Often this happens when we’re sitting on a balcony watching the sea go by or when we’re on a long walk, or sometimes on a long run, because we do run. We talk about where we want to retire, how we want to live, or what we want to do next.
In 2023, we were in port in Valencia on a Cunard Queen Victoria cruise. We didn’t book an excursion because we felt we could explore Valencia on our own. Although Valencia port isn’t necessarily walkable, Cunard was nice enough to provide a shuttle to the City of Arts and Sciences. Valencia has a greenbelt built on the diverted Turia River bed that begins at the City of the Arts and Sciences and passes by the old town core so we used it as a conduit. It’s a two mile walk each way. We should have worn our running clothes and run instead.
Anyway, I don’t know what exactly we discussed that particular day, but sometime around then we started talking about future travels and I suspect on the long walk we discussed much of what we wanted to see in the world. Patagonia and Africa came up as being fairly high on the list. To be honest, we didn’t talk about Antarctica.
Flash forward and we eventually started reviewing options and talking about planning. We discussed the merits of Africa over Patagonia, and I was sneaky enough to slide Antarctica in there. The Holland America itinerary is actually one I planned for January 2014 back in 2012 when I was still married. It’s a great itinerary starting in Chile and taking in parts of Patagonia, the Drake Passage and Antarctic Peninsula, and the Argentine and Uruguayan coasts along with the Falkland Islands. But obviously I’m not married anymore so I ended up canceling – my mother went instead, and we’ll see how this works out because literally two days after we booked this winter’s expedition she joined her local travel group to do the same. She swears it was merely a coincidence, but we shall see!
Compared to expedition cruises it’s very cost effective, and compared to other main-line options it’s longer and takes in a wider variety of ports, countries, and cultures. I was also looking at an Azamara cruise that covered roughly the same territory but we agreed upon Holland America. If we’re going to be on a ship for 22 days, we want relaxation and recovery in a larger cabin with more options.
So here we are preparing to embark in six days, and preparing to travel a few days beforehand.
In Retrospect 