Archives for posts with tag: antarctica

Catching you up – a ship’s behind the scenes tour, THE BEST of the Falklands! And Holland America Oosterdam Konigstafel!

January 25, 2026 //

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

Tags adventure, antarctica, blogging, cruise, cruise-experience, cruise-life, Foodie, travel-blog, travel-diary

Categories Foodie, South America - Antarctica January 2026, travel

Antarctica Day 2 and 3 (so far) – January 20 and 21, 2026

January 21, 2026 //

The weather yesterday could best have been described as inhospitable. Today has been much better. So, yesterday I spent some time doing other things, and today, especially in the morning, I spent a lot of time outside.

Yesterday morning we had a strong wind from the stern as we hoover off Cuverville Island. The good news is there are plenty of penguins and humpback whales.

This was the scene yesterday morning.

I did go through the trouble of viewing it from up above. See that rock in front of us? All of the level areas with lots of grey are coverd with penguins. You couldn’t smell them as there was a fairly strong wind arriving from the left.

Penguins everywhere.

Aren’t they cute?

After our early morning penguin-viewing, we went for breakfast in the Pinnacle Grill where we had whales breaching a hundred meters outside the window. There’s a blue blob above for instance.

There was some decent tail action but as we were about six feet from a window rather than six inches from a window photos really didn’t come out well.

All of my photos are taken with an iPhone 17 Pro. I stopped carrying an SLR about eight years ago because I don’t have the patience to upload or process. The quality on the 17 is twice as good as the IPhone 15 I just traded in. Most of my photos are rubbish, I just choose to share the good ones. You can tell when it switches to digital zoom as things get grainy.

I sat through three talks yesterday morning as it was a very rainy day. Dedicated wildlife watchers were still out on the bow, though, as there have been penguin and whale sightings all morning. As we then had 30 knot winds and were moving around considerably the bow balconies on 5, 6, and 7 are closed but 4 was still open. And, as always, the promenade was open.

There are a number of folks following along on my writing elsewhere and social media who are on-ship, and there are some who are planning future voyages. There are places Holland America doesn’t go anymore that past cruises could go (such as the lagoon in Deception Island where a Russian cruise ship ruined it for everyone). There are places that can be visited in an expedition ship that cannot be visited in a cruise ship. There are places where a small ship can dodge icebergs but Captain Kevin cannot even though Oosterdam is more maneuverable than other similar-sized vessels. And ultimately it’s the scientific community and Antarctic treaties that dictate what we can and cannot do.

And there are places where we’ve had things happen and seen things before where others haven’t.

We’re sgetting a great experience and at the moment we’re “planning to see” as much or more than the Oosterdam December 2025 voyage and prior voyages and a bit more than what direct competitor voyages (Celebrity, Princess, NCl0 were seeing this year.

So, choosing not to Sunday morning quarterback the captain, when the captain says “we are hoovering overnight” that really means from about 8pm to about 4am when most guests are either dining or sleeping, although there are many who are going without sleep for the four days we are down here. I take him at his word – we’re hoovering overnight because it’s windy on the other side of the rocks, not just to save fuel. Other than that we haven’t hoovered (I’ll repeat this – we’re only hoovering at night, otherwise he’s driving from place to place so we can view wildlife even in the inclement conditions).

We’re not a polar class ship. Quark had their polar cass ship sitting southwest of us in Lemaire Channel (not confused with Lemaire Island – the two are 20 miles apart). Silversea had their ice strengthened ship sitting in Paradise Bay, which we skipped yesterday, and the 450 foot long Hamburg is there as well (note – we saw this ship today, on January 21). Interestingly the Seabourn ship we met up with Monday “hoovered” with us last night and a handful of expedition ships were following us this morning. We later learned that the Seabourn ship’s captain trained with Captain Kevin on Holland America Konigsdam.

A little sad we missed Lemaire Channel, but here’s what the guidebook tells us about Lemaire Channel.

”Perhaps the best-known fjord in Antarctica, Lemaire Channel cuts a path between the continent’s mainland on the east and Booth Island on the west. It is almost 11 km (7 miles) long and renowned for its spectacular scenery, with near-vertical peakgs rising close on both sides. Wandel Peak, on Booth Island, is 980 m (3215 ft) high. The channel is deep too, measuring about 150 m (492 ft) most of the way. Ice sometimes chokes it closed so if you are lucky enough to make it through make a point of spending your time out on deck.

”The current that flows through this passage is strong enough to drag in large icebergs that sometimes block traffic. The ice also provides excellent platforms for resting leopard and crabeater seals, so keep an eye out for dark objects (this is the part I’m sad I missed).”

It goes on to talk about the humpbacks and minkes as well as shags and gentoo penguins in small numbers, but then points out that you go there for the landscape. Yesterday’s cloud ceiling during the cloudy half of the day was about a thousand feet though.

But there are a lot of places like this. The intention was we would make three stops Monday and overnight in Paradise Bay, but I’ve lost count of what we actually did Monday.

So, some slides from the morning briefing yesterday from Captain Kevin. I’ll note that the Q&A included some second guessing of the captain of which I reference above 🙂. One passenger suggested we remain in Antarctica for an extra day because “we won’t be able to stop at the Falklands.”

The first slide I’ll share was the ice forecast for the northern peninsula.

Thanks to the suggestion of a passenger, the cruise director is dispatched to the screen with a pool cue to point out anything interesting.

We’re told we’re missing Esperanza as sea ice is flowing over from Weddell Sea and the marine map bears out nothing more than an ice breaker up in Hope Bay.

Nonetheless, everyone who has been here has experienced the changeable weather. Yesterday’s weather as observed on Windy.com –

This really looked ominous. Thankfully it has improved. The map showed a low pressure system well to the west of us which actually traveled over us during the night. It showed 42 knot winds just “outside” of the islands but with hurricane-force winds closer to the low. By today, it moved off to the east.

Here is what the weather looks like now. Note how the peninsula now has blues.

We ended up spending the rest of the day yesterday trolling around the bays and islands more in the open than not, but still sheltered so the wind wasn’t horrible. It was a real treat though during the midday and early afternoon though because in the lower-visibility conditions there were a ton of humpback whales feeding. Many, many times the Captain took the ship to full stop and we just drifted as they breached around us. I went out on the veranda several times and listened to them coming up – you would hear a rush of water and sometimes a groan when they came to the surface. Usually they traveled in packs of two or three but sometimes they would be solo and the whole bay we were in you could see several groups splashing at once separated by a quarter mile or so in between each group. It was truly magical.

As I wasn’t one of the folks standing patiently with a big huge lens this is the typical type of photo I got.

And sometimes a bit of this.

By comparison in today’s daylight –

My new wallpaper!

Or really, a more realistic version thereof…. Conditions were much better for whale-viewing today but there were fewer whales (although still a lot, and likely more than a Cape Cod whale watching trip; definitely more than I saw off Kaikoura in 2015).

Eventually by mid-afternoon yesterday I headed up to the treadmill for nearly an hour (!!!) on the treadmill. Treadmill running on a ship of course can be tricky as it moves underneath you; there was a bit of dancing around and I had to focus directly in front of me. However, the view was great. Especially when the snow started falling.

I kept staring at this flag or just beyond. At one point, there was a pod of three whales less than a tenth of a mile in front of us which kept breaching every thirty seconds or so. I watched them move from left to right across my field of vision for about ten to fifteen minutes. When I finished, I realized many

Person on the treadmill made headless for anonymity purposes. Anyway, it was a bunch of this.

Obligatory post-run selfie outside!

So, after treadmill time I’ve been enjoying Oosterdam’s hydrotherapy pool. They have a large fifteen foot by twenty foot hottub with jets, bubbles, and a large spray from overhead which is good for soaking and warming up. Granted, after a run you don’t need hot water…. But it’s nice to go to the gym, shower, and soak in the hottub. And then head outside to the Seaview Pool and sit in the hottub there in the falling snow!

This is me outside on Sunday. I don’t have a photo from yesterday.

This of course is the view of the pool on today’s glorious morning! Note the snow-penguins at the end of the deck still there from yesterday. This afternoon there was actually a polar plunge out there which I magine wasn’t too bad as long as you soaked in a hottub beforehand. The water in the pool is probably around 75 or 80 degrees Fahrenheit so it wasn’t that polar, but not exactly pleasant to be out in the open air either – it’s barely above freezing.

I’m going to skip ahead to today’s update and come back and talk about our evening activities and wining and dining later (spoiler alert – the steakhouse has Caymus so that made me happy).

First, some updates on current and future conditions.

We’ve spent the past few days trolling around the area circled in red above.

Today we started in Charlotte Harbor; through the morning and into mid-afternoon we left Charlotte Harbor and slowly motored to the edge of the immediate peninsula islands. We are now crossing the strait to Deception Island where we hope to arrive around 6:30 this evening.

See? Here.

Chatting with my friends Andy and Hetty in England they provided their update from following cruisemapper which showed our path as above. Looking on MarineTraffic, I think we’re still, at nearly 5pm, about fifty nautical miles from Deception Island, so I think 6:30 in Deception Island is wishful thinking. I think we’re aiming more towards 8 or 9pm at this point which should be fine as it will still be daylight but it will certainly make an early morning tomorrow difficult.

Captain Kevin said “the kids” will drive the ship as we sleep and take us to Admiralty Bay. I think this is probably a hundred mile run so if we leave Deception Island and maintain only ten knots for whales that may be hard to do as well.

Then we will focus on crossing the Drake Passage. Forecast for Thursday night is holding at 6 meter waves which is fine with us, calming a bit by Friday afternoon.

Anyway, back to this morning.

I had my first outdoor meal.

Charlotte Bay is supposedly not known for wildlife although there was some there. I spent some time on the bow chatting with Adrian and Graeme from the expedition team and they explained that most likely the whales we were seeing there were resting – they weren’t moving a whole lot. They eventually explained this over the PA as well. Out in the main channel there is a fairly strong current so as they explained the whales tend to get tired out feeding there. Then they talked about whales sleeping vertically and a number of other subjects which I’m not too certain about (and didn’t really pay attention anyway).

I’ve been wandering around here with a heavy sweater labeled “US Antarctic Program South Pole” that a friend gave to me twenty years ago. I’ve been wearing it mid-winter since then, and I think now it’s time to retire it. No, neither of them visited the south pole but Graeme did come within 250 miles of the pole. There’s not much at the pole except a US research station and a handful of others. It’s flat, cold, and wind blows the snow everywhere even though it never snows there. And it’s always dark for half the year.

One of the things we visited before lunch was this iceberg – it has fallen apart over time and most likely one of the columns will collapse entirely at some point. I think we came maybe 50 or 75 yards away from it. I was on the bow for most of this and it was absolute mayhem. So many people came out so when I decided to leave I had to wait in line for about ten minutes.

I thought this view was particularly interesting as it showed a crack just above the waterline where water had filled in and frozen in dark blue.

On this scenic cruising often the clouds descend low and obscure things a bit.

And occasionally there’s a penguin.

This little guy was actually with a group of others who mostly got off the ice.

He just sat there stretching and posing for us!

In the mornign the best thing about visiting Charlotte Bay was the still water and the reflections on the ice.

The ship also used it as an excuse to do fast boat drills – and go collect some glacier ice. Like yesterday’s drone photos, they have a permit for this.

This has already shown up on Holland America’s social media. I imagine some of the views are going to show up on a television commercial coming soon to a screen near you as well.

Or on Carnival’s annual report as both Carnival and Seabourn are Carnival lines. Isn’t it beautiful?

What a great day it has been. The nicest thing about the past few days – only having to worry about a handful of things, rather than the usual family and corporate whack-a-mole at home. And it isn’t even like the usual vacation or retirement touring where you’re trying to figure out when you have an excursion or getting shuttled from place to place. You’re just walking out on deck and experiencing it.

I still want to write a bit about the variety of dining we’ve had over the past few days in particular and a handful of other things, such as how The Boss taught me to play craps and we did royally well, but for now I’m signing off. Tomorrow morning is going to be fairly busy but there will be more downtime to read and write starting tomorrow afternoon.

Tags adventure, antarctica, cruise, nature, penguins, photography, travel, voyage, whales

Categories Running, South America - Antarctica January 2026, travel

Crossing the Drake Passage – Day 2, preparing for Antarctica, January 18, 2026

January 20, 2026 //

From our noon update on Sunday –

60 degrees 50 minutes South, I didn’t catch the West, 16 nautical miles per hour headed south. We are 308 nautical miles from Ushuaia and 235 nautical miles to Palmer Station. No icebergs will be seen until early tomorrow based upon the ice maps and ice forecast. Currently the temperature is 6 degrees Celsius with a northwest wind at 30 knots. Sunset 10:54pm. Temperature tomorrow morning and through the day will be around freezing with sunrise at 3:52am. We are experiencing 2 1/2 meter swells. Again he warns one hand for the ship, one for your drink. Scenic cruising starts at 6:15am tomorrow.

About this scenic cruising.

So, today I sat through three talks, two by the expedition team and one by the captain. All were repeated in the afternoon as well. The first lecture was to a mostly full house; the second was to a full house, and the third we were bursting at the seams. It seemed as if a lot of people were frustrated when they realized that in order to have a seat at the 11am talk you need to show up at the 9am talk or you have to be patient – and expect maybe you’re going to be turned away to return in the afternoon.

Pro tip – if you stand in the aisles or sit in the aisles or on the stairs they will make you leave and the whole theater will wait until everyone situated as such has left.

The Boss reports that the questions asked in the afternoon were… less well thought out than the questions asked in the morning.

Adrian the geologist mainly spoke about the geology in the glaciers – the patterns and layers that develop as the glaciers and ice moves and flows, because it does flow.

Antarctica is basically covered by a system of ice streams as shown above with darker colors indicating faster flow of ice and lighter colors indicating nearly-still ice. By faster flow we’re not necessarily talking fast; we’re talking three feet a day, or one and a half Oosterdams per year.

He said he sees these patterns everywhere.

But here is what it looks like on the ice:

This is literally an ice river on Antarctica.

For scale – it’s about ten miles across and it’s taken at an angle, most likely from an aircraft flying into a valley, where you would notice it.

The second talk focused on a bit more depth as Ed is actually a person who studies the ice instead of being ice-adjacent due to time studying geology next to or hidden by the ice. And Ed is a great speaker as well (so is Adrian).

Antarctica has 24.4 million gigatonnes of ice. As you can see above, a gigatonne is a billion metric tons. As you can see below, the size of a gigatonne is roughly a 700 foot tall building sitting on Central Park in New York City.

As always New York City is the city that gets demolished by a megaton of ice

He also spoke a bit about the creation of icebergs and what happens over an ice sheet’s lifetime – the water flowing under the ice, fresh and salt water moving underneath the ice where the ice breaks off, and so forth. He spoke a bit about the A23a iceberg which is 918 feet tall with only a small portion above ground; A23a also is, or was, the size of Rhode Island and I believe floating somewhere near South Georgia Island now.

But both Adrian and Ed were not the stars of the show. The star was Captain Kevin. In the Antarctic cruise community, at least online on social media and in various forums, Captain Kevin is a hero, in part because he explains in detail what he’s doing but also because he has nervous travelers convinced he has their safety in mind. And he’s funny too.

On Sunday Kevin gave us the details behind his planning for the first two days of the voyage. The goal was to visit Palmer Station early Monday morning, like 6am, then visit Port Lockroy and drop off postcards to be mailed, and take an afternoon cruise through Lemaire Channel. Eventually we would overnight in Paradise Bay.

For Tuesday we would visit Cuyerville Island, Dallmann Bay, Gerlache Strait, and Wilhelmina Bay.

Much of this didn’t actually happen, but stay tuned. I didn’t take any more photos on Sunday.

This is the expedition team. Tomorrow they’re presenting on “Life in the Deep Freeze.” As the times line up with a couple of the scenic cruising sites I’m not certain when we will make them. The expedition team is mostly into physical sciences – not so much life – but they’ve done a good job with life sciences and ecology on Antarctica as well. Adrian in particular is highly naturalist-adjacent. I believe he’s married to a PhD biologist.

Anyway. Sunday night was a decent dressy night interspersed with football playoff games. This weekend they’ve been playing the playoffs in Billboard whereas last weekend everybody was left to fend for themselves. There was also a tango dance show tonight, jazz band, and of course the Rolling Stone band. It is / was a lively night on ship.

Weather continues to be gray and gloomy with temperatures falling more and more, and frankly the forecast is not looking promising for New Zealand. I believe the December cruise had two beautifully sunny days out of three; they’re telling us not to bank on that right away. But they’re telling us there are currently reports of lots of penguins in the places suggested so far.

This is actually one of the things the current expedition team is good for – they have a lot of contacts who are out on the ice and have access to current information in conjunction with the bridge.

At least the ship is relatively steady. We should sleep well.

Tags adventure, antarctica, antarctica-experience, antarctica-life, cruise experiences, cruising

Categories South America - Antarctica January 2026, travel

Crossing the Drake Passage – January 17, 2026

January 18, 2026 //

Imagine setting your alarm for 5:30 and then putting on warm clothes to go out on the bow of the ship. Brrr. A shock to the system. It was raining, so thankfully I had a hat on. It was also windy, so hold onto your camera tightly! But they did bring coffee and pastries out, so there was that. Of course, we also had coffee delivered to the room.

I spent about 40 minutes out there on the bow as we hovered in place by the island that makes up Cape Horn. There is a lighthouse station there as well as a small shiny monument, but otherwise it’s relatively non-remarkable in comparison to the dozens of other islands and hundreds of islands, mountains, cliffs, and rocks we’ve seen lately. It’s significant, though, as it’s the point of no return to some degree.

We were told this was the closest Captain Kevin has ever come to the point, but didn’t he say that last year?

Cape Horn actually is an island that sits in a large bay with a number of other rocky uninhabited islands. Anyway, after a while the ship rotated 360 degrees and then we spent the morning sailing around the islands and up and down the bay until the pilot boat showed up to take our two pilots on shore. Someone on the ship reported they saw two people get off with luggage which makes sense as they were Magellan pilots, meaning they were the pilots responsible for navigating us through the Straits of Magellan as well as the Beagle Channel, so likely they had been on a few days.

And now we’re headed south.

Sea life was fairly constant throughout the day. As soon as we were offshore the clouds and sun were more consistent. Instead of small spots of sunshine there were large spots of sunshine. When I walked the promenade this afternoon (four miles) there were some wet snowflakes; the temperature had dropped to 42 degrees Fahrenheit or about 5 degrees Celsius. Winds were over 30 knots; the ship has been leaning slightly much of the day and swaying a bit, but nothing too horrible and not as bad as the Bay of Biscuits.

From yesterday morning we had 608 miles to Palmer Station – I wonder if that’s the captain’s signal we will be starting our touring at Palmer Station rather than further south? Also, we enter Antarctic waters around 6:35 am tomorrow at which point we should expect a burst of wildlife. To be determined if I am awake at that time.

Otherwise, it was a relatively quiet day at sea with some napping, some game playing, and some soaking in the thermal spa. Dinner was lovely but unremarkable. I now have a glass of scotch whisky and we’re watching football in Spanish.

Tags adventure, antarctica, antarctica-experience, cruise, cruise experiences, cruise-experience, cruising, travel

Categories South America - Antarctica January 2026, travel

Ushuaia, Fin del Mondo

January 18, 2026 //

Okay, so I’m catching up on my writing as today is our final sea day until our Antarctic adventure begins. I went to two lectures on polar ice today and a third discussion led by the captain on our planned route once we reach Palmer Peninsula early tomorrow morning. Basically he warns us “if you’re living life to its fullest you’re going to be busy.”

Our mornings are predictably beginning fairly early here and I’m finally settling into a routine where I’m able to fall asleep and take a nap if I’m trying to live life to a fullest. Unfortunately, my Oura ring which I’m using to track my stress levels, heart rate, readiness, and sleep doesn’t seem to be able to tell when I’m taking a nap on a ship. I know it can tell how much sleep I am taking at night but it doesn’t see when I reach the same level of stillness I normally do for a nap at home – because obviously the ship is moving.

It hasn’t tracked a nap since Santiago.

Anyway, the first thing I tend to do in the morning is look outside off the stern of the ship. If it isn’t raining I hop out there and snap a photo. Beautiful, isn’t it? Then I sit at my desk here and write a little and sip coffee.

The further south we were going in the waterways of Chile the more ice we saw and the closer it came to sea level.

On Friday we went down to Pinnacle Grill for breakfast.

The Pinnacle Grill menu is obviously more substantial than the MDR menu. On this particular day I had the aloo masala (potato curry I think) and egg burjhi (eggs with peppers and spices I think). It was served with a dosa (lentil crepe), chapati bread, stewed lentils, and some chutneys.

For comparison, today I had the Pan Asian breakfast, you know because I have to try everything out.

This was served alongside miso soup poured table side.

I’m really impressed with the variety of food served here. It’s even higher than what we saw traveling in Aqua Class on Celebrity. I know we have some perks due to Neptune Class, but this variety even extends to the room service.

Anyway. We were cruising through the Beagle Passage past a series of five glaciers as we were dining that morning. I didn’t get the best photos, but that’s fine.

Many of my glacier photos were stained by the window

It was enjoyable to capture the moment and instead rest for a change.

We were able to have a fairly active morning as we were not due to arrive in port until 1pm. This was actually delayed even though our original plan was 2pm; the captain had to wait for a couple of expedition ships to clear out before we had space on the pier.

I was able to go to the gym and have some treadmill time (something I’m hoping to repeat today) before going to the aquatherapy room and the thermal suite.

I mean, this was a civilized way to come into port.

Anyway, unlike Punta Arenas, in Ushuaia it just seems as if you suddenly arrive on a scene. The city itself likes tucked up against the mountains on a narrow tilted shelf pouring itself out at the harbor. It looks and feels as if you’ve suddenly been dumped in Queenstown, New Zealand, or Aspen, Colorado. And it’s priced the same.

And there are these pricy expedition ships docked there to remind you of your mortality.

As we didn’t really have any opportunity for souvenir acquisition in our previous three stops we decided to begin our time ashore by going shopping.

Typical construction in Ushuaia – both old and new

There are a lot of shops that sell chocolate alongside t-shirts. And a number of liquor shops as well with whisky that normally costs us $60 at home going for $200 here. Fortunately the local stuff is cheaper – I think a small bottle of Patagonian gin was about $15 USD. We actually found the most interesting gifts in a coffee shop / cafe called Espirito Fueguino Cafe & Gift Shop. I now have a heavy black hoodie with a mythological Patagonian creature on the back of it; it should come in handy the next few days.

There are three museums near the port (there may actually be more, but I searched and saw three). There are two Museo del Fin Del Mundos; we visited neither. We did, however, visit the museum at the Presido, the old prison, which actually consists of about five small museums in one.

This museum has about two wings dedicated to prison life – one to the history of the prison and the prisoners who were in residence, and then one completely devoid of furnishings so you could wander around and enjoy the silence.

There were also two gift shops. And an art gallery.

The only requirement for a piece of art to be in the art gallery is it had to be pretty good and it had to have something to do with water. Nonetheless, it was good art, mostly South American from what I could tell. Much of it resembled European art work, or even American art work from the time periods where they were created. For instance, there were a couple of Hopper-esque oil paintings I enjoyed. I could have enjoyed standing in silence in this wing for a while longer but I wasn’t alone. It was time to go eat.

And even though it was neither Patagonian lunch time nor dinner time, we found a nice meal at Isabel Cocina Al Disco.

I think we actually spent big city prices for our meal but it was worth it. One massive 750ml beer from Patagonia Brewing Company and two large but not massive beers from a local brewery that makes a red ale. We also shared the house specialty – seafood and potatoes cooked in a disc from a plow, or a de arado, or plough in British English. In modern times they actually use a cast iron pot with high edges similar to a paella pan.

It was so good. Mussels and baby octopus and shrimp and calamari stewed in white wine-tomato broth with nicely roasted and fried potatoes.

I tell you. I researched this place months ago. I had no idea what the cast iron pot was until now and didn’t connect it until I saw “plough” on the English language menu. And Isabel is easy to get to from the port – you walk off the ship, down the pier, out through the gates, and across the street and it’s to the right one block.

Back to the ship for us.

It was a beautiful late afternoon stroll back to the ship where we whiled away the evening with our feet up on the loungers in the Crow’s Nest.

Ushuaia is a great cruise port – my favorite so far. Logistically it’s easy. For excursions buses and vans come straight out to the ship. Visiting town is a half mile stroll along the pier.

Local beer here is great, by the way. Next up, two days at sea.

Tags antarctica, antarctica-experience, cruise, cruise experiences, cruise-experience, cruising-tips, culinary, port city, seafood, travel, travel-blog, travel-to-south-america, urban exploration

Categories Foodie, South America - Antarctica January 2026, travel

Two days of scenic cruising – as we travel the various passages several hundred thousand miles south through Chile.

January 14, 2026 //

Yesterday was supposed to begin with scenic cruising past Wager Island, but instead it began with scenic cruising through heavy rain and pea soup fog. Wager Island was not to be seen which certainly enabled us to understand this morning’s lecture better.

This is an accurate representation of how much we saw before noon yesterday, so instead I attended a lecture and lost $104 playing blackjack.

Amidst all of this we started seeing a lot of albatrosses and other sea birds, but mostly the albatross (photo above taken with iPhone 17 Pro). Sneaky birds didn’t come close enough for me to capture them frequently but as I spent over an hour walking laps on the promenade I certainly was able to photograph plenty of them.

When the weather cleared it was really spectacular.

After I spent time on the promenade in the afternoon I ended up spending forty five minutes on the treadmill. What’s great after the treadmill? Time on the bow on the 9th deck in front of the fitness center. Isn’t it beautiful? As there was a considerable breeze it also helped with cool down.

As the day began to wind down, we settled down for dinner at Oosterdam’s Italian specialty restaurant – Canneletto. The food here was great, but the views were even better.

Along the mountains here along the edge of the sea there is a fairly wide level area, perhaps twenty minutes walk across, which reminds me of the east side of Barbados or parts of the west coast of New Zealand. Elsewhere in southern Chile it just drops off to the fjords or the water.

Most of these places seem like they have nobody around

This morning we woke to more scenic cruising. Imagine you’re sitting at the desk in your cabin looking out the window and you start seeing little bergy bits such as these going past. Still with pajamas on (I know people are going to flame me for this) I threw on a sweatshirt and walked to the far end of Deck 4 to go out to the bow because I knew we were near the glacier.

The moment I knew we were nearing something different

Captain Kevin managed to pull the ship into a narrow passage at the base of Brujo glacier.

He has also been keeping the bow open for most of the day for cruisers’ use for sightseeing and photography. I spent a short time out there but as I was not dressed as Nanook of the North like the folks above I eventually retreated to our aft cabin, where I continued to duck out into the rain and cold for photography.

View from our wrap-around aft veranda, 963 feet to the rear

Fortunately Captain Kevin elected to spend over an hour in this spot all while doing pirouettes and pivoting in circles so we could all have a view.

Periodically we would hear rumblings from the ice. I believe the glacier is about ten kilometers long. From the above it appears to be several hundred feet thick at its thickest point as well. I’m not certain without checking the map but I suspect the snowpack and ice collects beyond the initial range of mountains and squeezes through this valley to the top of the fjord. It isn’t the only one around in the immediate vicinity.

In today’s overcast weather the ice had infinite shades of green and blue as well.

Eventually after nearly ninety minutes spent we waved goodbye to the ice and made our way back towards the sea.

The headlands along the fjords are much more barren today than yesterday or the day before. It’s clear that winters here are longer and sunlight is harder to find – and the scraping of glaciers is more recent.

And now the weather has turned rainy again. Fortunately, I can sit here with our plant (the ship refreshed our prior green friend for a more sturdy and robust model) as we travel south.

Tags adventure, antarctica, antarctica-experience, cruise, cruise-experience, cruising, scenic, travel, voyage-writing

Categories South America - Antarctica January 2026, travel

Travel Reading and Time Management for Dummies

January 5, 2026 //

Good morning everybody! We fly tomorrow. End result – our fridge is empty, teens have gone off to their mother’s for a few weeks, and we’ve packed up. Our dog is ready to be dropped off at her friend’s house tomorrow morning where they’ll have a great time for the next month.

Yesterday’s pre-travel opportunities included lining up the neighbors to take our trash out later this week and bring the bins back in; coordinating with the plant caretakers; and most importantly polishing my shoes while watching football!

Also, I finished my third “Travel reading” book, Terra Incognita: Travels in Antarctica by Sara Wheeler. It’s going to Antarctica with me so I can hand it off to my mother while will be on the same cruise.

Sara Wheeler breaks Terra Incognita into roughly three different parts. Her first part is where she flys from New Zealand to McMurdo, the American base on Ross Island by the Ross shelf and spends at least a couple of months at McMurdo as well as flying, sledging, helicoptering, and otherwise traveling out to various research camps elsewhere on the ice including a visit to the West Antarctic Ice Sheet as well as the South Pole research station. She spends a lot of time talking about the early explorers of Antarctica especially the British (spoiler alert – Sara is British). She isn’t exactly easy on the British; for instance, she poked fun at their attitude that “of course a Brit would reach the pole first.” Much of what she discusses about life on the ice especially life at the Pole was shared with me by a friend of mine who spent ten months wintering at the South Pole in 2004 and 2005.

After her stay at McMurdo in the first part of the book, she transfers to the British bases the largest of which is Rothera; her experience there is entirely different. Although the book is set in the 1990s which seems like the modern era to me, and only ten years before my friend was at the pole, her experiences on South America, especially at Rothera, seem as if they were from another era. During this time she was much happier at research camps away from the stations rather than at the station itself. Also, in order to travel to Rothera, on the Antarctic Peninsula, she literally had to fly throughNew Zealand and Los Angeles and then home to London to return via Royal Air Force transport to the Falkland Islands and then a Dash-7 to Rothera…. It certainly was thelong way round.

For her final stay, she felt called to return – towards the end of the Antarctic winter, and in case anybody is interested in reading it, I won’t spoil it, but it was her happiest time on Antarctica it seems.

One thing she reminds the reader, and this is relevant for Antarctic cruisers – The Antarctic Peninsula is the banana belt. Especially in the summer it is warmer than Ross Island by 20 degrees and warmer than the South Pole by even more. Year round the peninsula is close to the temperature of the water around it. Areas that are surrounded by ice or land are much, much colder. It’s also the wettest part of the continent.

Anyway, if you read this, thanks for reading along. If you’re interested in the science and experience of being in Antarctica as well as the history, Terra Incognita is a great read. I also read Travels in a Thin Land where Sara Wheeler speaks of her experiences traveling the length of Chile – top to bottom – for the better part of a year, and I read Endurance by Alfred Lansing about Shackleton’s expedition. Hopefully if all goes well we will come close to Shackleton’s landing spot on Elephant Island.

Finally, I have an Antarctic Cruise Guide for understanding the geography around the peninsula as well as the wildlife, and I have a Lonely Planet South America guide forideas on how to spend time in Santiago as well as port days where we don’t haveexcursions planned. I wouldn’t recommend the Lonely Planet book – it’s too heavy and takes up the weight of a couple of pairs of jeans in your checked baggage! I’ve included a gratis photo of “Time Management for Mortals” for those who worry about getting everything done before traveling…

Today I wrap things up at the office and tomorrow is the day we travel. I may have felt comfortable waiting until Wednesday to travel but I figured we would want to get to know Santiago a little before getting on a ship and this gives two whole days for things to go wrong rather than one.

Happy Monday to all who celebrate!

Tags antarctica, antarctica-experience, antarctica-life, antarctica-packing, travel reading

Categories Books, travel