Pictures

Christ the Redeemder Statue Rio De Janerio


Joe and "friend" in Buenos Aires

Tango Dancers Buenos Aires

Flower in Buenos Aires

Cemetery in Buenos Aires

The "end" of South America

Ushasia Argentia

Argentina

Argentina

Chilean glacier

Punta Arenas, Chile

Shopping

Penguins

Penguin island

view from our verandah

Lake District, Chile

Puerto Montt, Chile and volcano

llama

Valparaiso

Valparaiso

View from our hotel room

Our hotel is the building on the left

Santiago

Santiago lunch

Valparaiso, Santiago and home

We docked in Valparaiso and disembarked from the ship.  After 16 days where some else took care of our every need, it felt like we were leaving a cocoon!  Going back the real world in a foreign country was a bit scary, but we have done this many times before and the language was Spanish, not Chinese!!  I think we were just getting a little spoiled.  At the dock we got a cab to our hotel--the Fauna--a boutique hotel on the hillside of Valparaiso.

Valparaiso is built on hills like San Francisco and bares a strong resemblance to SF.  The city is a world heritage site with lots of unique old buildings and charm.  We toured the area around our hotel by ourselves and had dinner outside over looking the harbor with a full moon.

On Thursday we took a tour with a guide who was a young English teacher at a junior college who had been an exchange student in college in Pennsylvania.  We also went to Vina Del Mar which is a suburb of Valparaiso.  It looks a lot like La Jolla, Ca.  Very upscale!

Friday we hired a taxi/tour guide to take us to Santiago.  On the way we stopped at Chilean winery and toured Santiago.  Santiago is about 75 miles inland from the coast and we finally found summer weather--90 degrees.  Touring in this heat lessened our enthusiasm for Santiago.  The city sits at the base of the Andes, but the heat only made the ever present smog worse and the mountains were hard to see. 

We boarded a 10 pm 9 hour flight to Atlanta and then on home.

We learned a lot about South America.  I thought that all South Americans were direct descendants of the Conquistadors, but many of them trace their heritage to a variety European countries.  Our tour guide in Valparaiso said that his grandfather left Spain during the Spanish Civil War in the 30s and his other grandfather came from Italy.  Just like North America, South America is huge and the geography and people vary because of this.  We recommend if you get the chance to visit and see for yourself!

2 sea days and Puerto Montt

We had 2 sea days since I last wrote.  The first took us past the Amelia Glacier where we got up very close.  The weather was dreary but the glacier was beautiful.  The next day we cruised the Darwin channel with beautiful weather and a chance to see the Chiean fiords.

Yesterday we docked at the city of Puerto Montt, 160,000 people.  The city itself was not anything special but it was the entry way to the Chilean Lake district, which was very beautiful.  We took a day long excursion in which we saw two beautiful volcanoes and emerald mountain lakes.  This area of Chile has a big German influence because of German immigration in the mid-1800s.  At times you could imagine yourself in Bavaria.  The Chilean lake district rivals any other lake district I have been to.  The weather was beautiful and sunny, so we very fortunate.

We dock tomorrow am at Valpariso.  We are spending two nights there and then heading back home on Friday night and will be home on Saturday am.  When we get back I will load some pictures and give a few more comments on our trip.  I hope you have enjoyed being an "armchair traveler"  along with us on our journey.

Love,

Diane

Cape HOrn, Ushusia and Punta Arenas

Wednesday evening we sailed around Cape Horn, the southern most part of So America.  According to local customs now we can wear a gold earring in our left ear and eat with one foot on the table.  People who have sailed around both Cape Horn and Cape Hope get to eat with both feet on the table!!

Thursday we got to Ushusia, the southern most city in SA with 60,000 people.  It sits at the foot of majestic mountains and has the feel of many frontier waterfront towns like Anchorage or St. Johns NF.  We took a catamarron boat tour of the Beagle Channel and stopped to see sea lions and different birds along the way.  then we headed to Tierra Del Fuego National park for a tour.  This park looks alot like Rocky Mt. Nat Park in Co.  We sent ourselves a post card from the post office at the end of the world. 

When we returned to the ship, we continued our cruise through the channel seeing many beautiful snow capped moutains and lots fo glaciers and fiords.  This part of the trip is called Glacier Alley.

Yesterday we landed in Punta Arenas in Chile, a city of 110,000.  No mountains circled this city so it wasn't as pretty as Ushusia.  We took a city tour in the am and then boarded a ferry for a 2 hour ride to Magdelena Island to see a colony of 150,000 Magellan penguins--pretty cool!   Penguins only live in the Southern Hemipshere so we felt fortunate to see them in their natural habitat, not in the zoo.

We returned to the ship about 9pm in daylight.  We have had good weather, no rain and more sunshine than not.  this is summer, (August) and the high yesterday was 57 degrees.  No one here goes sunbathing!

We have two sea days and then stop in Puerto Mort,  the lake district of Chile. We are stilll sailing through the Straits of Magellan with moutains and glacoers to keep our eyes occupied. I'll write after we tour Puerto Mont.. 

Diane

Days at sea

We are on our third say at sea--one more than planned at this point in the trip, but the weather calls the shots and we have not been blessed with good weather gods!  When we left Montevideo there were 2 low  pressure systems both headed our way and the captain had to tack back and forth to miss the worst of them.  Even with his attempts to do so we had gale force winds and waves up to 30 ft.  The front desk was giving out sea sick pills like candy and we took some ourselves.  In addition to tacking, we had to slow our speed significantly.  This all resulted in not being able to make it to the Falkland Islands and so today we are still at sea, headed to Cape Horn.   Tomorrow is another day at sea.  At least the weather has improved and sailing is pleasant again.

So what do you do when you are at sea and at least can stand on your feet???  There is always a show in the evening--music, magicians, etc.  We went to a tango class this afternoon.  The naturalist on board gives good talks.  We even went to an envoronmental talk by the ship's waste management officer (we are getting a bit bored! But it was interesting.) 

We do alot of reading which we both enjoy, but usually there is at least one old person snoring away in the common areas, so we look for our own spaces.  The food is very good, and we try and work it off in the gym each morning.  Joe has taken advantage of the accupunctrist and the massage therapist more than once.

South America is a big continent and it takes time to work your way around it!  I'll write more the next time we have been on land!

Diane

Buenos Aires 2 and Montevideo

Yesterday we had a second tour of Buenos Aires--lots of buildings and a huge cathedral.  A French architect laid out the streets so the city does remind you of Paris.  One new addition is a huge flower made of the same material as the Bean in Chicago.  It is also about the same size.  The flower opens each morning and closes each evening.  Pretty cool!

We went to La Recoleta, a 4 block cemetery with 4000 masoleums where Evita Peron along with many other people is buried.  We had to stand in line to see her family tomb.  It was similar to standing in line to see Lenin's tomb.  I am not sure too many people would put those two together, but the experience was similar for me.

At the end of the day we went to a tango show--great entertainment--classy and flashy.  Joe and I are taking ballroom dancing lessons on Friday nights at the YMCA.  Each month is a new dance.  The last one is the tango.  I watched Joe try and figure out the basic dance step for the tango.  You could almost see his mind working.  At the end of the performance he said, " I think it will take more than a month to learn this dance!"

We sailed over night to Montevideo, Uruguay and pulled into port this am.  We did a self-guided walking tour of the town in about 2 hours.  Montevideo is small compared to Buenos Aires and because it was Saturday many things were closed.  We did find a flea market in a square where they were selling some of the same things you could buy in the antique store in Penn Yan that never seemed to be open!

Uruguay is the second smallest country in SA and exports the most wool in the world.  I guess they have lots of sheep.  Education is free through graduate school, but I don't know how many people take advantage of the opportunity as I have never heard of lots of really smart Uruguarians.

We sail tonight for the Falkland Islands.  I think we have two days at sea but am not sure.  So I won't blog until we get to port again.

We are enjoying ourselves!

Diane

Buenos Aires

We arrived in Buenos Aires at 3pm--seven hours late.  The airlines are not the only ones who have trouble getting you to your destination on time.  Our delay was due to two things.  For some reason we missed our time to line up to come into the port and that put us back in the line.  The channel into the harbor is only about 75 yards wide and only 5 ships can come in at a time, so we had to wait for a new assigned spot.  then someone got very ill and we had to divert to Montevideo so they could get him off the ship.  But it didn't really matter to us. 

Buenos Aires sits at the mouth of the River De Plata, the widest river mouth in the world.  You can't see from shore to shore until you get into the city.  The river is full of silt making it very brown.  In fact, if you didn't have any other points of reference you would think that you were looking out at a large desert.

Once we disembarked, we went on a tour of two neighborhoods of Buenos Aires, La Bocca and San Telmo.  Half of the people in BA are of Italian descent, news to us, and the first neighborhood was very Italian.  The second was an antique center.  BA is very European looking, but a bit run down.  There are also many modern high rises.  Tomorrow we are taking a longer tour to see more of the city and some tango.

After we returned to the ship we had dinner and went to an Argentian folk music and dance performance which was very entertaining.

We are enjoying ourselves and meeting people (mostly old ones) from diffferent parts of the world.

I am sorry we are not sending any pictures.  The internet is very slow and it would take a LONG time to download them.

Diane

Rio De Janerio

We left Norfolk on Sunday at 7pm and flew to Miami and then caught a midnight flight to Rio.  The flight was 8 hours which sounds long but after our usual 15 hours to China this seemed like a piece of cake!  But neither of us got much sleep.  We were met at the airport by the cruise line and then boarded a bus to the terminal, about a 20 minute ride.  This ride was all we saw of Rio.  We did get to see the Christ the Redeemer statue which over looks the harbor.

Our fellow cruise passengers remind me of being at a Keuka alumni reunion--older than us by a number of years.  But who has time in February to take a three week vacation unless they are retired.  About half of the passengers are Americans, with Canadians, Brits and Germans making up most the of the rest.

Today and tomorrow we are at sea working our way to Buenos Aires.  We are in a large suite with a veranda.  We were upgraded to the level just below the luxury suites, which puts us on deck 10--up high.

The ship is full of activities to keep us busy.  We worked out in the gym, went to an acupuncture lecture and then another on fins, flukes and flippers in the southern oceans today.  Tonight is Broadway night in the theater.

We hope to blog regularly but not sure we will do so every day, as the internet access is limited and expensive.

We hope you find our stories  from the southern hemisphere interesting and informative!

Diane

Heading south

We leave today for our 16 day cruise to South America.  A few of you have asked if we are going to do a blog like we did in Canada.  I have set one up and we will see how our internet access is on the boat.  Hopefully, we can record our experiences and share them with you.

Diane and Joe