Since I typed this all out to send in an e-mail to mom and Dean, I thought I might as well maximize the usage and post this trip report on the blog. So here goes....
We started by flying to Chicago, then to Miami, then to Buenos Aires, where we got to stay for three days. On day one I will admit we were a little zonked because the leg of the trip between Miami and BA was overnight, so we got there on the morning of the 17th. On the trip from the airport to our hotel we went right past the BA Temple. We stayed in the Hilton, which was very nice. It is a refurbished part of the city called Puerto Maderas and was right in between two canals and was pretty close to the Rio Plata (Silver River). The weather was warm and sunny except for one morning when we were leaving the city anyway to go out to the country for a gaucho show. That trip took us about 3 hours on a bus so we got to see what the country side looked like too. We also got a city tour in BA and went to a tango show.
After three days, we boarded our charter flight of about 3 1/2 hours to a "city" of about 50,000 people that is at the very tip of Argentina. Ushuaia calls itself the southernmost city in the world. We went directly from the airport to the cruise ship, but once we got settled in there we could leave the ship because we didn't sail until that evening. We walked around a bit, but our time was somewhat limited because we didn't want the ship to leave without us.
We sailed from Ushuaia for two days to South Georgia Island, which is east of South America in the South Sandwich Islands. We arrived there on the morning of the third day and before we even got up, the ship's captain had made the decision that we could not go into Elsehul Bay, which was supposed to be our first stop, because the bay was full of ice. We ended up going to Bay of Isles, which was beautiful, but I think we didn't end up seeing the variety of wildlife we would have seen at Elsehul (although we certainly saw numbers, there were thousands of King Penguins at the Bay of Isles.)
Day 4 we stopped at Grytviken, an old whaling station, still on South Georgia Island. Ernest Shackleton is buried there (I didn't know who he was either until we started reading up for the trip), and there is a museum, a research station, and a very few residents (only two permanent). We had a very warm day here. We had gotten all bundled up when we left the ship because they warned us that the weather can change quickly. Well, it didn't that day. I think I heard that the temperature was 54 degrees and we were wearing enough clothes for it to be in the 30's.
Day 5 was at Gold Harbour, again on South Georgia. It seemed like there was a lot of ice in the water here as well (but nothing like we going to see later.) We then had another day at sea as we were traveling to Coronation Island in the South Orkneys, which is to the southwest of South Georgia. Lots of penguins here too, only a different kind. They were not in the least bit afraid of us if we stood still, we were basically just like a big rock to them, something they had to go around, but they would walk (or waddle) right up to us.
When we left Coronation Island we started to really see a lot of icebergs (and they were huge). Sometime during the night the captain made the decision that he was going to go north to try to get out of the ice, so when we got up the next morning we were way off schedule. By the time we got to Elephant Island, it was into the afternoon and as is typical, the afternoon winds had started up. The weather was not very good that day either, it was raining and I think I heard that the winds were blowing at 50 knots. I can't really remember what that it is in mph, but it was pretty windy and the sea was too rough to launch the Zodiacs boats, which is how we got from the ship to the various places we stopped. We hung around there for a little while without any improvement, so the captain decided to go ahead to our next destination. So we didn't get a very good look at Elephant Island.
The next morning we were near the Antarctic Pennisula. It was really calm and really foggy. This was a big problem because we had again found some big icebergs and the ship was just barely creeping along. At about 6:00 am that morning we hit an iceberg. We were still in our cabin then so didn't see exactly what happened but of course rumors were flying all day. The iceberg and the ship connected on the port side on two of the upper decks. The railing on both decks was crumpled and one of the decks was kind of buckled.
Enough of a breeze came up that we were able to make it into Hope Bay, which is right on the very tip of the penninsula. Again, we saw lots of penguins during the day, both on land and because the water was so calm, you could see them everywhere jumping up out of the water.
All of that does not take into account the other critters we saw, lots of birds, seals, a couple of whales. Its just that the penguins were the vast majority of what we saw. We also enjoyed on board lectures by scientists and other people who had spent a lot of time in the area. Plus all the usual cruise ship stuff. Sad to say I gained 5 pounds on the trip between all the food and no real exercise.
We had a day at sea to get back to Ushuaia across the Drake Passage to Cape Horn. This is supposed to be some of the roughest water in the world, but we lucked out for most of the trip. The crew was referring to it as Drake Lake because it was so calm. As we got closer to the Horn, the wind and seas did pick up quite a bit, so that you had to do a little dance as you were trying to walk anywhere. I never will understand how the on-board entertainers managed (lots of practice I guess). We got back and had an entire free day in Ushuaia. We went up into town to a museum there in the old prison (it used to be a penal colony.) Cal and I opted for the hike in the afternoon. This being a pretty isolated "city", a 20 minute bus ride from the ship and we were out in the country, where we went on a hike through the glacial peat bogs. We were warned to wear rubber boots and good thing we did because it was muddy/swampy/wet. The hike took about 2 hours and it sure felt good after all that time on the ship. I was a little disappointed, though, because our guides didn't seem to know a whole lot about the birds/plants/etc. Of course they could have known a lot more than they could tell us in English.
Our final day was a mostly bus tour of Tierra Del Fuego National Park in the morning. We did get to get out a couple of time and we saw some interesting birds. The busses then took us straight to the airport, where we started the LONG trip home. Seems like we were in the airport for at least 2 hours, then the flight back to BA where we had to go through passport control, then to Miami (about 8 hours) where we had to clear customs, then to Chicago, then to PDX. We had longer layovers in Miami and Chicago on the way back for some reason, so it seems like it took forever to get back.
posted by Cathy Crandall at 1:37 PM