Antarctica - - Land Ho!

We are here! Our first sighting of Elephant Island was at 4:30 AM and we have enjoyed the amazing view ever since. The icebergs are enormous! We sailed up to Esperanza Station, saw many glaciers, mountains, hundreds of penguins, seals, albatross, and several different kinds of ice. Because there is so much ice floating, our ship was unable to go into the Weddell Sea on the southern side of the peninsula. We are now headed back toward the Shetland Islands and the northern shore of the Antarctic Peninsula. It won’t get dark until 10:30 tonight, so we still have lots to see today.  

Our only mishap came about 5:00 AM when Doris slipped down on the slushy deck. We visited the ship’s infirmary for x-rays and  determined that she had pulled a ligament near her left knee. So, we have also had lots of ice in bags today to keep the swelling down. A sore knee, however, doesn’t slow her down very much. It’s been a great day and one we will never forget. We are so privileged to be in this part of our beautiful world.

Dake Passage

After an adventure day yesterday in the Falklands, today was wonderful for sleeping late and listening to lectures on Antarctica and Patagonia. We expected to have bruises from  the Land Rover through the “camp” as the mountains and bog are called. Only a bit sore, no bruises, and soooo worth it! We can’t describe how thrilling it was to be among thousands of penguins yesterday. We hope you saw the photo we put on our blog. Today the internet is down due to snow in the North East where the uplink site is. I hope to post this blog Thursday if the signal is strong enough.  We went up to the top deck of the ship last night to look for the Southern Cross, but it was too cloudy. The farther south we go, the window of darkness gets very short, but we’ll keep looking. We saw our first albatross flying around the ship today.

It’s 9:30 PM here and we are just about to cross the 60^th parallel. They tell us we will then be “expeditioners” rather than “passengers” at that point in the Antarctic waters.  We’ve been in the Drake Passage (the wide channel between Cape Horn and Antarctica) all day and happily the sea is calm (very rare). We have our fingers crossed it will stay that way. It is raining and we also hope that will clear by morning. We have the alarm set for 4:30 AM to get up and be ready to see our first landfall of Antarctica at Elephant Island. You may recall that is where, after 497 days trapped in the ice pack and not touching land, Shakelton and 28 survivors landed. We are beyond excited! The next three days will be sailing the Antarctic peninsula as the iced and weather allow. We should see our first icebergs tomorrow along with lots of wildlife. We are beyond excited!

Falklands

We have had a great day in the Falklands - it was even sunny which is very rare here. We saw our first penguins! Lots of them! The trek to the beach was an event in itself. It took almost three hours over gravel road and then no road in a Land Rover. I have bruises on my side from bouncing around and hitting the door. All worth it though. Tonight we head south toward Antarctia! 

Sea Lions

What a day! We work up to room service (breakfast of our choice with all the trimmings) - we love it! Then it was time to hurry up and wait (LOL). It took forever to disembark for a tour of the Valdes Pennesula, a good distance from Peurto Madryn where we were docked. We just returned from a long day on the bus, but were definately rewarded as we saw many sea lions and elephant sea lions. The were enourmous and playing on the beach. The road trip included seeing sheep and guanacos (a wild llama like mammal) out on the plateau. There are no trees because of the very limited water and high wind. We could easliy imagine that we were in west Texas - minus the mesquite trees!

We are now back in our stateroom unwinding (some of you know how we do that). We will head to dinner in a few minutes. The food has been wonderful so far so our hopes are high for tonight's menu considering we had a box lunch on the bus. The internet is so slow we are sorry but posting pictures is not likely.

Rocking and rolling

We have been at sea all day. It was a nice slow start sleeping late. We took a computer class, listened to lectures on Antarctia, went to a wine tasting event, saw a live show, shopped on board a litte, saw a movie, and did a lot of fine dining! This post will be brief as the ship is really rocking and rolling tonight and I don't want to get seasick. It is still a very slow internet connection so I can't post any photos today. We'll be in port tomorrow so maybe I an then. Our love to all of you!

Montevideo, Uruguay

Today we did a city tour of Montevideo, Uruguay. Because of the early start, we had breakfast delivered to our stateroom. What a life! Our tour guide was quite proud of her country and kept our attention throughout the tour of monuments to gauchos, heroes of the Uruguayan revolution for independence, and those honoring the natives who were completely exterminated from this country during the colonial period.  We especially enjoyed seeing and smelling the huge eucalyptus trees and gigantic aloe Vera plants. The beaches here are snow white sand and palm trees line the streets. For South America, Uruguay is fairly stable with less poverty than some of the others countries (average income of $1400 per month). 1/3 of the country’s population lives in this capital city. We were also surprised to learn that even though it appears to be the sea, we have been sailing on a very wide river this whole time. Sometime tonight we will be in the Atlantic.

After a little shopping in the market, we took it easy and napped – it is after all, vacation! A late afternoon visit to a lounge to hear one of the many musicians (and a mojito) got is in the mood for a sophisticated evening. Dinner tonight was in formal attire with a menu of shrimp cocktail, lobster and filet mignon. Three other guests joined our party – all are still older than Diana, but it certainly livened up the conversation. We were surprised to have the ship’s First Officer join us at our table – he was wearing his format whites and certainly made us feel special. After dinner, we went to the theater for free champagne, introductions of the captain and officers, and a wonderful Broadway review. Tomorrow is a full day at sea. We plan to sleep late, take a computer class and generally relax.

 The satellite internet is very slow, so we are sorry we can't post any photos today.

At sea

Today we had a wonderful slow start in Buenos Aires – sleeping late, nice breakfast and great shopping on a pedestrian only shopping street. Diana bought a beautiful Argentinean leather purse. Doris talked her way into a refund on a non-refundable sim card that didn’t work for international calls. We had an easy transport to the pier and check-in on the Ms Veendam. Our stateroom is comfortable and we are already unpacked. We explored part of the ship, had a fabulous prime rib dinner with octogenarian companions. We were the youngest of the bunch, but 4 more table mates should join us tomorrow, so we’ll see if that record holds.  After waving goodbye to BA from the deck of the ship at dusk, we continued our launch at a performance in the theater. Our initial impression is that the performers will be great and the silly games they played with guests imply that though grey haired, they will be a fun bunch. Tomorrow is an early start so we are heading to bed early (midnight) tonight.