Pat and Norm's World Cruises and other adventures

February 27, 2023

Before I post about Montevideo, here is the beautiful sail away sunset from Buenos Aires.

For our day in Montevideo, we chose the Jewish Heritage of Montevideo tour. This was our second visit to this city and last time we covered the most important buildings in the town and learned about the culture, so this time we wanted something more specific. Our first stop was the Holocaust Memorial. Our guide was Beatriz and she talked about her own Jewish heritage.

The memorial is on the coast and it is really very well done with lots of symbolism. There were originally about 60,000 Jewish people in the city, many escaping Russia and the czar and others fleeing from the Turkish Empire. Now there are only 8 – 10,000. There are several synagogues in the city and we will visit two of them. The one we won’t visit is the most beautiful, but visitors must submit their passports three days in advance to visit, obviously not possible for us.

The memorial is about 120 meters long and is mostly made of pink granite, with a central window looking out at the sea. A pair of railway rails are at the approach and the central part of the memorial has two wooden bridge crossings. It opened in 1994 as a memorial dedicated to the victims of the Holocaust. The memorial was renovated after several acts of destruction with anti-Semitic slurs.

We had about 45 minutes to walk around the site. There are several placques present, including one by Elie Weisel. They are all in Spanish but you could find a few words that gave you the intent.

After this visit, we went to the Yavne synagogue and school. A young woman from Israel who is doing one year of volunteer work here gave a talk about the synagogue and school. She described it as a place of joy – and the joy radiated in all she said. Everyone is welcome here, which she said is very different from the one she attends in Israel.

There were many students and families there. We were told not to take pictures of the children, and I wanted the picture of the dog. Since this student’s face wasnt in the picture, the young volunteer said it was OK.

Our second visit was to a conservative synagagogue, Tehilat-David. This one was more modern.

Sfter this visit, we went to Independence Square. Beatriz told us more about the country. There are 3,400,000 people in the country and half live in Montevideo. Voting is obligatory and you lose citizen privileges if you don’t vote. The presidential term is 5 years with no second term. There are lots of homeless people and the minimum wage is $500/month. Inflation stands now at 9 %. They, like many other places, have had months of drought.

After our tour and lunch, we went out for a walk in town and went to some of the shops that we remembered from our last visit. No purchases this time. We wanted to visit the Carnival Museum but it is closed. Here are the window decorations.

On the sail away, we saw this group of abandoned ships. And here is one of the tugboats that we depend on to get the ship in the right position to leave the harbor. Amazing to watch.

February 25 and 26, 2023

This is our third time to visit Buenos Aires, so we decided to try to do much needed updates to all of our devices and to try to solve an email problem with my iPhone and my iPad. We intended to go to a hotel but found that the WiFi in the terminal, while not really fast, was good enough to get things done in about an hour and a half. By then lots of passengers for the other two cruises that started here were coming into the terminal so we returned to the ship and spent the rest of the afternoon before preparing for our evening world cruise event. The iPhone issue was fixed but not the iPad – that is still a mystery.

Buenos Aires is the capital of Argentina. It is the fourth most populous metropolitan area in the Americas, with a population of around 15.6 million. There is a lot of European architecture here, one area is mostly French architecture. The city is a melting pot – considered one of the most diverse cities of the Americas.

There will be 5 Around the World special events during this 6 months and today was the first. We traveled by bus to a place called La Rural. Here is the description of the event. It was a wonderful evening and really gave us a taste of the culture of Argentina. There were stations spread around the huge pavilion that featured body painting, puppetry, tango lessons and photos in tango accessory costumes.

Here are some photos of the evening. There were wonderful musicians, traditional gaucho acts, singers and amazing tango dancers. I don’t know how those women wear the 5 inch heels and dance in them too! The lighting wasn’t good to capture most of the tango scenes but I did get one of the opening which depicted the early days of tango when settlers arrived. The later ones with the wonderful costumes and groups of dancers didn’t come out well enough. I might be able to get some from others who sat closer to the stage.

We had a dinner that was served throughout the entertainment – way too much food – and they did have some non meat items for those who had requested it in advance – like me! It was a great evening.

On Sunday, we met with one of colleagues from ICF, Ines Colle. She picked us up at the terminal and took us all around the city, pointing out lots of things of interest, and we had a walk in one of the parks. There are a lot of open areas and parks with beautiful trees. Some of the wide streets have trees that almost form a canopy over the street. We enjoyed a nice brunch together at the lake and overlooking the golf course. What a pleasure to meet people all over the world and share time together.

A wonderful two days in Buenos Aires. On to Montevideo, Uruguay tomorrow.

February 24, 2023

Here’s a picture of 2 Normans. The “other Norman” is one of our favorite sommeliers on board.

This is a new port for us. The entrance to the port is the widest estuary in the world. The city has been referred to as “the Monaco of the South”, “the Pearl of the Atlantic”, “the Hamptons of South America”, “the Miami Beach of South America” and “the St. Tropez of South America”. And, yes, it is that pretty and has lots of beautiful hotels, beaches and open air restaurants. We heard that there are many Americans living here. The city has a year round population of about 12,400 but during the summer season the number of visitors and residents average 450,000!

Our tour today was a boat trip to Sea Wolves Island where there is a colony of sea lions and fur seals. The scientists confirm that there are over 200,000 animals here, the second largest colony in the world. First is in Namibia.

This is a port that we needed to be taken to by tender, then we boarded a bus for the short trip to the boat that would take us to the island. Our guide was Marcello and he gave the same information both on the top deck and downstairs on the bottom deck. I happened to sit in the area with the very young and opinionated captain who thought he knew everything about the war in Ukraine, US and world politics, etc and he was very polarizing. Some passengers tried to give some other opinions but he would have none of it. His comment was “it is my boat, I can say anything I want, get out of here if you don’t like it”. I guess he never heard of customer service.

Otherwise it was a pretty calm trip and we sailed around the island for about 45 minutes. It was hard to get photos because we couldn’t get close enough, but I did get a few. There were hundreds of young seals playing in the water – they were fun to watch.

There is a lighthouse on the island, one of the brightest in the world according to Marcello.

The island is called Sea Wolves Island because early explorers hears the sounds of the sea lions and thought they weere wolves, so they didn’t go onto the island. Now the sea lions are referrred to as “sea wolves”.

After the boat trip, we wanted to visit La Mano, which is a sculpture of fingers emerging from the ground near the beach. It was originally part of an open air sculpture exhibition in 1982. At that time it was meant as a warning that the beach was rocky and could be dangerous. Now it is a big tourist attraction!

We got back after 2 so we had lunch in Waves Grill. They make a delicious veggie burger. Tonight will be an Indian Buffet in the Terrace Cafe and it will be nice enough to finally sit outside.

February 23, 2023

We had a very calm crossing of the Drake Passage and still weren’t sure that the conditions would allow us to visit the Falklands, a place we have never been and really want to experience.

Before I get to the day, I got another 4 of a kind in the casino last night. Who says lightning doesn’t strike twice!

We were scheduled to be at anchor at 8 am and in fact, we were right on time.  Our tour was also scheduled at that time, but by the time we traveled to the port in the tender, it was about 8:20.  Our tour today was to Bluff Cove Lagoon to see the penguins.

We were in a small bus which held only 20 people and our guide was Len.  He is a 5th generation Falkland inhabitant and was very knowledgeable. 

The Falkland Islands are a self governing British country.  The population of the entire country is only about 3000 people. There is free medical care and free education here.  The top three industries are squid and Chilean sea bass fishing, tourism (over 43,000 visitors a year in the season between October and March) and farming. 

To my surprise, there are no trees on the Falklands, it is mostly rocky with white grass plains.  They are very much into sustainable energy and have 6 wind turbines which produce 35-45% of the electricity consumed in Stanley and they have reduced their diesel fuel use by 1 million liters.  They also have a solar farm under construction.

We passed by an area that had 30,000 land mines left after the 1982 war, but the area  has now been totally cleaned – it took 5 1/2 years to do so.

The place we visited is the Bluff Cove Lagoon which is part of a 30,000 acre farm.  They raise sheep and cows and of course there are the penguin colonies along the water.  The two types we saw today are the king penguin, the second largest after the emperor and the Gentoo which is the third largest.

There were lots of guides around the area to answer our questions.

I got many pictures and will post some with explanations.

The king penguin is later into the breeding season than the Gentoo.  We got some great pictures, including the ones here that show one of them feeding the chick.  The chicks and the eggs (which are all hatched now) are well hidden under the feathers and on the feet of the adults. The chicks are hard to spot so I was lucky.

The colony of king penguins was much smaller than the Gentoo colonies. Here, the chicks are already about 6 – 8 weeks old and are molting.  They lose their feathers and the new ones grow in during this time. You can see the feathers all around them on the ground. They basically just stand around since they can’t swim in the molting state.  They don’t eat much either unless an adult brings them some fish, but they have stored fat from when they were fed by the parents. If they even try to swim, they would quickly become a snack for the seals. The adult Gentoos do swim and many of them were moving along the shoreline as well.  Hopefully I will be able to upload a video for you to see. I will try it in a separate posting.

We were scheduled for 2 hours here and it was warmer temperature wise but VERY windy.  At times, I couldn’t hold the camera still.

We walked all around the area and were simply delighted by these beautiful birds.

After our walk, we went to the Sea Cabbage café where we were treated to hot drinks and our choice of two of the many homemade treats offered to us.  There were a lot of posters with information about the area and the country.  And the treats were delicious. They have it set up like a mini museum.  The most current picture was the one of Zelensky!

The above picture is the wallpaper in the rest room!

Next to the café, there was a charming gift shop where I made some purchases.  And we got to meet the owner of the farm – Hattie –  who also baked all of the goodies. She held up her paper sign “Hattie the baker”.  Norm dropped a photo bomb from the window! The lovely woolen goods here are made from the wool from their own sheep which is sent to Scotland and then back here.

Due to the winds, the tenders were delayed so we were there an hour longer than scheduled.  Near the café it wasn’t quite as windy.  I did take another walk for some pictures.  I also learned what Sea Cabbage is and it is nothing to eat – it is a plant that gets yellow flowers in season.  Here is a picture.

The cows are mostly the Belted Galloway which they call Oreo cows since they have the black and white areas. There are still some sod and stone walls standing. These were constructed to keep livestock in specific areas.

We didn’t see any whales although the southern right whale is here this time of year.  Whales were endangered here for years, but they do a census every 2 years and there has been a 51% increase since the previous census, good news indeed.

We returned to Port Stanley and had some time to walk around the town.  They have a huge display of photos depicting “The Essence of Our Community.”  Here are some of them and some others of the two churches, interesting historical buildings, the whale bone arch and yes, the red phone booths!

February 15, 2023

Here is our wonderful casino team on Valentine’s Day!

This morning, on our way to Ushuaia, I got some great shots of the snow covered Andes mountains as we sailed in the Beagle Channel. The Channel was named for the British ship, HMS Beagle under the command of Captain Robert FitzRoy during its maiden voyage surveying Tierra del Fuego. The weather changes frequently, and during my walk around the deck, it was cold and windy, then rainy, then the blue sky would once again reappear.

Our tour today was called “End of the World Train, Tierra Del Fuego National Park.” We arrived in Ushuaia at around 11 AM and our tour didn’t start until 1:15, so we had a nice lunch before setting out. We thought we would be taking a bus to the train and returning by catamaran, but it turned out to be just the opposite for our group. There were 8 ships in this port today, since it is the gateway city to Antarctica, and this is the prime time to visit there. Our guide said 8 ships on the same day has never happened before. And it did put a strain on all of the tours. Four of the ships were expedition ships like the one we sailed on when we went to Antarctica, and 4 were like ours, just doing a sailing without touching land or exploring by zodiac. Our sister ship, Marina, was also in port.

In any case, we boarded a large catamaran and sailed in the Beagle Channel for a LONG time! The guide had a microphone but between the noise of the passenger conversations, the low volume of the microphone and her Spanish accent, we didn’t get to hear too much of her comments. We saw many rocky islands with what resembled penguins but were actually Imperial Cormorants. There were also many sea lions just lying about on the rocky islands. The boat captain spent time circling the islands so we could all get pretty good views of the wildlife. You could go outside, but I was too cold to do so. Again, the weather changes minute by minute and it was rainy a lot of the time. so my pictures aren’t that great but you get the idea.

We also saw the Les Eclaireurs lighthouse. It is still in operation, is remote controlled, automated, uninhabited and not open to the public. It guards the sea entrance to Ushuaia. Electricity is supplied by solar panels. It was put into operation in 1920.

When we got to the place where the buses were to take us to the train, there were other groups there so we had to sail around the area for quite a while. We sat with friends Shari and Rob so we had our own conversations.

When we finally got to the train, we got headsets to listen to the commentary about the history of the train. Basically it was constructed to take prisoners from Ushuaia’s prison out to the open areas of Tierra Del Fuego to work. It was a pretty brutal existance for these prisoners. They also did most of the construction of the town’s public buildings, including building their own prison! Eventually the prison was shut down by Peron because of the cruelty.

Ushuaia is known as “the end of the world” and that is the name of the train journey. We made one stop at a station in the middle of the hour long trip. And it snowed part of the way.

After the train trip, we had a 20 minute bus ride back to the ship. We had a guide named Ana who gave us more information about the area. The temperature and weather conditions are pretty much the same here all year around due to the archipelago located between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Tierra Del Fuego means “land of “fire” due to the volcanic activity here years ago. It is an island and a protected National Park. It is too cold for snakes and other amphibians and mosquitos. The main animal here is the fox, but we didn’t see any of those.

We got back at 8 PM which was the time the ship was supposed to leave (a good reason to take ship sponsored tours), so they pulled out just minutes after we got back. We were very hungry so had a quick dinner, I had a shower and we went to the show which was “Broadway” by our entertainment team singers. It was very good.

Each night, one of the Antarctica expedition team gives a short overview of what to expect the next day. We will be in the Drake Passage on the way to Antarctica and it can be very rocky. By all reports, it seems it won’t be too bad on the way there. The trip to Antarcica will take a day, then we have three days sailing in Admiralty Bay, Paradise Bay and Half Moon Bay in Antarctica and one day back in the Drake passage en route to the Falkland Islands.

February 14, 2023

Today we arrived at our last port in Chile. The days are so much longer here, it is light until after 10 PM. Here is a picture of the sunrise, just beautiful as so many of them are.

Our destination today was to the Magdalena Island and Penguin Reserve. I have been so excited to see these birds so was really looking forward to the excursion. We had a short bus ride to a different pier than the one we were docked at. We heard there would be 6 ships here today. One was the Oceania Marina.

We boarded a large catamaran which, thank goodness, had a lot of inside seating. We all got a penguin backpack with a sandwich and lots of snacks in it. The trip to the island took about 90 minutes and was pretty smooth, although we were advised that weather might be rough. Some whales were spotted but not that close to the boat.

The weather was not bad when we left the port, sunny skies but pretty cool, in the 40s. According to the guides, this is what it is like every day. When we got to the island, the winds were fierce and it rained off and on.

I was not disappointed by the penguin colony. The chicks have left the island and the adults are molting, they were mostly just standing around and walking slowly. Of course, I got MANY pictures and Norm got some good ones too so I will share some of them. These penguins all leave the island in March – they go to north of Peru on the Pacific side and just north of Brazil on the Atlantic side. They return in September. We hiked up to the lighthouse and observed many sea birds along the way. Our guides seemed like very young people but they were well informed. During the trip to the island, they came around to every group with maps and explanations of what we were going to see as well as the rules of the island regarding the penguins. We had to stay on the path and not approach the penguins. None came up to us. When we were in Antarctica, they came right up to us and seemed curious.

We were also fortunate to see an upland goose.

When we had spent an hour on the island, we were ready to board the catamaran for the trip back. Good thing, we were very cold and wet but we enjoyed the trip so much. When we returned to the pier it was hailing, and I guess that is all in a day’s weather here in southern Chile.

We will see many types of penguins in the next few days. These were the Magellanic penguins. So you will see lots more penguin pictures. I love the little fellows.

Tomorrow we have our first port in Argentina, Ushuaia.