This March, to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of our first date and to celebrate the fact we’d managed to save up long enough to afford it, my wife and I took a holiday with Princess Cruises on the Star Princess from Buenos Aires to Valparaiso. This post forms the first of two long parts documenting the holiday’s highlights as well as giving some hints and tips about cruising in general and cruising with Princess in particular. Some tips will probably update those presented when I wrote about our first Princess Cruise around Asia in 2008.
The Air France Experience
To say we were a little worried in the lead up to our cruise would be an understatement. Do we need visas? Have we got travel insurance? Did we arrange the parking for the right day? Are our passports valid? Did we really get travel insurance or have I mistaken that for the Iceland trip last year? And so on. One of the major concerns was that we’d arranged to fly out to Buenos Aires through Princess (there are flight protection benefits doing it that way) and this meant we had to fly Air France from Heathrow with a change at Paris Charles de Gaulle. Yes, we’d be risking the entire vacation on French air traffic controllers being at work.
Paris Charles de Gaulle airport. Quite nice-looking but not a lot to do there.
As it was, the air traffic control worry never materialised. Instead, after a short hop to France we settled into our seats for the 13+ hour flight to Argentina. Settled into our uncomfortable seats. If you’ve ever wondered what happened to those hard plastic chairs you used to sit on at school then I can tell you now that someone put a tea towel over them and installed them on Air France planes. Painful seats, equally painful food. I know that airplane food doesn’t have a good reputation, but French food does so we had high hopes they’d cancel out into something average. But no. It’s something when you and your wife disagree what something is before you eat it – I thought potato, my wife thought egg – then both change your minds to “Is this some genetically-engineered tasteless fish? Is this entire trip a psychological test or TV prank?” We still don’t know what we ate on Air France and were too scared to ask in case someone told us.
Arrival: Buenos Aires, Argentina
We picked up our luggage, got through security, spotted some Princess Cruises representatives, and were directed to the end of the airport where someone would take our luggage and put us on a coach to the ship. The representatives in the airport were having problems with some other arrivals while we waited our turn: a woman had apparently booked her vacation on her husband’s card using her maiden name or something and this was seemingly unacceptable of the cruise company to not know who she was from her passport; a group waiting to be seen were clearly not sailing with Princess based on their luggage tags so I directed them to the Costa queues they’d missed on the way through the terminal; the person in front of us had claimed to have come in on one airline but turned out to be another which is why his name couldn’t be found for several minutes. When it was our turn I simply gave our surname and pointed at one of the various sheets in front of the representative where I’d spotted our names moments before. The look of total relief coupled with the comment of “Oh, thank you! You’re hired!” spoke volumes.
Cruise Tip
Book the cruise under your own name for speedy embarkation!
A coach trip swiftly followed taking us from the outskirts of Buenos Aires to the port. The range of architecture was fabulous: colonial-style, slum-style (which may not actually be a style choice), art deco, brutalist, and more. My wife and I had been split up on the trip so I got talking to an older man from England who’d come out to meet up with fellow birdwatchers. Our conversations about the building styles and holidays in general gradually ceased as progress through the streets of Argentina’s capital did. It turns out that multiple cruise ships in port can lead to a lot of congestion. A lot of congestion. Several circles of the port area and lots of edging in between seemingly hundreds of taxis later our coach settled down, we disembarked, and in nearly no time at all were onboard the Star Princess and checking out our mini-suite.
Mini-Suite D201, Star Princess
A room with two TVs! Two!
We’d picked the mini-suite over a simple balcony room since the price difference for what was already a fairly hefty expenditure on the cruise was reasonably insignificant. So, what does a mini-suite get you?
- A separate seating area which was surprisingly well-used during the trip when we thought it probably wouldn’t be.
- A welcome glass of champagne delivered to the room by the steward. Maybe one was delivered to everybody but we’d like to think we were special.
- Different seating on the balcony, possibly. We certainly hadn’t had foot stools and recliners on our previous trip to Norway.
- A bath.
Now, a bath doesn’t sound like much and we never used it during the trip, preferring the convenience of the shower, but it did provide a couple of big benefits over the standard shower unit on Princess ships we’ve cruised with before. Firstly, the drying line for swimming gear (or if you decide to wash clothes in your sink) is much longer. Secondly, and most importantly, you can stand in the bath to shower without bumping into the wall or having the shockingly cold shower curtain stick to your arse cheeks making you scream.
There is one downside to the mini-suite, at least as far as I was concerned: the balcony is open to the elements. On rooms with balconies those balconies are covered by the rooms above. On our deck 9 balcony we had nothing above us which meant privacy was a concern as was the risk of not being able to venture out if it was raining. Would we book a mini-suite again? Yes, for a longer trip, but we’d look into one with less opportunity to be gazed down upon from above.
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Our first day in Argentina was spent onboard while it was docked. We explored the ship a little bit while waiting for our luggage and the other passengers to turn up (we’d arrived around 6 hours before our deck was scheduled to board but this didn’t seem to be a problem). I had my airplane carry on bag with me so a camera was present as was reading material. This allowed us to hit one of the bars and grab a drink after I’d snapped the views from the balcony and the top decks. We also wandered into one of the lounges in time for the first of many trivia quizzes. One other couple – possibly Canadians – were present initially who asked us to join their team; I declined as it seemed there wouldn’t be much competition if we did that. Shortly afterwards other people arrived, they were joined by four others (maximum of six in a team), and we ended up partnering with a single traveller, also from Canada. We didn’t win; I think we were second.
Didn’t fall down the stairs once. Quite the achievement.
To be clear: not everyone on board and taking part in the trivia was Canadian. As a people, though, they just appeared to be punctual and keen to quiz on the first day.
The couple who’d asked us to join our team then gave us dirty looks for the rest of the trip. Or I imagined they did which if you believe that life is an illusion and our thoughts form reality is actually the same thing.
Cruise Tip
Do not shun Canadians!
The airport and the dock didn’t really count so it was the following day that we finally, properly set foot on Argentinian soil (okay, concrete) with a booked excursion. We’d chosen to do a city tour and tango show because it was this day that was technically our twentieth first date anniversary and neither of us can dance for shit. I’m sure it made sense when we booked it.
Chess for the intellectuals on board. Never saw it being used once.
It was time to reacquaint ourselves with The Excursion Disembarkation Shambles, an event that takes place before any trip you undertake.
The Excursion Disembarkation Shambles
- Arrive at your disembarkation point 10 minutes early.
- Realise that based on the numbers present some people have apparently been there for 30 minutes before that because getting little excursion stickers applied to the chest and sitting in seats for long periods until enough people have turned up to fill a coach is some sort of joy I don’t comprehend.
- Tut as people don’t understand the instruction “Sit yourself in this row, move right to the end, next to the other people” and try to sit down immediately blocking anyone else’s progress.
- Tut louder and shake your head knowingly as people don’t understand the instruction “People with stickers Blue 1 leave through this exit, row by row, starting from the front” and promptly stand up and try to get everyone three rows back to move immediately and jump the queue.
- Discuss loudly that people should bloody well know how to queue by the time they reach their sixties and especially since they appear to be veteran cruisers (you can just tell).
- Feel relief as your row starts to move only to slump your shoulders when you all stop halfway down the steps to the exit for several minutes. Wonder why your row was called when they’re not apparently ready for you to leave yet.
- Grit your teeth as you realise the delay isn’t because the security people aren’t scanning your ID cards quickly enough but because everyone is being urged to stop and to pose for a photo with someone or something vaguely connected to the port you’re in so as to persuade you to part with money for a picture later.
Cruise Tip
Don’t pose for disembarkation photos if you don’t want to risk a grumpy-looking me in the background spoiling your odd memory of that time you queued on the stairs for a bit!
Our tour was in the company of Diego, a local who assured us that for those of us who’d been stuck in the traffic for a while the day before today would be a vastly different experience. And so it would have been had it not been the first day of government for the year leading to road closures and diversions in order to facilitate the Argentinian President’s arrival and prevent the various groups of protesters from causing any trouble. The coach crawled along…
If you’re a fan of above ground mausoleums then South America is the destination for you.
We made a first stop at La Recoleta Cemetery, containing well over 4000 above ground vaults, some of which were very impressive. Some were protected national monuments because of their historical significance and the one we were mainly there to see was that of Eva Perón (in her family fault: Duarte).
Diego gave us some Argentinian Spanish lessons as we waited for the police to decide what to do about our coaches which had then become stuck in the mire of cordoned-off roads.
Argentinian Spanish Lessons
- They speak Spanish in Argentina but, because of the large influx of Italians in the past, they speak Spanish with an Italian accent and associated hand gestures.
- Argentina is pronounced Ar-Hen-Tina. The H in Hen is pronounced as if you’re coughing up some phlegm from the end of a persistent cold.
- In Buenos Aires the LL in words such as pollo (chicken) or paella (paella) is pronounced SH probably because Buenos Aires looked at the Welsh language used by immigrants further south and thought “Yeah, you’re not the only people who can confuse foreigners with letters!” So, pollo is pronounced poh-sho, and paella is pronounced pie-yay-sha.
- Similarly, the word yo, used to mean “me”, is pronounced shyo. Because why not.
With the coaches unable to proceed but our next stop not being too far away we were given the chance to walk there instead. Walking through wide avenues in the middle of a capital city while police barricades line side streets and protesters can be seen and heard in the distance is a great experience. It almost felt like it was done just for our benefit. We visited the cathedral, wandered past the Casa Rosada (Pink House; executive mansion and office of the President of Argentina) and its guards, then made our way to La Ventana, the tango club, for a meal and a show.
The meal consisted of veal empanadas (yum), unbelievably great steak (double yum), and crepes with dulce de leche for dessert (sickly sweet yum). As the waiter explained the food to us he took down everyone’s preference for their steak. We were seated with six Americans. They wanted their steaks cooked well done, medium well, medium well, well done, medium, and medium well done. The waiter noted this down. He looked at me and my wife. “Rare, both of them, please.” A look of shock, a smile, and a nod as he wrote it down. Later, when the meat was brought out by a server the waiter’s assistance was sought in order to hand out – we’re guessing from the Spanish murmurs – “the good steaks, the steaks for the people who know how to eat steaks, the steaks for the people with taste.” Oh, and they were good steaks; they were the best steaks we’ve ever eaten.
Steak Tip
Eat it rare you idiots!
Argentinian steak is best steak.
We were seated at the front of the room for the meal and the show, at eye level with the stage, and this gave us perfect viewing of a fabulous show of tango dancing, traditional tango music, folk music, and singing. A rendition of Don’t Cry For Me, Argentina in Spanish brought tears to our eyes.
As the show had started we were told over the speakers in several languages to not take any photos and you can understand why; the flash could cause temporary blindness in a tango dancer sending that dancer onto punters yet to buy the DVD. The show started. Tango dancers started to dance. A woman behind me lifted her camera and fired off a shot with the flash on. “No photos!” I snarled. “Oh, no photos?” she queried unconvincingly in an American accent, putting the camera away quickly.
Cruise Tip
No photos means no photos everyone and not no photos unless you’re an American who thinks you have a special privilege none of the rest of the people have!
The roads had cleared somewhat by the end of the show so we boarded the coach and made our way to La Boca, a fabulously colourful area; the houses were decorated in a multitude of hues, figurines of dancers and footballers and famous Argentinians peered out from balconies and windows, street art decorated every spare bit of wall. Diego advised us that it was not wise to wander the area in football kits supporting any other team than the local one, Boca Juniors. Luckily, in a tour group of mostly elderly Americans this was never likely to be a problem.
The colours!
Our time in Buenos Aires came to an end back on the Star Princess. As it was the first night on the water there was a compulsory evacuation drill. Some people – probably regular cruisers – thought they could get away without attending. They could not. We were quite pleased to hear tannoy announcements declaring that everyone was tracked for the drill and those who hadn’t traipsed down to their meeting point and been scanned in would have to attend in private later.
Cruise Tip
Don’t be like those people who think they’re so smart turning up for the evacuation drill before you have to! Seriously! What kind of masochist would want additional time sat in a chair holding a life jacket?
While the ship set off for an overnight jaunt down the River Plate towards Uruguay we enjoyed a victorious trivia quiz with a couple from Barrow who would become our regular quiz partners for the rest of the holiday. Barrow in England, not Canada, in case you were wondering; I told you not everyone was Canadian. We won a bottle of champagne but needed to get dinner so let them have it. They would return the favour on the last night of the cruise when we won as a team again but they wanted an early night.
Montevideo, Uruguay
Another day, another city, another country, another excursion. Our trip for this day was a steam train ride to a vineyard and winery, there to engage in some wine-tasting. A trip with alcohol thrown in! I’m shocked that I would book such a thing!
Pre-train we had a quick stop in Plaza Independencia, a lovely square with some great buildings surrounding it, including the impressive architecture of Palacio Salvo which was during the 1920s and 1930s the tallest building in South America.
I was in awed-by-architecture heaven.
The train trip was next. The train – and other old trains too, not all of them steam – are bought and restored by a group of volunteers who then run the trains occasionally for kids or for tourists in order to fund more restorations. Clearly, the trains don’t run that often as was evident by the sudden stopping, staring, and waving from locals living alongside the train’s route as we chugged through the Uruguayan countryside from Montevideo to Juanico.
At the Juanico vineyard we had a quick tour of the vines and were allowed to pick our own grapes and taste them. The grape there is the Tannat; it’s small, purple, and very sweet. Grape-picking gave way to a quick tour of the winery and then we sat down to a meal, ten to a round table with plates of cold meats, salads, then hot food, more hot food, more of it, and so on. They did not scrimp on the food.
And then there was the wine-tasting. I’ve been to wine-tasting events before (suppress your shock!) but this was different. Let’s compare wine-tasting as I knew it and wine-tasting as experienced in Uruguay.
Traditional Wine-Tasting
- Receive a list of wines you’ll be tasting.
- Have a small glass of wine one. Drink wine one. Spit it out if you don’t fancy swallowing it (for some reason, weirdo).
- Have a small glass of wine two. Drink wine two.
- Have a small glass of wine three. Drink wine three.
- Have a small glass of wine four. Drink wine four.
- Have a small glass of wine five. Drink wine five.
- Mention to partner that you wish they’d stop putting chardonnay in wine-tasting because ham-flavoured wine is just vile.
Uruguayan Wine-Tasting
- Receive a list of wines you’ll be tasting.
- Have a small glass of wine one. Drink wine one.
- Have a refill of wine one. Drink more wine one.
- Have a small glass of wine two. Drink wine two.
- Have a refill of wine two. Drink more wine two.
- Have a large glass of wine three to save refills. Drink wine three.
- Have a small glass of wine one again. Drink wine one.
- Have another large glass of wine three. Drink wine three.
- Have a small glass of wine two again. Drink wine two.
- Have a small glass of wine four. Drink wine four.
- Get offered choice of more wine four or more wine two. Go for both. Drink both.
- Have a large glass of wine five. Drink wine five.
- Have another large glass of wine five. Drink wine five.
- Buy a bottle of wine five because by this time you’ll buy just about anything and this was definitely the nicest or most recent or both.
I danced with her but I limited my attacks to foot-stomping rather than attempting the more advanced spinal snap.
I’d been sitting next to Leandro for the meal. Leandro was one of the chief videographers on the ship which, if you’re not familiar with what one of those is, means he was one of the people assigned to occasional tours to record them for later editing and burning to the overpriced DVD on sale at the end of the cruise. As the cruise progressed you’d often see highlights from some of the videos being played in your stateroom or on TV screens as you waited to disembark somewhere. Anyway… Leandro was filming things because that’s his job. And after the meal a couple of Uruguayan tango dancers emerged to entertain us, so they were filmed too. And after they’d danced they invited men and women to come up and dance with them. And we’d been drinking wine. And so I said yes. And that’s how I ended up getting filmed “dancing” with a Uruguayan tango dancer. And even though I’d been friendly with Leandro and asked him to edit me out we ended up spotting footage of me in the theatre as we waited to get off the ship somewhere later on the holiday.
Cruise Tip
Never trust a videographer!
A quick visit to Parque Batlle to watch the local guardian of one of the national monuments shout at Americans on our tour who’d suddenly forgotten how to read signs saying “Keep away and don’t bloody touch!” (or something like that) and then Rambla de Montevideo to gaze out over the city rounded off a lovely trip.
You aren’t allowed to touch this national monument. Yes, even if you’re American. I know! It turns out you’re not super special after all.
Sea Day, Art Auction
A long flight then two days of long excursions put us in just the right place for a relaxing sea day. It would have been more relaxing if I hadn’t failed to screw the filter holder tightly enough onto the front of my camera early in the morning and leant out over the side of the ship from my balcony only to watch it and a filter slip off and get lost in the wake. It was only a cheap bit of kit, fortunately, and, even better, a casual glance around at the balconies above showed that nobody had been looking out so I got away with not looking like a total idiot.
Sea days are a great way to break up a cruise, though I wouldn’t like more than two in a row. Entertainment on board isn’t massively different but on Princess Cruises a sea day will typically mean the art department get to show off the pieces they’ve got in one of their auctions. We’d bought art before on our last trip so were keen to see whether anything caught our eye on this one too. We ended up going to every auction and not just because there were free prints for attending them and free champagne in a couple of cases too, though I suspect that’s the only reason some other passengers were in attendance.
We bought some art.
Princess have their own ale and the Denali Red is blooming lovely. I had more than one on the cruise. Maybe even more than two.
The sea days also gave us a chance to take advantage of the afternoon BOGO (buy one, get one for a dollar) deal prior to trivia. BOGO is a way to transform very expensive drinks on a cruise ship into reasonably expensive drinks on a cruise ship. In the following trivia there was a (possibly BOGO-fuelled) heated argument between two teams either side of us as one had marked the other’s sheet but – gasp! – hadn’t added up the score!
“You haven’t marked our sheet!” shouted one lady to us.
“We didn’t mark your sheet, that team did,” answered one of our team.
“But you haven’t marked our sheet!” shouted the lady to us again.
“We know you silly bat, that team did.”
“But there’s no score!”
“Well, I can see ticks on it. Add them up yourself.”
“We don’t know what the score is!”
“What’s the problem?” asked a man from the team who’d marked but not scored the angry lady’s team.
“You haven’t marked our sheet!”
“Yes I did.”
“But there’s no score!”
“Well, you can always add up the ticks yourself. There aren’t that many of them.”
“But you haven’t given us a score!”
“Jesus. Fine, let me do it now… there, five out of twenty. You’re not going to win.”
“There! That wasn’t so hard, was it?” said the lady loudly as the turned back to her quiet team.
“You wouldn’t think so,” said the man who’d just added up the five ticks and joined us in some eye-rolling.
Puerto Madryn, Argentina
The next morning we woke to find ourselves back in Argentina, in Puerto Madryn. Our excursion – because we’re excursion-fiends and had booked one in every port – was to see the penguins at Punta Tombo reserve. Punta Tombo reserve was quite some way from Puerto Madryn; understandably so since penguins probably don’t want to roost or migrate close to shipping lanes. And so, after the usual disembarkation chaos we got onto a coach and settled down for one of the most mind-numbingly dull coach trips it may be possible to have.
I found actual things that weren’t ground and sky in Patagonia. It wasn’t just a dream after all.
Have you ever driven through Norfolk? If you have then consider Norfolk as merely a homeopathic version of the Argentinian Patagonia region in which we found ourselves. Unending flatness; unending pale brown hues; not even a tractor to get stuck behind for the excitement; it was Norfolk Extreme. If you’ve never driven through Norfolk then I really wouldn’t. Our tour guide tried her best to talk about the port area of Puerto Madryn and the Welsh influence in the area but that took up just the first ten minutes of the journey. We did stop at a service station though!
But then it was nothing but drifting off to sleep as the kilometres and kilometres rolled by.
Cruise Tip
Get shit-faced the night before at Skywalkers Nightclub safe in the knowledge you can sleep off your hangover on the trip to Punta Tombo!
There were many penguins and penguin holes at Punta Tombo yet nowhere near as many as there could have been as we’d turned up towards the end of the breeding season and the vast majority of the half a million penguins had already migrated as the southern hemisphere’s summer was coming to an end. Still, lovely to get up close to the birds in their natural environment doing their natural things. Their natural things mostly involved laying around and braying like donkeys (seriously). Penguins come somewhere near the bottom of the chart of exciting birds.
Did you know penguins did yoga before migration? Well now you do.
Laundry And Whales
Another sea day followed which meant it was time for another art auction and the necessity to get some clothes washed.
Laundry on board a cruise ship involves one of four possible options.
Laundry Option 1: Bring enough clothes so you don’t have to do laundry.
A viable option for one week but any longer and all you’re doing is eating into your airline luggage allowance for smuggling far more alcohol back than you’re allowed.
Laundry Option 2: Wash your own clothes
You could wash your own clothes and hang them on your bathroom’s drying line, and if you’re travelling through a particularly poor part of the world this might allow you to experience a little bit of life outside the ship while you’re enjoying 24-hour eating in your freshly-cleaned room with ocean view. However, the drying line isn’t very long, the bathroom in an air-conditioned stateroom isn’t the fastest place to dry anything, and the ship frowns on people sticking portable washing lines up on their balconies as it transforms the classy hotel on the sea into a floating block of flats which detracts from the appeal somewhat.
Laundry Option 3: Use the laundry service
There’s a laundry service on the ship that charges by the item. In 24 hours you receive your washed, dried, and ironed clothing, which is great, but you pay quite a bit for the privilege. Unless you’re an elite member on Princess ships, that is; that’s where you get your laundry done for free; elite members get a few perks but that free laundry is the one that everyone else really covets.
Laundry Option 4: Use the laundry room
For everyone else the laundry room is the only sensible move and it’s certainly a fun experience if you too don’t understand what the word fun means and have been horriby lied to when you asked other people instead of looking it up like a normal person who grew up not knowing joy would. The laundry room consists of an equal number of washing machines and dryers. This sounds sensible until you realise something decidedly evil: one of the dryers is always broken. But that’s not the worst of it. The really evil, really devious thing is that the washing machines have shorter wash cycles than the dryers have dry cycles. The result of this is washing your clothes isn’t a problem but drying them then involves hovering around the laundry room with your wet clothes in a bag in order to keep your place in the undeclared queue that has begun to clump around the dryers in use by people whose washing was finished before you started yours but who have themselves been waiting for nearly an hour to get a prized drying slot. A cynical person would wonder if this was all a plot to make the experience so horrible you end up paying the higher fee for the laundry service but cynical people aren’t allowed on cruise ships so this thought never materialises.
Still, the pain of doing laundry was more than offset by discovering our cruise ship route was shared by whales migrating northwards. Much pleasure was derived from seeing the dozens of spouts alongside the ship over the course of several hours. In addition to the circumstantial evidence of whales – after all, it could have been groups of fish gathering beneath the water and all exhaling at once to fool us; you can’t prove it wasn’t – we did also see at distance a large tail fin break the surface and slide back under, and right under our balcony we watched a whale surface to breathe, only just missing the ship; I’d estimate its length at around seven metres and to see it from as close as we did was truly wonderful.
And we saw a sunset to remember. But just in case we couldn’t remember it I took a photo.
The sunset really looked like this. Jealous? Yeah, you’re jealous.
The Falkland Islands
Wrap up warm, they said. It gets windy and cold, they said.
We were baking. We got a little sunburnt.
After a fairly long tender boat journey we got off at Stanley and boarded the coach that would take us on our relatively short tour of some of the battlefield locations of the 1982 Falklands War. Our tour guide was called Phil. Our tour guide was acidic, sarcastic, occasionally grumpy, full of fabulous information; in short, perfect. We got to see the famous Only Traffic Lights on The Islands, heard how the population doubles when a ship comes in and how grateful the locals are when it does because some captains don’t stop depending on the conditions, remnants of destroyed helicopters, a military base that doesn’t exist, and, of course, loads about the war, including:
- the Argentinian invasion force were very skilled because we’d trained them
- the Argentinians had been told they were liberating the islanders from the British and treated the locals and their belongings very well
- the schools closed rather than sing the Argentinian national anthem
- all children born were literally born under a British flag because the hospital insisted no troops could be present and no men were allowed near the maternity ward
- there are still a lot of American-made mines on the islands
- there were never “white flags flying over Stanley” as reported; those were clothes and nappies drying after the curfew
Obligatory shot of whale bones arch. Surprising shot of clear blue sky which is not what we’d been promised.
We’d picked an early, short excursion so that we could take advantage of a walk around Stanley on our own afterwards. The museum, shops, and views under the low-pollution, blue skies were nice and the bust of Margaret Thatcher was disconcerting but what we really wanted to do was have a pint in a pub on British soil in another hemisphere. We found what we assumed was the pub and discovered it was popular with cruise tourists and Argentinian visitors too but that it only sold bottled beer. We made do, only to find out later there had been another place that had a microbrewery attached. Dagnabbit.
Life Tip
Ask locals where the best pub is; don’t just hit the first place you find.
Our tender boat back to the Star Princess was accompanied by a dolphin leaping alongside. That was nice.
Cape Horn
The next day was at sea but involved rounding Cape Horn, the southernmost point of the Tierra del Fuego archipelago. We’d hoped for the sort of rough seas you see in historical dramas of ships getting wrecked as they attempted to get around the tip of South America because why wouldn’t you? Sadly, the ocean was reasonably calm and he had to make do with being impressed at the various islands jutting out of the dark grey water under the slightly less dark grey sky.
Not the rough seas we were hoping for but just the right shade of grey.
In part two: the last stop in Argentina, Ushuaia, then onto Chile with Punta Arenas, the Amalia Glacier, some rough seas at last, and Puerto Montt to venture up the Osorno volcano.
Videos from the cruise can be found here: South America Cruise Videos.
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