Gary’s Ramblings

Ushuaia is today’s port. It’s in an area that’s really very pretty, with snow-capped mountains all around. We hadn’t had anything planned for this port. Among other things, I’d read sorta mixed reviews about the various tours, so we thought we might try just getting off the ship and seeing what we could pick up. Got off the ship around 7:30, and pretty much discovered that the town just doesn’t open until about 10am. There were a few cabs trying to sell their services right outside the port, although English definitely didn’t look like it would be a strong point. There’s also a handfull of booths that are set up to sell a few tours, with many of them being Beagle Channel tours on smaller boats (the boats Princess uses for this tour are pretty decent sized, and their tour seemed kinda short compared to what these places were selling). Even most of these places weren’t open yet. Moral of the story, if you’re not going to do a ship’s tour and have nothing planned, unless you plan on getting a taxi guide, there’s not much point in getting off the ship early. (Most of the Beagle Channel trips were for 9:30 or 10am, so the booths must have opened not too much longer after we went through.)

So we wandered up and down streets for a while exploring, looking for places that might get us some decent views of either the harbor or some of the mountains. Basically got a bunch of walking on hilly streets done. Then we headed back to the ship for an early lunch. After that, headed back out into town now that things were open. Wandered through a lot of stores just kinda souvenir shopping. There’s also a small handycraft market right near the pier, although even later in the day only about half the stalls in there were open, although some of the things being sold were interesting.

I think the captain is starting to get annoyed with people being late getting back to the ship, because he made some comment about people using sundials for keeping track of time (and it hasn’t really been that sunny). There were defintely a few people missing at time to sail, and I honestly don’t know if they made it or not. The captain basically said that because of the nature of the distance that we needed to sail to get to the next port, we really didn’t have time to wait around for them.

After leaving Ushuaia and travelling further down the Beagle Channel, we’d been told that we’d be passing some glaciers along the way, and that the port lecturer would be talking about them as we did. Unfortunately, they really didn’t do all that good of a job of letting us know about what time that would be. As a result, we headed to dinner and missed a little bit of the beginning. (I think basically all we really missed was one that came right down to the waters edge, and we did even see that right as we left dinner). We did see a bunch of the other glaciers. Really kind of a narrow channel, and the terrain really reminds me a lot of the type of terrain you see in Alaska.

Obviously it wasn’t the earliest morning in the world for us today, and I think that was probably true for a large portion of the ship. Sticking our head out the balcony in the morning, and it was definitely pretty cool out. The only real thing for today on the agenda was the scenic cruising of Cape Horn, and that wasn’t scheduled until later in the afternoon.

Cape Horn is actually on an island, specifically the Isla Hornos. The captain told us the plan was to go in and sail around the island in a counter-clockwise direction. Weather was, well, probably fair for this area of the world. Seas were minimal, and all we were really getting was some wind and rain/sleet/snow mixture from time to time. Part of me almost feels a little cheated that we didn’t get the true Cape Horn experience as a result.

Italian night in the dining room, which means a pretty so-so menu, but it also means limoncello, which makes Cathy happy. Oddly, tonight the dining room seemed noticeably busier than it normally is that early. Yeah, we were a little later than normal because of the Cape Horn viewing, but still, at worst it was we entered the dining room around the time we’d been leaving it before, and never saw it that busy then.

Falkland Islands today, and our trip to the penguins. This was the one port we’d really wanted to make it to, and it can be iffy at times because of the weather. However, we lucked out and ended up with some absolutely perfect weather. In fact, as we sailed away at the end of the day, the captain said he’d been coming to the Falklands for 30 years, and doesn’t remember having weather that good ever before. We had pretty clear skies, high around 60 degrees. In fact, we ended up not using some of our layers of coats because it really wasn’t necessary.

We’d booked with Patrick Watts for the Volunteer Point penguin trip, and managed to get off on what was probably the second tender of the morning. At first it was looking like we were going to be in the 4×4 with Patrick himself, but because he’s the organizer, he was still trying to wait on a few more people that hadn’t showed up (and apparently never did), so he passed us on to one of his other drivers. Our new driver was Caris, and this turned out to work out pretty well. She was able to give us a lot of information about living on the islands as we went to and from Volunteer Point. It also seemed like half her family works as drivers for the various tour companies that do this trip (they seem to work somewhat interchangeably for Patrick or FIC depending on need).

Now, for this trip they load you up 4 passengers to a 4×4. For the first part, you’re on the main road on the island (there’s apparently 1 main loop road) that varies between occasional patches of tarmac and mostly gravel. After a little while on that, you get to the sheep farm that Volunteer Point is on, and the rest of the trip is cross country, basically following previous tracks they’d taken. It’s pretty rough, and if it was wet at all I imagine it would be pretty iffy, because most of the trip is over areas of peat. All this is done with the drivers personal 4×4 vehicles, and I’ve got to think that the maintenance has got to be pretty brutal. We heard tales of getting bogged down in the mud, broken axles, various other broken parts. At one point when we crossed a small wooden bridge (ie, basically some boards that were laid down over a ditch), some wires on the back of our vehicle caught the boards up and started dragging them along. (Caris said the previous owner of her car had a boat, and it was the trailer wires that had gotten caught up in this). When doing this trip, the groups travel in a convoy, so that if something happens, at least they have the ability to stop and help each other out.

Total time out to Volunteer Point seems to be a little over 2 hours, and over half of that is the off-road portion of the trip. Then you finally arrive on the top of a hill over a beach. And there’s lots of penguins. This area has 3 types of penguins: king, gentoo, and magellenic. There’s a variety of lines marked out with either sticks or white rocks, and the general rule besides don’t go past the lines is that you’re not supposed to go within 20 feet of the penguins, but the penguins are allowed to approach you if they want. (There were a fair number of people that weren’t really paying much attention to this rule, but the wardens weren’t giving them a hard time about it either).

We were late enough in the season that most of the penguin chicks had already had a chance to grow some, but many still retained large patches of their baby down. For king’s especially, once they shed that they’re hard to distinguish from the adult penguins, because they’re already close to full-size by that point.

We had about an hour and a half to wander around the area and watch penguins before getting back in the 4×4 to head back to Stanley. Wandered around briefly and looked through a couple of gift shops before heading back to the ship. BTW, Stanley has a population of around 2000, and the entire islands have a population of about 3000, so when they get a large cruise ship in like ours, it basically doubles the population.

Oh, one other update, apparently our late passengers from Buenos Aires may have made it on the ship somehow. The people in our 4×4 said that they’d heard that. And apparently some of those missing passengers may not have been first offenders on being late back to the ship. I imagine they might have gotten into a little trouble.

Since it’s New Years Eve, tonight’s formal night. I doubt it would normally be a formal night because of the port day (with so many sea days, there’d be no reason to do it on a port day). A little weird, because you could tell people definitely didn’t start dressing up until somewhat later in the evening. (Of course, that could also tie in with how late people tend to eat on this trip. I think we finished dinner shortly before 8PM or so, and the dining room was still mostly empty.) Watched the hypnotist show largely to kill some time, and it was ok. He did have an issue where partway through the show they announced a “Code Sierra” for a cabin number, and that seemed to wake up some of his volunteers.

No idea what a Code Sierra is, but it seems to be something involving security. The cabin was on the same floor as us, and I could see security personel hanging around near that end of the hallway. Cathy also says someone she talked to had problems getting to her cabin going one way, because there was a number of security personell not letting people through (and apparently, the next morning there was still a security person outside the cabin door).

On this ship, all the New Years stuff was happening indoors. I guess they must have decided it was too cold to do things outside (plus maybe too windy). Seas have started to pick up a little, so we’re moving more than we had up to now on the ship. It’s not quite the same experience to ring in the new year when you’re not out on the top deck, and made for a much more crowded experience. They did do baloon drops in the piazza and a couple of the lounges. Off to bed after that.

Another sea day. This ended up being laundry day. Unfortunately, still haven’t cruised enough to start getting the free laundry (man, I look forward to that). Machine prices seem to have gone up, they were running $2 each. Still, was able to get the laundry done before lunch, and I think that should carry us through the rest of the trip.

Weather today was definitely a little cooler. I think the high was supposedly around 59 or so. I did notice at the noon update today was the first day that we’re actually further south than how far north we live. Still, not all that shabby. If we can get similar weather for Stanley we’ll be doing good.

Watching out the balcony I’ve noticed that we seem to have picked up a few albotrosses (or is the plural still albotross?). They’re taunting me though, every time I go out to try to take pictures, they back further away from the ship. Looks like we have more than one type, one’s a larger one that has a lot more white to it, while the other is smaller and is mainly grey or black. The smaller one seems to actually have to flap its wings sometimes, while the bigger one just seems to skim along, and I’ve never seem it flapping its wings. No idea how they manage to do that.

Captain’s Circle party tonight. Room was pretty crowded, but unlike some comments I’d seen recently, they were still doing it in multiple sessions in the Vista lounge, with the usual free “drinks”. Our captain, Captain Kent, I think is working on going into a second career as a stand-up comedian.

Seas have picked up a little, and we’re doing a little more rocking tonight, but still nothing of real significance. The captain did say we might run into a little more movement sometime tonight, but that things were looking pretty decent for the Falklands. However, it also sounds like we’re going to be headed down to Cape Horn right in front of a big storm, and it could get a little more entertaining for that. After all, we are going to one of the places that can have the worst seas in the world.

Another sea day. We seemed to make it down the river channel last night without any problems. For that matter, during the times that I was watching out out balcony, I never did see *any* other traffic. That kinda surprised me, especially since we’d apparently had traffic problems when going upriver.

Another day of not really doing much. Went to a couple of the lectures that were given on the ship, one on various types of print making in art, and the other about the battle of the Plate River from back in WW2. That one was apparently given by a passenger that had done a couple of lectures who’d been on since Venice.

Noticed in the dining room this evening that they seemed to be running somewhat fewer staff than normal early. As I’d commented, the dining rooms are very empty during the early hours on this cruise. I think they’re trying to adjust a little so they can handle the larger crowds late, but this evening at least it seemed to miss a little, as if they weren’t quite sure about things.

Buenos Aires, and another tour arranged by the same person as the last one. Still something of a larger group than I expected, but this tour did turn out to be a lot better. Basically we did a driving tour of some of the areas of Buenos Aires, and then stopped at La Recoletta cemetary. Kind of an interesting cemetary, all the sites are mausoleums, generally owned by families and then the various members of the family are interred in them. Our guide seemed to indicated that many of them also go down into the ground somewhat. We stopped at several different interesting sites in the cemetary, but of course the real reason most people go here is to visit the grave for Eva Peron. She’s buried in the tomb of her family (Duarte) instead of being in anything with the Peron name.

After that we drove through some of the city center area, and stopped in the plaza with the pink house (where the movie and the musical make it seem like Eva gave her don’t cry for me argentina speech, although apparently that actually happened in a different location). Didn’t get a real chance to stop here, because apparently they were setting up to close the square off for an announcement from their president about her having thyroid cancer that was just recently diagnosed. Apparently, with these major events, the police actually shut down the area in front of this building, and we could see most of the barricades already up. And apparently, once they shut it down, noone comes in or out until they’re done, so our guide was real concerned that we not spend too much time here or we could get stuck.

Next we went to an area called La Boca, which is the area of the town where the Tango originally started. Nowadays, it’s a place where a lot of local artists set up shop and sell their wares, and there’s a bunch of restaurants and coffee shops, many of which have tango demonstrations going on while you eat there.

Finally, it was back to the ship.

We’d actually arrived somewhat late to Buenos Aires, apparently we’d run into some traffic issues in the River Plate channel. It got us in probably a good hour later than we were supposed to, but thankfully our tour wasn’t scheduled to leave until a little later anyways, so it didn’t really affect us.

Oddly, it seems like there was a significant number of people that were disembarking the ship here, and then a fair number that were actually embarking the ship also. Not really sure how that worked out, but it appeared to be a reasonable number of people. And, when we got down near when we were supposed to be leaving, there were a fair number of people being paged to check in with the purser’s desk, implying that they hadn’t made it back to the ship yet. The captain in his pre-departure announcement explaining what we’d be doing, referenced that we’d be leaving as soon as the clearances from shore were done, even though there were a number of people that were still not accounted for. Apparently, the ship had an appointment for transiting the River Plate navigation channel, and if we missed it, it could cause us to get delayed by traffic in the channel, which could affect us getting to the next port. I think some of those people showed up, but I’m also absolutely positive there were at least 3 that never did. I’m kinda guessing it might be a little difficult to get from Argentina to the Falkland Islands easily too, so who know if they’ll catch up.

Today’s port is Montevideo, in Uruguay. We’d booked a tour through someone on the roll call on Cruise Critic which was to do some sightseeing. Started out on a rough note when apparently one of the people had lost their key card and was having to get a new one, so that delayed us for a bit. Tour also turned out to have a few more people than we really expected, we were travelling on a full sized motor coach.

Headed from Montevideo up to Punta de la Esta (all names and spelling subject to correction later when I have a chance to double-check them). Stopped part way up there to view this weird house or something with some strange architecture. Punta de la Esta is something of a resort town with beaches right on the Atlantic. Drove around town for a little while and stopped at a street with some shopping and some places to grab a quick snack.

Back on the bus, then headed down to a place called Periopolis or something like that. Drove up a large hill (and I’m pretty impressed that the driver was able to handle the curves with the bus), to a spot with a pretty decent view. Then back down and we stopped briefly in the town itself. Decent views, but really not a whole lot to do in these places.

We did have a little excitement on our way back to Montevideo. We heard a very loud bang and in the window right next to Cathy’s head was a small hole, and the entire window was basically shattered. It was some sort of laminated glass, so in general it held together in even it’s shattered state, but whatever hit the window did actually manage to produce a small hole right there next to Cathy. The guide and driver thought it might be kids with slingshots, but it also could very easily have been some sort of bullet. Good thing for safety laminated glass.

Finally, back in Montevideo we did a little driving around to see some of the sites there. We got off to see a few things in a plaza there, and seriously considered walking back to the ship from here. Looked like it would have been easy, but decided not to, and finished up by being dropped back by the ship. We did a little wandering around in a shopping area that’s right near the port, then headed back to the ship ourselves.

Honestly not real sure what to make of this tour. It was a *lot* of driving around in the bus, with very little getting out of the bus. It made for kinda a long day, something like 7-8 hours.

One thing we did discover as we were walking out of the port is that Montevideo has a walking tour of the town, that covers some of the new city and old city. It was part of this walking tour that we’d been tempted to do when we stopped at the one plaze in Montevideo. While it would certainly not use up an entire day (they said the whole tour would take about one and a half hours), I’m not overly convinced that this wouldn’t have been more interesting than what we did. I’d certainly considering giving it a try if we ever end up back in Montevideo.

One of the soups this evening at dinner was a chilled tropical fruit soup with vanilla aroma. Gave it a try, but wasn’t real sure about it. To be perfectly honest, I strongly thing it could have vastly been improved by a little tequila in it. Cathy says she’d choose vodka, but I honestly think a nice Reposado would have accented it pretty well.

Another sea day, and once again, not didn’t really do a whole lot. Spent some time at the art auction and ended up buying another piece, but that’s probably been the highlight of the day. Weather is definitely better today, warmer, but not too hot, and the wind has died down, so the swells have also died down a lot. Ship isn’t moving anywhere near what it was yesterday.

One other note of interest. Princess has always had a reputation for having some lousy beds. Seems like they’re starting to address that issue. We’ve always asked for an egg-crate pad because it at least helps some, but apparently on this ship, on all outside cabins, the beds are equiped with a pillow-top on the mattress. I have no idea how far through the fleet it’s spread since I hadn’t seen anything about it before this cruise, but I’m hoping it becomes standard fleet-wide quickly. Definitely improves the beds.

First sea day, which means we pretty much did very little. What a difference a day makes in the temperature though. When we left Rio, it was pushing 90 degrees. Today, much cooler, and there’s a fair amount of wind. Ship’s been moving a little all day long too. Not quite enough for them to empty the pools out, but I suspect it was getting a little close. With the wind, sitting outside on the Promenade deck was a little liffy, plus, one side of the Promenade was getting very wet from spray, and even the other was getting some. Annoyingly, the Star Princess seems to have benches along the Promenade instead of chairs or loungers, so it’s not going to be quite as comfortable to sit out there like I like to do.

Since it’s Christmas, tonight was the first formal night. During the Captains speech he was going over the number of people from various countries, and for the Americans, it was only around 720 people. That’s probably the lowest number of Americans that we’ve been on a ship with, except for when we’ve cruised the smaller ships. 400+ Brazillians on the ship, which isn’t really that surprising considering where we started from. I’m almost a little susprised they’re not doing announcements in Portuguese given that number.

Got up in the morning and had breakfast at the hotel which thankfully was included in our price. Then we had to gather things together to put our bags outside the hotel door so they could be collected to be taken to the cruise ship. This did involve visiting the concierge desk to borrow a stapler. Princess now makes you print out your luggage tags, and since we don’t like to put them on before flying, you need a stapler to assemble them, and we forgot one this time. (Although we were far from the only ones, I know I heard at least one other request later that morning at the front desk to borrow a stapler.)

Since we had some time to kill, but not really enough to try going over to Sugarloaf, we ended up going out and spending a little while on the beach. After the beach time, we stopped at one of the little kiosks along the beach, had a couple of cokes and a caipirinha. After all, figure we’re not likely to be able to get those once we leave the country. Then it was just sit around and wait until our transfer to the ship.

The port was kinda a madhouse, with a fairly large crowd already at the port waiting to check in. Since we’re Platinum with Princess, that did let us skip the waiting and get right into the check in line. Checked in, went through the exit immigration procedures, and headed onto the ship. Think it probably took us maybe 15-20 minutes tops. Ran into some people that had been on our same bus to the port but didn’t have status with Princess, and they did say it took a lot longer for them to get through.

Stopped by the room to drop things off. Always nice when you enter the room and can’t smell smoke, that’s always been one of my bigger fears. Thankfully, in less than a month Princess goes non-smoking in rooms and balconies. I still think they should have started that early on the Star since it had just gone through dry docking before it crossed the Atlantic.

Found some lunch, then waited around for sail-away. Sat through the muster drill, which took probably about 3 times as long because they were doing it in both English and Spanish. Apparently, for whatever reason, there’s a very large number of Spanish speakers on this particular cruise. We ended up sailing just a little late because there was apparently some confusion between the shore and the ship, and it took a bit to straighten out. There were actually 4 other ships in port today. Aida Cara I think might be overnighting in Rio, because we saw them coming in sometime just before noon while we were still back at the hotel. Pullmantur Empress, a Royal Carribbean ship (I think it might have been Vision of the Seas), and Ibero Cruises Grand Celebration (which was clearly a former Carnival ship) were the others in port.

After leaving the port, sailed right by the naval base in Rio. Among other things, docked there were a submarine and an aircraft carrier. Our route out of port took us right next to Sugarloaf Mountain, and then we turned and went down along Cococabana and Ipanema beaches. By the time we were passing Ipanema it was really starting to get a little dark out.

Not much else for the day. Dinner did include one of our favorite deserts on Princess, the flourless chocolate cake. Also they had the passion-fruit souffle.