Jan 31 Fjords and Glaciers

Our nice ride to the glacier

First view of glacier

The blue color is dramatic

lots of ice!

It's cold!

This morning we anchored at Paso Quesahuen and will not depart until late this evening.  Trips to the glacier  at Laguna San Rafael were scheduled all day on two large catamarans.  We were the second trip scheduled for about 11 am but left almost one hour late.  The Mariner had sent along sandwiches, hot drinks and cookies but about 15 minutes into the trip we crossed the wake of the other catamaran that was returning to the Mariner and the coffee urn and two trays of sandwiches hit the floor.  We had enough food for everyone but had to make do with hot chocolate and tea instead of coffee. 
The catamaran we were on was very plush with two levels, large couches with tables on the upper level and individual high back seats on the lower level.  The weather was still rainy and cold but the glacier was quite dramatic and everyone took lots of pictures.  The San Valentin glacier flows into the Laguna San Rafael from the "Southern Patagonia Ice Field" which is the third largest extension of continental ice behind Antartica and Greenland. 
We made it back "home" at about 2:30 and had time to relax a bit before afternoon tea and trivia.  We lost again today, missing our anchor man Michael who knows a lot of the entertainment answers.  Michael was on the tour that left after ours returned and each tour got later as the day went on.  Right now it is 9 pm and the last tour has not yet returned.  We were supposed to sail at 8 pm and I doubt if we leave before 10.
We will spend the next two days at sea and in the fjords, arriving in Punta Arenas on Friday.

Jan 30 Chilean Fjords

Special "full cruisers" dinner with new friends Jim and Judy from Hawaii

At the Simpson river, known for fly fishing

Waterfall at the nature preserve

Almost all goods come to this remote area by ferry

We are continuing to sail southward through the Chilean fjords.  There are huge mountains and hundreds of islands.  The vegetation is lush and very green and reminds us of the inside passage of Alaska but it is much longer and very remote.  It is at the same latitude as Sitka, Alaska, in the northern hemisphere.  The high temperature today is about 45 degrees with intermitent rain and strong wind, not very nice at all, but the scenery is beautiful.  I thought I had brought some long underwear but tore the cabin apart looking for it and could not find it so I went with panty hose under the jeans, heavy coat, stocking cap and gloves which worked pretty well. 
We anchored at Puerto Chacabuco at about 11 am, this is the first port where we have had to use the tenders to get everyone to shore.  This is always a challenge as most people never read the instructions or listen to the announcements about the procedure for using the tenders, very irritating for the rest of us.  Hats off to the crew that have to practically carry some of the passengers off and on the tenders.  This tiny port is the gateway to Chile's part of Patagonia.  We visited the nearby town of Aysen and a Nature preserve.  The snow coverd peaks of the Andes make for some great vistas when they can be seen over the lush green valleys.

January 28 and 29

At dock in Puerto Montt

Water wheel at colonial museum

Beautiful hydrangeas everywhere

Concet hall on the lake at Frutillar

Lots of colorful small boats

January 28, we had our first really rough seas today, big swell but not much wind.  This continued through the night, not bad for sleeping once you get in bed but our tv was swinging back and forth, banging into the cabinet and the shower doors in the bathroom were sliding back and forth.
January 29.  This moring we awoke to rain, really the first of the trip.  Luckily we were able to dock at the pier in Puerto Montt as there were three other cruise ships in the port and the other three were having to use tenders to get their passengers ashore.  We had a bus tour to the resort towns of Puerto Varas and Frutillar.  Both are on the second largest lake in Chile and were founded by German immigrants.  They were very pretty little towns with many restaurants and shops.  We toured a recreated German colonial town that is a museum, very nice.  We also had a German "kuchen" (cake) snack in a nice shop that also sold local handicrafts.  Noel bought a pendant that had Lapis Lazuli stone in it.  Most of the world's supply of this bright blue stone comes from chile. 
Tonight we will be attending a special dinner and show that is just for the "full cruise" passengers, should be a nice event.

January 27/28 Chile

We arrived in Valpariso, Chile at 8 am.  This port city serves the capitol, Santiago, which is about 75 miles inland.  The two metro areas have about half of all the residents of Chile.  The port is surrounded by coastal hills with very little flat ground.  There are numerous funiculars to take residents up the hills but apparently most are not in working order!  We heard from some passengers that one of the funiculars got stuck when one of our tour groups was coming downward and they had to walk down a huge flight of steps. 
Our tour traveled to the Casablanca valley, about 30 miles inland where a large number of winerys are located.  We visited one of the newer ones, it was very pretty with beautiful landscaping, lots of trees and flowers.  The wines were good, but not great.  Next on our bus tour was a drive through Vina Del Mar, a coastal resort area that was quite nice.  We returned to the ship about 1:30 in time for lunch. 

Front lawn at the winery

Large military statue in square near port

Silver Spirit in dock at left

A large crowd watching when we left dock

There were five Chilean navy ships nearby

The helicopter that came over our ship

We were supposed to sail at 5 pm but several of the tours that had gone to Santiago were late returning so we did not leave until 6.  Not sure if I mentioned it before or not but one of the Silver Seas ships, The Silver Spirit has been in several of the same ports and appears to be traveling on a similar itinerary.  They were docked in Valpariso when we arrived and were still at the dock when we left.
Chile has the largest navy in South America and were engaged in some sort of manuevers as we left port so we had to do some turning to avoid their ships.  One of their helicopters also came over our ship a couple of times.
We continue to be impressed with the obvious higher standard of living in Chile compared to Ecuador and Peru.  There is also a noticeable European influence in Chile.
We are at sea today, continuing south along the coast.  It is quite foggy and the fog horn has been sounding every few minutes for several hours.  The climate in this area is roughly equal to northern California in June.  Soon it will be much colder as we round Cape Horn and then head north.
Our team is now at full strength having acquired a new member and we managed to get a perfect score yesterday.  In the past we have always second guessed a few answers, ended up changing some and were often wrong, so yesterday we stuck with our first guesses and it paid off. Everyone on the team contributed.  Our next port is Sunday in Puerto Montt.

First port in Chile

Silver smelter ruins

Big Ben replica clock tower

More desert coast line

Salute to the haggis

Jan 25  We arrived in Antofagasta, Chile at 8 am.  This is an industrial port city located on the Atacama desert, (the driest place on earth).   The town has about 300,000 residents at any given time but only about 200,000 are permanent.  The 100,000 extra are miners that work either a 4 day on/4 day off or a 7 day on/7 day off schedule and they return to their permanent homes on their days off. 
Mining is the only industry and they have very little tourism so there is not much to see or do.    We chose a tour that  was supposed to go to a couple of museums and the old town square.  The tour operator had supplied some large buses but we drew the short straw and got one that was really very dirty, inside and out.  It looked like all it ever did was drive on dirt roads and was never cleaned.  The  first place we visited was an old silver smelter built of large stones that was from the late 1800's.  The museum contained some nice exhibits but everything was in Spanish.  We then drove a short distance to the main plaza in the center of the town and got off the bus to walk around the square and to visit another small museum.  After getting off the bus several members of the group decided to leave the group and get back to the ship on there own, the first defections!  We had the same problem with the second museum, everything was in Spanish so we could not really get much information from the nice exhibits.  The tour guide's english was very good but he did not seem inclined to do any translation of the information.  He then told us we were going to the train museum, this stop was on one of the other tours but the guide insisted that it was on our schedule so quite a few, including us, decided to leave the tour.  Maybe no one stayed until the end!  The ship had a shuttle bus available from the main square so we made it back in time for lunch. 
Today is Robbie Burns birthday so tour director Ray donned his kilt and we had a celebration  that  included a "salute to the haggis" during cocktail hour in the Observation Lounge. 
Jan 26  We are at sea again today and will arrive in Valpariso tomorrow morning. Tom will get a visit to his first Chilean winery, one that is known for its pinot noirs.

Sailing from Peru to Chile

More desert from bus window

Tiny buildings are homes.

Folk dancers at dinner

Today we are sailing along the coast of Chile after leaving Peru last night.  Chile is 4000 miles long so we will be in Chilean waters for many days.  Tom is anxious to start hitting the wineries!
Yesterday we docked at Matarani, Peru, a small southern Peruvian port.  We went from sea level to 7000 ft in elevation to visit a museum in Arequipa,(Peru's second largest city).  It was a 2.5 hour bus ride on a two lane mountainous road with literally hundreds of trucks coming and going from the port.  The distance from the port to the city was only 70 miles but we probably averaged about 30 miles per hour.
"The ice mummy museum" was well worth the trip.  There were displays of Incan artifacts as well as one of the frozen mummies.  The mummies were sacrifices to the gods over 500 years ago, well preserved because they were at the top of 20,000 ft volcanoes buried in ice.  The six mummies were discovered in 1995 as the ice had melted from volcanic activity in the area. 
Before heading back to the ship we had dinner at a restaurant owned by the same chef as the place where we had eaten a few days ago in Cusco. This time it was a more typical Peruvian meal, some mystery meat wrapped in dough and deep fried, pig hocks deep fried, potatoes and a baked apple.  The Peruvian pinot noir was quite good however.
We were surprised by how dry the Peruvian cost was, getting less than two inches of rain per year.  The landscape along the coast was as stark as anything we have seen.  However, it changes quickly as you get into the Andes.  We will be seeing more of the same in Northern Chile for the next few days as the Atacama Desert is the driest place on earth.  Some areas have never had recorded rainfall.

Cruising off the coast of Peru

Tour buses lined up on the dock

The whole area looked like this

Desert meets the sea

Hundreds of Booby birds on the cliffs

Red sand beach

We do not dock until 2 this afternoon so we have a chance to catch up on everything.  It sure is great having the free laundry service, we just put the bag outside our door in the morning and the laundry comes back in the afternoon.  They iron everything including the underwear and pajamas! 
The first thing we noticed yesterday when we docked was the smell, the whole place stunk of rotten fish and by late afternoon the smell had permeated the entire ship!  I think there is still a bit of the smell on the ship even though we have sailed more than 15 hours.  Yesterday we took a short tour to a natural preserve, pretty stark desert that goes right to the sea, not really what we expected at all.  The whole coastline is nothing but desert.  We did see a lot of different sea birds, but not much else. 
Our team won at trivia even though we had lost one of our members when she left the cruise in Lima, we are searching for a replacement team mate, hopefully a Brit or Aussie to help with those questions! 
After we dock today at 2 we are taking a 7 hour tour to Arequipo (sp?) to see the ice maiden mummy, kind of sorry we chose this tour as it is two and a half hours each way on the bus, luckily we have a sea day tomorrow so we can take it easy for a day.

Peru, Cusco, Machu Picchu, Lima and Pisco

Overview of Cusco

Machu Picchu

Having Pisco Sours on the train

Main square in Lima

1/19, We left our ship in Lima to fly to Cusco.  Our flight was about an hour late so that but our schedule off the rest of the day.  We did have a nice lunch at a famous restaurant prior to touring a bit.  We visited the Korikancha Temple and the historic archeological site of Saqsaywaman.  We had dinner and overnight stay at the Monasterio hotel.  This had been an actual monastery from the late 1600's.  Very fancy and they even have a beautiful chapel. 

1/20 We had a 6 am wake up call, had buffet breakfast and then rode a bus for 1.5 hours to pick up the "Hiram Bingham" train for a 2.5 hour trip up to Aguas Caliente, the gateway to Machu Picchu.  The train and hotel are both operated by the Orient Express.  The train makes you feel like you are going back in time, quite elegant. After getting off the train there is a short 30 bus ride to Machu Picchu.  The Andes are spectacular and make the rockies seem like hills!

We had a three hour guided tour with a very enthusiastic guide.  The whole sight is overwhelming.  Having seen the Pyramid's of Eqypt, The Great Wall of china, Ephesis is Turkey, Pompei in Italy, and Knossis on Crete, Machu Picchu is at the top of our list.  It is massive and we had great weather rather than their typical rain.  After our tour we had a nice tea service at the Sanctuary Lodge which is also run by the Orient Express.  We then reversed our travel back to Cusco with a four course meal served on the train.  We had a very long day, not arriving bakc to the hotel until about 10:30. 

1/21 We left the hotel early and flew back to Lima.  We had a short tour of the city then a wonderful lunch at a mansion that was built in the mid 1500's and has been the home to 18 generations of the same family, quite impressive.  A great couple of days but it was nice to get back "home" to our ship.

Trujillo,Peru

We docked early this morning in Peru. Almost everyone on the ship was going on some sort of tour today. If at all possible we try to do half day tours, the long ones are very tiring. Today we had a short tour to some ancient ruins called Chan Chan, it was a huge complex of mud constructed palaces that have been partially restored, quite impressive.  Tomorrow we leave the ship for our trip to Cuzco and Machu Pichu. We will be gone for two nights. More when we return!

Quito, Eucador

Courtyard of monastery where we had dinner

Center of the world monument

Crew greeting when we returned to ship

Sunday we were supposed to leave the ship in Manta, Ecuador and travel by chartered plane to Quito at 8 am.  After sitting the the ship's theater for about a half hour we were informed that because of the poor visibility due to rain that the Manta airport was closed.  The travel department arranged for us to go ahead and board the buses and we were taken to the local museum, the museum was very small but had some nice displays of the local culture and some modern art.  After about an hour we were advised that the airport was open and our plane was on the way.  We waited about another hour before we boarded for the short flight to Quito.  We were on a small turbo prop plane, the flight was a bit rough due to the poor weather but we made it okay.  Since we were so late arriving our plans had to be adjusted and instead of being taken on a tour we went straight to the hotel for lunch.  The hotel was nice, very upscale, and all the ladies were given beautiful long stemmed roses when we checked in.  We later found out that Ecuador produces more roses than any where else in the world.  We had a short tour of the city after lunch and then back to the hotel to get ready for our gala dinner at a monastery.  The dinner was quite nice with a beautiful setting in the monastery that included a rather large museum.  It was still raining (as it had been all day) and it rained all night but the next day was sunny.  We were taken to the "Center of the World" monument where we had our picture taken with one foot on either side of the equator.  We were bussed back to the airport in Quito for our flight to Guyaquil (sp?) where we met up with our ship.  We had a nice welcome back with a big "welcome home" banner, music from the ship's band and greetings from the crew. We were also surprised to have the Captain checking us back in when we boarded instead of the usual security officer. This evening we had dinner with all the members of our trivia team as our one member will be leaving us in Lima.  One of our members is a doctor and another is a lawyer, so we have done pretty well and we will have a hard time replacing our member that is leaving.  Tuesday is a sea day so hopefully we will be able to catch up on our rest. Neither one of us slept well in Quito, the beds were really firm and we think the altitude bothered us some.  Quito is over 9000 feet in elevation.

Sea day crossing the equator

King Neptune (cruise director Ray Solaire)

We are at sea today and arrive in Manta, Ecuador in the morning.  We leave the ship for a day and travel via chartered plane to Quito, Ecuador's capitol.  We overnight there and fly to Guayaquil the next day and rejoin the ship.  It was somewhat rainy today but the "crossing the equator ceremony" presided over by King Neptune went on as scheduled.  Those members of the crew and passengers who had never crossed before are supposed to kiss a fish and jump into the pool.  More passengers than we have ever seen before participated.  A great day to be at sea as we learned of the Italian ship that ran aground.

Panama Canal

Entering the first lock at Gatun

Big crowd in the Observations lounge

Picture from canal live camera of our ship in second lock taken off my tablet

Tom got up at five am in order to get a couple of front row seats in the observation lounge which is on the top deck.  We started through the first lock at about 7 am.  I pulled up the canal live web camera on my tablet and we were able to watch our ship go through the first set of locks at Gatun.  It is now 10 am and we are in Gatun Lake waiting to make our way out through the Miraflores Locks at about 4pm this afternoon. 

Cartagena Colombia

Sailing into the bay at Cartagena

Pool deck set up for BBQ with local entertainment

Newer part of city at night

Nice show from local folk dance group

We arrived mid day in Cartagena, very hot and humid.  Every time we go outside our glasses and the camera lens fog up.  We have not scheduled a tour here as we have been here twice before.  We had planned on taking the ship provided shuttle bus that would take us into the center of town but it was announced that was not going to happen as the local taxi drivers union has blockaded the shuttle bus, needless to say we are not going to be taking a taxi!  The afternoon on the ship was very quiet as most passengers had gone on tour, in fact we were the only two people at tea, we had a personal piano player and about four waiters.  This evening we had a BBQ out on the pool deck that included a show with local dancers, very colorful costumes with lively music.  Tomorrow we sail at 1pm and our next event is the transit of the Panama Canal.  We are not getting much feedback on this blog so we hope that someone is reading it!

Curacao and Aruba

Yesterday we were in Curacao, very pleasant weather, not too warm and a nice breeze.  Our tour was less than spectacular, not much to see, very poor museum, junky gift shop and our tour guide was unable to answer a lot of our questions.  We did have a very nice dinner in the Cordon Bleu restaurant with some new friends that are from Honolulu.  We sailed about 11 pm and docked in Aruba early this morning.  (Tom said to tell everyone that he looked for Natalie Holloway but was unable to find her). We took a four hour guided tour via Land Rovers to the other side of the island.  Fun ride but very rough and dusty, when we returned to the ship we just washed our faces because we had to get to lunch before the dining room closed, the washcloths looked like we had used them to wipe our shoes! Our trivia team won again today.  We have an eclectic group and seem to have a good mix of knowledge among the group.  We just sailed a half hour ago and we will be in Cartgenia Colombia tomorrow afternoon.  This first picture is our arrival in Curacao, the second is our Land Rover and the last one is of the largest sea arch in Aruba.