We flew up from Melbourne to Sydney this morning to catch our flight to Santiago for a 32-day trip to South America and Antarctica.
We had a good night’s sleep last night, which we really needed. We got downstairs at about 8:30 for a lovely breakfast and talked about what we would do today.
Today we spent relaxing at the hotel, catching up on some reading and generally just taking it easy.
We are now in Cusco, in southeastern Peru. Cusco has a population of around half a million people and was the capital of the Inca empire from the thirteenth century until it was conquered by the Spanish in the sixteenth century. We got off to a slow start this morning, sleeping in until 9:45am (which was not the plan!).
We did not get the sleep we had hoped for last night. Keith came down with some sort of gastro/bug in Santiago and it progressed to the point last night where not much sleep could be had.
Last night we had a wonderful long sleep, which we obviously needed. Some months ago, unaware that our train tickets to Machu Picchu included entry to the citadel for the day of our arrival, we had bought another set of tickets that entitled us to go in today.
We had a bit of a sleep-in this morning so it was a bit of a rush to get down to breakfast before it finished at 10:30am.
We had a lovely day today exploring Lima. We started with a very nice breakfast in the hotel, before heading out for the day's activities. Our first stop was the Mario Testino Museum (MATE), where we had arranged to meet our new friends, Simon and Mags (who live just outside of Oxford).
We are now in Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil. We had breakfast at the hotel this morning in Lima and then hopped in the car for the drive to the airport for our flight to Brazil.
This morning we were up early so we could see Iguaçu Falls before the crowds arrived. The waterfall is 9km inside the national park (from the Brazil entry) and the park entry opens at 9 am.
We are now in Rio de Janeiro. We started the day with a nice breakfast in the hotel and then returned to our room to finish packing.
Today we had a pretty full day exploring Rio de Janeiro. We were up early and down at breakfast just after 7 am.
We decided to have a nice slow day today. We started with a late breakfast here in the hotel and decided over breakfast that the main thing on the agenda for the day would be a walk to Ipanema, a few kilometres from our hotel in Copacabana Beach. It was about midday by the time we set off and we had a very pleasant walk along Avenida Atlântica, which is closed to traffic on Sundays.
Today we awoke to another lovely sunny day in Rio de Janeiro. We had a relaxed breakfast at the hotel, before heading to the airport around 11 am to catch our flight to Buenos Aires.
We had a big day today. We were up very early in order to be downstairs for breakfast by 3:30am and to leave for the airport by 4:00am. We got to the airport before 4:30am and couldn’t believe the number of people there! We checked in and headed to off to wait for the boarding of our 6:25am flight to Ushuaia, the southernmost city in the world. The flight time was about three and a half hours and we nodded off to sleep for about half of it! We landed at about 10:00am and were picked up for a short tour around Ushuaia before we headed to the ship. Once on board we had a nice lunch and then headed to our room to unpack.
We're still en route to Antarctica, currently crossing the Drake Passage. The seas are pretty light and we are faring well. Today we had to attend a number of briefings: a submarine safety briefing, a helicopter safety briefing, and a sea kayaking safety briefing.
We slept in a bit this morning but sprung to life when we heard the captain’s morning address come in over the loudspeaker. After a quick breakfast, Keith went to the gym and Andrea relaxed in the room for a little while.
Today we had another wonderful day of exploration in Antarctica. We were pretty organised this morning, up early and down to breakfast by about 8 am.
Today we were up early to do something very exciting: walk on edge of last winter’s sea ice! We were told that the ice was likely about 2m thick and it stretched as far as we could see into the distance. During the night the captain navigated us through a very icy section of water to get us far south enough to find the edge of the sea ice.
We were up early this morning to have breakfast and get organised for a Zodiac trip out to Astrolabe Island. We got to Astrolabe Island around 9am and had a lovely walk around in the snow, observing Kelp gulls, penguins (Chinstrap, Gentoo, and Adélie) and the Weddell seals that had parked themselves on the snow-covered beach.
Today we were up by about 8 am so we had time for breakfast before heading out on a Zodiac to land again on the Antarctic continent, this time at Neko Harbour. Once we got ashore we started a climb to the top of the glacier that overlooks the harbour.
Today we were up early for breakfast and prepared for a helicopter flight over Spert Island. However, the weather did not cooperate and the flights were all cancelled.
We had another early start today. The captain’s plan for this morning was to pass through Neptune’s Bellows at around 6:30am to enter Port Foster in the caldera of Deception Island, so we wanted to be up to enjoy it.
We had a pretty wild night at sea last night and were hoping we had experienced the worst of our Drake Passage crossing.
Despite another fairly rough night at sea through the Drake Passage last night, the phenergan tablets we took last night seemed to do the trick so we had a pretty good sleep. We rounded Cape Horn at about 9 am this morning and, as expected, it was a bumpy ride.
We were up bright and early this morning for our 6:45am disembarkation from the ship. We all got on a bus to Ushuaia airport and managed to check in and get to the gate with not much time to spare. Our three-hour flight to Buenos Aires was uneventful.
We had a pretty full day today, trying to pack as much of Buenos Aires in as possible. We decided to postpone breakfast So we could get to the Recoleta Cemetery before the crowds arrived.
Today we spent most of the day travelling. We were up just after 4 am so we had enough time to have breakfast before departing our hotel to get to the airport for our early morning flight to El Calafate in southern Argentina. The flight took about three and a half hours and we arrived in El Calafate at around 11am.
Today we were up early for breakfast before heading out at about 8:30am for a walk to Laguna Azul (Blue Lagoon).
We had another early start this morning. We had an early breakfast and headed out with our guides, Patrick and April, to go horseback riding.
Today was (another!) big travel day. We were up early to finish packing and have breakfast before setting out on the four-hour drive to Punta Arenas airport.
We had the luxury of a nice slow start to the day today, given that our flight from Santiago to Sydney had been delayed and was not leaving until around 4pm. We got to the airport in plenty of time and relaxed in the lounge until it was time to board our flight to Sydney.