Chocolate heaven!

The economy has literally taken a bite out of cruising. Gone are the midnight buffets and chocolate fantasy nights (at least on this ship). To save money, this is the first midnight buffet that they have had since I boarded the ship 38 days ago. As you can see, I was more than happy that they decided to go with a dessert buffet!

And yes, I did sample almost everything here (except the show pieces – like the chocolate ship and the ice sculpture). Let me tell you, everything tasted D – E – L – I – C – I – O – U – S!!

Port Stanley, Falkland Islands

It's hard to believe that Britain and Argentina spent billions of dollars fighting over this place. It's even harder to believe that thousands of people actually fought and died trying to takeover these islands. The place looks like a deserted, barren wasteland.

They don't even have trees here. Any tree that you find on the island was brought over here by someone. In fact, the only thing that the land is good for is grazing sheep. (I would hate to see what countries would do if they had a really nice place to fight over.)

As it turns out, we arrived in the Falklands just as things were starting to heat up between Britain and Argentina again. The day we shipped in, an oil rig had been parked offshore and we watched oil workers being transported to the rig. Army guys were walking the streets and fighter planes were practicing their maneuvers overhead. Apparently, neither side learned anything from the 1982 conflict and they seem prepared to go at it again. This time they are fighting over potential oil revenues. If oil is found, then the Brits want control of it. Argentina is claiming that the oil rig is in their waters so they should get control. Our tour guide said that this sort of nonsense has happened before. The last time the oil companies didn't find any oil and he doesn't think that they will find any this time either.

The 1982 war is not far from anyone's minds over here. In fact, there is a deep seated hatred between the 2400 residents who live here and the Argentinians. You can actually 'feel' the hate in the air. The irony of it is that the only residents who got killed during the war were killed by their own people, the Brits ('friendly fire' as the press like to call it). The effects of that war are still being felt today. Part of our tour was cut off because people were clearing land mines from the area. More than 25 years later they are still clearing mines! That war only lasted a couple of months. (Think how long they are going to be clearing mines from Iraq and Afghanistan.)

In Stanley, there are war memorials to the soldiers who died on both sides of the fighting. Here you can see the British one, which is located in the middle of town.

The museum contains many weapons and pictures from the war. It also contains some interesting Victorian antiques left behind by the early British settlers. As you can see below, the town of Stanley is very small. It only takes about 20 minutes to walk from one end to the other.

A place this small doesn't have many tourist attractions. Most people come here just to say that they have been there (just like Antarctica). One of Stanley's premiere attractions is this whale bone arch.

It is made from the jaw bones of two blue whales. It was made to commemorate 100 years of British control over the Falklands.

Down the street from the arch is Government House. When the flag is flying, it means that the Governor is in and ready to do business.

One of the residents in town is an anti-whaling activist. His yard is covered in various whale skeletons and signs against the whaling industry.

Another home in town is covered in garden gnomes. The collection keeps getting larger because people keep donating them. According to our guide, people don't even bother to find out the the owner's address. They just send packages to Stanley marked with 'Place me in the garden with my other gnome brothers'!

If penguins are what you are after, then you will have to walk about 1.5 hours out of town (or put up the cash to take one of the few taxis out to the rookery). Since you don't see any penguin pictures, it means that I wasn't about to walk or part with any of my money. However, I did see a stuffed one in the museum.

So much for Stanley's attractions!

Antarctica – Day three

Today, things didn't go according to plan. For starters, the day was very foggy so we couldn't travel very fast. To make matters worse, we ran into tons of sea ice. As you can imagine, fog and ice do not make a good combination. So unless we wanted to end up like the Titanic, we had to change our plans. Since the ship is not equipped as an icebreaker, we had to turn around and look for open ocean.
When the fog finally cleared, we got to look at some really big icebergs. Below you can see a huge tabular iceberg that is half a mile long.

Here is a closeup of that iceberg.

Antarctica – Day two

On our second day in the region, we got lucky again and saw lots of wildlife.
We also saw lots of other ships touring around the area.

Here you can see tourists visiting an Argentinian research station. Yes, those little specks are people! And the tinier specks, under the buildings, are penguins!!

In another bay, we came across six humpback whales. Here you can see a couple of them.

One of them was very curious and came right up beside the ship.

Warning - here´s something that no nature program will tell you. Don´t stand down wind from a whale that is taking a crap. This whale swam up to us and took a dump. The smell could knock a buzzard off a shit wagon at 50 paces!

We came across alot of penguins, but they were too far away to get any closeup shots. There are thousands of them here at this rookery. The pink stuff is penguin crap. (There is tons of it down here.) As you can see, the penguins are quite small, so in order to find them, you just have to look for their crap.

Here you can see a couple of penguins swimming (flying) through the water.

Antarctica – Day one

Since a picture is worth a thousand words, I will them tell the story of our first day in the region. We got lucky because the weather was sunny, the seas were calm and the scenery was fantastic! Surprisingly, it wasn't very cold down here and the temperature hovered around the 6 C mark.

Cruising the Drake passage

Cape Horn is infamous for being one of the most dangerous shipping passages in the world. That is because at 56 degrees south latitude there is virtually no land. This means that when a wave forms, there is no land in the way to break it up. As a result, a rogue wave can grow up to 100 feet high. The winds in the area don't help the situation, so a lot of ships have gone down in this part of the world.

I can verify that the winds in the area are very strong. As usual, I was up at the crack of dawn to get these shots. I nearly got blown over on the deck trying to take these pictures. Even though the sun was shining, the wind chill made it feel like it was freezing cold outside. Below is a close up of Cape Horn.
Now we are heading off to the Palmer research station (on Anvers Island, Antarctica) to pick up a few scientists. They are scheduled to give a couple of lectures on the kind of work that they do at the base.

Ushuaia, Argentina – the city at the end of the world

After traveling through the Beagle channel (see photo above), following the same route as Charles Darwin's ship, the Beagle, we finally arrived at our first Argentinian port of call – Ushuaia.

There is a lot of rivalry between Chile and Argentina about who has the southernmost city in the world. Technically, Chile has a few people living on Puerto Williams (an island south of here). But with only 2400 people, it is more of a settlement rather than a city. Therefore, Ushuaia rightly deserves it's title of city at the end of the world.

As you can see, many ships pass through this busy port. It is the starting place for a lot of boats that are travelling to Antarctica. There was another big cruise ship at the dock, but most of the vessels heading south were small. That is because the powers that be are trying to preserve the region. By Antarctic law, no boat carrying more than 500 people is allowed to land on Antarctica. They can sail through the waters (although they are thinking of banning this after 2011), but they can't dock there.

Ushuaia is kind of like a frontier town (the way Alaska probably was back in the 1960s). Over 80% of the people here are under 30 and most of them only come here to make a few bucks and then return home to northern Argentina. Because of it's isolation, this area was once used as a penal colony for the country's worst offenders. One day, the guards were sleeping on the job and the prisoners took over the place and burned the town to the ground! Nowadays, the prison is a popular museum and tourist attraction (like Alcatraz).

One of the reasons that Chile and Argentina are fighting for the end of the world title is so that they can use it to promote tourism. I boarded a tour bus and headed off to visit the post office at the end of the world.

Then we headed off to see the end of the Pan American highway. After 17,000 kilometers, the highway (which started in Alaska) ended in the Tierra del Fuego national park.

I'm sure that on a nice summer day the park looks lovely. However, on this particular summer day, it was pouring rain. The only people more disappointed than us were the campers in the park who were huddled in their leaking tents!

This is the last place in the world where I would expect to find naked people. I always figured that cold weather is what motivated people to invent clothing. But the native people of the region, the Yamana, didn't wear clothes. You would think that in this neck of the woods they would be covered from head to toe in fur, but instead they ran around smeared in seal grease and body paint.

Our tour guide said that the temperature in winter only goes down to 5C or 6C and that summers generally hover around the 20C to 25C range. Since it doesn't get really cold (like minus 10C below), the seal grease kept them warm. I guess it did because I remember that when swimmers try to cross Lake Ontario, they usually grease themselves up before getting into the cold water.

Glaciers, glaciers everywhere

For some reason, the captain always picks the crack of dawn to pass through some of the most amazing scenery. Today was no exception. I had to get up at 8 am (an unreasonable hour for me) if I wanted to see the Romanche, Alemania, Francia, Italia and Holanda glaciers. As you can guess, these glaciers were all named after various countries.

We spent the next two hours sailing through the fiords, admiring the scenery and keeping an eye out for any interesting wildlife. Of course, since I was up and on the deck, there wasn't an animal to be seen anywhere. The occasional bird flew by, but nothing else bothered to make an appearance. We've been told that once the icebergs show up, there would be seals and penguins on them, so we will have to wait and see if that happens.

Punta Arenas, Chile

Well, we have finally arrived at our last port of call in Chile - Punta Arenas. Way back when, in 1520, the explorer Magellan arrived in these waters and there is a statue in the town square erected to him.
This is the southernmost city in Chile and despite being so far away from everything, it is also one of the most modern. Back in the early 1900s, sheep ranching and the gold rush made millionaires out of some of the people here. Back then, there was no Panama canal, so travelers to California or the Yukon had to sail around South America to get to the gold fields. Punta Arenas was one of the places that they would stop at to load up on supplies and provisions.

Some of those people, notably the Braun and Menendez families, did very well for themselves. They owned practically everything in town including luxury homes like the one pictured above. Downtown Punta Arenas is a mix of modern architecture and these wonderful old buildings.

One of these mansions is now a museum, so I went inside to take a tour of the place. The ground floor has beautiful rooms that are kept just like they were back in 1906.

After exploring the city, I returned to the ship to watch a Chilean folk show. The singers and dancers put on a lively show, but there weren't too many people watching the performance. This is because the passengers with money were out getting up close and personal with penguins.

We are getting pretty close to Antarctica, so there are lots of penguins in the area. Since I had already seen them in Australia, I decided not to spend hundreds of dollars seeing them here. Some passengers paid thousands of dollars ($3300 USD to be exact) to take a plane out to Antarctica to see them. If I had won the lottery, I might have joined them, but unfortunately I didn't win a dime. Instead, I will have to be content to look at them from the bow of the ship when we sail into Antarctic waters in a couple of days.