It has almost been a month since we arrived back home from this adventure. We have had time to ponder our experience and have a few thoughts to share as we officially bring this trip to a close after this post. First up is Stephanie’s health. She has fully recovered from her bout with Covid, and we are hopeful that there are no long term side effects from having it. …
We have been home for several days now, and have about fully recovered from the long travel home. Unfortunately, Stephanie was diagnosed with Covid this past Friday after taking her twice weekly PCR test at work on Thursday. She has mild symptoms so far, and as of today, I have not caught it from her, I took a PCR Test two days ago, and I am waiting on the results. …
We are booked to take an Antarctic Expedition Cruise because we watched the Smithsonian Channel and they showed a two hour special on an Antarctic Cruise through a company called Hurtigruten Expeditions. The show featured the MS Roald Amundsen, and it looked fantastic. It was something we had considered doing for a while, and had gained interest again when we had some friends go on a Viking Antarctic Expedition Cruise…
AS a continuation of our last post, we were barely back from our Transatlantic Cruise on Viking Ocean Cruises when we received an email from Viking about a sale on their Expedition Cruises to Antarctica. It was a short 5 day sale, and included free airfare for several dates in January and February of 2023, just a few weeks away. After we did some research, and determined that we really…
As mentioned in the previous post, we paid an additional fee so that we could choose our flights from Columbia, SC to Buenos Aires, Argentina for this trip. We initially chose a departure date for the trip of Saturday, February 4, 2023. This would give us an arrival in Buenos Aires on the morning of February 5, 2023. I had originally chosen this date because there were more available seats…
We thought we would add a little bit of information about our Expedition Ship, The Viking Octantis. The Octantis was launched in 2022, and is the sister ship to the Viking Polaris, also launched in 2022. Both of these do expedition cruises to the Antarctic during the southern hemisphere summer, and also cruise in the Great Lakes in the USA during the northern hemisphere summer. There are other voyages available…
Below is the Itinerary for the trip. It has been updated after we returned home in the “Notes” section with the actual locations we stopped on the days listed as “Explore Antarctica” on the Itinerary we originally received from Viking.
We have one week before we leave for Buenos Aires. We have been busy with non-travel related issues, mainly with both of our Mom’s. Stephanie’s mom had a brief setback last week, but now she is home and doing better. My mom is fine other than her memory, we are just having some problems with the company we hired that provides her with a caregiver for four hours each day. …
We leave on this adventure tomorrow, and we are just about ready to go. We did our packing last night and were surprised that we got near to our desired weight of 40 pounds per suitcase on the first attempt. My suitcase weighed 39.4 pounds and Stephanie’s suitcase weighed 41.2 pounds. It was not easy, we really had to think about how much clothing we needed. Knowing we have the…
It was nice knowing we did not have to get up for an early flight today, our first flight to Dallas Ft.-Worth Airport does not depart until 4:41 PM. We both slept in a little until Sophie, our cat, did her normal routine of kitty meows at about 7:15 AM. That is about as late as we get from her, she wants her breakfast. I got up and fed Sophie…
This post picks up from our previous post where we are heading to Customs and Immigration in the Buenos Aires Airport. We arrived to the immigration area and saw that there was quite a long line for “Foreigners”, which we are here. There were quite a few Immigration Officers working, but obviously, we were not the only flight to have arrived this morning. We saw a shorter line to the…
For some unknown reason, we slept like babies last night, neither of us budged until I woke up around 6:00 AM. It was getting daylight outside, but just barely. I headed back to sleep until the sun was really up and it was a lot brighter outside at 8:00 AM when I decided to get up. I went ahead and showered. Afterwards I woke up Stephanie so she could get…
Today we transition to the Hilton Hotel and officially start the Viking Expedition Cruise Package. After all of the walking for the last two days, yesterday afternoon we decided not to do a lot this morning other than walk to the Hilton Hotel, which is about a 17 minute walk from our current hotel. We needed to do a little repacking of our suitcases, just to get everything back into…
We had a really short night of sleep last night. We had set alarms for 2:45 AM, and had also called in a wake up call to the front desk. We just wanted to have some redundancy to take any worries away. Unfortunately, for some reason, neither of us slept well at all. We tried to go to sleep about 9:00 PM, but it was just too early. We wanted…
We slept great last night, even though it was a bit of a bumpy ride. Once we got out of some of the protected areas leaving Ushuaia, it had gotten a little rougher. Not bad, but it was noticeable even though we were sleeping. I woke up about 6:00 AM and it was already pretty bright outside. We do not know what time the sunrise was, but only a layer…
Today we are making an unscheduled stop in Fournier Bay. We have been able to cross the Drake Passage quicker than scheduled, so we will be stopping in Fournier Bay starting about 1:00 PM this afternoon. Later today, once we get to Fournier Bay, we will be doing a Zodiac Cruise. We woke up about 7:00 AM, and it was cloudy and rainy outside. Stephanie is still having some issues…
Today our stop is on Elephant Point, named because of the Elephant Seals that reside there, along with some Gentoo penguins. Elephant Point at the south extremity of the west half of Livingston Island. Our Zodiac Landing was scheduled for 8:20AM, so we set a wake up call for 6:30 AM. It was already daylight at around 5:00 AM when I first woke up and looked out the large window. …
Today we are at Half Moon Island, which is a Chinstrap Penguin and Fur Seal habitat. Chinstrap penguins have a small black line under their chins, hence the “chinstrap” name. Yesterday, we mostly only saw Gentoo Penguins on Elephant Island, as well as the fur seals and elephant seals. We set an alarm for 6:20 AM so we could get ready and then get dressed into our Expedition Gear for…
HAPPY VALENTINES DAY! Today, we are stopping at Enterprise Island and Wilhelmina Bay. There is no landing for today, there is only scenic activities in the water around this area. It is known for having been a weather protected location where whaling boats came to process the whales. We slept in a little this morning because our first activity is a submarine ride at 10:30 AM. We did not need…
Today we stopped an an area called Mikkelsen Harbour. Like many of the areas we have been, it was used by whalers to process their catch of whales. It is surrounded by mountains, so it is fairly protected from the wind. What was the best about this morning was that the sunshine was starting to peak through the clouds. We were supposed to have a nice sunny day here, the…
Today, we were awoken by bright sunshine streaming through our window at 4:30 AM. It was nice to finally have a really sunny morning but it was very bright and way too early for the sun to be that intense. We almost used our electric blind on the large window to block out the sun, but did not, just closing our shear curtain instead. At a much more reasonable 6:15…
Today is the last day of the expeditions for this cruise in Antarctica. We were scheduled to go to an area called Chiriguano Bay. The Octantis ship has never visited this area before, so we were excited. The sister ship, Polaris only visited here for the first time on their last cruise a week or so ago. When I woke up at around 6:00 AM, it was really snowing…
As the Captain had said yesterday, it was a little bumpy overnight last night as we started the Drake Passage crossing to return to Ushuaia. The seas were not terrible, but it was rough enough for our large window to constantly make a rubbing noise, which was a little irritating. Since we did not have any excursions today, I was able to sleep in until about 7:30 AM, before I…
This morning at around 8:00 AM, we will round Cape Horn, the well known monument to the sailors of the past, many of which did not survive the passage. There was an announcement made yesterday that there will be hot chocolate, coffee, Baily’s and Bloody Mary’s served as we “Round the Horn”. We set an alarm for 7:20 AM, but I was up before that and looked out the window. …
Today is likely to be the worst day of this adventure. It is sad to be leaving the Viking Octantis after a wonderful cruise, but we are not excited at all about our extremely long travel schedule to get home. We estimate that it will take roughly 31 hours to get home once we leave our cabin this morning at 7:50 AM. We set alarms for 6:15 AM just to…