March 20 - Montevideo

The ship sailed into Montevideo on Sunday evening after dark, and docked just before midnight.  Before going to bed, I went out on the balcony and looked at the lights of Montevideo off the starboard side of the ship, and enjoyed the cool breeze.

This morning I was up around 6:30, final packing, and out of the cabin by 8:00 as required…met Jim and Neil Ann for breakfast on the 2nd deck restaurant, and we were picked up just outside the ship at 9:00 am sharp, to be driven from the port (which is in the Old City) for about 30 minutes to the Sofitel Hotel & Casino way down the beach east of the main part of the City.  We followed the beach road past miles of apartment buildings, and finally it became a bit more residential, until we got to the hotel, right on the beach in the neighborhood called Carrasco.  This hotel/casino was built in the 1920s and is a beautiful old building that looks to me just like it could be in Monte Carlo.

Sofitel Hotel & Casino

Hotel Lobby

After getting checked in, our driver (the same one who had brought us from the ship), took Jim and me for a City tour lasting about 4 hours, and it was just great.  He was full of information, and easily one of the most energetic, enthusiastic people I’ve ever met, and he made the tour a lot of fun.   We started out driving back west towards the Old City, or Ciudad Vieja, through several different neighborhoods, & our first stop was the Estadio Centanario, the main soccer stadium.  The stadium was built in 1930 for the very first FIFA World Cup, which was held that year in Montevideo and won (I think he said) by Uruguay.  Our guide was clearly obsessed by soccer, as we had to circle the stadium twice before he managed to tell us everything there was to know!  The stadium is in a huge park with several other sports facilities, and the beautiful Monumento a la Carreta, which we stopped to look at.

Next stop was the Legislative Palace of Uruguay, the seat of the legislative branch of the national government.  The City of Montevideo has about 1.3 million inhabitants, and the country of Uruguay has about 3.3 million, so this whole country is smaller than the State of Louisiana. 

Next we headed downtown, stopping at the Mercado Agricola, which was beautiful on the outside, but basically just a disappointing modern food court on the inside. 

From there we drove to the City Hall building downtown, and rode an elevator up to the observation deck on the top floor to get a really interesting bird’s eye view of the whole city, harbor, and Rio de la Plata.  Back to street level, we continued into the old city and ended up at Plaza Independencia, where there was a beautiful statue of Gen. Jose Gervasio Artigas, the “father” of Uruguay, in front of the Presidential Office building, which was itself adjacent to one of the old government buildings, the Palacio Estevez.  

Palacio Estevez, the 2nd seat of government

Statue of Gen. Jose Artigas

We toured the exhibit upstairs in the Palacio Estevez, which was primarily about the presidency and the various presidents of Uruguay, and learned about the special Presidential Sash (of which there were numerous examples from Uruguay’s history), the terms of office, etc.  It was very, very interesting.  Underneath and behind the the Artigas statue was the large, very somber mausoleum of Gen. Artigas, which is kept under military guard 24/7 much like we saw in Buenos Aires a few weeks ago at the tomb to San Martin. It was beautiful and very moving.

The Mausoleum of Gen. Artigas

On the east side of the square was the fabulous Palacio Salvo, one of the most architecturally interesting buildings that I’ve ever seen.  Although it’s gotten some TLC in recent years, it seems badly underutilized, especially at the street level.

The Palacio Salvo

Palacio Salvo as seen through the Citadel Gate

There was still more to see!  We walked from the Plaza through one of the citadel gates of the old city, then down a pedestrian mall, to the Plaza de la Constitucion, a beautiful square filled with plane trees and an ornate fountain in the center, another government building (this the original one from the founding of the country in the early 1800s) a big cathedral, and several other beautiful buildings.

The Cabildo, where Uruguay’s Constitution
was signed in 1830

Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception

After this, it was time for lunch, and we were dropped off almost across the street from where we had disembarked the ship earlier in the day at another bit indoor food market where Jim and I did a bit of shopping and then had a HUGE lunch of Uruguayan steak, fries and local beer.  Then it was back to the hotel in Carrasco, via Uber, and I took a quick walk across the road to the beach, and around the beautiful neighborhood of homes and shops behind the hotel.

With 1.3 million inhabitants, I wouldn’t say that Montevideo is a small place, but we kept seeing familiar faces from the ship at almost every place we stopped all day! At this hotel, the group of Australians that we became so friendly with are also staying, totally by chance, so we had one more opportunity tonight to share drinks and dinner (only bar food after that huge lunch) with them.

Finally, since my mother came to this very casino in 1950 during a summer trip to South American with my grandmother and uncle, and she remembers visiting and playing at the casino (even though she was underage), I thought that I should visit the casino myself 73 years later, so I wandered down there, but unfortunately it was just a huge underground maze of slot machines and not all that interesting. The only area even remotely resembling a what I imagined it as were the VIP areas where there were a few table games. Still, the public areas of this hotel are really posh and elegant. I imagine that in 1950 the casino was on the main floor off the lobby in one of those elegant spaces.

So, this ends a fabulous trip to Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay (briefly), Antarctica, South Georgia Island and Uruguay. Tomorrow we head to the airport here for a 1:30 pm flight to São Paulo, then an overnight flight to Dallas, and the final leg back to New Orleans on Wednesday morning. It’ll take a while to process it all (and even longer to process all the photos), but it has truly been the trip of a lifetime. We met many seasoned travelers on this cruise, and almost all of them all agreed that this expedition cruise was the highlight of all their travels. I’ve seen and done things that I never imagined I ever would! A truly amazing experience.

March 16, 17, 18 & 19- Four Days at Sea

After leaving South Georgia Island on Wednesday evening, we headed northwest across the “Roaring Forties” for a four-day stretch at sea.   With no shore excursions to get ready for the next morning, I had stayed up very late Wednesday night and so I got a late start on Thursday.  Still, there was time for a late breakfast, and there were still several events planned each day.  The weather all day Thursday was perfectly clear & sunny, but still frigid temperatures; that night we were able to go on deck and some of the Australians gave us a star tour, including pointing out the Southern Cross, which I hadn’t seen since my 2012 trip to Australia.  During the day, it was still possible to spot seabirds, including albatross, alongside and behind the ship.

Mid-morning on Thursday was the first of a two-part presentation by Jorge, the Expedition Leader, on navigation and the how the problem of longitude was solved (having read Dava Sobel’s book “Longitude” many years ago, I knew the answer already, but it was still interesting to hear it again), and an afternoon lecture on Albatrosses.  On Friday, the second part of the Longitude talk, a talk about krill (more fascinating than you’d imagine), a visit to the Ship’s bridge between 3 and 5 pm, and a Trivia session with all the naturalists in the main lounge that ended up with a tie between two French Teams and an amusing face-off to decide the winner.   You really had to have been sober & paying attention at all the lectures to do well at this. I was on one of the Australian teams, so….

The visit to the bridge was pretty interesting; even though everything was digital & on big screens, there I spotted a whole section of cubbyholes along the rear wall with old-fashioned signal flags, and a big chart table where the ship’s course was being plotted hourly with a ruler and pencil.   Also, they had about a dozen of the finest binoculars up there that I’ve ever used!  I also enjoyed hearing about the ship’s stabilizers that have kept the voyage most comfortable for us.  Apparently this whole trip has been “not too rough” but not exactly smooth sailing either.  All I can say is that except for when we were anchored in protected bays, this ship has never stopped rocking (I’d say moderately) and pitching (seems a lot) since we left Ushuaia.  I’ve learned: don’t walk on the ship with your hands in your pockets, and don’t bend over to pick anything up.  Fortunately, I haven’t had to take any seasickness medicine, nor have I felt even a moment of queasiness.  Anyway, one interesting thing about the stabilizers is that they were using only one, on the side of the ship oppposite the direction of the swell, which does all the work and creates less drag. 

Saturday we had a fantastic morning lecture by Leo, the glaciologist, about life in a polar research station, which was a sometimes harrowing, but really interesting series of stories about his time doing research at a Polish research station in Hornsund, Svalbard.  

As we sailed north, the weather got noticeably milder, and on Saturday, for the first time, people (including us) were able to eat outside on the pool deck at the rear of the ship, and a few were even in the swimming pool, although the water was pretty rough in there.  The Saturday afternoon lecture was all about the science of ice and snow (the naturalists make these talks so much more interesting than they sound, and it’s not just that everybody is desperate for some diversion).  Saturday night was the gala, farewell dinner, and I was flattered to have been invited to join a group of new friends at that.  Before the dinner, everybody went to the theater for a presentation of all the crew members from all the departments - some 156 of them for 170 passengers on this trip (the number of passengers keeps going down, not sure why!).

Sunday was a gorgeous day, and a quiet day of packing and final briefings on the disembarkation process in Montevideo on Monday morning.  Thenaturalists put on a hilarious farewell lecture for us in two versions, one in French and a later one at 10:30 for the larger English-speaking contingent.  They even showed us what was in big plastic barrels that were always just by the landing spot on the shore expeditions (survival gear for up to 100 people in case we were not able to get back to the ship for any reason) and made it funny.

You’d have thought that 4 days at sea with nothing to do would be a total bore, but there was never a dull moment, and it flew by.

Bags were to be outside the cabins by 10:00 pm Sunday night, and disembarkation is to take place from about 7:00 to 9:00 on Monday morning.  Since we are making our own plans for Montevideo, Jim, Neil Ann and I don’t have to be off the ship until the very last group, at 9:00 am.  At that point, the ship begins to get ready for a departure Monday afternoon for a 21-day repositioning cruise to Lisbon, on which there will be only 20 passengers!

March 15 - Afternoon; Grytviken

When everybody was back on board from Fortuna Bay, the ship sailed southeast back down the coast to Grytviken for the final stop of the cruise before heading back to Uruguay.  

Although the old whaling station has been abandoned since the mid-1960s, there are some administrative offices in modern buildings at the entrance to the bay, as well as a post office, museum and the only public bathroom we’ve seen since Ushuaia.  Most significantly (for me), just down the beach, there’s a small cemetery containing the grave of Sir Ernest Shackleton.

The Zodiac landing spot was to the left of the remains of the town, at the bottom of a long, muddy walkway leading up to the cemetery, so that was the first stop upon getting off the ship.

Walking up to the Cemetery

An apt, but modest resting spot
for such an illustrious explorer

At Shackleton’s Grave

View of Grytviken from in front of the cemetery

Another view from in front of the cemetery

The town, if you could call it that, consisted of a lot of rusting storage tanks, sheds and equipment lying around, the whole place having been taken over by seals (but no penguins).  Farther on there was a small post office and gift shop. From here I purchased (using Apple Pay, which worked great even here!) a postcard and mailed it to my parents back in New Orleans (p.s. it arrived in NOLA something like 2 months later!!). There was also an interesting museum all about the history of the island and with a room dedicated to Shackleton.   Behind the buildings, set off by itself, was the old church, which was open for us to walk into and look around.

After we had seen everything there was to see and do here, it was time for our last Zodiac ride back to the ship, which sailed at 5:00 pm towards Montevideo.  There followed a very long evening of cocktails with new friends, a long dinner, and then more drinks and conversation until around 1:00 am.  For the first time, there’s nothing on the agenda for the next four days at sea, other than sleeping late, a series of lectures, and increasingly warm weather as we head north.

March 15 - Morning; Fortuna Bay

For our last day in South Georgia, we had two expeditions planned, one in early morning (Red Group disembarked at 7:10 am) at Fortuna Bay, and the second one in mid-afternoon at Grytviken.  Breakfast was available starting at 6:00 am in the 3rd Floor lounge, which is where we gather to put on our boots and parkas before heading out on deck to board the Zodiacs.  The landing was a wide flat beach full of King Penguin and seal activity.  In fact, there were so many inquisitive penguins and seals at the landing site, it was hard to get off the Zodiacs without stepping on one.

To the left of the landing spot the beach extended towards a winding stream of glacial runoff, and way beyond that was a large King Penguin colony.  It was about a 20-minute walk through the rocks, across streams and grassy meadows, surrounded by high mountains on the right and the bay on the left.  Hundreds of mother and pup seals dotted the meadow, and the little ones were so inquisitive and endearing.  They would come right up to us, with absolutely no fear whatsoever, and follow us along as we walked towards the colony.  On the left, penguins trudged along with us to and from the water.

When we got the actual colony, there was a steep little hill off to the side, which we climbed up to get a good view of the whole area.  This is considered a “small” colony.  We saw lots of them still incubating eggs, as well as many fluffy brown chicks, but since this is relatively late in the season, our naturalists told us that these chicks would probably all have difficulty surviving the coming winter since they were so late.  The sights, sounds (and smells) were just amazing.

We walked along their “penguin highway”
back to the colony from the beach

Looking across the whole colony from up on a little hill;
9,000 breeding pairs in there

Here there are several adults incubating eggs;
Also a bunch of fluffy, brown chicks in the center of the photo

After returning to the ship, there was still time to grab a late breakfast and regroup while we sailed to Grytviken for the final expedition ashore, later in the afternoon.

March 14 - Gold Harbor & Ocean Harbor

This morning we were anchored off the northeast coast of South Georgia Island at Gold Harbor, and from this ship it was already possible to see that they hadn’t been kidding when they said that we’d see penguins today.  All along the beach, there were tens of thousands of penguins, maybe hundreds of thousands, and it was also easy to pick out the huge Elephant Seals lazing on the beach.

Our first view of Gold Harbor and all the Penguins

The Red Group was called to the Zodiac deck at the stern of the ship (they call is the “Marina”) for a 9:40 disembarkation, and Jim & I were there in time to get in the first Zodiac.  It was a longer, and much rougher ride across to the landing spot than usual, and although there was a wide sandy beach, the surf made it probably the hardest landing yet.  

But we made it and then were rewarded with 90 minutes ashore amidst the most amazing spectacle of penguins and seals that you could imagine.  Almost all were King Penguins, with a very few Gentoo Penguins here and there.   The black, white, orange and yellow plumage of the Kings was just magnificent in the sun, and there were penguins as far as the eye could see.  Hundreds of thousands at least.  To the right of the landing spot was a cluster of enormous, napping Elephant Seal males, I counted at least 25.  Closer to the beach were smaller seals, and of course the penguins everywhere.  Then to the right of the landing spot was the bulk of the colony, so thick with penguins and seabirds that you couldn’t have gotten through even if you wanted to.  The penguins were pretty fearless, walking right up to within a couple of feet of you….while you were looking in one direction and taking photos, more penguins would come up from behind to inspect what was going on.

Towards the left behind the beach was a shallow, gravelly stream of glacial melt that some of us walked through to get a vantage point (still standing in the stream) from behind the main colony.  On the land side of the stream were clumps of Tussock Grass, which if you looked closely, hid smaller seals that were mostly napping.  And everywhere around was the sound of the penguins, the big Elephant Seals bellowing, and the smaller seals playing.  

After our 90-minute allotment, it was back in the Zodiac, which again wasn’t easy, then back to the ship in pretty choppy water.  This time, for the first time, the seas at the unloading platform were pretty rough, so the Zodiac was rising up and down pretty dramatically, which made it hard to step off onto the ship, but with one crew member holding on to each arm, and some good timing, everybody managed to transfer safely, then up a few stairs to the boot washing and pressure washing station, up another flight to the check-in spot (the parkas have a little clear plastic window on the left sleeve where you put your cabin card, which has a bar code that they scan when you leave and return to the  ship).  Next are several  bootjacks to help get the big rubber boots off, then inside to the lounge for hot cocoa!

Here are a bunch of photos and videos from the morning outing:

This was the first photo that I gook after stepping off the Zodiac

The colors of the King Penguin plumage in the sunlight was just amazing

We were told that this was a group of not-fully-adult
male Elephant Seals, but they looked plenty big!

If you look closely, you can see some of the
fluffy, brown chicks mixed into this crowd 

During lunch, the ship repositioned up the coast to Ocean Harbor, where our afternoon excursion would take place. Along the way we were, of course treated to some spectacular views of the coastline off the port side -

Arriving at Ocean Harbor, the ship dropped anchor right outside the cove, and it was warm enough on deck to be out in the sun in short sleeves.  The Zodiacs ashore started a little after 4:00 pm, but at 4:00 pm they had offered a “hike” up to a viewpoint overlooking the harbor, and although they did their best to warn everybody that it would be arduous, I signed up anyway.  

We landed on the beach surrounded by hundreds of the cutest little seal pups playing in the surf and on the beach.  The pups were really endearing, looking up at us with their huge eyes, and approaching with no fear whatsoever, wanting to check us out or play.   The beach led up to a broad grassy expanse in which there was an old hut and some rusty old machinery.  It looked pretty normal until you looked closely and realized that the field was just with seals for as far as the eye could see.  Most of these seals were mothers and pups, but there were a few larger males, and a group of about three huge male Elephant Seals who were napping together in the sun.

The hike was indeed arduous, mostly because we were all layered up with parkas and hats from the Zodiac ride, so it didn’t take long for everyone to get hot, so we stopped and peeled layers off.  We trudged up the slope through boggy grass, across little pebbly streams, and finally past the point of any vegetation, and then across rocky scree for as far as you could see.  Despite the difficulty of the climb, just about everybody made it to the top, although we were all pretty bedraggled by the time we got there.   They told us that the climb was about 300 meters, or 1,000 feet, but even though it was tough, it didn’t feel like that much.  Anyway, here are some photos from the afternoon:

In the Zodiac, headed to Ocean Harbor & the hike

Look closely, there are seals everywhere

Seal pups and a Giant Petrel

The big bull seals all taking a nap together

The ship hoisted anchor as soon as everybody was back on board, and we’re headed up the coast again for an early morning stop at Fortuna Bay, then the old whaling station at Grytviken.  Two shore excursions tomorrow, weather permitting, and then we leave South Georgia Island and head for Montevideo.