D-Day for Departure to Antarctica

King George Island here we come!

The day dawned, the 6:30m wake-up call from Ted did not eventuate, and everyone started to filter down to breakfast.  At 7:15am Ted rushed in with the news that there was a very narrow window of opportunity to depart, and we needed to be ready to leave at 7:30am!  Plenty of pastries, hurriedly put-together ham and cheese sandwiches and fruit were put together for later as everyone rushed upstairs to get packing.

Of course, South American time meant that the buses scheduled to arrive at 7:30am did not arrive until 8:15am, by which time a few anxious checks of watches were starting to happen.  However, the luggage and people loading went smoothly, and a short ride to the airport had everyone inside checking in by 9am.  The big concern, and the subject of numerous emails and conversations for months beforehand, was the 20kg/44lb luggage weight restriction on the plane going to Antarctica.  Those of us with lots of camera gear were getting a bit antsy, however the previous evening’s reassurance that the carry-on luggage did not usually get weighed, together with seeing our illustrious leaders piling all the check-in luggage in a pile near the counter, to “average out the weight”, was a great relief.

There were two planes heading down that morning, and they must have taken off with about 10 minutes difference between them.  We had boarding passes, but once on the plane it was free-for-all seating, and within minutes we were off! The two-hour flight down was easy, and we didn’t get much of a glimpse of land until we were just about to touch-down on the gravel runway.

KGI is a Chilean base, with a big landing strip made up of “gravel” which is really an accumulation of bits and pieces of all the rocks around the place.  They allow anyone to use the runway – today there were some Argentine personnel returning to their base, as well as the 100 tourists and staff getting ready to board the Akademik Sergei Vavilov.

This was no easy feat – everyone had to walk along the gravel road for about half an hour, through the Chilean base, down to the beach, where zodiacs were waiting to transport staff, passengers and fresh provisions to the Vavilov, anchored quite some way off the beach.  A very quick, sink or swim lesson on how to get into a zodiac off the beach, and how to get off the zodiac at the gangway, and everyone was finally settled into their cabins, bags unpacked, and ready to start the adventure.

________________________________________________________________
Sent via Satellite Phone using Shipboard Email

Punta Arenas (Sandy Point)

We have arrived in Punta Arenas, the capital city of Chile's southernmost region. Located on the Brunswick Peninsula north of the Strait of Magellan, it was originally established in 1848 as a small penal colony. It has been called the “city of the red roofs”, due to the proliferation of red-painted metal roofs.  These days the roofs are multi-coloured, as are the walls of the town, which are covered in murals and graffiti (street art graffiti is becoming quite the signature in South America!)

I felt like putting a few people behind bars after the debacle that was our trip from Santiago to Punta Arenas.  After our unhappy experience with the Santiago airport-hotel transfer, we were determined that was not going to happen again!  A phone call the night before gave us the assurance that our driver would be on time, which was critical as we were departing on a 6:40am flight.  The transfer was for 4:45am; at 4:40am the hotel received a phone call from the driver saying he would be there in 15 minutes!  At 6:05am the driver rang to say he was 5 minutes away, as he had “a flat tyre”.  Of course, the sod had slept in!

Fortunately, at that time of the morning on a Saturday, there was very little traffic, and the airport is only about a half hour drive, so we arrived in plenty of time to drop our bags (we were clever enough to check online). Travelling with LAN, we found our gate – at least we thought it was – I saw Gate 21 on the monitor, Tim saw Gate 27, we went to 21 and checked with the staff at the desk, who said yes, we were at the correct gate.  That flight was actually going to Easter Island, a small detail discovered as they tried to scan my boarding pass.  A quick run to Gate 27, we found many people milling around, with huge camera backpacks (perhaps I was one of them??!!)

So, we stood, waiting, waiting, waiting, the time for departure passed, still waiting, then the announcement of a change of gate.  So off we all ran, downstairs to the gates where you have to get on the shuttle to go out to the plane. Again, we were waiting, waiting, waiting, until another announcement that we needed to go back to Gate 27!  By that time I was starting to get alerts from LAN on my phone, with the final alarming one saying “Please change your reservation”!  We were told that the departure would be now be delayed until 8:30am (which we brushed off with a “pfft”, as by now it was about 7:30am and we had been awake since 4am!)  At 7:45am, another announcement, another change of gate, back downstairs, this time for keeps, and we were on the plane and flying by 9am.

We arrived in Punta Arenas, certain that our luggage would not make it, and that our transfer had given up and gone home. Our driver was waiting for us!  SHE had the common sense to check the flight arrival times, and our luggage was first off the plane!! The drama did not finish there, however; the flight was continuing on to Mount Pleasant (a British army base in the Falklands), which is where all the heavy camera gear people were going.  Just as we were disembarking, the stewardess announced that the flight to Mount Pleasant had been cancelled, due to “meteorological effects”. We left an unlucky LAN person trying to find overnight accommodation for around 50 people.  As it turns out, touching base with Ted and Scott, my buddies at Cheeseman's Ecology Safaris (with whom I am travelling, and writing the ship's log for), Scott emailed me to say he was stranded with his group in Stanley, the capital of the Falklands, waiting for the weather to lighten up (it's the wind!)  Hopefully they will arrive safely on Sunday.

The positive outcome of all this was that when we arrived at our hotel, Cabo de Hornos, our rooms were ready!  The joys of travelling in South America – I felt right at home!

Sydney to Santiago

QF27 to Santiago 747-400 is the direct flight of around 12 hours and 40 minutes, arriving at around lunch time in Santiago.  After an easy flight, and, in Tim's words, "including a great view of the coastal regions of Chile (great rivers, snow-capped mountains and volcanoes, beaches and farm land) for the hour or so before landing", we arrived in Santiago only half an hour behind schedule.  Then, having smoothly negotiated the payment of the reciprocity fee, immigration and customs, and quickly collecting our baggage, we then found that our hotel transfer wasn't there and, when contacted by the very helpful officials, turned out to be more time away than the time it took to get from the city to the airport.

It was a relief to finally arrive without mishap at the Hotel Ismael 312, conveniently located in the Barrio Lastarria.

Pros

• direct from Sydney to Santiago
• 12 hour flight means you don't need to change your watch (although you arrive at approximately the same time as you left!)
• Last minute change of plane meant we lost all our seats, but managed to get all 3 of us in the upstairs Business Class cabin
• QANTAS pajamas!
• Plenty of time to wallow in the Business Class lounge at Sydney Airport, which was just as well as we needed to have breakfast
• Only 24 people in the top cabin and there are 2 toilets!

Cons

• Plane was delayed an hour due to late arrival
• Seppelts champagne in the lounge??
• This plane was clearly not one of the refurbished ones, and the seats are NOT flat lying (they were in the original plane!)
• Updated amenities packs are pretty ordinary compared to those you get on Emirates (but there ARE pajamas)
• Waiting over an hour at Santiago airport for our long ago booked transfer.

Food

• Salad of Roasted eggplant with haloumi, buckwheat, pomegranate and palm sugar vinaigrette
• Herb panko crumbed chicken breast with soft polenta, braised silverbeet and capsicum sauce
• Vanilla panna cotta with strawberry salsa and pistachio wafers

The Great South America and Antarctica Expedition 2018

...or, as it will from now on be referred to as, GSAaAE!

The plan will be to start at 9am in the morning with champagne in the company of a Ballpoint Penguin (Tim) and mate (Pam).

Actually it hasn't started with champagne, as the bar is closed!  Probably they think it unwise to have it open at breakfast time, so we will have to wait until we get on the plane to toast our upcoming adventures.

Bags are loaded (mine is 25 kg with all my Antarctic gear in it - but TnP have space to rearrange for our limited luggage constraints on the flight down to Antarctica from Punta Arenas). Pam has already left her phone at the luggage drop (at least I have not yet left my passport anywhere), and now retrieved it, and we are happily sitting in the Business Class lounge at Perth Airport for our flight to Sydney.

QF580 to Sydney 737-800 - this will be Flight 1 of 10 flights in our GSAaAE, with an overnight in Sydney before Flight 2 to Santiago tomorrow.  The 737-800 is one of those planes which has those nasty dated red vinyl seats in Business class, with the 12 seats in a 2:2 configuration.  However, not complaining, because, you know, Business Class!

Unfortunately, the happiness displayed on Tim's face in the photo above did not stay long, as his guitar was swiped from him at the plane entrance and consigned to the cargo hold, because "these 737's just don't have the locker space of other planes".  As it turned out, a big fib!
The food for lunch was good, but the steward got a bit confused when I asked for the cheese to be served at the same time as the soup.

To overcome the stress of having to deal with the steward's stress, I listened to classical music all the way! This was just as well, because after arriving at the Domestic Terminal and successfully negotiating the T-Bus to the International Terminal, and our final overnight sleep at the Rydges Hotel, we found out that they had no record of our booking!  Our first glitch was fairly easily rectified by successfully booking rooms, followed by a recovery gin and tonic on the roof bar of the hotel!

In Summary
Pros

• Cheese
• T1 shuttle bus from Domestic to International airport is free, takes 10 minutes, and drops you 100m from the Rydges Hotel.
• Less than 5 minute walk to the International Departures
• Beds and pillows at the Rydges were very comfortable
• Best thing was the Rooftop bar with a great view over the airport and runways
• 2 Bombays and a Tanqueray to start the journey

Cons

• fronting up to the airport hotel in Sydney to find that no rooms had actually been booked though we were all very clear which hotel we were going to!

Leave it to Beaver

I was trying to fill up some spare time before getting on the ship, so researched day trips you could do from Ushuaia. 

I thought I might do a tour to see the beavers, as I know absolutely nothing about them, except that they are better builders of dams than human engineers. However, I then found out that beavers are considered vermin here in Tierra del Fuego. I would have been doing the equivalent of a tour to see the cane toads in Queensland, or the rats in South Georgia!  Yikes! 

Having said that, tourist-wise, beavers are a big deal down here.

Hotel Arakur Inside and from the Inside

The Holy Elevator

The lifts in the Hotel Arakur are clad in a scented wood called "Palo Santo", or "Holy Wood".  

Bursera graveolens is a wild tree native from Mexico and the Yucatán Peninsula to Peru and Venezuela, that inhabits the South American Gran Chaco region (northern Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia and the Brazilian Mato Grosso). It is also found in Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and on the Galápagos Islands. The tree belongs to the same family (Burseraceae) as frankincense and myrrh (so Google tells me).

Palo Santo oil was used during the time of the Incas for its reputed spiritual purifying properties. Today, Palo Santo essential oil is traditionally used for relieving common colds, flu symptoms, stress, asthma, headaches, anxiety, depression, inflammation, emotional pain and more.

Part of the citrus family, this sweetly scented wood has sweet notes of pine, mint and lemon.

I take deep breaths every time I step into the lift!  It reminds me of our sandalwood.