I think it's finally going to happen!

It’s a new year and nearly time for a voyage that has been in the works for nearly three years. My late husband and I had planned an Antarctic cruise in December 2020 to celebrate our 50th anniversary, a little late but close enough.  Events intervened; he passed away and Covid brought the travel world to a halt.  In early 2021 I saw that the same exact cruise was being offered on the same exact dates and I thought it was karma.  I booked it and  felt certain that Al would be with me in spirit.  Once again Covid stepped in and the cruise was canceled.  Then in November, 2021, while I was on my first solo cruise, I saw that the Seabourn Quest (the first Seabourn ship we sailed on) was doing a circumnavigation of South America which included Antarctica and South Georgia.  It was 79 days long and I wasn’t sure I would like to be on a ship or away from home that long.  Then I noticed that I could take a 58-day portion of it beginning in Chile.  It was still long, but that seemed a little better, so I booked it.

Now I’m only three weeks from finally getting to go.  Hooray!  I’m going to spend a couple of nights in Santiago, Chile, and then I’ll be on my way.  Along the way besides spending several days in Antarctica and a couple in both South Georgia and the Falklands, I’ll be making a trip up the Amazon before ending in Miami in late March.  My biggest challenge now is figuring out how to stuff all the clothing I’ll need in my suitcases. I know everyone says to layer, but unfortunately the long underwear and fleece lined things to stay warm in Antarctica don’t translate well to the Amazon region. I’m up to the challenge though, and everything will get stuffed in somewhere.  In the next few days I’m going to get a variety of shots that are recommended particularly for travel in Brazil.  I get to be a pincushion, but once I’ve gotten them I should be good to go.

I’ve been around Cape Horn twice, once with Al and once with Katie.  Both times it was calm which is not always the norm for those waters. On both of those cruises we took a shore excursion involving flights to a Chilean base on one of the South Shetland Islands where we landed on the gravel runway and spent the day visiting the science stations and penguin colony there. The plane was a four-engine prop job seating 38 passengers.  On the trip with Al we had three pilots and a mechanic with us.  I’m not sure what exactly the mechanic could have done if we broke down, but there he was.  When we took off for our return to Punta Arenas, I remember that the pilot told all the guys on the plane to come up to the front  to distribute the weight the way he wanted it.  When the plane lifted off and we looked out the window, we saw that the runway ended in a sheer drop-off with a bay full of icebergs below.  It was spectacular! 

Well, this time I’m going further south, and if the weather cooperates, I’ll actually get to set foot on the Antarctic Peninsula.  Several people I know recommended reading a book about Ernest Shackleton and his Antarctic expedition in 1914-1916. The book they recommended is Endurance by Alfred Lansing.  I just finished it a few days ago and it was one of the most fascinating books I’ve read in a long time.  It was written in the 50’s when some of the expedition members were still alive and the author interviewed them and had access to their journals. If you want to know how people with a will to live find the way to survive in the worst of circumstances, it’s a book well worth reading.

Anyway, I’ll begin my saga in a couple of weeks and hopefully I’ll get lots of good pictures along the way.  Happy New Year everyone