Petermann Island (-65.1706258, -64.1435135) The drama of the Drake Passage has been forgotten. We are here. The excitement was, certainly in our cabin, palpable. From the moment we booked this trip in March 2019, it seemed neither real or possible that we would ever actually make it to Antarctica. Suffice it to say we were booted, spurred and trussed up like waterproof chickens much earlier than we needed to be. But excited! And keen! We made our first landi...

Sometimes four days can snap by in minutes - sometimes it feels like months. In this case it's arguable. There was a lot of busy busy, then a fair bit of hurry up and wait. With a solid dose of utter misery and a doctor's visit thrown in for good measure. Big four days. Huge. We, and our veritable shed load of luggage, taxied over to the Hilton Buenos Aires around 11.30 am on 12 Jan, We did the checkin paperwork, left all four pieces of big luggage with the p...

There's an adage in the travelling world that if you absolutely loved a place when you visited… don't go back. You're risking all those glowing memories. But sometimes it makes sense to go back. There was only one transatlantic cruise and it plopped us down in Buenos Aires which is where we needed to be - albeit 5 weeks sooner than we needed to be there. Financially the cruise and the Airbnb together was still around half the cost of two flights - and we n...

Cruise Day 15, 6 December - Port Day / Rio de Janeiro - My oh my! We never thought we'd visit Rio so were pretty excited - like a bagful of kittens (but in a good way!) So much so we got up a bit early and went to the top deck to witness the ship's arrival in Rio. Beautiful overcast day, calm waters and sliding into port with views of Christ the Redeemer in one direction and Sugarloaf Mountain in the other. Just beautiful. We had breakfast and eventually joined o...

Cruise Day 13, 4 December - Port Day / Salvador de Bahia - Singing Hot, hot, hot! 'Twas the day of hurry up and wait. We ventured off more or less on time (Yes! Wifi! Managed to email our medical forms to a ship's staff member who promised to try and get them printed for us.) First stop was the Church of Sao Boafim, quite moving with the thousands of colourful prayer/wish bracelets/ribbons strung from the railings of the church. There was also a mass in progre...