Somehow it seems wrong to set the alarm when on vacation, but yesterday it was worth it. We got up at 6:30 to see a gorgeous sail in towards the Amalia Glacier. It was cloudy and quite chilly (cold) but just as we arrived at the glacier the sun came out to shine on it. The ship stayed there doing 360's for about an hour. The rest of the day was a relaxing sea day. It has been too cold for us to do much outside. Hopefully it will warm up after we get around Cape H...

Our start to the day in Puerto Montt was again interesting. I had organized a tour for ourselves and 20 other Cruise Critic members to go to the ski area on Orsono Volcano, see Petrohue Falls, and visit the city of Puerto Veras which is on the 2nd largest lake in South America. Puerto Montt is a tender port so getting us all off early on the same tender was a bit of a challenge. It was a good group and we pulled it off. Then it got very interesting and we were lu...

After 6 flights, 6 hotels, 10 days and 1 great time we are on board the Crown Princess. Now we can unpack and get some laundry done. Boarding was interesting. We had a nice breakfast on the terrace of our Valparaiso hotel. The climate there is a lot like San Francisco – usually foggy and cool in the morning but it was sunny this day. We caught a cab to the cruise terminal and got there about 10:30 where we were informed that there was a work stoppage at the...

We are in our hotel room in Valparaiso. Tomorrow we board the Crown Princess. It's hard to believe the 1st part of the trip is done. Today I had arranged for a local guide to pick us, and 4 other couples from Cruise Critic, up at various hotels in Santiago, go on a tour of the area, and then drop us off at various hotels in Valparaiso where we board the ship. Michael the German Pirate is an East German ex pat who has lived in Valparaiso for about 20 years. We kne...

After getting a few hours sleep we got up and still caught the end of the hotel buffet breakfast. We love the Magnolia Hotel - it is a small boutique hotel with only about 40 rooms located in the main shopping district. We planned to do a walking tour in the afternoon so we headed out to find where we were to meet the tour. We walked around the very busy downtown shopping area for over an hour. It was very clean and modern and looked just like most North American...