Tuesday 9th February Sea pretty calm & a pleasant day at sea. The Arcadia is about 80k tons & is incredibly smooth so that one hardly feels any motion. The decor is modern without being obtrusive & the hotel staff is largely Indian while the officers are English as are the majority of passengers. There are quite a few Australians also & we were surprised how many people had joined the ship in Valparaiso. Lunch & breakfast are buffet style o...

Monday 8th February. After breakfast we west off for Valparaiso at about 9.45 in a private car. The route took us out past the airport & our driver pointed out various places on the way. The highway is mainly a toll road which we had been on before when we visited Santiago on a day trip from Valparaiso in 2011. We passed an incredible number of buses at intervals making their way to Santiago, as apparently some people work there but live in Valparaiso. The r...

Thursday 4th February Anna took us to the airport & we took the midnight horror to Sydney. This was fairly painless & we were having a coffee there by 6.30am. Friday 5th February Transited to the International Terminal in Sydney & waited for our flight at 11.30am on LAN via Auckland. The flight was virtually full in a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, which proved to be less of a 'dream' than we had hoped. The seats were very closely spaced, seemed relatively...