ARGENTINA | Friday, 13 Dec 2024 | Views [41]
WE THOUGHT WE HAD BEEN TO MONTEVIDEO in 2012 when in fact we had taken the ferry from Buenos Aires to Colonia del Sacramento, over one hundred miles away. No wonder we weren’t impressed!
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FALKLAND ISLANDS | Tuesday, 10 Dec 2024 | Views [36]
FOR GREAT BRITAIN THE FALKLAND ISLANDS are strategic. For Argentina Islas Malvinas are a matter of Pride. For Oosterdam , it’s all about penguins! Colonies of Gentoo and Magellanic Penguins—even some King Penguins—nest on the islands ... Read more >
FALKLAND ISLANDS | Tuesday, 10 Dec 2024 | Photo Gallery
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ARGENTINA | Monday, 9 Dec 2024 | Views [47]
WE ARE OFFICIALLY “MOSSBACKS” and have the right to wear a hoop earring in our left ear. “Rounding the Horn” doesn’t have the same significance today that it did in the days of wooden sailing ships—especially today-... Read more >
CHILE | Sunday, 8 Dec 2024 | Views [30]
HISTORICALLY—BEFORE THE PANAMA CANAL—the main reason to go to Punta Arenas was to continue on to somewhere else. Magellan and his fleet didn’t tarry long, leaving only his name. Ernest Shackleton, Raold Amundsen and Robert Falcon Scott ... Read more >
CHILE | Friday, 6 Dec 2024 | Views [91]
EVEN FOUR DECKS UP, SPRAY FROM the bow streamed down our balcony windows. Oosterdam had been fighting gale-force winds and three-meter waves since we sailed back into the Pacific. Everyone was weaving like winos on a Friday night and the west wind ... Read more >
CHILE | Wednesday, 4 Dec 2024 | Views [34]
IN A PERFECT WORLD WE WOULD stick around this part of Patagonia for a week or so—I would also be twenty years younger. Puerto Varas on Lago Llanquihue is the adventure center for hiking, birding and fishing but to get here you first have to go ... Read more >
CHILE | Sunday, 1 Dec 2024 | Views [35]
PUERTO COQUIMBO LOOKED BETTER at dawn with its signature stick-figure concrete cross lighted than when we went ashore later Saturday morning. And in morning’s light we could see some of the wrecks that littered the harbor—another reason to ... Read more >
PERU | Wednesday, 27 Nov 2024 | Views [38]
CALLAO IS A PORT FOR CARGO SHIPS and Oosterdam stood out like an evening gown at Walmart. We docked around 2 PM Sunday and would be in port until Tuesday evening, just time enough for the well-heeled to take the Holland America excursion to Machu Picchu ... Read more >
ECUADOR | Tuesday, 26 Nov 2024 | Views [45]
THERE’S NOTHING LIKE WAKENING to the smell of fish—and I don’t mean kippers! We are in Manta, the largest port in Ecuador, also the Tuna Capital of South America. There is no special pier for cruise ships so we are moored among the ... Read more >
PANAMA | Monday, 18 Nov 2024 | Views [78]
THE PANAMA CANAL IS AN ENGINEERING MARVEL with a touch of political chicanery and a soupçon of colonialism thrown in for flavor. It was prohibitively expensive to build at the beginning of the Twentieth Century, both in dollars and lives lost ... Read more >
COLOMBIA | Sunday, 17 Nov 2024 | Views [65]
WE SECURED THE COVER ON OUR CAR, checked-out of the AirBnB and Uber-ed to Port Everglades. Boarding was smooth and efficient—we had already done the gruntwork online—and we were onboard in time for lunch. As cruise ships go, Oosterdam is ... Read more >
ARGENTINA | Thursday, 14 Nov 2024 | Photo Gallery
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USA | Wednesday, 13 Nov 2024 | Views [47]
WE HAVEN’T EVEN BOARDED THE SHIP and the itinerary has been changed! Yes, we are leaving again, a month aboard Holland America’s Oosterdam, sailing the “long way” to Buenos Aires, through the Panama Canal and around Cape Horn.... Read more >
USA | Wednesday, 6 Nov 2024 | Views [69]
IN THE 50S WHEN SPACE WAS THE NEW FRONTIER, families would gather in front of tiny b&w TVs and anxiously count-down with each new space launch. Today, 65 years later, launches from Cape Canaveral have become ho-hum events—we actually watched ... Read more >
USA | Wednesday, 30 Oct 2024 | Views [55]
ST. AUGUSTINE IS THE OLDEST CITY in the United States. It is also the last “Friends and Family” stop on this leg of our Grand Tour. John’s sister Jean “Charlotte” and daughter Carli moved down from “Joisey” about ... Read more >
USA | Tuesday, 29 Oct 2024 | Views [51]
EVEN THOUGH IT’S ONLY ABOUT 400 MILES from Myrtle Beach to St. Augustine, we broke up the trip with a stop in Georgia. When we last visited Savannah in ’05—the details are a bit fuzzy in my mind—we seem to recall having a good ... Read more >
USA | Thursday, 24 Oct 2024 | Views [86]
WE VAGABONDS HAVE TO BE SOMEWHERE; a hotel or hostel, a birding tour or cruise ship. Or an AirBnB in Myrtle Beach SC. It’s a logical stop on the way to Florida, the price is right and we enjoyed our visit in the spring of ’21.
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USA | Tuesday, 15 Oct 2024 | Views [67]
THE ORIGINAL PLAN ON OUR WAY SOUTH called for a stop in the Blue Ridge Mountains. but after Hurricane Helene washed out much of Asheville NC, we went to Plan B, a cozy AirBnB cottage in Kill Devil Hills.
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USA | Saturday, 12 Oct 2024 | Photo Gallery
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