Timmer's 2023 Grand South America Cruise

 Tendering started around 7:20am but we were barely awake at that hour.  The initial reports from the shore side were not positive and had reports of  rain.  So we enjoyed a leisurely breakfast before gathering our belongings and headed for the Wajang Theater to pick up our tender tickets.  We were immediately put on a tender and were ashore in about 30 minutes arriving just after 9am.  The tender platform here was a bit tricky with the stairs being partially submerged and the tender boat rocking in the swells.  This slowed down the process considerably and speaking with guests who departed later, there were significant delays.   As for us, we purchased our $10US per person park pass and headed up the 18 - 19 degree sloped street to the trailhead (yes I measured it!).  We then took the trail which has lots of elevation gain, roots, compact earth, chainsaw shavings, rocks and stairs. Essentially it switchbacks itself up the mountain to a view point.  The last bit got a bit more difficul

 Overnight there was a lot of motion to ocean onboard.  We were warned that the seas would get progressively rougher as we headed due west to to Isla Robinson Crusoe. We were scheduled to arrive tomorrow morning but we ended up arriving around 6pm in the daylight and dropped anchor.  But I'm getting ahead of my account. It was a very short night as I stayed up until 1am watching the World Series Game 1 in which Texas beat Arizona 6-5 in 11 innings. After breakfast and our morning interdenominational devotional in the Hudson Room (it's been really good), we went to Jeremy's coffee chat with Frank, Executive Chef, and Ron, Director of Food & Beverage.  It was an interesting interview some of which had previously been covered in Jeremy's prior interview with Ron.  We did learn that Ron is the Penguin Herder and has the inflatable Penguins in protective custody while the pool is drained.  Afterwards, Tom Goltz presented a talk on the real "Robinson Crusoe, Alexande

 It's hard to believe that we are now three weeks into our voyage.  Today we arrived at San Antonio, Chile which is the commercial port for Santiago, Chile.  It's by far the busiest industrial port we've been docked at so far in this voyage.  On our previous Antarctica voyage we departed from Valparaiso which is about 90 minutes drive north from San Antonio.  However, HAL's cruise ship operations were moved to this modern Saudia Arabia owned facility about 6 years ago. Another passenger organized today's excursion and we joined 23 others in the Ocean Bar before heading down to deck 2 to disembark the ship.  On that deck, the line stretched about halfway down the length of the ship.  But once we could depart, the line dissipated quickly and we boarded shuttle buses to the passenger terminal where we passed through a security check for food being taken off of the ship.  We then found our tour guides and bus outside the port gates.  Mike, the owner, and Philippe, his a

 While we arrived at 7am, the ship was not cleared for passenger disembarkations until 7:40.  After breakfast, I met our group in the Ocean Bar and we departed the ship just after 8:30am.  We had a short walk to a "Terminal" building where all backpacks were scanned for food items.  Our tour company was in the building and collected our $55US fares and the 32 of us boarded our bus for the day.  I didn't quite know what exactly to expect, but we ended up on the bus for nearly 2 hours to reach the Elqui Valley and more specifically a cool vantage point called Paihuano which is in the Andes mountains and not far from the Argentinian border.  The viewpoint was spectacular and the mountains were really impressive.  Along the drive up we passed by numerous wineries and orchards and one very large dam used for irrigation purposes.  However the lake level was very low due to the fact that they have had no rain this year. Front Side of Dam at Gualliguaica We then retraced our path

 It was really nice to have a very lazy day at sea today.  I was pretty tired especially getting up by 7am these past number of days.  Jeremy's morning coffee chat was with the comedian, Simon B. Cutter.  It was entertaining like his shows.  He's new to cruise ships and especially liking the aspect that he's essentially living with the people he performs before as opposed to land events where he most likely will never see members of the audience again once he performs for them. Tom Goltz returned with an excellent presentation on the Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda. The biggest challenge of the day was to complete the Chilean border entry form which could be done online or by filling out a paper form.  The online form was challenging for many because once one selected the English option, America or United States of America could not be found on the drop down menu. The selection was written in the Spanish equivalent! The process was so challenging for many passengers that a speci

 The sea swells continue to get larger and the temperatures are continuing to drop.  Of course, the penguins in the LIDO pool are very happy with these conditions.  And the gannet birds are enjoying a free ride on the bow of the ship while leaving their guano deposits.  The Captain in his lunch announcement reported a whale sighting, but I saw no wildlife other than the constant flights of gannets seeking food stirred up by the ship's passage through the cold dark blue waters. After our normal morning interdenominational devotional time, we ate breakfast and Tom Goltz gave his presentation on Pacific Islander Canoe Wayfinding: Then & Now which was good. The gem of the day was when Florian, our hotel general manager, interviewed Jeremy, our Cruise & Travel Director.  It was enlightening and and bittersweet as Jeremy announced that this was his last contract as a Cruise & Travel Director.  He's about to get married and his and his new wife are going to assume a new ro

 Today was the first of our three sea days on our way to Coquimbo, Chile.  The temperatures are falling and the general sea conditions are getting a bit more choppy. This morning after the morning Interdenominatial  devotional time, at breakfast we were having an interesting discussion with a fellow from Victoria, BC Canada and the subject of independent shore excursions came up.  He said, "There's a fellow who is down in the Atrium at 4pm who talks about excursions." I replied, "You're speaking with him!".  It appears my reputation is preceding me. The rest of our morning was spent in lectures with the first being a shore excursions manager presentation on the next 4 ports of call followed by Tom Goltz's excellent presentation on Thor Hyerdahl's voyage on the Kon-Tiki. In the afternoon after a light lunch,  Caroline presented a talk on Coquimbo: Center of Astro-Tourism. Throughout the day I published my updated blog posts for the past few days.  Wit

 Overnight we had a short sailing from Callao to General San Martin.  We arrived just after 7am and the Zaandam headed for the dock at about a 45 degree angle.  As we reached the dock at a very low speed, thrusters were used to move the stern clockwise to put the ship parallel to the dock where both front and rear thrusters were used to move the port or left side of the ship against the dock bumpers without so much of a feeling the contact. We finished breakfast and met up with our excursion group in the Ocean Bar.  Once everyone (22 people) was there, we headed off the ship and were met by representatives from LAS Adventures including the owner, Joel, and our guide for the day, Olenka.  It turned out that there were additional people who were joining our tour or a part of it, so we had a pretty full minibus.  We got on the bus and paid our $107US per person and were on our way to Paracas to board our high speed boat for the trip to the Ballestas Islands. At Paracas bio breaks were in