March 10-25, 2019
Celebrity Eclipse
Boarding the ship from Buenos Aires after a long delay in Puerto Iguazu due to tire change for the plane we were taking for short 2 hr flight ... ours was not the worst of the delays experienced by several passengers on the ship. We were to learn some guests missed connections. The recent mishaps of Boeing 737 leading to its grounding may have been a contributing factor
Casa Rosada (Pink House) in the Plaza de Mayo is the Presidential palace & most emblematic structure of Buenos Aires. Local lore says the facade was painted with cow's blood but more likely the pink paint was utilized to diffuse opposing political tension of the time - one party (Federals) was red, the other (Unitarians) white
Floralis Generica a 20m high stainless steel mechanical flora sculpture designed by Argentine architect Eduardo Catalano. It towers over the Plaza de las Naciones Unidas, aka Plaza de la Flor . The flower opens & closes its petals with the sun, its movement symbolizes hope reborn each day. We revisited the fun & colorful La Boca - bought some handcrafted leather purse & belt were well priced and sturdy. The Argentine dancers and musicians along the cafes still
mesmerizing with staccato kicks and sultry footworks
Finding ourselves back in the port of Montevideo (last visit 2017) this time on a somewhat rainy & cloudy day, we thought it opportune to take in the old city sights on foot, did a fair bit of shopping and took in the historic Carnival Museum - an interesting way to obtain an understanding and feeling of the S.American cultural origins and influences. Tom posing with colorful, jester like costumes ;)
Montevideo apparently celebrates the longest carnival in the world! It typically goes from Jan to March and includes rehearsals, stage preparation, parades and 40 days in a row of events. Apparently, once the sound of the drums and the music of the 'murgas' start, no one can remain indifferent to its hypnotic appeal The music of the 'candombe' forged by the intersecting Africana cultures as they found themselves transported onto this continent due to the slave trade...I can just imagine the intense rhythm & high energy.
Back on the ship and time to snap a few intricate porcelain art pieces as I await our dinner table
There was a Faberge egg display and seminar onboard. As this sailing is around the tip of Cape Horn close to Antarctica, the penguins in gold Faberge egg motif was a brisk seller...even at over $800us a pop!
Some snaps of what we did on sea days ... several musicals were quite original and well staged, bands tended to play more jazz than ballroom, thus we did quite a bit of after dinner latin dancing up in the top floor sky observation lounge
We docked in Puerto Madryn under beautiful sunny skies, yet just the evening before during our meals, the captain announced that our upcoming port had been innudated with heavy rains for several days, so much so that the ship excursions to see the penguins have been cancelled. We then called our independent local agent who advised that they also will be refunding our Punta Tombo tour. Despite the balmy calm weather today, the tour cancellations are due to the roads closures. Here are a pair of wayward penguins..they look like either the Humboldt or Magellanic penguin species floating along the dock as we walked from the ship pier to the main town. Babies are born in November, by now March , they are teenagers, have lost the furry grey feathers & adopted adult colors. They head to water to score food, diet includes sardines, squid and small crustaceans. They are preyed upon by orcas and falconsGot a taxi from town to drop us off at the far end of waterfront promenade. It was a pleasant day for a stroll along the ~5km length of the paved shoreline -
walked back from Ecocentro (a museum to showcase the Valdes Peninsula and Patagonia marine life.
To this day some towns (Gaiman) have retained its Welsh culture. The persecuted Tehuelche helped the Welsh get established and they maintained a good relationship.
We rounded the southern tip of Chile's Cape Horn and sailed close enough to the authentic southernmost Cape Horn lighthouse atop the small Hornos Island. This point is still one of the most inhospitable places, stormy and dangerous. Our sail around it was punctuated with intermittent rain making our observation of this site a restless one as we darted in and out of the ship's breakfast patio area and at times going to our cabin to sample the vantage points from our own balcony stateroom. The lighthouse is still inhabited by Chilean naval officer Andres Morales, his wife and three young children ...at apex where the Atlantic meets the Pacific, keeping the watch to illuminate the Drake Passage, beyond which lies Antarctica. Celebrity Eclipse navigated close enough to this iconic spot that we can make out not just the lighthouse, but also residence, utility building & chapel. A short distance from the main station is a memorial, including a large sculpture featuring the silhouette of an albatross, in honor of the many sailors who died while attempting to 'round the Horn"
Next day, fortunately the weather was dryer as we embarked on a shore excursion dubbed "Charles Darwin End of the World" tour. The morning was spent on a large catamaran to skirt the Beagle Channel Isla de Los Pajaros (Bird Island) for wildlife - mostly sea lions and bird species that resemble penguins on the rocks but really were cormorants - we still got pretty excited seeing & hearing the wildlife up close, mostly because their natural unspoiled habitat, windy, bitingly cold, the air wafting with briny seaweedy scent, in small doses does jar us & remind what its like to reckon with mother nature in its most elemental forms; survival challenge! 
Les Eclaireurs Lighthouse here on the Bird Is. marks the dangerous rocks at the entrance to Ushuaia Bay in the Beagle Channel. Populated on this expanse below are Rock Cormorants, Royal and Imperial Shags...existing quite harmoniously with gruff fur seals &sealions ...awarrrf, ..awarrrfff...
Back on board and cleaned up for dinner, we sailed by the Avenue of the Glaciers aka Glacier Alley Patagonia - here is the impressive glacier named Italia. There were several other in the vicinity - Francia, Alemania & Holanda ( named to honor past marine explorer nations) According to people in the know, the blue-colored ice is caused by decades of pressure applied to the ice which eventually expels all air, leaving just pure ice.
The afternoon prior to sail through Glacier Alley was spent touring the large expanse of the Tierra del Fuego park - a great playground for naturalists and thrill seekers. It has all the remoteness, you could want, its evergreen flora, parks, lakes, rivers and waterways still untouched.
There is an alternate tour on a refurbished train dubbed 'End of the World Heritage Rail'. The train & rails were initially built back in 1884 to serve the prisons of Ushuaia, as it started as a penal colony - immates toiled here transporting timber & rocks
In some sense, it truly is a land of 'fire and ice'. At southernmost frontier of Patagonia, the area rife with ancient glaciers, the iciest of all ice. Yet its name Tierra del Fuego literally means 'Land of Fire' - coined by Ferdinand Magellan when
his ships docked along the shoreline, they kept on seeing numerous man-made fires in the dense forest for days prior to setting foot on the archipelago. The indigenous people Yaghan (or Yamana) , once roamed this desolate land virtually naked. they constantly had a fire stoked to keep warm and smoothed greasy fish or animal fat over their bodies to protect
Currently, there are hardly any traces of these indigenous groups left. Even though they proved their hardiness being able to survive in these inhospitable environs, the onset of European settlers bringing disease wiped out large numbers of their population. Today less than a handful of pure blood Ona and Yahgans exists
although there are many mixed blood people.
The cloudy skies obscured the Tierra del Fuego's glacial lake 'Laguna Esmeralda' (glorious in pics online if a sunny day) In all fairness, March is their fall & their summer season is short and fickle as well . For us, we picked March to go along with more favorable weather re Iguazu Falls and understood we'd be chancing it weather-wise by the time we got to Patagonia leg of the trip.
In fact, the first stop on Eclipse was suppose to have been Punta-del -Este but the torrential rains prohibited the ship from docking. We were fortunate to have toured Punta-
del-Este in 2017 in March, our first visit of this continent so was less impacted on missing that first port.
We finished the tour with a visit to the end of the world post office - an obligatory stop to mark the spot! And of course Tom couldn't resist the notion of mailing a postcard with the postmark 'fin del mundo' back home to our son replete with all the various old fashion Ushuaia stamps supplied by Carlos de Lorenzo - a true libertarian with posters of Che Guevara, Salvador Allende, Evita Peron adorning his walls
The town center of Ushuaia is a windswept place, perched on a steep hill, surrounded by the Martial Mtns and Beagle Channel. Officially, Fin del Mundo - quite a busy spot as it serves as the gateway to Antarctic cruises and tours to nearby penguin island colonies
Visiting the Nao Victoria shipyard museum was a real treat - loved authenticness of the 1:1 replica of the only ship of 5 in Magellan's Spanish expedition to successfully return to Seville after circumnavigate the world. ...I can just let my imagination run wild back to the times where true sailors or even indentured slaves chose a life off the seas .... 🎼 'Brandy your're a fine girl...but my life, my lover, my lady, .. is the sea eee , is the seaseee...'🎶 ...lol
So, of the 265 men in Magellan's expedition, only 18 returned alive on the Victoria.
We joined a tour of the sights in Punta Arenas Chile - views at Mirador Cerro de la Cruz, is the panoramic vantage point to see the city and the strait; the Plaza Armas is a beautiful city square with endemic trees of twisted branches and an imposing statute of Magellan; the celebrated public cemetery reminds us of Recoleta in Buenos Aires, Argentina although not as big. There is an interesting backstory to the entrance of this cemetery in connection with the wealthy matron Sara Braun ( not a heroic figure in local folklore as she was said to have caused much maltreatment & death to the indigenous Selk'nam). Sarah Braun came from her native Russia in the 1800 and married a Portuguese businessman Jose Nogueira (gold explorations & sheep raising in Tierra del Fuego). Sara Braun apparently gave everything for the construction of the cemetery, under one condition, that after her death, the central door of the cemetery had to be closed Forever! The city thus kept the promise & uses an alternate entrance just beside her interred mausoleum. Evidence of the Braun families prominence is on display in Punta Arenas as close to the Plaza de Armas are Sara Braun Palace ( she had no heirs) and Jose Braun Menendez (Sarah's brother's heirs) Residence, both can be toured
Our last stop for coffee and a view - in Club Andino , a ski resort with some lifts - way too chilling and windy for any of us to want to take it at the late afternoon hour ...we were content to take the shuttle back to the ship for cozy beverages at El Bacio ...& watch the ship sail quitely into the sunset along the verdant slopes of the Chilean portion of the Patagonia inlets
Pristine fjords dot the southern Patagonia landscape, from time to time we'd sail by these aquaculture sea pens for raising of baby salmons - increasingly under challenge by local community
Relaxing sea day for sailing Chilean Fjords ... if we return here for a next voyage, it'll be nearby Puerto Natales (not a stop for this cruise) that'll be a good jumping off point to explore on foot the true Chilean Patagonia places of Torres del Paine & El Calafate - best in Jan or early Feb
Our tablemates for the cruise, an Arizona AA pilot and his wife Tracy, mom & daughter from Vancouver. Getting a flight of Eclipse signature martinis with the ladies from London, Ont.
A special voyage indeed - Celebrity Eclipse Captain Leo ( the youngest captain in the fleet) kicked off a 500 year landmark ceremony on board with invited ambassadors from the Argentina & Chilean officials. The Captain announced that on this voyage, we traced the exact route the explorer Magellan navigated to traverse around the tip of South America. However, as we noted, Magellan may have set sail in 1519, he did not actually reach Patagonia and sail thru the straits til 1520, no doubt they'll be capitalizing on that moment again next year for another 500 year celebration...lol cake & champagne for everyone!!
Our very last port before disembarking in Santiago was Puerto Montt. Part of the mainland of Chile, surprisingly a metropolis hub albeit a tourist draw due to its pretty landscape, calm lakes Llanquihue & Lago Todo Los Santos, which surrounds its Osorno & Calbuco volcanos. Our tour stopped for a while in Puerto Varas and since the day was too cloudy to make out the top of Osorno,we decided to hike a short way up the hills of the Varas to its red &white cathedral
The remainder of the day was taken up with natural beauty of Saltos del Petrohue in Varas. The chute like waterfall in the Vincente Perez Posales Park is just at the entrance - dramatically churning water set against the porous black & craggy volcanic boulders
After the exhilarating hike to & fro in Petrohue, we were taken to a charming lodge - Yan Kee Way (La Ensenada) ...waiting for us was a hearty meal of local salmon . The lodge sits on the banks of Lago Llanquihue, the southern most lake in Chile's lake district.. This lodge looks up the foothills of the Andes and is known for the most prolific fishing (rainbow trout & Steelhead, Atlantic, King & Coho Salmons pass through river system on their way to distant spawning grounds) in southern Chile.
