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January 29, 2018

Durning the night the ship moved to Stanley, the main town in the Falklands, and was tied up on a dock. The town has about 2,500 inhabitants. They recently had a referendum and decided to maintain their status as a British Overseas Territory. There seems to be a lot of resentment of Argentina. One person we talked to spoke about East Chile rather than say Argentina.

The Falklands are self-sufficient and do not relieve on England for monetary support. England pays for the military base which houses about 3,000 people. The Falklands’ economy is primarily based on fishing licenses. They “own” a circle of 200 miles beyond the islands which is very rich for fishing. The second component of their economy is tourism. They receive about 50,000 tourists a year. They generate about 40% of the power from wind. There are no trees so most of he houses are build from kits shipped in from England. There are quite a few areas that still have land mines from the war Falklands war in 1982. They are slowly but surely being removed.

The island used to be quite important during the whaling days. Ships would round Cape Horn which has very rough seas and then pull into the Falklands for repairs. With less traffic rounding the cape most of that business has dried up. There are quite a few shipwrecks in the harbor. I guess the boat owners couldn’t afford to fix the ships so they just abandoned them.

After breakfast we walked 4 km along the shore towards Gypsy Cove, spotting birds along the way. There were Magellanic penguins on the beach but we couldn’t get close because of potential land mines on the beach. Here are pictures from our walk.

After our walk we took the bus, went to town and had lunch at a pub with Forrest and Anna. There was no menu but there were three choices, fish and chips, chicken and chips, and curry chicken and chips. We had a nice lunch and then Rick played darts with a guy from Ireland. Rick won.

After lunch we walked to a souvenir shop because I think I left my hat at the last hotel so I now have a Falkland Islands hat. We returned to ship once our shopping was done.

We were supposed to leave the dock at 4:00. We were out on deck to watch them cast off. We waited and we waited and no action. There was a bird outside the guard shack who was waiting for some bread. After the guard threw some bread to him he tried to fly away and ended up flying backwards because it was so windy. When he tried to walk he ended up walking sideways because it was so windy.

Finally Hayley, our expedition leader, announced a meeting. There was a bad storm with winds over 50 knots headed for the Falklands. Therefore we were going to spend the night at the dock. It wasn’t clear when we would leave the Falklands and the captain would watch the weather and decide when it was safe to leave.

That night we had a speaker from the Falklands give a lecture about the Falklands and her research in the area. They have discovered oil within the territorial sea boundaries of Falklands. Her research is to establish a wildlife baseline and forecast the oil rig impact on wildlife.

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January 28, 2018

This morning I removed my scopolamine patch and started to feel better quite quickly.

We arrived at West Point on West Falkland in the morning. Only seven people live on this island and they are primarily sheep herders. Most of our ship mates went onto the island to see the nesting albatrosses and rockhopper penguins as well as to have tea and cakes at a local house. Us kayakers had our first session. Rick and I were in a double and we kayaked for about 45 minutes leaving from the beach. We kayaked along the shore looking at the wildlife. Here are a couple of pictures of the kayakers.

We saw birds and water fowl but I couldn’t tell you their names. We also saw a couple of elephant seals. Here are pictures of some of the wildlife we saw.

After about 45 minutes of kayaking they took us back to the ship where we changed out of our kayaking dry suits and then we went ashore. This is a picture of the buildings along the shore line.

Here are some pictures of the landscape. It was desolate, clearly a harsh environment.

After a 5 minute jeep ride we came to a nesting area for black-brow albatrosses and rockhopper penguins. The babies were relatively mature but most still had their down. They have down to keep them warm when they are babies but must grow feather in order to swim or fly. The albatross babies sit on a pedestal nest. There was a lot of squawking for food. Here are pictures.

We didn’t have time to go to the local house for tea and cakes but here’s a picture of it.

We headed back to the ship in the zodiacs for lunch.

During lunch the ship moved to Saunders Island where there was quite a large penguin colony as well as sheep grazing. Here we saw rockhopper, gentoo, megellanic, and king penguins.

We returned to the ship where we had our daily debriefing and dinner.

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January 27, 2018

I didn’t sleep very well last night. When I went to bed the ocean was very calm but I woke up at 2:00am and could feel the waves and could hear the boat slapping the water. When we go on our sailing adventures I usually feel seasick on the first day and then I become accustom to the motion. So I decided it was time for a scopolamine patch.

We were on the boat all day. Here are some pictures of our room and the ship.

It’s about 340 nautical miles from Ushuaia to the Falkland Islands and the trip took about 36 hours. The Falkland archipelago lies 280 miles east of the South American continent. It consists of two large islands, East and West Falkland, and more than 750 small islands and islets.

To entertain us they had two lectures before lunch. One on the history of the Falklands with an emphasis on the 74 day war between Argentina and GB. The other lecture was on the birds and marine mammals of the Falklands. Both were very informative.

After lunch we met with the kayaking guides. They can accommodate 16 kayakers. It seemed that a lot more people would have liked to kayak but didn’t sign up early enough. At the meeting they told us what to expect and then gave us our kayaking gear, including a dry suit, booties, dry bag, gloves, and a life jacket. Here’s a picture of us in our kayak costume.

That evening we had a Captain’s reception and a wonderful dinner. They do not assign you to a table. So it’s a great opportunity to meet people. We sat with a couple from Missouri, Anna and Forest. They are a lot of fun and we laughed throughout the dinner.

All day I was really tired and I thought it was because I had trouble getting back to sleep after I woke up at 2:00am. Also I was really, really thirsty. The ship staff told us to stay well hydrated because the air is very dry. Eventually I figured out that these are both side effects of the scopolamine.

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January 26, 2018

At last night’s orientation meeting they told us about an optional trip to Tierra del Fuego National Park. We didn’t sign up for it because we wanted to explore Ushuaia. However after walking through the town last night, we realized that we had seen most of it. So we were able to jump on the tour.

Here are some pictures of Ushuaia taken from our hotel up on the hill. I have circled our ship.

Our guide on the Tierra Del Fuego tour was very good. One of the interesting things we learned about is the problem with beavers. In 1947, fur traders introduced beavers into the area. However because the climate conditions were different from the north, the beaver’s coats were not thick enough and could not be used by the fur traders. So they abandoned the project as well as the beavers. In the last 70 years the beaver population has exploded from 50 to 200,000. They have no natural predators. They fall a lot trees and the issue is that trees grow very slowly because of the harsh weather. The government is allowing beaver hunting in an effort to eliminate the beavers.

Our first stop in the park was a glacier lake. The southernmost post office in the world is located on the shore. Here are some pictures from this stop.

Next we stopped at another lake and took a short walk along the lake where we saw black neck swans. Here are pictures from this stop.

The final stop was at the end of the Pan-America highway which starts in Alaska and ends in Argentina.

After the tour we were dropped off in the town where we went out for a late lunch. Ushuaia is well known for king crab and sea bass. Most of the restaurants have a tank with king crabs crawling around in their window. Our guide recommended Freddy’s Cantina. They had the tank in the window. Rick had grilled sea bass and said it was excellent. I had a salad. We watched other people have crab. They would pull the crab out of the tank and the waiter and customer would weigh the crab and then they would take it off and cook it.

After lunch we went over to the meeting point to get the bus to the ship. Finally the moment we have been waiting for had arrived. We were greeted by the expeditionary leader and had to turn over our passports before being ushered to our cabin.

We had a few minutes to get settled before there was a briefing meeting where we met the expeditionary staff. The staff includes

Hayley Expedition Leader
Adam Expedition Naturalist, specializing in birds
Hannah Expedition Naturalist, specializing in marine mammals
Sophie Expedition Staff, specializing in kayaking
Ewan Expedition Staff, specializing in kayaking
Ashley Expedition Staff
Thomas Expedition Staff, specializing in photography
Jim Expedition Staff, specializing in geology
Tom Ship’s Doctor
Seb Expedition Staff, specializing in history

The ship’s doctor gave us a talk on safety, the importance of good hygiene to reduce an “epidemic” on the ship and, of course, sea sickness.

After the meeting we had our emergency drill. We had to muster with our life jackets in the lounge and then, once we had been counted, we had to go up to our station where we would have gotten into the life boats as they lowered them.

That evening we had a nice dinner. Interestingly they serve everyone at the same time. The seating is open so you can sit with different people at every meal or you can sit alone.

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January 25, 2018

Today is a travel day. We flew from Iguazu to Ushuaia, with a stop in Cordoba. The flights were long but uneventful. We left our Iguazu hotel at 7:00 am and arrived at our Ushuaia hotel around 5:00 pm. After collecting our baggage in Ushuaia we were met by a representative from the cruising company who took us to our hotel. Our hotel was quite fancy.

We had a bite to eat at the hotel and then went to welcome briefing at which they told us the details of embarkation. We met quite a few really nice people that will be on our ship. It will be hard to remember everyone’s name because there are 114 people. After the welcome briefing we took a shuttle to the downtown area. There lots of shops and restaurants on the Main Street. Ushuaia has about 65k inhabitants. We walked around the town down area but weren’t hungry after our snack the at the hotel.

We caught the 9:30 shuttle back and had another snack in the hotel.

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Blogging break

Today is Friday, January 26 and we embark on the ship this afternoon.  The ship has very limited internet access.  I will be writing the blog everyday but I’m not sure when I will post the entries.  Worst case it will all go up when we disembark.

Meanwhile, GO PATRIOTS.  We won’t be able to watch the game so cheer for us!

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January 24, 2018

We had a relaxing morning. We did a few errands, picking up things we had forgot to bring and returning the car. After lunch at the hotel, we were picked up for our tour of the Brazilian side of the falls. The majority of the falls are in Argentina. We are guessing that a quarter of them are in Brazil.

Brazil is right across the river, 10 miles from our hotel but it took awhile to get to the Brazilian National Park because we had to emigrate out of Argentina and immigrate into Brazil. We had an interesting discussion on the way; our guide was born in Argentina but now lived in Brazil. He told us that the Brazilian economy is much more stable, opportunities much more plentiful, and Argentinean’s go to Brazil to shop so we assume the prices are lower.

It had become overcast and the sky was getting darker and darker. While we were waiting for our guide to get us tickets into the park, the skies opened up and it started to rain. We waited briefly to see if it would stop and then forged ahead even though it hadn’t stopped. About half along the 1 km trail it stopped raining.

Initially we could see the Argentinian falls. We were far enough away that we could see most of them. As we continued to walk we started to see the Brazilian falls as well as the Argentinian ones. The falls were even bigger than what we had seen yesterday and we were amazed by the size of them then. At the end of the walk we were by a fall that dropped half way to a small plateau and then dropped further. The trail went to the bottom of the first drop and then walked over to the top of the second drop. As we walked to the end of the trail it was very windy due to the turbulence from the falls. There was also a lot of spray and I went to the end and got quite wet.

We learned today that the falls are one of the seven natural wonders of the world. They definitely deserve that recognition. Here are a bunch of pictures and a couple of videos so you can hear how loud and expansive they are.

We returned to the hotel, had an appetizer at the bar, and returned to our room to pack up. We leave at 7 tomorrow morning for the airport and onto Ushuaia.

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January 23, 2018

Today we went to the Argentinian side of Iguazu falls. They are the largest waterfall system in the world, a chain of waterfalls almost 2 miles wide.

This is from the Lonely Planet guidebook, “According to Guaraní tradition, the falls originated when a warrior named Caroba incurred the wrath of a forest god by escaping downriver in a canoe with a young girl, Naipur, with whom the god was infatuated. Enraged, the god caused the riverbed to collapse in front of the lovers, producing a line of precipitous falls over which Naipur fell and, at their base, turned into a rock. Caroba survived as a tree overlooking it.


Geologists have a more prosaic version. The Río Iguazú’s course takes it over a basaltic plateau that ends abruptly just short of the confluence with the Paraná. Where the lava flow stopped, thousands of cubic meters of water per second now plunge down as much as 80m into sedimentary terrain below. Before reaching the falls, the river divides into many channels with rocks and islands separating the many distinct cascades that together form the famous 2.7km-long cataratas (waterfalls).”


We got lost several times on the way to the park but eventually found it.

There were three trails around the falls, upper, lower and Devil’s Throat. As the names suggests the upper trail is a set of trails/grated metal walkways above the falls and the lower trail was below the falls.

We walked on trails through the rainforest to get to the falls. This picture of the rain forest shows how dense the vegetation is.



There were lots of coati, a member of the raccoon family, and capuchin monkeys around. In fact there were warnings about how aggressive they can be to get food. We also saw lots of butterflies, several turtles, and an alligator.


The falls were simply amazing. The roar of the water was loud. You really felt the power of Mother Nature. Words cannot describe it so I will leave it to the pictures . . .

From the upper trail

From the lower trail

From Devil’s Throat

One interesting sign said that 40 years ago the water on the falls was clear but there has been so much logging that now the water looks reddish-brownish from all the soil run off. (The soil is very red here due to the fast decomposition of organic material.). Of course they are trying to remediate that.

After the falls, we returned to the room. We walked into town to get groceries and had our typical picnic for dinner. Off to the Brazilian side of the falls tomorrow.

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January 22, 2018

Not the most exciting day . . .

We spend the morning with Roberto. We went to see family graves and then he showed us a little more of the town. We went back to the house, picked up Ingrid, and went to a restaurant for lunch. They had a salad bar and bought trays of grilled meat to the table. It was very good.

After a sad goodbye (we plan to see Roberto when we go to Switzerland), we headed north to Puerto Iguazu. The drive took about 2 hours. We got checked into our hotel and then explored the property and the town. We bought our food for dinner at the local grocery store and had a picnic in the room.

I told you it wasn’t very exciting.

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January 21, 2018

We were up very early to catch a flight to Iguazu Falls.  We were a little nervous that the airline would have a problem with one of our suitcases which weighs slightly over 50 pounds but they didn’t say a word.  The flight was uneventful.

When we arrived in Iguazu, we rented a car and drove about 2 hours to Puerto Rico.  We went through two police checkpoints.  We didn’t have to stop at the first one and at the second one we told the police officer that we don’t speak any Spanish and she just waved us through.  We think they are looking for drugs coming from Brazil or Paraguay.

Once in Puerto Rico we couldn’t find the hotel and ended up driving up and down the Main Street several times.  Finally we found it and got checked in.   We had come to Puerto Rico because Rick’s cousin, Ingrid, lives there.  Rick’s great grandfather was Swiss and had seven sons.  Several of them including Rick’s grandfather went to Prussia and Ingrid’s father, Adolph, came to Argentina in 1937. Rick’s grandfather and Adolph were brothers and the two brothers married two sisters.  If you are following this, Rick’s  grandmother and Ingrid’s mother were sisters.  This cousin is Lily’s aunt.  For those of you that followed our Spain trip, you may remember we met Lily when we stayed at Irene’s (another cousin) condo in Denia, Spain.  Lily’s twin brother and Ingrid’s nephew, Roberto, who lives in Basel, Switzerland, was visiting Ingrid.  I guess we had met him in 2010 at the family reunion but I met a lot of people that day. Bottom line the Mansers are taking over the world.  😉

Ingrid and Roberto showed up at the hotel just as we were leaving to come to them. We tried to go to lunch but the restuarant was closed so we ended up at the local Shell station for empanadas.  Seemed a little weird but we went with it.  After lunch, Roberto showed us around the town.

Eventually we ended up at Ingrid’s house which was a small two bedroom house.  We reviewed the family genealogy and talked some more.  Actually Rick talked to Ingrid and Roberto in German and I tried to follow along.  My German is worse than my Spanish which is really bad.  Here’s a picture of the four of us.

We came back to our hotel to follow the Patriots game.  Go Pats!!

Then we met for dinner (at 8:30 and we were one of the first people at the restaurant, I told you they eat late).  We had a great dinner and great conversation (I think) with them.