Sunday, December 21st, Home from the Southern Oceans

Greetings!

Somewhere over Brazil, about halfway through our 11.600 mile trip home on Friday, I agreed with Pat.  Earlier, she considered this trip one of the best we'd ever taken.  It's so hard to compare adventures.  It is certainly was the best cruise.  It may even be the best wildlife search.  It took us to a completely different world, almost incomparable.

Because it proved impossible to communicate the experience during the trip, I chose to wait until we returned to try to explain it.  Now, with plenty of photos, and some notes, I'm pursuing a couple of avenues.  I've rejected constructing my traditional day-by-day postings.  Too hard to re-capture that daily environmental excitement needed.  I can't imagine all of you would have the same amount of time to absorb the great volume of views and comments in a recap, as you'd have had if we paced it out.

So it will have to be shorter, with less text.  I finished a single photo album which I posted on my Google Photo site (The Southern Oceans).  I'm in the process of uploading them with some text to my YouTube Channel.  Check back in a few hours when I edit this post and place the link here.

Next week, I may try to find the time to create a photo album featuring the hundred Best of the Southern Oceans.

Other than colds which result from anytime you put 227 world travelers together in a small place for three weeks, we brought back only wonderful memories and new friends.  May you add a trip of this design to your bucket list, and it will please us if you enjoy this one.

Gregory and Pat

Sunday, Nov 30th, Buenos Aires

Greetings!

Listening to a bad rock band in the Jorge Newbery Airport in Buenos Aires, we're waiting for the last flight leg of our trip to Antarctica.  We've three hours to kill, and that's too little time to make it to a hotel and back in the middle of the night.  So we're paying outrageous prices in dollars for hot chocolate and an almost cafe mocha in order to sit in nice comfy chairs across from the LAN check-in desk.  

It all started when we arrived at San Francisco Airport to find the flight crew would be late on their flight in, and we would be missing our connecting flight in Houston to Buenos Aires.  All other connections would be missed, and the MS Fram would sail without us.  We decided (against all United advice) to take the delayed flight, and get as creative as we could in Houston with other airlines.

The options included several U.S. and South American airlines, flying through New York, Toronto, and Miami (we took Miami).  We turned down flying through Mexico City, Santiago, Bogota,  and Rio.  But we finally made it a couple of hours ago, and we have to thank the United Customer Service Rep Jean Etienne in Houston for saving us lots of money and getting our luggage safely over to American in time to meet us in BA.

Gregory and Pat