Hi folks - Dick and I are finally getting around to sending out some pictures and descriptions from our 3rd World Cruise aboard the Crystal Serenity, which left Miami January 12, 2007 for Southampton, near London. This will take three and a half months. This leg of the trip took us from Miami to the tip of South America, where there is a little Argentine town named Ushuaia (oosh-why-ya) that claims it's at "the end of the world." It's the jumping-off place for many ships bound for Antarctica, where we're going on the next leg of our cruise. Our route took [View Full Entry]

---

---

We left the tip of South America early in February and cruised through the Straits of Magellan toward Antarctica, a trip of about 400 miles. We tried to remedy our total ignorance a little on the way, and found that the Antarctic is really a large continent (unlike the Arctic, which is all ice and water). On the map Antarctica shaped like a round blob with a little pigtail of islands stretching toward the tip of South America. This round blob is about the same size as the United States and Mexico combined and it is almost totally covered with [View Full Entry]

---

---

After several days at sea our ship docked at Wellington in New Zealand, in the Land Down Under. When the Polynesian Maoris from the South Pacific discovered New Zealand they called it “Antearoa,” or the Land of the Long White Cloud. The name may have come from the heavy clouds that gathered around mountain peaks and spread for many miles along the horizon. This was one of the signs the Maoris used in their remarkable navigation feats. Our guidebook says New Zealand was one of the last large land masses to be settled by the human race. The Polynesians arrived between [View Full Entry]

---

---

PITCAIRN ISLAND I’m sure most people have read or seen “Mutiny on the Bounty,” the story of the mutinous crew of the Bounty, headed by Fletcher Christian, and the infamous Capt. Bligh. After setting Capt. Bligh and his few faithful crew adrift in a small boat, the mutineers headed for the tiny uninhabited island of Pitcairn, a two-square mile speck of rock in the middle of the South Pacific. It was 1790. This story was repeated to us on the way to Pitcairn Island by William Christian, a present-day descendant of the original Fletcher Christian. William Christian was [View Full Entry]

---

---

EASTER ISLAND Five days of cruising the South Pacific from the coast of South America brought us to Easter Island. This is a tiny volcanic island 2000 miles from any population center - about halfway between South America to the east and Tahiti to the west. The closest other inhabited island is over a thousand miles away - tiny Pitcairn Island where the mutineers of the H.M.S. Bounty settled in 1790. We had an interesting approach to the island. Its only dock was too small for anything but fishing boats, so our ship had to anchor offshore. The ship's' tenders that [View Full Entry]

---

---

GALAPAGOS BACK TO ECUADOR After our visit to Galapagos, we were to meet the Crystal Serenity at Lima in Peru, the next country south of Ecuador. But first we had to detour back through Ecuador to get there. This was a long trip, beginning with the obligatory boat and plane trips from Galapagos to the Ecuador mainland. The scoop among our group was that Ecuador is willing to donate the Galapagos Islands for research and conservation, but any air travel to and from the Galapagos Islands must first pass through the airport at Guayaquil on the Ecuador mainland, where many tourist [View Full Entry]

---

---

Next stop on our cruise down the west coast of South America was Ecuador, which lies south of the Panama Canal from Guatemala. Dick and I are learning a lot about geography on this trip. My hazy guess as to how to get to Ecuador from the US was to go to Los Angeles and turn left. But it turns out, to our surprise that Ecuador is in the same time zone as South Carolina, and the shortest route between the two goes over Miami! As with any area in the southern hemisphere, now is the height of the summer season [View Full Entry]

---

---

ACUPULCO Dick and I left Greenville, SC a few days ago for our second world cruise aboard the Crystal ship Serenity. This is a large beautiful ship that holds about 1000 passengers, with about 800 aboard at present. I think about 280 of us are doing the entire cruise, which left from Los Angeles Jan. 17 and will dock near London on May 5. This year we will go to South America, Easter Islands, Tahiti, New Zealand, Australia, Africa, Dubai, Egypt and some ports in Europe. Not much overlap with last year. The first segment of our cruise has been from [View Full Entry]

---

---

After leaving Spain, we spent one more full day at sea frantically packing for debarkation at Dover, on the coast of England. Many passengers left the ship there, so the terminal was busy as a beehive for few hours. Each of the world cruise passengers (or couples) had a limosine for their personal destination, and ours was crammed with our luggage full of clothing and additional treasures from the trip. In the rush we left one of our large bags in the Dover ship terminal. Our driver called his home office when we got to the airport and reported the loss. [View Full Entry]

---

---

After leaving Porto Venere and the Five Villages, we spent three days cruising through the Mediterranean until we popped out into the Atlantic Ocean through the Straits of Gibraltar. It's a strange experience to stand on the deck of a ship and look at Europe on the right and Africa on the left. They are only 15 miles apart at the Straits. What a way to learn geography! The Rock of Gibraltar is on the southern tip of Spain, on two square miles (pop. 30,000) owned by the UK. There is a NATO base there now. Across the Straits is Morocco [View Full Entry]

---

---