I went along to this festival as a guest of my sister who plays a tenor drum in the Essex Caledonian Pipe Band. The journey over there on a coach was extremely slow due mainly to a road accident and delayed ferries after earlier bad weather. We were staying at the Holiday Inn Express in Hasselt and on arrival (after 8) only had time to drop bags in our rooms and meet in the lobby to go out for dinner. The man who organised the trip knew of a restaurant from previous visits and led us across the town to it. It was probably nearing 9 when the restaurant staff agreed that they could accommodate us and they recommended 3 dishes - chicken stew in a pastry (turned out to be a vol-au-vent), beef casserole in ... read more

I had really wanted to see this town after a friend visited a couple of years ago and told me about the street art. As our flight was the same day as the ship's arrival there was little time for sight-seeing and the transfer to Santiago airport. I arranged with Tours by Locals for Leoncio to collect us from the port, tour specific areas of the hills then take us to the airport. We had expedited disembarkation as we had heard horror stories of hours to get out of the port but were first through and half hour ahead of our schedule. Leoncio arrived right on time with a comfortable vehicle and stowed our luggage in the boot. First he drove us up into the Cerros to the ones I particularly asked to see - dropping ... read more

We sailed through the Straights of Magellan to reach Punta Arenas for 2 pm and it was a murky day so not much to see. From there we headed to Ushuaia with the morning cruising through Glacier Alley. This is a channel with many hanging glaciers visible whenever the clouds / rain lift. Glimpses of them were sufficient to get photos. In all we had 3 days at sea. The first was a trip around Cape Horn. We reached there just before dawn and I was thrilled to see the Rock out of our porthole about 5.30. I woke Paul with this exciting news only to receive a grunt so took myself up to the back deck where others had gathered to film as as we sailed by. Around 6 the captain announced that we were ... read more

Our only goal in this port was to see Magellan penguins and from the ferry and on the island we also saw dolphins, petrels, skuas, cormorants, kelp gulls and small starling-like birds. The weather was intermittent rain but that did not affect our enjoyment of the trip. We had heard that cruise line companies charter the ferries so booked with them although speedboats with independent travelers did arrive whilst we were on the island. Loading and unloading the ferry was a tedious affair with a single file stairway and walk from the entrance to the seating area and almost 200 people doing so. Chile does not allow any foodstuffs to be brought ashore so lunchbags were issued as we boarded containing a sandwich, mini biscuit pack and drink. Boredom on the ride meant that we ate ... read more

Again we took a cruise ship tour to get a quick and easy overview of the city. I had not read the itinerary in detail but the part that grabbed my eye was the market. First we stopped at the mandatory city square, then drove up the coast appreciating beach views. Next stop was a stand of trees full of squawking parakeets. At last we headed to the market. Yes it was colourful and yes there were stalls of local produce including from farmers. However it was rather clinical with all the goods in very ordered booths and as it took less than 10 minutes to walk around it was also very small. The best thing that can be said is that we were able to exchange US dollars to treat ourselves to ice cream. Our ... read more