Hard as it was, we rolled out early again today for our last day in this beautiful city. Carol’s main desire here was to visit the crypt of Evita, aka Eva Duarte Peron. Check out the crypt with the dog with the shiny nose. Legend has it if you rub the dog’s nose you will return to Buenos Aires. We’ll be back! We hit the streets and walked north to the Recoleta Cemetery which is in our area of the city, passing through embassy row and a lot of very nice apartments and homes in the local neighborhood. Housing prices here are outrageous, with the average cost for a “nice” two-bedroom, one bath (that means with a toilet and a shower or a bathtub in the same room) and a place to park your ride (if ... read more

We had a pretty good idea this was not going to be one of those days that was well choreographed when we came down from our final visit to Jimmy to find that the ship was about one full hour behind schedule getting people off-loaded. It just got worse from there, and today marked a HUGE failure on the part of Princess Cruises to have their shit together! Imagine 6,000 people all getting off four cruise ships at the same time, with no direction from anyone, in a large warehouse that is about 90 degrees F inside, with 90% humidity (and, of course, NO AC), and porters just dumping bags helter-skelter into the middle of the warehouse, and letting people fend for themselves, and that is a pretty apt description of the morning and early afternoon ... read more

Our last full day at sea as this voyage comes to a close Friday. Today has been a quiet day for the most part, as we just rest up and take stock of getting off the ship and onto our next leg of the tour in Buenos Aires early Friday morning. We are experiencing very heavy seas and gale force winds again, so we were bundled up while reading on the sun deck as we are moving across a very deep portion of the Atlantic at present. As they are cross swells, the ship is rolling a tremendous amount, even with all of the stabilizers’ out. Thank God we have those or there would be a LOT of sea sick people on-board. The ship’s Dr. told us this morning that a very large number of people ... read more

Things calmed down a bit during the night as we get closer to the mainland, and we have left the cold and wet weather behind as we move back toward the equator. We still have 15 – 20 foot seas, but very little wind. Although out next stop is in Puerto Madryn on the Argentinian coast, we heard a weather report that our following destination, Montevideo (Uruguay), was experiencing 95 degree F temps at 1000 this morning. We have decided Puerto Madryn will be an internet/catch-up day, as it is New Year’s Day here as well, and most places will be closed for the holiday. One note of interest from the Navigator’s log last night: The Star Princess has aboard a “NACOS Integrated Navigation Bridge System,” which utilizes three GPS systems that keep us within 2-3 ... read more

The entire ships’ company was up again by 0800 (no matter, as sunrise is now before 0430) as we approached Hornos Island, the whole purpose of our being on this cruise. Once one sees “The Horn,” why this name was given to this cape is obvious. We have had a chance to cross the equator at sea to become Shellbacks, and now we have sailed around the Horn. We are close to 9,000 miles south of our departure port of San Francisco, and what a stark and bleak place. The landscape is a mixture of flat, scrubby islands, mixed in with mountain ranges that look like twins to the Tetons in Jackson Hole. It is hard to imagine the European explorers of old coming this far from their homeland in ships the size of our lifeboats ... read more