Parrots to Penguins!

I have been quiet on here for a while. Christmas and New Year came and went, coloured by a potential medical issue which, thankfully turning into a false alarm but mainly because I was away on the most fantastic cruise on Holland America Line's Zaandam to South America and Antarctica. Since I came back last Monday, people have asked me if this was my best cruise ever - that is a difficult one to answer as they are all so different, but was this worth thirty hours flying in total? Yes, yes and yes!

I had only visited HAL ships before and this was my first cruise with them. I had felt on my visits that I would enjoy their style of cruise and I was right - elegant lounges, live music everywhere, in different styles to suit all tastes, fresh plants and flowers decorating the ship and best of all, low passenger numbers for the size of the vessels.

Zaandam in Ushuaia, Argentina

Mix cocktail bar, Zaandam

As for the itinerary  - we boarded at Buenos Aires, sailed to Montevideo, the Falklands, cursing the Antarctic Peninsular, back to Ushuaia, Punta Arenas, Puerto Chacabuco, Puerto Montt and Valparaiso where we disembarked and stayed in a hotel in Santiago for a couple of nights. It was amazing - from the heat and tango of Argentina, to the magical frozen landscapes of the south, teaming with wildlife, and back to the Chilean Fjords and wine country. I saw parrots, condors, humpback and killer whales, dolphins, albatross and penguins - lots of penguins - and all in their natural habitat. So - what will follow is my daily blog of the cruise, written at the time, but posted retrospectively (there was no internet access for much of the cruise anyway).