Friday 10 Feb 2023 - Farewell Santiago - and not a moment too soon. The air quality here has been unhealthy for the past week due to the massive wildfires 6 hours south of here. Thankfully the air conditioner in the apartment has been working hard so at least it's better indoors. Our driver turned up 'Spanish' Early - only 5 minutes. We invariably book drivers for a particular time and they arrive 15-20 minutes early then cause havoc rushing us to get down to the...

It was not the best of sleeps. After 5 weeks with 'Airbnb's most comfortable mattress' in Buenos followed by almost 3 weeks with 'comfort incarnate' on the Roald Amundsen, the Hilton's bed offering was lack lustre to say the very least. It was deja vu all over again on Monday morning. We finally got to try the Hilton breakfast, not bad. Back up to the room for more packing, we're allowed 3 x 23 kg bags each for the flight to Chile and we made the most of it. We...

It was a bittersweet farewell to the ship on Sunday morning. We are usually happy souls but have truly been in our element for the duration of our time aboard the MS Roald Amundsen. Sad, sad, sad to say farewell to the expedition crew who turned out to wave us onto the coach. In fairness, perhaps they were just making sure we left. We are super happy we chose to book this excursion prior to the afternoon flight back to Buenos Aires. Having achieved all our shopp...

We finished the packing yesterday so there was a fair whack of chilling out by the time Friday dawned. We watched movies, we limited movement for my sake and ate a lot of takeaway in the cabin - thanks be for Fredheim's fried rice and chicken satay. Saturday proved to be much more agreeable as the captain had gently diverted us further north as we crossed the Drake, keeping us ahead of the weather front moving through. We definitely missed the worst of it due t...

Brown Bluff (-63.5333330, -56.9000000) Our final day in Antarctica was to involve a landing in Brown Bluff. This area is known for a couple of things, firstly Penguins by the truckload and secondly it's close to the year-round Argentinian base, Esperanza. This base's claim to fame is having had the first human birth in Antarctica - on purpose in January 1978. The theory of this planned birth was that if territorial claims ever came to a head, having an 'Antarc...