Thread: December 8, 2010 South America Passage on the ms Veendam

Hoping some friends from CLF will join us while we take a break from college football. The ship leaves out of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and goes to
Montevideo, Uruguay,
Port Stanley, Falkland Islands,
passes by Cape Horn at the southern tip of South America,
Ushuaia, Argentina
Punta arenas, Chile
Puerto Montt, Chile and ends in
Valparaiso/Santiago, Chile

We will see the Chilean fjords, and relax! The cruise ends in time to get home before Xmas, and the all the major college bowl games.

Wow -- That sounds like a great cruise.

But we can no longer do long air flights. DH saw his neurologist this past Monday and his Parkinson's has gotten worse -- so one more medication added to his list.

Enjoy your cruise.

Yonnie, I am sorry to hear that. I really would like to meet you, and onboard a ship! It's too bad that this cruise can't be part of a longer one that starts and finishes in the US. I'll just have to find something like that for us!

When we finally get to cruise again -- hopefully this fall -- it will hav been over a year since we cruised.

Planning still continues for this cruise. We are getting into Buenos Aires a day before the cruise, and we will be staying at the Marriott on points! YAY!

We have a tour set up in Montevideo to see everything related to the Graf Spee, a German ship that was scuttled in the River Platte during WWII, rather than let the British get hold of it. Some really interesting history surrounding this, and DH is very happy that I came up with this. We are doing this through Real English Tours, and they have been excellent to work with.

If weather permits, we will get to the Falklands, where we have a guide who will show us the Battlegrounds from the 1982 war with Argentina. It was hard to get a tour guide, because most of the guides and drivers will be busy with people from the ship on tours to see penguins. There are several penguin species that you can only see here, so those tours are very popular. I am very happy we found our guide!

We don't know what we will do in Ushuaia or Punta Arenas; lots of choices for outdoorsy stuff, and since that isn't our normal thing, we can't decide!

In Puerto Montt, we will be on an all day tour to see the lake country! Beautiful lakes, a waterfall and the hopefully dormant volcano Osorno are all on the tour - along with lunch! GV Tours comes highly recommended, so this was an easy choice.

All that's left besides picking excursions is the hotel for Santiago and picking books to take to read!

Oh. And Packing.

Wish we could do a cruise like that.

I wish you could too, Yonnie. And not only because I would love the company! But there are times I wish I could have gone on all the cruises you've been on.

We made our final payment yesterday, a few days early, just to make sure that we aren't shut out by computer problems, etc.

The taxes went up since we booked, but HAL never told us, so our TA tried to get them grandfathered. While I wouldn't expect the taxes to be reduced, they could have reduced the fare enough so that it would be the original price quoted after taxes. It wasn't the amount that I objected to (although I'm sure that my TA did!), it's that HAL didn't feel the need to communicate with us about this. Their onshore customer service is serious lacking.

What rankles me the most is that they have been lowering prices on cabins on our ship to increase the occupancy rate, and that there are at least 6 cabins left at our price point. I'm sure those will be reduced soon.

The travel industry overall needs to take a very good look at what is happening to other businesses and improve their customer communication, but cruise lines have the biggest hill to climb in that area. The first cruiseline to start communicating REAL information to their customers will probably steal business from all the other lines. I just hope that they wake up soon.

Once again HAL "forgot" to pass on important info, and I learned about it on line. The Argentine government is now charging a reciprocity fee to people from the US, Canada and Australia if they fly into the international airport (EZE) at Buenos Aires. Really weird.

However, they did very well about scheduling a Meet and Greet for this cruise. Form was faxed in one day, and they responded the next with everything requested.

Go figure.