Between Big Trips
I recently recounted my story about visiting the South Pole at the beginning of 2023, followed by my special father-son trip through Latin America. We still have plenty of catching up to do regarding my travels in 2023, so I’ll continue to retrace my steps from the beginning of last year. After my big expedition to the South Pole and playing tour guide for my father for a few weeks, I was looking forward to a slightly more relaxing, although no less ambitious, adventure ahead. 😎
After saying “auf Wiedersehen” to my father and sending him back home to Germany, I had three weeks to spend in the Americas before taking off on my next big adventure. I planned to take a three-week cruise across the Atlantic Ocean, from the southern tip of Chile all the way to South Africa, with my girlfriend Karyna. But first I had some time to decompress between trips, and Karyna still had some things to take care of before disembarking on our cruise. So shortly after my dad left, Karyna came to meet me in Argentina to enjoy some time together before we had to part ways again leading up to our big cruise together.
We went to Mendoza to visit my vineyard, attend the owner’s conference in the area, and guzzle a ton of wine together. We also got to go horseback riding through the land near the vineyards, which was beautiful and a lot of fun for us both.
After our short time together in Argentina, Karyna took the long journey back to Dubai, while I traveled north for a bit. During our few weeks apart, I visited one of my future homes in Honduras, went to the Cayman Islands, and spent a little time in Florida to round out my trip.
It was an easy flight from Miami, Florida to Santiago, Chile, where I was excited to meet Karyna again and depart together on our cruise across the globe.
We would fly in a private charter plane from Santiago to Puerto Williams, the southernmost town in the world. It’s just off the coast of Ushuaia, Argentina but Puerto Williams is a Chilean city. From there, we boarded the cruise ship to sail across the ocean. Along the way to South Africa, we would visit the Falkland Islands, South Georgia, Tristan da Cunha, and more.
Going South
My arrival in Santiago de Chile from Argentina felt different from the last time I landed at the same airport just about a month prior. Last time, I was on my way to Antarctica, and I met my brother in Santiago before continuing to Punta Arenas to depart for the South Pole. This time, I didn’t plan to stop in Punta Arenas, but we ended up having to stop over there anyway, maybe to refuel or because of bad weather. I don’t remember the reason exactly, but I do remember seeing that airport again without planning to. 🙄 From there, we flew the last few miles down to Puerto Williams.
Before we made it on our flight to Puerto Williams though, Karyna had some issues with her flight to Santiago. After leaving Dubai, she had been taking care of some business matters in New York which caused her to miss her flight to Chile. Luckily, she was able to catch another flight early the next morning. That still left us enough time to work out the last-minute details and enjoy a short walk through Santiago de Chile before moving on to our next destination.
We took a bus to the airport, and there we were met by our private charter plane to fly us further south in comfort.
It took us three or four hours to fly to Punta Arenas from Santiago, and only about a half hour more to get to Puerto Williams from there.
Once we arrived in Puerto Williams, we took a bus on a very brief city tour to see a few places around town, and then the bus took us to our ship.
Anchors Away
We boarded the Silver Cloud, a ship from Silversea Cruises, which is a prominent ultra-luxury cruise company headquartered in Monaco. This would be our home-away-from-home for almost the next three weeks as we cruised from the southernmost point of Chile all the way across the ocean to Cape Town, South Africa, passing through the Falkland Islands, South Georgia, and Tristan de Cunha on the way.
If you’re departing from Argentina, it’s quite a hassle to visit these British-owned islands because of the conflict. You can’t fly to the Falkland Islands from Ushuaia, and even though all the Antarctic cruises depart from Argentina, they aren’t allowed to visit those islands either. If you want to visit the Falkland Islands, you can either depart from Chile or from Montevideo, Uruguay, which is much further away. For obvious reasons, I picked the closer and easier option.
We boarded the boat and sailed out through the Magellan Channel into the rough ocean toward the Falkland Islands, where we would already dock the next day. We visited a few places in the Falkland Islands: New Island, West Point Island, and the capital of Port Stanley.
Visiting the Falkland Islands
At New Island, we walked up a little hill to see a high cliff with lots of wild birds, including some adorable penguins.
The landscape was quite interesting, featuring low grass, rolling hills, beautiful water, and many different types of birds flying and nesting all around.
There was a nice bay with a shipwreck, and the water was completely transparent there. Karyna went to collect some seashells, because although it’s strictly forbidden, she likes them, and a beautiful woman deserves to get what she wants. 😏 We saw some seals basking in the sun and took a nice walk around the area to enjoy the scenery and each other’s company.
In the afternoon, we went to see the Westpoint Island Settlement, where we had some nice tea and cake and learned a bit about the history of the Falkland Islands. There were a lot of sheep around, and we met a guy who gave us a tour in his jeep.
He took us up to a viewing platform that felt quite isolated, although it was only about three kilometers from the village.
We were already pretty late getting off the boat, so we just took the jeep tour, walked around the island a bit, saw some rare birds, and then drove back to the boat. We saw a bunch of penguins and sea lions hanging around, and we greatly enjoyed seeing the landscape.
Touring the Capital
The next day, we visited the capital of the Falkland Islands at Port Stanley, a quaint British town that was very interesting to explore. We took bus tours from there but decided to divide and conquer based on our interests. Karyna went on the regular Port Stanley tour, while I went on the military bus tour to learn more about the quiet little island. 🪖
On my tour, we took a few scenic roads to see more of the island. The islands are quite hilly and there are practically no trees around. The exception is one little patch of forest which was basically planted as an experiment 30 years ago to see whether the trees could grow and survive in this environment. It turns out, they can, but they’ve only grown about four or five meters tall in all these years.
We visited a couple of military installations, which played a big role in the Argentinian invasion of the Falklands in the 1980s. It was fascinating to learn about the history of civil disobedience that the Falklanders took against the Argentinians to protect their country, which used to be known in Spanish as Islas Malvinas.
Overall, it was an interesting tour that showed off some nice viewpoints around the island. We also went to visit a fjord where they had a big battle. We saw a hill where the British defended themselves until the very end, and we learned about the history there. From these significant historical sites, I could see a lot of the island’s beautiful scenery surrounding us, which was impressive.
We had a good time walking around the capital of Port Stanley after our respective tours. We went to a local museum that taught us a bit more about the history of the Falkland Islands, as well as some information about the current politics, culture, and society there. It was nice to wander around the streets a bit, see the harbor, and visit some other local places nearby.
We got back on the boat after a long day of exploring and were ready to take off for the next destination, which was South Georgia. It would take two days overseas to get there, and we had to go through security and so on every time we embarked or disembarked the ship.
Back on Board
The Silver Cloud is a big boat that’s not so well-suited for expeditions, as it’s more of a regular cruiseliner. Regardless, they handled this expedition relatively well. My only complaint is that the boarding process of their zodiac boats wasn’t necessarily up to modern standards, but that was a fairly minor inconvenience.
The ship’s captains were two Ukrainian men with whom we became friends throughout our journey. They invited us on the bridge.They liked her a lot because they were from Odessa just like her. Some cruise ships have an open bridge that anyone can visit, but this one was closed, so we could only go with a special invitation from the captains.
We also got friendly with the Indian chef, who made some special Indian food just for us after we talked and he learned that Karyna and I are Ukrainian and German. There were a couple of other German guests on board too, but we didn’t talk much with them.
Besides us, the age of the average passenger on this ship seemed to be about 80 years old, and we’re barely in our thirties. We felt pretty young but still had fun aboard the boat with all the senior guests. We got to know some of these older passengers on a deeper level, which was actually kind of nice. Many couples on the cruise already had “diamond” marriages, meaning that they’ve been together for 60+ years. It was nice to talk to some of them, and they set a nice example for me and my girlfriend.
We enjoyed our time on the luxurious boat with tasty food and nice drinks. Everything was pretty close to perfect, and spending such a great time with Karyna was undoubtedly a highlight of the trip.
Our days at sea sped by, even though the internet was slow on the boat. It worked well enough for what I needed, but it was challenging for Karyna to manage with the low signal. Despite the slow internet, we made it work and had fun during our sea days.
Join us again next time as we continue cruising across the Atlantic to visit South Georgia, Tristan da Cunha, and eventually make our way to South Africa.
