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Showing posts from January, 2023

Antarctica - Expedition to the end of the world or a social experiment in the ice

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The Southern tip of Patagonia (split between Argentina & Chile) is the point with the shortest distance to Antarctica from anywhere in the world, from Cape Horn it is „only“ approx. 1000 km to the Antarctic peninsula. Cruises last from 10 days until 3-4 weeks (if Polar Circle or Southern Georgia is included) and there is a range of ships/cruises offering such trips (currently there is 76 ships going to Antarctica), ranging from large proper cruise ships (400+ passengers) to smaller vessels for 100-130 passengers with a bit more expedition character; all ships have a different ice class meaning they are more or less able to go deeper into icy passages or bays, if their size allows that is. While the trip to Antarctica is never cheap both ends of this spectrum come with a premium; we found the MS Hamburg, a 30 year old German cruise ship for up to 300 passengers with a somewhat lower ice class, to be a good and more affordable compromise. Our actual cruise had 288 guests (+162 crew m

Argentina, Uruguay & Chile - From city life to the great outdoors

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The initial struggles and doubts ceased after some 3 days into the trip, by then I was able to wrap my head around things to start exploring and really dive into the adventures at hand.  We discovered some of the neighborhoods of Buenos Aires, which gave us quite some European vibes in a lot of places, based out of our AirBnB in the hipster area of Palermo. Distances can be long in this metropol of approx. 15 million people,    walking only gets you this far and we figured out the public transportation being a convenient and affordable way to get around, of course Uber does the trick, too. Old city parts of San Telmo, the famous area of Boca including the legendary Boca stadium, a tango show and of course red wine and meat of all sorts (as a vegetarian Diana was struggling with options, sandwiches, pasta and papas fritas being the common go-to-meals). Also, Argentineans don‘t really seem to care for the quality of coffee - going for a coffee is more of an excuse to meet and chat, not n