Trip archive
2019 World Cruise
The long 2019 world cruise journal. 76 entries.
Entries in chronological order
All tripsUshuaia
What a wonderful two days we’ve had in Ushuaia — the southernmost city in the world! It was a beautiful sail in. Since we were scheduled to be here only one day we had to scramble to find activities for the…
Patagonia
You might think that dining on a cruise ship is a delightful and relaxing experience, and usually it is, but sometimes you just can’t eat three bites without jumping up to take a picture. We left Ushuaia and headed…
Scenic fjords of Chile
Today we sailed all day through the fjords and had just about every type of weather that you can imagine. At one point I really thought I might be blown off the deck except for the railings. The weather changed so…
Goodness Glacial!
Years ago the Cunard Steamship Line had the slogan, “Getting there is half the fun.” This would be true of cruising the glacial fjords between Ushuisa and Punta Arenas up on the Magellan Strait which was the most…
Puntas Arenas, Chile
Suddenly we awakened to mid 70 degree temps and bright sun and no mountains. Sunset at 9:30 PM. What a change from grey winter the day before. Punta Arenas, Chile sounds like a spicy dish from the tortilla islands.…
Cruising from bed
The view from where I sit at the computer. I picked up a head cold and despite all efforts, passed it on to Jenni. I am getting over my cold, but Jenni is in bed. We both got up, went to breakfast and our respective…
Puerto Chacabuco, Chile
But first a little ditty from Dale. . . “Oh I came to Port Chacabuco with a banjo on my knee To taste their Ossobuco. It’s the best in all Chile” You know the rest. Feel free to join in. Puerto Chacabuco and WA state…
Getting a head in seafood business
Saturday, Jenni and I without any designated tour or guide found our way to the Puerto Montt, Chile, dockside fish and farm markets. Jenni will have more to say about the farm market. We were lucky to be there on…
Puerto Montt market
If you remember that I am not a shopper (my total of purchases on the entire trip so far is 2 postcards purchased in the Falklands) you might wonder why I’m posting about a market. And it won’t be the last time on…
Valparaiso to Santiago
We docked in Valparaiso this morning and promptly set out on a long bus ride to Santiago where we enjoyed the architecture and the amazing parks. This old building appears to have a new one protruding from its top.…
Valparaiso/Santiago, Chile – more
There is a lot to say about Valparaiso and Santiago, Chile. Jenni wrote a blog and I am doing my own. We had a really interesting day traveling with a guide for nearly nine hours as we went cross country to Santiago…
Night in Valparaiso
It was a beautiful evening with no place to go so I spent it on the deck playing with the camera. The big windows on the building across from us gave me some interesting reflections of our ship and the ship docked…
Valparaiso/Vina del Mar Impressions
Well, the photo above kind of paints the picture. Old Valparaiso looking across to new Vina del Mar. I would really be easy to observe that half the city is in an irreversible state of decay and all the money is…
Valparaiso panorama
Many of my impressions of Valparaiso were taken from the bus window so they are different from Dale’s. And they may have ugly reflections in them. Bus tours are the norm in the cities so sometimes that’s the best we…
Stranded on Robinson Crusoe Island
Look at this island on a globe – if you can find it. It’s close to. . . nowhere. In fact it is in the middle of nowhere. It is the actual island on which the real life character Alexander Selkirk, stranded for nearly…
Mirador de Selkirk
We were on the first tender over to the island today. We quickly checked out the main street and then headed for the hills. There was, of course, no town here on Robinson Crusoe Island when Alexander Selkirk lived…
Easter Island
See the statues in the lower right of the above photo. They were all cut out of the volcanic quarry in the mountain above. There are over a thousand of them around the island. Easter Island was one of the highlights…
All dressed up and
We were all packed and ready for our adventure on Easter Island when word came that there was to be no landing there today. So, we viewed it from afar. The waves crashing on the shore were our reminder that it just…
Six million dollar man
Remember the show called the “Six million dollar man?” I was sitting at lunch today with my brain in neutral, casually eavesdropping on conversations around me. People were talking about their “parts,” old, new, and…
Ship shots
Several of you have sent email requesting more shots of the ship itself. Here is a bunch of random shots which should give you a feel for our home away from home. The ship is beautiful and maintained at a level hard…
Land Ho! – Tahiti
After many days at sea, partially due to our inability to land on Easter Island, everybody on the ship was looking forward to standing on dry land, which finally happened in Papeete located on the island of Tahiti.…
Bora Bora – Sing to the tune of Boola Boola
We woke up this morning while gliding across turquoise seas into the set of “South Pacific.” I guess we should be singing Bali Hai, not Bora Bora because this island was the inspiration for South Pacific. It has one…
Island life
As we sailed towards Tahiti we had a bit of time 🙂 so I broke out the quilling that I brought and invited some friends to learn to quill. I also had time to look for another post card. You may remember from Dale’s…
Polynesian feast
Chef Thomas and his crew certainly enjoyed themselves despite the hard work of putting on an elaborate dinner to mark the end of our time in French Polynesia. Everyone looked lovely; even the cooks. We ate out on the…
Rockin and Rollin
Today is the second or third of March 2019, depending on which side of the International Date Line on which you may find yourself. It will be a memorable day for many on the Viking Sun as we have spent the entire day…
Rocking and Rollin day 2
One of our blog readers sent me a list of questions which I will answer. We are eating less every day as the novelty of endless banqueting wears off. For breakfast, I had fried eggs and link sausage, period. On clear…
Bay of Islands, New Zealand
The photo above is of the hole in the rock, the iconic image of Bay of Islands region. We didn’t see it until we were departing the area at sunset. Tomorrow marks the halfway mark in our World Cruise and New Zealand…
Auckland, New Zealand
Well, we all like Auckland. Meaning Jenni and I who have been here a number of time before, and Bob and Brenda who were new to Auckland. Busy town for New Zealand, even congested. We had a nice bus tour around the…
Seal the deal in Wellington
Wellington had it all; rain, wind, fog and cold. This entire trip has us bouncing around from temperate to tropical climates every week. Nevertheless it is fun and above all, interesting. In Wellington we had two…
Wellington
I, too, enjoyed Wellington and was thankful that it wasn’t as windy as it could have been. This wind wand proves it. Dale didn’t know that his pictures were of tuberous begonias (some of my mother’s favorites) and I…
Eating around the world
That’s exactly what we do, eat around the world. Today was not exactly a sea day, nor was it a port day. Today we sailed up two fjords called Doubtful Sound and Milford Sound in New Zealand. This was today’s event.…
Beautiful food and beautiful fjords
Our captain checked the weather in the morning and made a course change in order to get us in to the respective sounds / fjords at the ideal time. The day began with a promising rainbow as the captain said that…
My my Milford
You will note that we spent one day here and one brunch but generated three blog posts. It gives you some idea how easily we are impressed! It was a really wonderful day which culminated in a private room party at…
Sydney, Pre-dawn
We glided into Sydney before sunrise. Half the ship was awake and outside on deck after days at sea and anticipation of this beautiful harbor. Oh well, it was just plain dark. Jenni got some interesting photos of the…
Sydney panorama
We cruised in to Sydney on a lovely clear morning and are leaving in the pouring rain and fog and in between we spent many happy hours in this beautiful, clean, modern city. Sydney boasts the largest steel arch…
My Sydney
By now you have seen so many images of the Sydney Opera house I figured it would be ok to slip in B&W picture just to be different. If you are wondering why Jenni and I are writing different entries for some of these…
Tasmanian sojourn
I had a picture in my head of Tasmania based on my mother’s frequent and fond references to her stop there on her way to (or from, I’m not sure which) the war but in reality it was quite different than I imagined. It…
Tasmania day trip.
The doctored up photo above is the ever popular Tasmanian Devil. . . and boy does he have teeth! We floated into Hobart Tasmania, which is an Australian state early in the morning, got on a bus and got back to the…
Geelong (as in Jelly)
Geelong (as in Jelly) Don’t worry. We were just as confused by the name and pronunciation as you. In fact, we were even further confused. We thought we were going to Melbourne. Instead of Melbourne we anchored in the…
Australian countryside
Dale’s pictures showed the sunny afternoon at the national park — for which we were very thankful because most of the day was overcast and foggy — so once again I’ll show you some of God’s amazing nature that was new…
Adelaide with friends
Today was special. Glen and Helen, the parents of Bob and Brenda’s pastor, Ryan, from Everett, met us early this morning as we disembarked. We hit it off immediately with them and they graciously showed us their city…
Vignettes of Albany
Albany is a lovely small city with lots of military history but most of what we saw on our bus tour was the natural beauty surrounding it. And that was OK with me 🙂 We finally saw lots of kangaroos in the wild, too!…
Amity in Albany
Amity was a 148-ton brig used in settlement of what later became Albany in Western Australia. The photo above is of the replica ship. Albany is a beautiful, clean small city with a great deep water port.…
Perth – Fremantle
Perth is on the Swan River estuary while Fremantle is fifteen minutes away on the shore of the Indian Ocean. What is interesting is that the wide protected Swan river is too shallow for ships and the ocean front is…
The Pinnacles and Fremantle
We were up and on the bus before dawn for today’s long journey to the Pinnacles in Nambung National Park. I didn’t sleep on the bus at all though as I wanted to see everything I could of this different landscape. We…
In the middle of nowhere
We’re on day three of eight sea days in a row; between Perth/ Fremantle and Mauritius, in the Indian Ocean. Fortunately it has been calm and lovely on the water so far. So, there are no pictures — nothing to see but…
Impressions of Mauritius
Coming into port in the morning we saw a lovely, modern city. We quickly exited the city, however, and spent our day in the countryside of Mauritius which often looked to me exactly like India. Indeed, a large…
My Mauritius
The photo above is the Chamarel restaurant and rum distillery. Rather than trying to coordinate with Jenni on blogs and blog photos we decided it would be easier to just record our own photos and impressions of the…
Cooking school
As I’ve said before the sea days are busy. Besides the mundane tasks like laundry and answering email there is also the option of cooking school. Dale and I opted to go to the Mauritian class where the menu was…
Madagascar countryside
Although we spent only hours in Madagascar we learned a lot about it from our excellent guides. We docked at a port built by a mining company which is apparently very helpful to the people of this very poor country…
Few cars in Madagascar
Jenni and I really liked Madagascar. It was so laid back. The people were really nice, even the ever present begging kids were pleasant, not abrasive or sharp. We both took a lot of pictures so I am just going to add…
Maputo, Mozambique
The new suspension bridge above was built by the Chinese in exchange for mineral and natural resources. It was the fourth country we have visited with conspicuous public works like sports stadiums, bridges, deep…
Impressions of Mozambique
Today we made our first landfall on continental Africa. We’re sailed over 32,000 miles so far (around the globe at the Equator is 25,000 miles) and we still have a month to go, most of which will be spent in Africa.…
Durban – We hardly knew you.
We sailed into Durban, South Africa, Friday evening as the sun was setting, had dinner on board, went to bed early to be outside on the dock at 7:15 AM with passports, ready for a twelve hour trip to the landlocked…
Durban city
First thing in Durban the entire ship’s population had to disembark for a face to face immigration inspection. Picture it — about 1400 people meeting individually with customs inspectors. We dutifully stood in line…
The Kingdom of Lesotho
Our 4×4 trip to the Kingdom of Lesotho was wonderful! We got to see the countryside of South Africa on our way and then the lovely Drakensburg mountains of Lesotho. The village that we visited was interesting, if…
Wild animals in London!
The guy above is HUGE! One lunge and we would have been cat chow! Well actually we were docked in East London, South Africa, our departure point for a day of safari out in the boonies. This was another case of getup,…
East London, South Africa
East London seems to have pride in itself and it shows. The streets were clean and the street vendors that I saw were more neat and organized than we had seen thus far. The roads were good but fairly empty. In many…
Addo Elephant Park
Port Elizabeth seemed to be a nice city but we’ll never really know as we headed straight out of it to Addo Elephant National Park, about 2 hours into the interior. Near to the port we saw these dolos (A dolos is a…
Much Ado about Addo
Jenni has already shown you Addo Elephant Park, the Dung Beetle capital of the Eastern Cape. I should be clear that she took all those pictures and the hand holding the beatle was not mine! It was the guide’s hand.…
Cape Town / Stellenbosch
Table Mountain was lovely as we pulled into Cape Town this morning and we were excited because instead of riding the bus today we got to be with good friends. When last we had seen them in AZ over two years ago they…
Walvis Bay, Namibia
Namibia gained independence from South Africa in 1990. It is about the size of California but not so many people — about 2.5 million. A former German colony, the country speaks German, English, Afrikaans and a dozen…
Walvis Bay Adventure
We had already had our Easter service on Saturday because Sunday was to be our stop in Luderitz, Namibia, but it never happened because the seas were too rough for tendering. So we had a brief glance at the shore at…
00, 00, zero, zilch, nada, nothing- zero degrees, zero minutes both E-W and N-S
Yes boys and girls there is a place called null, zero zero. That is zero.zero latitude at zero.zero longitude. Of course anybody who has ever looked at the meridians on a globe has observed that there is a Prime…
Impressions of Senegal
Although we spent only one day in Dakar, Senegal, I have lots to say about it so I’ll meter it out in small doses. Dale and I went our separate ways again so his impressions will be quite different from mine. Since…
Dakar – Transportation
The terminal at which we docked in Dakar was more interesting than most. There were people working there, not just machines. In the mornings we always look over the balcony railing to see what’s going on down below…
Bandia Reserve — Senegal
It is amazing to see giraffes hiding in the vegetation. I think of this as my “last shot” at the animals in Africa. I spent my entire one day in Senegal going out to the Bandia Reserve on the other side of Dakar. It…
Constructing Dakar
I got the strong impression that construction seems to be the main occupation of almost everyone in Dakar. From center city to the most remote areas we visited there is construction just everywhere. Although we saw a…
Commerce and industry – Dakar
You know that I like markets. They fascinate me. I love to see the produce and the products. And I enjoy seeing industry — factory tours as well as “industriousness”. I love seeing how people have made do with what…
People of Dakar
Like most African nations Senegal is composed of many people groups and religions. According to our guide, who was Muslim, they all get along amazingly well and live together in peace. As you can see from these…
Lake Retba salt works
Lake Retba is known for being a beautiful pink. But today it wasn’t. The salt harvesting industry there, however, was fascinating. We were told that the salt content is second only to the Dead Sea and rather than…
Teide National Park, Canary Islands
I saw very little of Santa Cruz de Tenerife after we sailed in this morning. Dale will show you a bit more. But here’s what I did see. The streets in this very modern Spanish city were deserted because this is a…
Tenerife, no canaries or canneries.
Tenerife is the largest island in the Canary Islands whose name origin is still something of a debate. I have heard of the Canary Islands all my life. In my imagination, they were tropical volcanic islands like…
We go to Vigo
It was kind of funny. Our guide kept pointing out all the famous people and places associated with Vigo, Spain and I kept thinking, “I had never heard of Vigo, Spain before this cruise.” Fame is in the eyes of the…
Portsmouth, England
We sailed into Portsmouth in a cold rain. Typical. Portsmouth has been settled since before the days of the Roman Empire and it has been an important naval port for centuries. Many famous ships are here including…
Greenwich / London
So, here we are in the Thames at Greenwich for our last night of the cruise. We intended to spend the day at the British Museum but apparently Uber is on strike or some such thing so we couldn’t get a ride. We walked…