South America – 36 days

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Our big trip this year is to South America where we are taking a 20 day cruise on Oceania followed by a week in Peru where we hope to see Machu Pichu. We will spend 5 nights before the cruise exploring Buenos Aires. Our friends Brenda and Craig will meet us there. At the end of the cruise, we meet up with longtime Pensacola friends Chris and Jenny who will be our travel companions to see Peru.

We have never been to South America and we chose this cruise to get a taste of the huge continent. We’ll be in Argentina, Uruguay, Chile and Peru. We are only seeing some highlights and there are so many places and experiences that we will have to come back again.

February 23, 2023

Buenos Aires – Part 1

Feb 22, 2023 We arrived in Buenos Aires on a Wednesday morning. We didn’t realize how easy it is to travel to South America from Florida. Our total trip time from takeoff in Pensacola to landing in Buenos airport was 11 hours. We have met others on this trip whose trips took 22 to 30...
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February 24, 2023

Buenos Aires – Part 2a

Feb 24, 2023 We have had two very full days marching around this busy city. This post covers Friday Feb 24th. On Friday we took a cab to the neighborhood of Palermo which is supposed to be the hip neighborhood full of bars, restaurants and shops and some sights. We mostly wandered around but it...
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February 25, 2023

Buenos Aires – Recoleta

Feb 25, 2023 Our friends Brenda and Craig arrIived from New Orleans on Saturday morning. We decided that it would be a good day to explore the neighborhood of Recoleta where our hotel is located. We headed over to the famous Recoleta Cemetery where the rich and powerful of Buenos Aires are buried. The cemetery...
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February 27, 2023

Buenos Aires – Antiques, Steaks & Tango

Sunday was spent enjoying the market and weekly antique market (ferria de antiquidades) in the old barrio of San Telmo. This barrio is a colonial neighborhood first inhabited by the BA elite where they built beautiful European style mansions. In 1871 there was a yellow fever epidemic and the wealthy fled for higher ground and...
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March 1, 2023

Uruguay Shore Excursions

Feb 28, 2023 – Montevideo, Uruguay On Monday Feb 27th, we took our time checking out of the lovely Melia hotel and headed to the cruise terminal in Buenos Aires for embarkation. The cruise terminal is very nice with indoor seating and wifi. We had little hassles and I am still glad we have minimal...
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March 4, 2023

Sea Days on Marina

This trip entails a number of days at sea which sounds like it might be tedious or boring but is far from it. The Marina is a lovely ship and offers enough amenities for our age group. We have a starboard cabin with a small balcony on the 7th floor adjacent to Brenda and Craig....
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March 6, 2023

Ushuaia, Argentina

Mar 5 and 6, 2023. Since Oceania cancelled our planned stop at the Falkland Islands, we spent an extra day and one night in Ushuaia, Argentina. I was able to get hold of our guide, Gaston, we had booked through ToursbyLocals.com to arrange for an extra tour with during the afternoon of our extra day....
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March 8, 2023

Glacier Alley & Punta Arenas

Glacier Alley, Chilean Fjords Mar 8, 2023 We left Ushuaia, Argentina around 4pm and had a picturesque sail through the Beagle Channel. The channel is a strait that extends for 150 miles in the Tierra de Fuego archipelago in the southern tip of South America. It connects the Atlantic Ocean with the Pacific Ocean. The...
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March 12, 2023

4 Days at Sea

What was supposed to be 2 days at sea and then a port in Chile, followed by another day at sea didn’t work out as planned. On the second day Bill and Brenda tested positive for Covid and are quarantined in our cabins for 5 days. Craig and I had negative tests so we are...
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March 13, 2023

Chile – Puerto Montt

Finally, we were able to disembark at a planned Chilean port and go on our scheduled tour. Puerto Montt was on Mar 13th. It started out as a very foggy damp day. The area is surrounded by volcanoes, several active and recently erupted. But the fog obstructed views of the volcanoes. We were on a...
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March 14, 2023

Chile – Valparaiso & Casablanca

Port of San Antonio, Chile, March 14, 2023 Another excursion day that Bill had to miss because his early morning test was still positive. Happily, Brenda was able to get out of Covid jail and join us for our time in the San Antonio and Valparaiso Chile region. The boat docked in San Antonio, Chile...
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March 15, 2023

Chile – Coquimbo

Mar 15 2024 Today was a ship’s tour to see the Elqui Valley starting in the port of Coquimbo, Chile. The port is  located on the west coast of Chile in the Coquimbo Region. The waterfront are was pretty rundown with unfinished construction, trash and many shacks. As we rounded the bay, we saw many...
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March 18, 2023

Peru – Exploring Lima

Lima – Mar 18, 25, 26 Oceania had two stops in Peru on our 20 day South American itinerary. Early in the year the company cancelled a planned stop in Pisco/Nazca as well as all excursions from Lima including Machu Pichu due to the political unrest in January and February. They added an extra day...
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March 20, 2023

Peru – Cusco & Sacred Valley

Sacred Valley, Peru – Mar 20 2023 Our first day in Cusco (which is at 11,000 feet elevation) was a long full day tour of the Sacred Valley. We had an early morning start from our hotel in Cusco. We met a representative for the tour operator in the Plaza des Armes, the central square...
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March 23, 2023

Peru – Machu Picchu

Machu Picchu is one of South America’s greatest attraction and by far the best part of our five week trip in South America. The Incas built this city in the cloudforest around 1500 and occupied it for only a hundred years. They were able to hide it from the empire-raiding Spaniards in the 1500’s and...
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