Antarctica & South America (1/15 - 2/2/26)

While originally not on my bucket list, our opportunity to cruise with some family in the southern hemisphere came at a great time to add and check this off the list. We sailed on Celebrity Cruise Lines to Antarctica and ports in South America out of Buenos Aires, Argentina. We sailed for 14 nights and stopped at various locations in ports in South America and visited many sights in Antarctica itself.

Now to be clear, this trip was not one of those National Geographic, hands-on type of tours (no helicopters/Zodiacs). Since it was summer down there, we saw most of the penguins raising families in Argentina in colonies.

We arrived in Buenos Aires a day early to recover from our overnight flight and to catch a few more sights. At this Argentinian Steak House on the water, we all really enjoyed the famous Argentinian beef.

To me, seeing all the wildlife was my favorite aspect of this cruise. Large birds, sea lions, whales, and of course, lots of penguins. Here an Albatross follows the ship right outside my cabin balcony.

In our first port of call, we docked in Ushuaia, Argentina. The place is known as the southernmost city in the world. It is primarily the gateway to the "End of the World".

We decided to take a boat excursion while here. The Great Cormorant was an unexpected bonus on the ride.

One of the first stops on the excursion, we got a glimpse of this colony of birds. If I didn't call it out here, you might assume we are looking at a penguin colony here, but no, this is a gulp (colony) of Cormorants.

There is an island in the bay that these sea lions made home. In the next picture, you can see the island from a further distance.

The island where the sea lions live, it also serves as a lighthouse for the bay. In the background you can see the southern end of the Andes Mountains.

On our way across the Drake Passage (from Cape Horn to Antarctica) and closer to Antarctica, we could see so much snow and ice.

Our ship also happened to pass by this iceberg with penguins taking a ride. We were able to catch this picture from our balcony.

One thing I learned new about penguins was that as clumsy as they are on land, they are quite graceful in the water.

We also had the opportunity to see Humpback whales. These moments were harder to catch on camera than the penguins, but I was able to get this lucky shot.

Once in the Schollart Channel, we could see on both sides the islands with glaciers in many locations.

One of the most impressive stops was at Elephant Island. One of the things this did was to rotate the entire ship in circles to make sure everyone gets a great view. I think we went around three times while at this location.

The island is also known for its Elephant Seals although I never saw any.

I assume you need a very experienced crew with the right technology to navigate around all the icebergs floating everywhere.

Down here, there are no places to dock a ship like this.

Here are some more icebergs we were able to avoid.

Due to high winds, we had to divert from the Falkland Islands to spend more time in Puerto Madryn where we spent 2 days.

We decided to take two all-day penguin tours of two different colonies.

Our first tour was at a smaller colony located on a private farm on Punta Ninfas. Here we also enjoyed a traditional meal at the farm BBQ with lamb as the main dish.

We were able to walk right through the colony to see the penguins up close. They have no fear of humans and don't seem to care we are there to see them. We were warned not to try and touch them though.

This picture doesn't really show how big these whale bones are. This private farm did not have this colony originally when they purchased it. But after the penguins moved in, it became quite a tourist attraction.

This time of the year, many young penguins were getting as large as their parents, but there were still some smaller ones around.

On the second tour, we drove further to see the largest Magellanic penguin rookery in the region at Punta Tombo. There is an estimated 1M penguins here at peak times.

Another interesting animal we saw here was the Guanaco. About the size of a mule, these hairy guys also lived among penguins.

Here some siblings are trying to see what all these people are doing in my neighborhood.

We sailed on the Celebrity Equinox which had many nice restaurants and bars to choose from.

One bar had a cool (excuse the pun) bar top. That is frozen ice shavings that kept the drinks cool!

This was the main dining room where we had most of our dinners, We also ate in specialty restaurants and usually visited the huge buffet for breakfast/lunch.

We were the largest ship I saw when we were down here. The ship to the right was one of those expedition cruises.

In Montevideo, Uruguay, we did manage to get a bike ride in on a bike ride tour through the city. We only rode 13 miles, but they did take us to several monuments and sites of interest. We weren't too fond of the rental bikes however.

This is also a beach town with many residents right on the water.

Back in Buenos Aires, we took a bus tour of the city. Here is a picture of the balcony where the famous Eva Perón gave a famous address to the nation from the "pink house" where the president works. She was the wife of the president of Argentina and was loved by the lower class people.

This is her tomb in a very interesting and large cluster of other tombs.

This cathedral of Buenos Aires was huge and had many enclaves that featured various major events and people from this country. Pope Francis was the archbishop of this church.

One last look from our cabin. Now this was one of my longer posts, but I took hundreds of pictures. To see even more photos and video, look at my photo album for more pics with commentary.

We were gone for 17 days and headed back to Punta Gorda for the rest of February for which I will create a separate post later. I also have a post from our trip of skiing in Utah in early February while we stayed in Punta Gorda as well. Stay tuned!!!