Happy New Year

Wednesday December 21st, 2022

In just 10 days David Shlay and I will be leaving for our Grand Voyage to circumnavigate South America and Antarctica. For us this will be a big adventure. We will be carried away on luxury ship Holland America the Volendam to the wilds of the Costa Rica Macaw Sanctuary, meet the fabled Blue Iguana at the Queen Elizabeth Botanical Gardens on Grand Caymen. From there to the Panama Canal where will will board a small boat past the giant ships and locks to a quiet estuary where the monkeys come down from the trees and the Toucans call out from their perches. Then down the West coast of South America with stops in Manat, Ecuador, Peru (revolutions permitting) including the pre-Inca ruins of Pachacamec and several in Chile, on to the remote Robinson Caruso Island and its endemic Firethorn Hummingbird. If we are lucky we will see the Juan Fernandez Fur Seal, once thought to be extinct and now making a steady recovery.

We will catch our breath and eat the delicious food on the ship. From the island we go back to the coasts and through the fjords of Patagonia. We will get out along the way and look for rare birds and plants. Then to,the ends of the earth and Tierra del Fuego. We cruise through Beagle Channel where ‘Darwin explored for fossils and made keen observations on the now extinct indigenous people. We will cruise the historic Straights of Magellan and through the Drake. Passge around Cape Horn to Antarctica for 4 to 5 days of turbulent cruising in some of the most treacherous waters on the planet. To the Antarctic peninsula, glaciers and ice burgs, watching the whales, penguins, sea birds and seals. Then we wil,go back into our warm cabin for some hot cocoa or a latte. 

Up to the Falkland Islands. Who would ever think I would go there twice? We are going to see the King Peguins on Bluff Cove Sanctuary. We will,cross the battlefields where Argentinian soldiers invaded these islands only to be liberated by the Iron Lady herself Margaret Thatcher. 

Then we hit Uruguay for Carnival and a Jewish Heritage tour of the capital city, Montevideo. We spend Valentines Day and my 65th birthday with two romance filled nights In Buenos Aries. There will be a formal. ‘Valentine’s Ball’  on the ship. We will see the city, the gardens, some museums and eat local food. Then things go all Portuguese in Brazil. A totally different culture. Some of these ports sound a bit shady. People get murdered in Brazil. And I hope no one gets murdered on our ship. Which reminds me there is a revolution in Peru and it may not be safe for tourists. People do get kidnapped and held hostage for money. They have an insurgency group called ‘The Shining Path’ in Peru with factions that hide out in the jungle.

We then go to Rio and eventually cross the equator and go for 6 days up the Amazon to Manaus. We will see the fabled fresh water Pink Dolphins, see giant water lilies and meet indigenous villagers where topless native woman sell trinkets they make to tourists for money. I think Manaus is the kinda place where a murder could happen. Assuming we escape the mosquitoes and no one gets Yellow Fever, Typhoid or Malaria we should be ok. We have Quinine Malaria pills just in case. Plus David has promised to keep me safe.

Then we make our way; those of us who have survived this far, to Devil’s Island, French Guiana. This desolate essentially abandoned relic of the French Prison where Napoleon sent people to languish, suffer and die. You’ve seen the movie Pappillion? Well it is undoubtably haunted and there are said to be thousands of wild monkeys that run all over the place and come beg for food. There are flocks of escaped wild peacocks which may look beautiful but these wild one will bite and chase you. So there may be some birds here but defiantly ghosts.

Once we leave here it is essentially an escape to paradise as a final reward. Barbados, Dominica, Puerto Rico and the Bahamas. A lot of safe sunny beaches, blue colored drinks to match the water, with paper umbrellas, palm trees, parrots and people who speak English. Praise be.