LIVE (hopefully) MS Fridtjof Nansen Highlights of Antarctica November 9 - 19th

[patrickmoran]

My phone number is 502 939 5437. Email is patrickmoran150@gmail.com. Feel free to contact me. 

[patrickmoran]

We’re back in civilization and have Wi-Fi. I can officially report the Wi-Fi on the ship sucks. I got my emails but opening any attachment was nearly impossible. I could post text and pictures to FB but even a 20 second video took hours to upload. I could see the headlines for my newsfeeds but opening them was hit and miss, mostly miss.  If you NEED Wi-Fi, don’t go. If you’re getting away, then not a problem. I did see people making calls so maybe the ship has something I wasn’t aware of. Not a big problem for me but I would have liked to FaceTime with the kids. 

[CDNPolar]

Patrick - this explains why you did not answer a few questions....  

 

Not sure if you are good to go back and see some of the questions?

 

 

[patrickmoran]

The food was good. Breakfast and lunch were buffet style, as were 2 dinners. Hot food on the buffet was lukewarm at best. At breakfast you can order eggs or omelette through the waiters. The plated dinners were very good. I had the beef, lamb and pork main dishes. I never tried fish or vegetarian dishes. I liked the wines that were served. They served a variety throughout the trip. There was a red and a white available for lunch and dinner. Generally I did not like the coffee. Too bitter for my taste but then I don’t like Starbucks coffee. Lunch desserts were small and lacking flavor. 
Service was good. You could make reservations but I never could figure out why. You walk up to the stand and give them your cabin number, wash your hands, then get seated. Most tables were for 2.

All of these comments are about the main dining room, Aune.
The chocolate shakes at the Freidham were very good. I liked the hamburgers but had to get them with the toppings of my choice on the side. Service was slow since there were only 2 servers and 1 (?) chef. If the restaurant was full it could be very slow. We usually would do an early dinner there when we had a late landing. That worked well.  

[harrywpb]

On 11/17/2022 at 9:31 AM, patrickmoran said:

Return flights to EZE are scheduled to arrive at 12:15 and 3:25 pm. We are flying out at 11:50 pm the day that we arrive. A flight at 10 pm won’t be a problem. 

Hi Patrick 

We are really enjoying this thread because we are booked on this ship and itinerary for January 2024.  Thanks for the time you are putting into this.  We live 50 miles south of you in West Palm Beach and would love to talk to you when you get home.  However we have no idea how to make a personal contact on Cruise Critic.  We have some questions and appreciate all the first hand knowledge from a fellow cruiser.  We too are avid ocean cruisers (40+) and have been to Ushuaia while cruising around South America.  After observing the expedition ships while there we have wanted to do this trip ever since.  We also have been to Buenos Aires a few times and loved it.  We will follow this thread and look forward to this adventure.  Please let us know if you have a contact you can share.  

Thanks again.  Smooth sailing!

[patrickmoran]

Finally made it home today. We arrived at EZE Saturday as scheduled. We collected our luggage and walked over to Terminal A for our late night flight on American. We had 8 hours to kill. American check in and desk didn't open for 3 hours. The line to check in was crazy long. We had 2 of the few seats available in the terminal. Finally I asked Anne to ask a roaming agent about our flight. Guess what, it had been delayed for 21 hours! We weren't leaving Saturday night! AA didn't notify me. Anne had me check the app and yup we're leaving Sunday night. All right, I've got travel insurance and it's not the end of the world. Book a hotel, get a taxi and head into center city. After more drama Sunday night, we finally leave BA and get home.

I'll post my report regarding landings later this week, probably Thursday while watching football.

[Host Jazzbeau]

10 minutes ago, patrickmoran said:

I'll post my report regarding landings later this week, probably Thursday while watching football.

You should have plenty of time while watching Detroit lose to – who is it this year?  oh yeah, the Bills!

[miklinga]

Patrickmoran, 

Thanks for posting your highlights.  We are not going on the MS Fridtjof Nansen, but leave tomorrow for Santiago (2 days early) and will meet with the MS Fram group on Saturday11/26 for a night at the Mandarin Oriental pre-cruise.   Looking forward to your landing reports.  

 

Safe travels for wherever you go next!

Mike and Linda

[Heartfelttraveler]

16 hours ago, patrickmoran said:

Finally I asked Anne to ask a roaming agent about our flight. Guess what, it had been delayed for 21 hours! We weren't leaving Saturday night! AA didn't notify me. Anne had me check the app and yup we're leaving Sunday night.

What was AA's reason for the 21-hour delay?

[patrickmoran]

An agent told my wife that the pilot had an accident and was in the hospital. Eventually AA cancelled the flight and were rebooked on a flight out Sunday night. We hate middle seats and were able to get an aisle and window combo in the rear. I have no idea what they did with the other 300+ passengers because I had checked and the flight was booked pretty full and other flights Saturday, Sunday and Monday maybe had 20 open seats each.

[patrickmoran]

Landings

We made 5 landings and had 2 cruising opportunity

Half Moon Island: afternoon of 2nd day (11/11/22)

Cuverville Island: afternoon of 3rd day (11/12/22) There was also expedition cruising

Peterman Island (canceled due to too much ice): afternoon of 4th day (11/13/22)

  (We did sail to Dorian Bay and there was expedition cruising late that afternoon)

Damoy Point: morning of 5th day (11/14/22)

Base Brown at Neko Bay (landing on the Antarctica continent): afternoon of 6th day (11/15/22)

Beach of Whalers Bay in Deception Island: late morning of 7th day (11/16/22)

 

All of landings involved up to 1 hour on land plus transfers to and from the ship for each group. Only 100 people were allowed on land at a time. So the passengers were divided into 4 main groups and each group was divided into 3 subgroups. Each subgroup would be called to the launch deck to board the boats to be transferred to shore. The crew would help you into and out of the boats and onshore.  They were very good at helping. Climbing up off the beach could be very challenging (steep, slippery, etc). The whole process of all of the passengers going ashore, set up and tearing down was about 8 hours so there was quite a bit of waiting around.

Once ashore, you would collect hiking poles and follow the paths that the landing team had established. The paths would take you by wildlife (usually penguins) and scenic points. Hiking in the snow was tiring and it did not take much climbing to wear me out.

All of the landings were good. Each site was different in its own way but many were pretty similar.

 

I will be traveling for the next 3 weeks so I may not get back to this post to regularly to answer any follow up questions or post some info. So be patient.

[patrickmoran]

I should add that Peterman Island was as far south as the cruise goes.

Also we were told that in a couple of months we will receive a link that will take us to cruise log with pictures and lots info from the cruise.

[CDNPolar]

On 11/24/2022 at 11:35 PM, patrickmoran said:

Covid counts?

 

Somewhere on the thread you mentioned that your sailing did have positive covid cases?

 

In another discussion here one member stated that last year Hurtigruten cancelled their Antarctica cruise because the previous cruise had 10 positive cases on board.

 

In the end, did you know how many cases your sailing havd and how does Hurtigruten deal with Covid?

 

Thanks!

[AlanCruise]

It appears that there have been a few cases on the recent Antarctica trips. The current policy is just for the infected passengers to isolate in cabin for 5 days. It is much less serious than it was a year ago.

[Heartfelttraveler]

6 hours ago, CDNPolar said:

 

Somewhere on the thread you mentioned that your sailing did have positive covid cases?

 

In another discussion here one member stated that last year Hurtigruten cancelled their Antarctica cruise because the previous cruise had 10 positive cases on board.

 

In the end, did you know how many cases your sailing havd and how does Hurtigruten deal with Covid?

 

Thanks!

 

We were supposed to be on the Cruise that originated in Santiago on January 11, 2022, flying to Punta Arenas on January 12 for 18 days.  Back then protocol was that we had to fill out reams of Hurtigruten online paperwork, get a negative Covid test within 72 hours of our flight to Chile, do Chile Government website forms, take another covid test in the Santiago airport, another covid test at the hotel, and another covid test at the Punta Arenas dock.  Plus, we were expected to isolate at the hotel until the negative covid tests were posted.  This year is so much easier.

 

The people disembarking had to take an Covid test every few days (I think every 3-5 days) and then a test the night before disembarking to fly back to the USA and UK.  It was the tests that were taken for flights home where they ten (or more) cases showed up which caused our Hurtigruten cruise to be cancelled last minute.  There were several people who were already in Santiago.

 

I will say that Hurtigruten has treated us right so far.  We went from a 12 day on the Fridtjof Nansen to an 18 day on the FN, to 18 days on the Roald Amundsen without increasing prices.  (Note that Hurtigruten has now changed how they count to how many nights instead of days.  Our cruise is now considered a 17-night cruise.) 

[patrickmoran]

9 hours ago, CDNPolar said:

 

Somewhere on the thread you mentioned that your sailing did have positive covid cases?

 

In another discussion here one member stated that last year Hurtigruten cancelled their Antarctica cruise because the previous cruise had 10 positive cases on board.

 

In the end, did you know how many cases your sailing havd and how does Hurtigruten deal with Covid?

 

Thanks!

I do not know the final count. I would guess about 10. I have no idea what was required of the infected though I do recall an a comment during the morning announcement one day that people were being released from quarantine.

[ronpes]

We finally submitted our Health Declaration forms today after a 4 week wait to get the GP to sign them off.  Glad that is now done and out of the way. 

[CDNPolar]

There is a significant time difference from Ushuaia to Antarctica.  I think Antarctica is 18 hours ahead.

 

Crossing the Drake Passage takes about 48 hours.  

 

How do you deal with that time change?  Does the ship move the time as you go, or do you just stay on Ushuaia time because Antarctica is light 24 hours?

 

It would make sense to me to just say on the same time setting and that way there is no issue with time zone tiredness, but I have never seen anyone bring this topic up...?

 

 

 

 

[CDNPolar]

7 hours ago, CDNPolar said:

There is a significant time difference from Ushuaia to Antarctica.  I think Antarctica is 18 hours ahead.

 

Crossing the Drake Passage takes about 48 hours.  

 

How do you deal with that time change?  Does the ship move the time as you go, or do you just stay on Ushuaia time because Antarctica is light 24 hours?

 

It would make sense to me to just say on the same time setting and that way there is no issue with time zone tiredness, but I have never seen anyone bring this topic up...?

 

 

 

 

This is likely a silly question that I just asked here.  If you google the time of Antarctica, it shows 18 hours ahead of my time EST, but when you look further, most entries state that Antarctica really does not have a time zone and the research stations all work on their own time zone.  

 

I assume that we will not change clocks at all?

 

 

[Host Jazzbeau]

8 hours ago, CDNPolar said:

This is likely a silly question that I just asked here.  If you google the time of Antarctica, it shows 18 hours ahead of my time EST, but when you look further, most entries state that Antarctica really does not have a time zone and the research stations all work on their own time zone.  

 

I assume that we will not change clocks at all?

I don't see any reason why the ship should change its time.  The reason for changing time in the rest of the world is to avoid confusion on shore excursions when people are looking at the clock on the wall of the bar or checking with their tour guide.  None of that applies in Antarctica.

 

Side question, slightly off the wall:  on the cruises that go to the geographic North Pole, what time does the ship use there?  Technically it could be any time zone, or all at once...

[miklinga]

We were on the MS Fram 11/27 - 12/18.  The ship changed times two or three times back and forth during the cruise.  It seemed odd since we did not dock at any ports with the exception of Stanley, Falkland Islands.  It kind of kept us on our toes to be able to go on excursions with our group.  We were divided into 6 groups for landings and/or cruising.

 

Safe travels, 

Mike and Linda

[AlanCruise]

Just returned from Roald Amundsen to Antarctica and Falklands. No time changes during the trip, we stayed in Argentina time.

 

 

[JCN51]

Hi Patrick, I am doing the 11 night Antarctic Peninsula cruise next week. Did you need hiking boots or just wear the provided ship boots to go ashore?

Thanks,

Jane

[AlanCruise]

For landings on the Antarctic Peninsula you are required to wear the boots provided by the ship.

Also you often step into the sea whilst getting off the zodiacs, so would probably get wet feet with hiking boots.

Edited January 24, 2023 by AlanCruise