Live From the Sapphire, 30-Day Antarctica/SA B2B, Jan 20 - Feb 19

[Ken the cruiser]

1 hour ago, ocean sounds said:

Thanks for all details and photos!!

 

So happy to be joining the ship tomorrow. 
All checked in at the airport, for non-stop flight to Buenos Aires overnight.   

 

Here’s hoping you have a safe and uneventful flight, and the boarding process goes smoothly! 😁

[Ken the cruiser]

Tonight after another tasty dinner, we headed back to the cabin to ponder which of the two entertainment options we were going to go to. There was a single 8:30 pm show in the theater, which featured violin virtuoso Jakob Trasak, or go to back to back game shows in the Explorers Lounge starting at 7:30 pm. 🤔

 

You guessed it. We went to the game shows and had a great time learning all about Barbie and then watching the very funny Battle of the Sexes! 😂

  

 

 

[Ken the cruiser]

Day 17 - Buenos Aires, Argentina - Transition Day

 

 

 

[Ken the cruiser]

We have arrived in Buenos Aires! We have absolutely nothing planned for today other than to hang out around the ship on this transition day for us. But since we will be here for two days, we are curious to find out if the mosquitoes are as bad as some have said. In any event, we did bring some mosquito spray with us just in case! 😁

 

[Ken the cruiser]

Other than the same paperwork we received in our cabin at the start of the cruise, here’s the ports and associated requirements we will be encountering on this leg.

 

[Ken the cruiser]

You might have heard the Buenos Aires cruise terminal was severely damaged by a windstorm back in December. 
 

 

Waiting and pre-boarding areas damaged

The roof collapsed onto the terminal's waiting and pre-boarding area. The rest of the facility — baggage operations, immigration and customs — was not affected and will continue to operate as usual.

 

https://www.seatrade-cruise.com/ports-destinations/new-buenos-aires-check-process-after-storm-damages-cruise-terminal
 

Since only the waiting and pre-boarding areas were damaged, everyone still has to check-in there before getting on a transfer bus to the ship, where you can see from the photos below there is no cruise terminal. The same is true, only in reverse, when disembarking the ship in BA.

 

 

 

Edited February 5 by Ken the cruiser

[Ken the cruiser]

After lunch we headed up top to see if we could see where the NCL Sun had docked, knowing they had followed us in last night.

 

 
But after an extensive tour around the ship, we finally had to pull up CM to see where it was. As it turns out a large group of warehouses was blocking our view of it along with 2 other cruise ships in port today!

 

  
During our walk we also discovered who our new Cruise Director is going to be, Fernando Duran. 

 

 

[Ken the cruiser]

We went up to the Sterling Steakhouse for our complementary specialty dinner and while we waited for the various tasty courses, we were entertained by shipping containers being loaded and unloaded on/off the trucks next to the ship! As you can see it doesn’t take much to keep us entertained! 😂

 

 

 

[XBGuy]

56 minutes ago, Ken the cruiser said:

We went up to the Sterling Steakhouse for our complementary specialty dinner and while we waited for the various tasty courses, we were entertained by shipping containers being loaded and unloaded on/off the trucks next to the ship! As you can see it doesn’t take much to keep us entertained! 😂

 

 

I am so with you.  I think it is fascinating to watch the empty trucks drive under the cranes, stop at exactly the right spot for the the containers to be precisely dropped on the truck's empty bed.  That is so cool,

[effinaround]

Ken, you were lucky to stay on the ship.  That disembarkation was a complete cluster.  We left the ship at 10:00 and arrived at the terminal at 10:15 and waited in a line of nine other buses for 32 minutes.  Once we got off it was a cauldron of chaos and confusion.  There was no place for the flow of people upon exiting the building.  The building used today is wholly unsuitable for any type of pax handling operations. 

[Ken the cruiser]

6 minutes ago, effinaround said:

Ken, you were lucky to stay on the ship.  That disembarkation was a complete cluster.  We left the ship at 10:00 and arrived at the terminal at 10:15 and waited in a line of nine other buses for 32 minutes.  Once we got off it was a cauldron of chaos and confusion.  There was no place for the flow of people upon exiting the building.  The building used today is wholly unsuitable for any type of pax handling operations. 

That’s too bad. Hopefully there wasn’t any issue with the PCL transfer getting you to the airport well ahead of your flight time. But with 3,000+ passengers having to process through that temporary building, I can imagine it was quite chaotic, especially if some folks had scheduled relatively early flights back home.
 

I wonder if the folks like my BIL and his DW that went on an excursion on the way to the airport had to deal with the same chaos. But they left at 6:45 am, so they might have avoided much of what you had to deal with.

 

In any event hopefully you made it to the airport in plenty of time to get on your flight and had a smooth flight home. 😁

[effinaround]

2 minutes ago, Ken the cruiser said:

That’s too bad. Hopefully there wasn’t any issue with the PCL transfer getting you to the airport well ahead of your flight time. But with 3,000+ passengers having to process through that temporary building, I can imagine it was quite chaotic, especially if some folks had scheduled relatively early flights back home.
 

I wonder if the folks like my BIL and his DW that went on an excursion on the way to the airport had to deal with the same chaos. But they left at 6:45 am, so they might have avoided much of what you had to deal with.

 

In any event hopefully you made it to the airport in plenty of time to get on your flight and had a smooth flight home. 😁

Fortunately, we are staying in Buenos Aires for a few days and fly back to Toronto on Thursday afternoon.  For those that have mobility challenges and were of an advanced age, it must not have been easy for them. I can't imagine disembarking 500 passengers in that small space outside the terminal, let alone 3500! If Buenos Aires is serious about attracting cruise traffic, that need to become serious about building a facility to handle them. If that was the experience today with an arrival, I can't imagine how the departure with a damaged waiting lounge went!

[Ken the cruiser]

Tonight the evening show was a well done folkloric performance by some local performers called Passion and Rhythm of the Tango!

 

 

 
followed by a game show called Strikeout, which we passed on as we have an early excursion tomorrow.

 

 

Edited February 6 by Ken the cruiser

[Ken the cruiser]

Day 18 - Buenos Aires (Day 2)

 

 

 

 

[Ken the cruiser]

Here is the Buenos Aires excursion we are going on tomorrow. Hopefully, we will only see the same number of mosquitoes as we saw today - 1. 🤞

  

 

[Ken the cruiser]

22 minutes ago, effinaround said:

Fortunately, we are staying in Buenos Aires for a few days and fly back to Toronto on Thursday afternoon.  For those that have mobility challenges and were of an advanced age, it must not have been easy for them. I can't imagine disembarking 500 passengers in that small space outside the terminal, let alone 3500! If Buenos Aires is serious about attracting cruise traffic, that need to become serious about building a facility to handle them. If that was the experience today with an arrival, I can't imagine how the departure with a damaged waiting lounge went!

That’s good. The article I read said the repairs on the cruise terminal from the huge windstorm this past December should be done by March. If that’s the plan, hopefully the cruise terminal will be fully usable before the Sapphire returns on March 4 for their final visit to Buenos Aires this season.

Edited February 6 by Ken the cruiser

[Mah Jongg]

4 minutes ago, Ken the cruiser said:

Here is the Buenos Aires excursion we are going on tomorrow. Hopefully, we will only see the same number of mosquitoes as we saw today - 1. 🤞

  

 

We have the same taste in excursions. This one was a very pleasant cruise with interesting things to look at along the way. There was a grocery store boat that delivered food to people along the river, rowing clubs and as stated some beautiful homes. Lots of birds too. Enjoy!

[Ken the cruiser]

For those interested, there are 2,561 passengers on this cruise whereas on the last leg there were 2,469 and 1,050 crew.

[ocean sounds]

1 hour ago, Ken the cruiser said:

Tonight the evening show was a well done folkloric performance by some local performers called Passion and Rhythm of the Tango!

I really enjoyed them. They were great !  Enjoy your excursion tomorrow! 

[Ken the cruiser]

Before I forget we learned from one of the naturalists onboard the Antarctica leg that there is no Gull type called Sea Gull. So of course I had to check it out, and lo and behold there isn’t! 

 

https://www.wildlifetrusts.org/how-identify/identify-gulls

 

I know, who knew! 😂
 

Edited February 6 by Ken the cruiser

[Familycruzer11]

2 hours ago, Ken the cruiser said:

Before I forget we learned from one of the naturalists onboard the Antarctica leg that there is no Gull type called Sea Gull. So of course I had to check it out, and lo and behold there isn’t! 

 

https://www.wildlifetrusts.org/how-identify/identify-gulls

 

I know, who knew! 😂
 

Learn something new every day…. Thanks for sharing all the info, insights and journey. You probably are aware but just in case, the Cornell Lab app (Merlin Bird ID) is very cool and has packs for around the world. Great for identifying what you see by description, photo and even sound.  

[stonepebble]

Just downloaded!

Thank you!

Chris

[Ken the cruiser]

Our tour this morning was fun, especially since we only paid $60 pp. It took about an hour to drive to the Parana Delta in the Tigre district near Buenos Aires.

 

 

Most of the drive was through the city, which was not all that photogenic. But once we got to Tigre, the scenery turned a little more resort like.

 

 

 

 
We even had a greeting committee welcoming us to the area! 😂

 

 

When we got off the bus, the one ahead of us had already loaded onto the double-decker river boat behind the one in the photo. So we figured the one in front was going to be ours. Right?

 

 
Nope! We were directed to a different single-level much smaller boat with 8 seats in each row. In addition, they loaded another full bus of folks onto our boat that were doing the same tour as us. In fact, there were 4 buses doing the same one.
 

 

Luckily, we saw what was happening and decided to stay outside and found a covered area along the railing to stand for the duration. Here are some of the sights we saw along the way.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
This grassland was fun to watch as it would lay down and then pop back up in a swaying motion timed with each wave.

 

 
Mr and Mrs White Goose

 

 
Snowy Egret

 

 
The elusive Tigre pigeon flying low trying to escape from being photographed! 😂

 

 
It sure looked like the excavator on this boat was tilling this person’s garden. But I’m sure he was probably doing something else. Just not sure what? 😁

 
Another egret flying around.

 

 
This old tour boat has definitely seen better days! 😂

 

 

 

 
Then it was time to head back to the tour bus.

 

 

On the way back to the ship, we had a 20-minute stop at a church and nearby square where we were able to get out and take some photos.

 

 

 

 

Edited February 6 by Ken the cruiser

[BoopTennis]

17 hours ago, Ken the cruiser said:

For those interested, there are 2,561 passengers on this cruise whereas on the last leg there were 2,469 and 1,050 crew.

Is that a full ship?

[Ken the cruiser]

3 minutes ago, BoopTennis said:

Is that a full ship?

Pretty close. According to the Princess website 2,670 passengers is the maximum at double-occupancy. 

 

https://www.princess.com/en-int/ships-and-experience/ships/sa-sapphire-princess