Carrie's Adventures: April 2008

In the nick of time

So I get up at 5:30am ready to go. Arrival back into the US after being out of US waters is always hectic. You have immigration inspections, Coast Guard drills, USPH may show up and make sure you clean. So armed with the knowledge that it was going to be a full day, I set about my business.

Dad and Jane were scheduled to arrive at FLL airport at around noon which would give them time to get to the ship (10 minute taxi ride) and get checked in and put their feet up. Well, things didn't quite go according to plan. They stayed overnight in Toronto, only to arrive at the airport Sunday morning and find the flight times had been changed. They were now departing around 8am to head to Montreal and then catch the connector down to Fort Lauderdale. I got the email that said they would be arriving around 3pm and to be patient. Well, all I could think was I hope there is no issue with the luggage! As 3pm arrived and left, then 3:30, I began to wonder if a Plan B was going to be necessary. The pier staff were great and tried to see what was going on and if the delay in their flight was part of the American airlines debacle. (Yes, we have learned to send flight information when sending emails...) 3:40pm rolls around and we are now 10 minutes past the cut off as we need to send documents to US Border Patrol. Visions of them needing to purchase flights to Montego Bay and wait for the ship to arrive floated through my head but at that point, there isn't much you can do ~ just wait.

The only saving grace was there was a group they were waiting for who had purchased their airline ticket through Celebrity and therefore we needed to wait. And then they appeared through the doors. I think they were just as glad to see me as I was to see them. So yes, they made it ~ in true Carrie travel style ~ just in the nick of time!

Puerto Montt, Chile

This was one of the first ports that Akis and I went out in when I came back. We only went out once. We wandered the streets and market.

The downfall of a number of these ports is that there aren't docking facilities, so you often have to tender. Depending on how close the ship can get, we can have quite lengthy tender rides, not to mention the wait for actually getting on the tender.

Once we got to town, here was the downtown area and park:

The tender operations were perhaps a bit slower on this particular day due to the fog. I can see how this might be disconcerting to some. You get on the tender, head off into the Pea Soup fog without an idea of where the ship is. It is only as you come up to it that you can see the outline in the distance... Hey, where did they all go???

Cape Horn, Chile

We arrived at the 'Horn' quite early in the morning, so I was up and at 'em by 8am to get the photos. I'm not quite sure exactly which rock out there is considered the Horn, so I took pictures of a lot of them.

The weather was apparently good that day, however there were still waves and a lot of wind. I can see how you might get a crappy day and then this could be a very dangerous area, being thrusted onto the rocks.

We circled around, and looking at the photos, it would appear that things look pretty much the same, regardless of what rock you are looking at ~ either way, here they are. I've see the joining of the seas in Western Australia, the tip of New Zealand and now at the bottom of South America.