Timmer's 2024 Oosterdam Antarctica Cruise

 After a short overnight sailing from Montevideo, Uruguay, we were awakened by the PA announcements that the ship was not cleared.  This was repeated until finally at around 8:30am we were free to leave the vessel permanently or just for the day.  If one wanted to stay out all night, that was okay, but you had to be back on board by 7:30am on Monday morning. As for us our tentative plan was to stay on the ship and have a spa day.  We went up for breakfast and ended up visiting with Ann & Paul.  We decided to get off the ship and check out the wind damage to the port and then take the HOHO  bus for a city tour.  We entered the terminal and saw a small section with lots of ceiling damage.  The whole vendor area was totally intact.  We purchased tickets for the Red bus (Grayline) online ($25/person) and were quickly escorted to the unmarked stop a block away from the cruise terminal and in front of the police station. We took the tour which lasted about 3 hours and refreshed our memor

 This morning I remember hearing Ed, our Cruise & Travel Director, give the 7am "The ship has been cleared and you are free to depart the ship" announcement.  Then I rolled over and fell back asleep for another hour plus.  With the second announcement I decided it was time to get up for the day. After breakfast we filled laundry bag for the last laundry of this voyage and handed it to Ali our stateroom attendant.  We gathered our things and headed off the ship for a day of exploring. As we were walking the pier I noticed that we were joined in port by the Costa Fascinosa.  It's a pure white painted ship of about the same length as the Oosterdam but 30,000 tons heavier.   After we passed through the little park inside the port, we were handed a tourist map and decided to use it as a basic guide for today although we wanted to do three things:  Visit the Carnival museum which didn't open until 11am, get a haircut and visit the MAM (Mercado Agriculturo de Montevideo)

 After a missed attempt to visit this port on the Grand South America cruise, we were successful in stopping here today.  It's a tender port and the ship used shoreside tenders.  There's a large group on board (200) and they got the first tenders and we were in no hurry as we were independently walking the town.  So we got up a little bit late and enjoyed a leisurely breakfast with Ann & Paul from Canada who are doing something similar. We got in the 4-5 star tender line in the atrium and we were there for about 20 minutes before we were released to board our tender.  It's about a 15-20 minute tender ride into the marina dock which is on a peninsula.  We left the dock area and walked to the right from the terminal.  The walkway is paved in black and white tiles and is in excellent condition.  It traces a path along the rugged volcanic coastline.  While it was nearly 80ºf, the water was cold and we didn't go swimming.  But that didn't stop the locals.   After rea

 We made this sea day into a relaxation day.  There was a nice display of towel animals in the Lido pool area.  The only events we attended were in the morning were the port talk on Buenos Aires (heavy duty warnings were given about crime) and the City on the Sea multimedia presentation.  At lunch we joined a brother sister couple from California  we had met earlier in the cruise and enjoyed an extended lunch and discussion. Our passports were returned to us today and I spent the remainder of the day reading South by Shackleton (his account of his journey and the subsequent rescue of the men stranded on Elephant Island is chilling) and keeping current on my YouTube threads that I follow..   After dinner our entertainment was Maria Campos who's been with HAL for 17 years and now has created a main stage show of Broadway songs.  She was very good and played to a full house.  Adam was sick with food poisoning so his billboard onboard sets were cancelled.  So we listened to a couple of