Antarctica trip is back on!!!

Antarctica trip is back on!!!

Punta Arenas, Chile, South America

We’re going to Antarctica!!! It took a lot of figuring out, a lot of time, and a lot more money, but Ryan and I have decided to suck it up and go. Laura found us a ship with the company Exodus that has an available twin room on their trip leaving on 10 December. It’s has pretty much the same itinerary as the G Adventures cruise did, and it does offer camping and kayaking. It’s quite a bit more expensive than the G cruise (£2000 more), but this is a once in a lifetime kind of trip, and we’re gonna do it right. We now have a nicer room, on a nicer boat, and we don’t have to wait another year to go!

Our ship is an old Russian spy ship from the 1980’s and the reviews of the ship online are fantastic. The woman at Exodus told Laura that this is by far the best ship in their fleet. I can’t wait to see it! I got lucky this morning and the wifi in the hostel was working for a couple of hours, so I got to talk to Ryan and Laura and we made our decision around 10am that we are definitely going to go. We paid Laura end the trip is officially booked for us. Very exciting!

I then went back to the cafe from yesterday and used their wifi to talk to Ryan about flights and get that all sorted. Ryan is leaving from JFK on the 8th, to arrive in Ushuaia on the 9th, for our trip to start on the 10th. The flights were a bit more expensive than he had paid before, and he has a couple extra stops on the journeys now, but that doesn’t matter. At least we’re going to make it!

I spent the rest of the afternoon (three hours sitting in that cafe) to figure out what I’m going to do for the next two weeks. I have an itinerary laid out that looks pretty good, but pretty manic. I’m going to Ushuaia by bus tomorrow, staying one night and then flying up to Buenos Aires. I’m then going straight to Cordoba, then Mendoza, Bariloche, and Peninsula Valdes. I’ll fly from Trelew, near Peninsula Valdes, down to Ushuaia on the 9th to meet Ryan at the hotel in the afternoon. The next day we’ll start our cruise, and then when we return on the 20th I’ll fly with Ryan up to Buenos Aires. He will go home from there and I will stick around for a few days to check out the city and Montevideo, before getting my flight up to Bogota on Christmas morning. It’s going to be a really hectic month, but I cannot wait!!

I’m so excited to have this trip all sorted, and the next couple of weeks planned out. Between the extra money for the cruise and the extra flights I had to book today I ended up spending another $4500, but I feel pretty good about it. When else am I going to be at the southern tip of the world like this. You only live once!

To celebrate, and get my mind off of all the stressful happenings of the last few days, I went to the cinema tonight. I really wanted to see the movie Interstellar since I saw previews for it a few months ago, and it was playing with subtitles at a cinema out at the big mall in Punta Arenas. It was hard for me to find cinemas in Chile that show a movie in English with Spanish subtitles. They like to dub movies into Spanish here, which is really annoying. Anyway, I saw the movie and loved it! It was absolutely stunning. The storyline was pretty good, and the acting was excellent. It was a great way to end such an eventful day.

Now I’m back at my hostel (without wifi again) and getting my stuff packed up so I can leave in the morning. I have to be at the bus terminal at 8am for the ten hour bus ride to Ushuaia. It’s a bit of a pointless trip, seeing as I will be there for one night and then flying north to BA, but needs must. It’s exciting that I’ll be starting my Argentina journey though. Chile absolutely did not disappoint, and I can’t wait to see what Argentina has in store for me!

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