The Cruise

The Cruise

March 31- April 13

After reluctantly checking out of our 5 star dream of a hotel we found a taxi and headed over to the cruise terminal to start the two weeks of bliss we’d been anticipating since the day the idea popped in to our heads! This cruise was going to have it all and help us see the southernmost part of the continent we otherwise would have had to miss…. Or so we thought! :)

The cruise started out amazing, we were on the Holland America ship Veendam sailing for 13 nights from Buenos Aires, Argentina to Valparaiso, Chile. Holland is an awesome cruise line, but they're kind of geared toward a slightly different crowd than what you might see for example on a typical Carnival caribbean cruise.... Let's just say we probably brought the average age on the cruise down a good 10 years just by being there and we stuck out like sore thumbs, really cool fashionable sore thumbs but sore thumbs none the less. Despite spending the next two weeks on this floating old folks home (oh come on, it was too good to pass up) we were pumped to be there! We got to our room and found out we had somehow scored a handicap ready room. I'm not sure if they saw our ages and thought there must be something wrong with them to choose to come on this cruise alone, but we weren't going to complain because that meant in addition to having more space in the room, including a couch (a couch! Can you imagine having that kind of space on a cruise ship?), we also didn’t have to suffer through a bathroom the size of a shoebox. Talk about having high standards!

We were too cheap to buy any actual cruise pictures, but McKay was sneaky enough to snap this great shot of us as we were getting on the boat! :)

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention in addition to the couch, it had a whole separate side chair as well! :)

The MS Veendam!

We got on the ship on Easter morning and despite the lack of Easter egg hunts on board, the food was awesome! We had both been starving ourselves in anticipation of gorging ourselves for *free (I added the asterisk, because as anyone who's taken Econ 1500 knows, there's no such thing as a "Free Meal") and the food did not disappoint. They only had the Lido bar buffet set up at certain hours for each meal, so it seemed like they were able to put a little more thought and preparation in to everything they served. And as a bonus they always offered a 4th full meal buffet at 11:00 pm for those night owls on the ship who hadn't already fallen asleep while sitting in front of a tv.... After discovering this magical 4th meal, we didn't miss it once. Just to make you all jealous I'm going to go ahead and highlight a few of our favorite foods from the ship. The Chocolate Chip Cookies, I don't know what's wrong with other cruises but Holland had these down pat, the perfect combination of cooked but still soft and gooey. We grabbed a few of these every time we passed the dessert bar and found that the best way to wash down our 4th meal was with a plate of these and a big glass of milk! Incidentally during one such of these wash downs I introduced McKay to the beauty of adding a little half and half to the skim milk that was available to make it taste better. Sounds great until he started drinking the half and half straight up! :) The Hamburger grill, this place was legit! All the delicious fresh grilled cheeseburgers, hot dogs, or bratwurst you could eat plus fresh thick fries on the side. Let's just say we were regulars there! The Taco Bell bar, was it officially sponsored by Taco Bell? No, but did that mean it didn't taste just as good to our Taco Bell deprived bellies? Absolutely not, I had as many beefy 5 layer burritos as my every growing tummy could handle!

I finally got my Lobster and Filet! I love formal night! 

I know what you're probably thinking, ok, enough about the food let's get down to the ports. Surely they must have been more interesting than that 10 minute rundown of your complete dietary intake over the course of the cruise. Well, that's where you might be a little disappointed... We got to our first port in Montevideo, Uruguay on Day 2 (April 1), it was nice. Reminded us a little bit of Buenos Aires but not quite as cute and quaint. We walked around for what felt like a sufficient amount of time before heading back to the boat talking about nothing other than the food we were going to devour!

Welcome to Montevideo, Uruguay please keep your hands and arms inside your pockets at all times...

Looking at MV from the beach front walkway.

Ride 'em cowboy! This is the Plaza De Armas in MV, stylish isn't it?

Oh ya know, just one of your average run of the mill guards, standing watch over the tomb of someone important in Uruguayan history... They have to sit there day after day ignoring anything or anyone around them. This guy was good too, I don't think I could have let the jelly beans up my nose go... 

What more can I say, this was the highlight of the city for us!

Ahoy matey, I've spotted the flag of Uruguay arghh!

On Day 4 we had another stop in Puerto Madryn, Argentina. It's about halfway down the Argentine coast and the fall cold weather was slowly starting to creep in on us. There wasn't much to see here but we did have fun walking around town admiring all the fancy graffiti...

Puerto Madryn... And there you have it!

If Harry Potter spray painted on a wall doesn't get you excited, well then I just don't know what will!

For those of you who have spent countless sleepless nights worrying, there's no need to worry anymore... Rollerblading is alive and well in the great country of Argentina! This was at least the 6th person we had seen wandering down the streets in Argentina on wheels. 

Just your typical romantic beach picture with the cruise ship in the back ground, sorry if you're jealous.

These were the cutest sea lions hanging out on the docks by the ship, we didn't even have to pay for the $160 excursion to see them!

After that we were supposed to have stops in Ushuaia, Argentina (the southernmost official city in the world) and Punta Arenas (the southernmost city in Chile) as well as pass through the Strait of Magellan and what is referred to as glacier alley. Those 3 things are the real reason you do this cruise so we were beyond stoked to check them out. Unfortunately at about 5:00 in the morning on Day 7 just as we were supposed to be pulling in to Punta Arenas, the captain came over the intercom and informed us that he had to make the hard decision to skip both ports and the straight of Magellan due to impending weather with swells up to 80 feet. We definitely understand the safety aspect, but of course we couldn't help but be disappointed especially because that then meant we were going to have 6 straight days at seas! The good news was that since we had so much time on the ship we found the gym and decided to workout for the first time in 4 months, the bad news was being stuck on a ship for that long with unlimited supplies of cookies and taco bell tacos it didn't matter how many times we went to the gym! :) It turned in to a long 6 days and the ship didn't stop rocking the whole time, multiple times at dinner had people throw up at the table and have to excuse themselves while running to the bathroom. Unfortunately this hit us the hardest on my birthday and we both ended up being so sick throughout the day we could barely get out of bed, ughh. At least it was a birthday I'll never forget. :)

Passing through our alternate route to get from the Atlantic to the Pacific, it was so beautiful! 

 Who state? U State!... Yep just made that one up on my own...

This is the amazing glacier we passed, I bet it was even prettier in real life, we wouldn't know cause we might have slept through it... In our defense, this got pushed up a day early because of the skipped ports and somebody forgot to let us know.... Also it was super early in the morning, like 8:30... Luckily we had friends who were willing to share their pics with us!

They did end up giving us one extra stop on Wednesday April 10 at a place called Puerto Chacabucco, population 1200, there were more of us on the ship than in the whole town. As we were waiting in line to get off the ship there were already people coming back on that were shaking their heads mumbling, "not worth it" over and over. We should have taken the hint, but we decided to check it out anyway despite all the rain and cold! Once we got in to Chacabucco, we realized there really was nothing to see and decided to take a bus in to the slightly larger town of Puerto Aysen, where they boasted of having a whole grocery store and one bar with wifi. Unfortunately the wifi was out and the grocery store wouldn't take any of our dollars. :)

You've now seen as much of Chacabuco as you ever need to see. 

And this is the tourism sector of the port... All of it... No really...

Puerto Aysen! Now that we've taken this picture we can head back... :)

Our last port of the trip was on Thursdsay April 11 in Puerto Montt, Chile. This place had a bit more to offer and we had an awesome day! Ok, that might have been mostly due to the fact that we had been deprived of internet so long and we were finally able to log in to facebook and see what we had missed in the last week!

Here we are at Puerto Montt, you can tell by the big sign behind McKay.

As we were walking the 3km from the port in to town minding our own business, we suddenly notice a cop motorcycle pulling up on the sidewalk right in front of us and another cop on a motorcycle rushing in behind him. They both walk up to this kid and pin his arms behind his back and throw him to the ground. In the meantime we hear some sirens and see another cop car zooming towards us, it flips a U turn and comes skidding to a halt right next to the other officers. The officers haul the kid to his feet, rip off his backpack and literally throw him in to the back of the police car and all 3 vehicles drive away like nothing happened. This all happened within a matter of a minute and then it was gone! They didn't say anything to the kid and I can still see the scared panic'd "Oh crap my parents are going to kill me" look on his face. Later we saw all these cops in the main square and it was filled with kids getting in their faces. Apparently the kids were protesting something to do with the school system and we picked the wrong day to be there.

View of Puerto Montt from the ship!

We ended up having an amazing time on board, not because of the places we stopped but because of the people we met! Seriously being the youngest ones on a ship like that made us stand out and by the end of the trip it felt like we couldn't go anywhere without having to stop and chat with someone we had met somewhere on the trip... I guess what I'm trying to say is, we really were big deals! :)

He's smiling so big because he's so good at growing such a big man beard, and because he knows he's about to look like this....

Yes, I let my husband shave a disgusting molestache, I still have nightmares about it...

These were a couple ladies that we met at dinner one night. The one on the far side of me likes to travel to Mexico so obviously McKay had to tell her all about Chiapas and the big waterfall there called "Chiflon". I don't think she ever remembered our names but would always say "Chiflon" as she walked past us to say hi.

We may or may not have smuggled out an entire bag of those delicious cruise cookies to take with us on the road. It took us a day and a half to sneak those out of the kitchen without drawing too much attention to ourselves. :) 

Buenos Aires
March 22-31

We got in to Buenos Aires around 11 on Friday March 22nd. After taking a taxi to our Hotel, Ayres De Recoleta, which btw (by the way) turned out to be right across the street from the Recoleta Cemetary and a super nice mall featuring a movie theater and not 1, not 2 but 3 different McDonalds, if that’s not classy I don’t know what is! We got checked in and then spent the rest of the day checking out the city. Initially we were just planning on staying a couple days in BA and then heading out to the coast before coming back for a few more days. But because of our inability to pull out dollars and our cheapness at wanting to get the best exchange rate possible we did some research and found a place we could wire money from our bank account and then pick up pesos, but we would be getting 7.7 pesos to the dollar instead of the published rate of 4.8. Sounded simple, ended up turning in to a nightmare, and we weren’t able to get our pesos until Monday so we just decided to spend the rest of our time until we had to get on the cruise ship in Buenos Aires! Even though our hotel was a little more (a lot more) than the usual $15 we’ve gotten used to paying, we really loved the location and the fact that it had a kitchen for us to do some cooking, so we decided to stay there a few more nights. We had both signed up for Hyatt credit cards and received 2 free nights at any Hyatt around the world so, we spent our last 4 nights at the Palacio Duhau Park Hyatt. It's so fancy we couldn't even pronounce the name! :) We walked in to the lobby carrying our gross backpacks and wearing our wrinkled clothes and needless to say we felt like impostors!

Buenos Aires is an awesome city! It reminds me of cleaner, less crowded, more European New York. I absolutely loved it! So many great monuments and parks to check out and we felt super safe the whole time we were there. They have an awesome bus and metro system, but it is basically impossible to get change from anyone, which is what you have to pay with to get on the bus, so we walked everywhere we possibly could and ended up logging like a billion miles or somewhere close to… :) We saw as much as we could, which included just about every statue slash monument slash park in a 5 mile radius (and believe me there were lots), La Boca, Puerto Madero, the Recoleta cemetery, Tom Cruise (yeah I did just casually threw that one in there), a River Plate soccer game (yes they call themselves River Plate, don‘t ask me why it‘s in English), a TC 2000 road race,  the zoo, amateur UFC fighting (in a park between friends), shady money exchanges where we taken in to an underground den to conduct our transaction… You name it we probably experienced slash saw it here and loved every minute!

This was the place we stayed for the first half of our stay in BA, we made full use of that tiny little fridge and stove.

This is the Recoleta cemetery, it’s one of the most popular things to see in BA and I’m sure if we were Argentinean or even halfway educated about the country like we should be, we would know a few of the famous people buried here… :)

This place was massive and had so many beautiful tombs! McKay likened it unto a city for the dead…

Oh, a picture of a black cat in a cemetery, that’s not cliché….

Creepy or not creepy? These are just the stairs that lead down to the crypt of someone's ancestors…

Our delicious breakfast served right to our door every morning at our first hotel!

One of the things I have loved so much about BA is all the awesome clean parks they have everywhere. It’s awesome to see so many people hanging out and taking advantage of them!

Pic Dinner?

Oh my goodness this street has like 80 lanes! For real though, this is the widest street in South America it is right around 20 lanes across! 

These kids were magical with there soccer balls! Juggling and back flipping and balancing and hand standing all while keeping the ball in the air. We creepily sat on a bench and watched them until they all got on their bikes and went home!

We tried to go to church on Sunday and after walking 20 leagues just to find the church no one was even there! But we did run in to a really nice pilot from California who was looking for the ward as well. Another member ended up coming late and realized it was Stake Conference, so we all followed her across town and finally jumped on a bus that took us to the Stake Center, all I can say is the church is alive and well in Argentina!

And then there was an obelisk and we took a picture...

He’s trying to turn it in to an optical illusion where it looks like he’s holding it in his hands, I didn't know how to tell him he was only slightly off...

This was the day we hung out at Puerto Madero, that's where all the richie rich's live. Lots of yachts and fancy hotels and restaurants that we couldn't even stand in they were so expensive. Luckily we found this amazing cheap parilla on wheels with these awesome sandwiches and tons of great fixings to put on top, they were so delicious and we were craving them the rest of the time in the city!

I even got a prize for finishing my sandwich in the form of this awesome High School Musical plate! 

There was a pick pocket sneaking up on McKay right as he was taking this picture, so I quickly put on my mean face to scare him away, works every time.

After checking out the fake Capital building we found this sweet little pizza joint that had an indoor soccer field attached to the back of it. We ate our pizza and then watched some soccer. Oh man did it make me long for the glory days of C league coed soccer back home!

One night we walked out of our hotel and decided to take a stroll, we stumbled across this mess of people and paparazzi and red carpets. We immediately figured out it was a movie premiere but just assumed it was some low budget Argentinian flick that we'd never heard of. Since we couldn't see past the big barriers and throngs of people blocking our view we walked back to some monitors we had passed to see if we could pick out anyone we knew. This is what we found....

Uhh, yes that is TC himself on the monitor, that's when we knew, we'd finally made it to the big leagues!

This is one of the other stars of the movie Andrea Riseborough. Who really cares about her anyway though? :)

I know you’re probably jealous of this super close up shot of Tom Cruise, but please make sure to credit me for all future use of this photo.

Tom Cruise stood in this exact spot not more than 2 hours before this, I’m pretty sure that makes us soul mates!

Apparently this place is famous for the professional dog walkers and their ability to handle with ease so many ferocious beasts. We naturally had to capture this phenomenon in action! :)

This is the amazing balcony view of the Recoleta cemetery from none other than the McDonalds in the mall! Talk about a high class big mac!

We ate at McDonalds our very first day there and they made the mistake of bringing us a 2 for 1 sundae coupon, which we of course immediately used. Then for the rest of the trip any time we had any kind of craving for sweets McKay would work his magic and tell them we had a 2 for 1 coupon, but had left it at the hotel (lies), worked like a charm every time! Isn't he dreamy with those sundaes in his hands?

Our plush room at the Hyatt complete with a master desk on which we could conduct any and all business that might come up during our stay.

This is the amazing fruit that was delivered to our room twice atday at the Hyatt! You would've thought we'd won the lottery with how excited we got every time we walked in to our room and more fruit had magically appeared! That's like 1 1/2 meals right there, for free!

What, you've never seen a bathroom in a $650 a night hotel? Well now you have!

We spent one day at the zoo and had an awesome time, as is obvious by the clear excitement on my face...

I know what you're thinking, 'What!? You guys saw an elephant? That is INSANE!'

Wanna hear a joke? Come se llama? Llama... Get it?

This monkey was hilarious! At the zoo you could buy buckets of food that you could feed to a lot of the animals and it was very clear that the animals loved and expected the food. We weren't supposed to feed this poor guy, probably because it wasn't appropriate for his diet, but someone must have caved in and thrown some food over in the past, because he would walk around, find a piece of rock and throw it over a 12 foot glass ceiling and then look at you like, ok your turn! We were laughing so hard, his mamma didn't raise no fool!

Us in front of some water at the zoo, how precious!

Kentucky Pizza! Did it have anything to do with the state? No. Was it started by one of Colonel Sanders relatives? Probably not. Did that stop it from being the most delicious cheap pizza we've eaten? Of course it didn't. We liked it here so much we went out of our way to take the bus 20 minutes to get here again, only to realize that there was one within walking distance of the hotel, oops!

After visiting Kentucky Pizza for the 2nd time, we had a wonderful picnic in this beautiful, not drab at all, park!

La Boca! This is in front of the Boca Juniors stadium, they are one of the most popular soccer teams in Buenos Aires! This was also the day I discovered my husband did not know who Diego Maradona was, I was torn between tears and indignation at his lack of soccer knowledge.... :)

Is my husband the master photographer or what? He captured this pic of this car racing by at 80mph and it only took him like 12 tries... This was at the TC 2000 race that was going on in downtown BA, they closed off a bunch of the streets and had races going on Saturday and Sunday around town!

Saturday night we decided to go to a River Plate Soccer game and it was intense! You had to go through 5 lines of security guards like this, checking your tickets just to get through to the entrance of the stadium.

This is what a sold out crowd of 75,000 soccer crazed fans looks like and we loved every minute of it!  By far one of my highlights of the trip. Everyone was jumping up and down screaming or singing in unison the whole game! This might be a bit blasphemous to my Aggie heritage, but it was seriously like the Spectrum student section on crack times 50!

It was so jam packed in there and everyone stood the entire game and anywhere that wasn't occupied was considered fair game for standing to watch the game. Especially the aisles and stairways! 

Ole Ole Ole Ole! At the end of the game they wouldn't let anyone out of the stadium for 45 minutes while they cleared out the other team and all their supporters. They don't want the mobs of crazy fans killing anyone. I say that in jest, but apparently it's dead serious (pun intended)!

This is the garden of the Hyatt, naturally we stood out in the worst way possible at this classy up town joint, and not just because McKay walked around doing this pose the whole day!

We left the Hyatt on Easter morning and were so sad they didn't even ask us if we wanted any of these delicious chocolate Easter eggs for the road!