Category: Uncategorized

Roughly 2600 miles (about the same distance from New York to San Francisco) west of Easter Island you’ll find Tahiti.  We spent 3 weeks traveling among the tiny islands and even smaller atolls in between.  Most along the way are uninhabited and many have just a few hundred permanent residents.  Most famous among them is…

Who made the statues, why and how were they destroyed…still a mystery!! Easter Island, or Rapa Nui in their native language, is one of the most remote islands on the earth. It is Chilean territory in the South Pacific known for its over 900 statues, the Moai, carved by Polynesian settlers between the 13th and 16th centuries. As…

Beyond the glaciers, we continued north along the pacific coast to Valparaiso, Chili’s first and once bustling port.  In the early 1900’s this was a wealthy city where European imports and fashion made this the place to be.  Sadly, after a massive earthquake that devastated the city in 1906 and the opening of the Panama…

From the start of our travels, we have had many days at sea.  Our most recent journey through Antarctica, Chile and onward to Easter Island has been filled with many more sea days that are anything but dull – despite a few instances when Suzanne struggles with her sea legs. The ship offers a variety…

After Antarctica we made our way to Patagonia on the southern coast of Chile for an incredible journey among the fjords and glaciers.  It was magnificent. This is what we learned: “Chile holds one of the world’s largest concentrations of glaciers, primarily located in Patagonia, including the massive Northern and Southern Patagonian Ice Fields. Top…

(noun)               a large flightless seabird of the southern hemisphere, with black upper parts and white underparts and wings developed into flippers for swimming under water. Among the many different types, we were fortunate to see hundreds (perhaps thousands) of Emperor Penguins.  They are the largest and tallest of all the penguins and call the…

The Ross Sea, is the southern-most body of water on the planet, located approximately 2,000 miles south of New Zealand and just 200 miles from the South Pole.  The Ross Sea is also home to the Ross Ice Shelf, the largest ice shelf in Antarctica, approximately 500 by 370 miles; roughly the size of France…

The heroic age of Antarctic exploration occurred in the early 19th century and included over a dozen expeditions from countries including Belgium, the UK, Sweden, Norway, Germany, France and Japan.  Most were billed as scientific studies, with a race to the South Pole for many, but they also included the chance to claim some of…

“If Antarctica were music it would be Mozart. Art, and it would be Michelangelo. Literature, and it would be Shakespeare. And yet it is something even greater; the only place on earth that is still as it should be. May we never tame it.”– Andrew Denton Antarctica, the southernmost continent and site of the South…

From windy Wellington to Bluff at the south end, we spent a quick couple of weeks in New Zealand.  Wellington is a vibrant city, home to lush hills, too many coffee shops an amazing National Museum.  It is also home to the Weta Workshop, where the creative artists designed and fabricated most of the costumes,…