Cruise Personalities

South America / Antarctica Cruise

She didn't get to go on the cruise with us, but she definitely should be included in this section. She's an American Airlines flight attendant who was so nice to us and made the long flight from Miami to Rio de Janeiro much more bearable if not actually enjoyable. We had survived a 5 hour layover in Miami plus a move from one end of the terminal to the other — it seemed like the next county to us. After finally finding seats among those who had been directed to the correct gate in the first place, they made us get in line to have dots put on our boarding passes!

This is Jodi Herrera

Get That Direction Right We were on Rio de la Plata heading east from Buenos Aires, and Owen Tyler is making sure he orients the Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver in the same direction as the ship, so he can get a good satelite reading on our heading. The GPS kept us informed of our exact location, even while we were in Antarctica.

In The Tender

If some of the people look less than overjoyed it's because it was only 7:38 AM. We were already on the way to the dock. We were in the Falkland Islands, and the harbor was too shallow for the Ryndam to get to the pier, so she launched four of the lifeboats to serve tender duty to taxi us to and from Stanley. As it turned out, this was the only port where this was necessary.

Sometimes, if there isn't sufficient available dock space, ships have to use tenders to get passengers ashore even when there is a deep-water harbor.

Marcel of the Crows Nest

January 15^th, at 10:32 AM: We were in the waters of Antarctica, so there was a crowd looking for icebergs. Marcel is one of the Filipino beverage stewards who works in the crows nest. He and some of his coworkers are experts in origami. We brought home a small zoo that they made for us.

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