Preparation: The adventure begins as I head to ... - All Things Cruise

Walnut Creek, California, Nov. 4, 2012.

Whenever I?m getting ready to take major trip, I do as many other optimistic souls do. I first make a list. You know ? things to do before leaving and then what items to be absolutely sure to take on the journey. Often the first thing to occur after that is that I lose the list.

That?s okay, I shrug my shoulders and make a second list. Item No. 1: ?Find the previous list.?

Today, Sunday, I?m working off list No. 3, and I think I?ve taken care of everything on it. My AA flight leaves SFO at 2 p.m. PST for DFW and then connects with a flight to SCL. The latter is the airport code for Santiago ? the end of a really l-o-o-o-n-g night flight. I will arrive in the Chilean capital at 10:10 Monday morning.

I?m headed for a highly anticipated 14-day Holland America adventure on the good ship Veendam, which departs on Wednesday, Nov. 7, from Valparaiso.

This is no sissy cruise, either. The ship will sail way down the coast of Chile and through the southern fjords, apparently scraping by an odd glacier or two, until we round storied Cape Horn. That rocky promontory is smack in the sometimes trouble-prone confluence of three oceans ? a trio whose strong winds and heavy waves often do not agree on exactly which way to blow and flow.

Our port calls include the city of Ushuaia, an Argentinean settlement which vies with a couple of small Chilean villages for the title of the southernmost town in the world. After conferring about such things with a colony of penguins, we will continue northward, pausing at a couple of more ports including Montevideo, Uruguay. Finally we will disembark in the undisputed tango capital of the world, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Tomorrow morning I will l check in to the Santiago Sheraton and perhaps will let you know well how well that list thing finally worked out for me. If the gods of climate and cyberspace are kind, I will try to blog every day here on All Things Cruise for the length of this ocean adventure.

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About Cynthia Boal Janssens

Cynthia Boal Janssens is the editor and chief blogger for AllThingsCruise.com. She is a former national president of the Society of American Travel Writers (SATW). She has sailed on over 40 cruises all over the world.

Source: http://allthingscruise.com/preparation-the-adventure-begins-as-i-head-to-south-america/

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