Cruising

We spent a few days in Montevideo, Uruguay and Buenos Aires, Argentina before joining our Antarctic cruise. We’re already planning on returning to Montevideo some February, when weather is nicer than the grey skies and rain that we encountered this time –

The “palace” at the main plaza was interesting and ornate. I love to get pictures of a country’s flag when we visit, and this next picture included both that and the architecture –

Puerto Madryn is a fairly large (~100,000 pop.) city on the Atlantic coast of Argentina, about midway down the length of the country. Argentinian flag –

On the way from the airport to the city, we stopped at a representation of Titanosaur, the largest land animal to have ever existed. A femur was found in 2013, along with a number of vertebrae, and this model was erected in the desert near the site:

(of course we had to have Steve for scale)

The tidal change for Puerto Madryn is very significant, and at low tide in the evening, the exposed sand ripples had a beautiful geometric design -

We were very excited to finally be embarking on our very first cruise, and for it to be to Antarctica, no less! On our way out to sea, we were escorted by some Dusky Dolphins. They were quite acrobatic, but I wasn’t quick enough to capture their leaps on camera.

Our first night at sea gave us this glorious sunset –

We then had two full days at sea (or actually 60 hours of sailing by the crew). We filled our time by going to lectures on geology, history or the wildlife of the places we were about to see. I worked feverishly on trying to photograph the beautiful birds soaring by…

…but captured them best when they floated by, sitting relatively still.

Black-browed Albatross

After talking with the resident photo pro, I was able to catch them on the wing much more successfully –

Cape Petrel

I think my favorite bird (of the air) was the Wandering Albatross. It has the longest wingspan of any flying bird on Earth, measuring over 10 feet!

I’m making this post relatively short because I have literally TONS of pictures to share with you about our upcoming days. Our second night at sea also went out in a blaze of glory –