Antarctica
December 21, 2025 to January 8, 2026
Mike and Judy Henderson
We are leaving Antarctica now. We took our last excursions yesterday and have two sea days to cross the Drake Passage, then fly to Santiago to take our flights home.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
1/6/2026 (Tuesday) - We're at 61°30'9"S, 64°5'36"W at 7am this morning. This should be a quiet day. The sea is a bit higher than it was in the Antarctic Sound, but not bad. The ship is rolling a bit, making it a challenge to walk straight down the halls, but it's far from a "Drake Shake".
At 9:30am we attended a lecture on "Krill: A little guy but a giant-sized link in the global food chain".
The next notable event was a special Trivia - focused on scientific questions. We didn't do very well.
Then at 5pm we had the briefing - a recap and a look ahead to arrival at Puerto Williams. One of the presenters gave some statistics on the guests. Here are some screen shots of what he presented. The majority of the guests were American, with quite a few from Australia.
These were the age ranges. There were only eight other people aboard in our age range. The majority were in the early retirement age group.
Finally, we had the Captain's Farewell and crew recognition. I had to go very wide-angle to get all of the crew in the picture.
After that, it was dinner and then to bed. Tomorrow we pack.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
1/7/2026 (Wednesday) - We're at 56°3'18"S, 66°1'9"W at 6am this morning. We're nearingTierra Del Fuego and the Beagle Channel. We'll arrive at Puerto Williams this afternoon. We're scheduled to arrive about 5pm but will get there earlier. On arrival, Chilean customs and passport control people will board the boat and review our passports for entry to Chile. This is required because we stopped at ports of another country (Falkland Islands and South Georgia Island).
As part of our preparation for departing the ship, I had to pay the Lima airport tax ($11.68/person), and we each had to complete the Chile agricultural declaration on our iPhones. Then I checked in with LATAM for our flight from Santiago.
At 11am we played our last Trivia game, and came out second. At 11:30 we went to a presentation by the "hotel" staff. They answered questions posed by the guests about the operation of the "hotel" part of the ship - the food service, the laundry, the butlers, the cabin attendants, etc. The hotel manager, speaking, had a thick Italian accent. He commented that his wife didn't speak English very well. Then he added, "She's Australian".
About noon, the ship entered the Beagle Channel. At 3pm we redeemed our points for a Silversea hat and t-shirt. And about 4pm the ship docked at Puerto Williams.
The Chilean passport people came aboard and the ship was cleared by 5:30pm. I picked up the passports shortly after that, and Judy and I went ashore to walk around Puerto Williams.
We walked around the city but there's not a lot to see. Houses, lawns, etc. in the town are not kept up as well as you might expect. Puerto Williams is very different from Punta Arenas or Ushuaia, both of which are much larger towns.
At 4pm, Claudia gave us the final briefing and recognized her expedition staff.
Then there was an auction of a chart showing where we went on this cruise. The bids went back and forth and it finally sold for $2,500. The money goes to the crew welfare fund.
We went to dinner and then to bed. We have to get up about 5am to prepare to leave the ship at 7am.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
1/8/2026 (Thursday) - We leave the ship today about 7am to fly, first to Santiago via a charter flight, then a 6:30pm LATAM flight to Lima where we transfer to our LATAM flight to LAX.
We were up at 5am to shower and get ready. They called us at 7am and we departed the ship, boarded a bus, and were taken to the airport.
During the drive, we passed the new hotel that Royal Caribbean Group (which owns Silversea) is building at Puerto Williams, "The Cormorant at 55 South". Here's a picture of what it's planned to look like.
I didn't have time to take a picture of it as we drove by, but they still have quite a bit of work to do before it's finished. Silversea says it will open in 2026. I think it will be late in 2026. It's also some distance from the main part of Puerto Williams - certainly not an easy walk - so the town may not gain a lot of benefit from having the tourists there.
The drive to the airport was quick. You can easily see the airport from where the ship is docked. The plane we're on is the same model Embraer 190 as we came in on, a nice plane and we had exit row seats which gave us a bit more leg room.
As we were departing the parking area, a BAe 146 was arriving. Silversea uses these planes for their "fly to Antarctica" cruises. They fly the guests to King George Island where they board an expedition ship to see some of the same places we saw. The advantage is the guests avoid the "lost time" of traveling the Drake Passage (two days each way), and the possible rough weather of the Drake. But those trips are more expensive (per day) than a ship-only cruise and they're fairly short - 6 days if you fly both ways (they offer a 9-day where you fly down but come back on the ship).
We took off at 8am but we had to stop at Punta Arenas for fuel. The runway at Puerto Williams is short so the Embraer 190 may not be able to take off with a full fuel load.
We arrived at Punta Arenas about 8:45am and stayed on the plane while they fueled it. We took off at 9:40am, and arrived in Santiago about 1pm. We had to claim our baggage and go to the International Terminal to check in. Then through customs and security and finally to the LATAM lounge. It was about 3pm when we got to the lounge.
Our flight is at 6:30pm and we left to go to the gate about 5:30. Then, when we got to the gate, there was an announcement that the gate was changed to a whole different airside. It was a long walk to the new gate but we boarded as soon as we arrived.
The plane is a Boeing 787-900, a nice plane. It had lie-flat seating and lots of room. It's a three hour flight to Lima, but there's a two hour time difference between Lima and Santiago. The flight took off about 7pm so we arrived in Lima about 8pm, Lima time. I was even able to sleep a bit during the flight.
We didn't have to go through customs but did have to go through security. Then we went to the LATAM lounge, the same one we spent hours in on the way down to Santiago. We arrived at the lounge about 8:45 pm so we have about 3 hours to wait in the lounge.
Our flight to LAX was scheduled for almost 1am and we went down to the gate about 11:30pm. There was some additional security screening at the gate and we boarded as soon as we cleared that check.
The aircraft was a older Boeing 767-300 (produced from 1986 to 2000), and the seating was not nearly as nice as the 787 we were on to Lima.
The cabin staff offered us a meal but I was more interested in going to sleep. It was an 8 hour flight and there's a three hour time difference between Lima and LAX. They offered breakfast about an hour and a half before we arrived at LAX about 6:30am.
We have Global Entry and usually fly through passport control, but this time I was flagged for additional checking. Turns out that LATAM had put me on the manifest as Judith Henderson. It took about ten minutes for that to get straightened out, then we went to get our bags where we met Judy and David Cox. They had come in on the same flight.
We had AirTags on our luggage and could see that it had arrived. It came out on the turnstile fairly quickly.
When we exited the terminal the limo driver was waiting for us.
It was about an hour drive home and we arrived about 8am. Greg had already left and the girls were happy to see us but settled down quickly. That was the end of another journey.
Our next trip is a Mediterranean cruise with Tauck.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Afterword: I said I'd comment on whether we thought the upgrade to a higher category cabin was worth while. Let me start by talking about cruise ships.
The "standard" for suites in the higher level cruise ships has evolved over time. In the early days of cruising, suites were small and priority was given to the "living" area of the suite. The bathroom was small and limited - usually a single sink, toilet and bathtub with a tub shower was squeezed into that small space. Some were so small that they couldn't fit a tub and had a very small walk-in shower - so small that you could hardly turn around in them.
Over time, the cruise lines recognized that people spend a lot of time in their suites and began to make them more like home. The suites became larger and that extra space allowed a larger bathroom. Suites on some of the recently launched ships are significantly larger than on older ships and the bathroom may have two sinks - with space to put your "stuff" near the sink - a toilet, a large walk-in shower and a tub. The newer Regent ships are like that, specifically the Grandeur, Splendor, and Explorer.
With that introduction, I think upgrading to a larger suite on an older ship (the Silver Wind is 30 years old) is worth while. We were on an older Regent ship (Voyager, launched 2001) on our Africa cruise and upgraded to a Penthouse suite. We enjoyed the extra space and felt it was very worth while.
We also discovered that guests in a higher category suite receive certain "perks". For example, the suite came with the premium Internet access and unlimited free laundry - both of which we really appreciated. Additionally, we were placed on the first flight from Santiago to Puerto Williams, and on the first flight at the end of the cruise from Puerto Williams to Santiago. We also got good seats on both flights - bulkhead seats on the way down and exit row seats on the way back to Santiago.
Overall, I felt that upgrading on an older ship was very much worthwhile. Perhaps not so much on a newer ship with larger cabins and bathrooms.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Photography: I brought a DSLR camera with me (Fujifilm X-H2) but most of the pictures in this blog were taken with an iPhone 17 Pro Max. The DSLR has certain advantages but the convenience of the iPhone won the day most of the time.
You can go back to our main page here.