For this cruise, we're going back to Azamara. We did our 2012 Baltic Cruise on Azamara Journey and we're aboard her again, way down south.
We're making up these pages ahead of time to make it easier later.
The first problem is getting to Santiago, Chile. Finally used points & rewards to schedule American JAX-SCL and EZE-JAX. Still have to schedule some way to the port at San Antonio.
We visited Santiago in 2022 when we ended a cruise there. We had started in Miami, through the Panama Canal, to Santiago with O's cousin Fran and her husband Duane. They've already done the cruise we're planning here, so they're not with us this time.
An oddity about this cruise is that we leave the US in winter, fly to Santiago which will be in summer, then cruise to Antarctica, which is always in winter, and continue to BA again in summer. Then we fly home to winter. It'll be a packing challenge.
AA3101 JAX-MIA 1649-1816
AA957 MIA-SCL 2250-0914*
The flights will be out of Jacksonville this times via Miami, a few days before the ship sails. When we arrive in Santiago, we'll continue by car and driver the 80 miles to the port of San Antonio.
We'll stay in a hopefully nice hotel (at bottom, left) until boarding time on 2 February. This hotel "Enjoy San Antonio" (Enjoy is a brand) has a great view of the port and seaward. It includes a small casino and there's a shopping mall connected. It's built on top of the fish market (hmmm). There is a paseo along the waterfront where there stalls and where seals lounge on the sand.
The old San Antonio train station is at the front door, but the trains don't run there anymore. There's a nice plaza across the street. I don't know how much exploring we'll get done - the streets look a little ragged on Google Maps Street View, but a couple of videos on Youtube show it will be ok during the day..
The ship will actually arrive the day prior to our boarding as part of the previous cruise agenda. It might get a little crowded - or they might all go on tours.
Looking through our safe at home produced 171,000 Chilean pesos, worth about $US175, left over from our 2022 trip.
We'll fill in the happenings here………
