24 hours in - we sail south in search of adventure! Some notes on the last week:

Our couple of days in Santiago and Valparaiso were perhaps more pleasant than electrifying, but pleasant is also good!  Chileans seem to be very friendly people, and we took the Santiago metro around town several times - with Barbara hobbling a bit with her recent knee issues, I don't think there was one subway trip we took in which someone didn't jump up and offer her a seat.  Including a 16 year old kid with his baseball cap on backwards - I'm unconvinced this would have been the case on, say, the New York subway.  And people would rush up to us to help if we displayed momentary confusion about which direction to walk around town, or how to use the transit system, they really are remarkably friendly and anxious to help.

This ship is identical to the the Sojourn, on which we sailed last year on our big trip from Singapore to Athens, so there is no learning curve about where everything is or  just about the general shipboard routine.  All that will change, though, when we get to Antarctica and the Zodiac landings there - I've read fairly extensively about how this all works, and they apparently have it all down to a science, how to get people from the ship to the Antarctic landing sites, safely and efficiently.  And there is a 16-member expeditionary team who will accompany us, and they will give exactly 42 different onboard lectures over the next few weeks, concerning the wildlife, geology, whales, seabirds, photography; all manner of things that we will be experiencing - the cruise line is quite dedicated to making all this as educational and informative as possible, not just a comfortable but superficial "drive-by" of the white continent.

The further south we sail, the later the sunset gets - tonight's will be at 9:25!  When we are in Antarctica, it will practically never set at all.

Tomorrow morning we dock in Puerto Montt, at the north end of the Reloncavi Sound.  From there, for the next 4-5 days, we will be slowly cruising the fjords and glaciers of Patagonia, and then after that, it's across the infamous Drake Passage, to the actual Antarctic mainland itself!