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We hope you have a wonderful trip Rob and Gail. Safe travels!

We received our Visa's yesterday, a month after we applied. We found it very beneficial to use the guidance in the PDF provided by the Inside Cabin. Our address is also longer than the space provided. I kept typing until it stopped, just short of the complete address. If they want more, they will ask for it. Once I started to populate our postal code, the province was available. We did use the email help option to answer a few questions. At the start of the process, they responded right away. Then the responses took a couple of weeks. The following is the link to the Inside Cabin presentation. Pete is a well known world cruise blogger and is a valuable source of information. He helped numerous people through the process. As they needed the Visa's to begin a Grand Cruise that began the beginning of January. https://www.theinsidecabin.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/How-to-get-a-Brazil-E-Visa-5.4S.pdf Hope this helps.

I highlighted and was requested to resubmit document as a clear scanned copy. Uploaded 2 weeks ago, have heard nothing since.

So happy for you, we are still waiting and we fly out tomorrow. Hope the Oosterdam has good WiFi.

This tour was included as part of our HAL 18 day Land and Sea Tour last year. We had plenty of time to hike after the tour ended at the base of the park. The hiking was quite enjoyable, lots of options.

Has anyone seen any status changes or request for information on the weekends? Time is running short and we are getting nervous since we submitted PDF documents and not PNG format which now seems to be the format to use and we seem to be stuck at the "pending document upload" stage.

That is great news. Did you have any rejects in your application? What was your time line been? I have gone from "Under Check" to "Pending Document Requested" and have been hanging a "Pending, Document Uploaded" for quite some time. The process is taking forever, I am sure Christmas doesn't help.

Loving your report and pictures. We are getting so excited for our trip. When you have a chance, will you please let us know how many dressy nights. It will help us with our packing.

Enjoying your blog and getting lots of ideas! What were your thoughts on wearing jewelry (rings, earrings, etc.)? There seems to be mixed thoughts on wearing jewelry in both Buenos Aires and Santiago. Some say no worries, others say no way.

If anyone is currently on the Oosterdam, would they let us know if they have added the library back to the ship yet or if not are they able to find out when they expect to have it completed. Thanks.

I am curious how many dressy days on the Santiago to Buenos Aires portion. Although it is 22 days, I don't imagine it will be the standard 2 dressy nights per 7 days as are on the shorter voyages or back to back combinations.

Does anyone know when they expect to reintroduce the libraries to the remaining ships? I believe there are only three ships left to update.

We travelled on the Y1L (18 day land and sea) in June/July of this year doing land first. We used Alphen's review from last year as initial guidance and then did quite a bit of of our own research beforehand in order to make the best use of the time in each location. Based on discussions with others we met when we got on the cruise, we made the right decision to do the longer tour. The shorter tours apparently spent a lot of time of buses and the scenery apparently became repetitive. We hesitated with respect to taking the meal plan options and ended up not taking any of them. It was the right decision for us. There was no shortage of affordable places to eat at any of the locations and at any time of day, even breakfast. There were days we ate breakfast at the restaurant on the HAL property but more often than not we found cheaper options elsewhere where we had more options than a breakfast buffet. We had used google maps ahead of time to identify where the restaurant options were so we didn't have to worry about it once we arrived if the cell service wasn't good. More than once we asked a young local "where they would go to eat if they were on a date". We got great recommendations. We enjoyed both Whitehorse and Dawson City. Your time in Whitehorse is somewhat limited but there is a walking trail the covers both sides of the river and it was quite enjoyable. We did the Tombstone Park Tour in Dawson and it was very good. It was a small group tour and we had a fantastic guide so we learned lots of information about the people in the area.

Rotterdam - 08-Mar-23 - 21 day Southern Caribbean Seafarer / Wayfarer

We are really enjoying your review. We are doing the same itinerary in 2023 and are curious when you received your exact schedule and the excursion options for the land portion. No rush to reply, just whenever you have a chance. Thanks.