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slewis7

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Everything posted by slewis7

  1. I can give you prices for 2 of those excursions for my Viking June 22, 2024 cruise: Vigur $229 per person Skalanes $219 per person
  2. So good to hear! We are sailing the Millennium on a Japan itinerary in early April and I hope we will have a similar onboard experience.
  3. My wife and I very recently made a new booking with Viking so I have emailed my travel agent to see if we can apply the “Special Future Guest Promotion” retroactively. 🤞
  4. I agree that this is an absolutely wonderful itinerary. My highlights were our pre-cruise visit to Iguazu, the Antarctica scenic cruising and the last several ports in Chile. The red eye flight the eve of disembarkation was painful but it was worth it. As for the Holland America shipboard experience, it exceeded all my best expectations! I especially enjoyed the food! Will sail HAL again!
  5. Perhaps I found the wrong “Doctor my Eyes” video as Tako was not in it. He is a pretty young guy.
  6. We just got off the Oosterdam and we enjoyed the music in the RS Lounge. The guitarist, Tako from Tokyo, is a phenomenal talent and he seems to play a ripping solo on just about every song. On my one prior HAL cruise I really enjoyed the music in the BB King Club; I much prefer it to rock. Will that type of music still be present on the larger ships?
  7. My wife and I did a HAL horseback riding excursion today in Castro. It was a very small group of 11 passengers and a HAL rep. The ranch owner accompanied us on the van and told us about his ranch and how he obtained it. He was a very friendly fellow named Julian. After a scenic half hour ride, we arrived and Julian gave us a demonstration of training a horse. Then we all got saddled up on horses accompanied by Julian and a number of his family members. The area was absolute beautiful with some nice grades at various spots. We saw plenty of dogs and passed by a lake. It was wonderful! After a 2 hours ride we returned to the ranch. We were treated to sandwiches, fruit, nuts and honey sweetened lemon juice and then returned to the port. It was an amazing outing and by far the best ship excursion I have ever taken!
  8. Today is Castro. Tomorrow is Puerto Montt. Castro was added to the itinerary pre-cruise when some scheduled dates were shifted and a port was dropped.
  9. I did the El Pedral tour as well today. Seeing penguins up close was wonderful! Was that a long cruise pier or what!?
  10. When the lecturer mentioned that book, I jumped on Amazon and was able to purchase an illustrated Kindle version of it for just $0.99! https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07MK5GMDG/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_d_asin_title_o01?ie=UTF8&psc=1
  11. Me and my lovely wife tried the Dive-In for lunch today. We were both quite pleased with the food. I would rate it above Oceania, Viking and Celebrity for this fare. The burger, fries and shake were all outstanding as were the sauces.
  12. Looking ahead to Port Stanley, the weather forecast for Sunday currently shows windy conditions. Hopefully we will have calmer weather. According to the following relevant web site: https://www.falklands.gov.fk/maritimeauthority/coastal-state/local-notices-to-mariners/69-local-notice-to-mariners-01-2022#:~:text=Wind condition limitations for tendering,small passenger tenders and zodiacs. “Wind condition limitations for tendering operations When the wind conditions are sustained 30 and gusting above 30Kts, Stanley harbour will be closed for fishing vessels and all small passenger tenders and zodiacs. Additionally, the harbour may be closed at wind speeds below these limits on direction of the Harbour Master.”
  13. @Btimmer unfortunately HAL canceled Punta del Este for this cruise. We get Castro instead, later on. Today, after a brief tour of Montevideo, we were taken to the Bouza Winery by our private guide. It is an absolutely beautiful property. We had a tour of the facilities and sampled 4 wines accompanied by delicious tapas. All 4 wines were excellent. We enjoyed it!
  14. Our driver knew to take us to drop luggage at Costa Salguero (not the cruise terminal). We are there now awaiting a transfer. It seems like a smooth process so far.
  15. I am excited to be joining you both here and on the ship for this very same cruise. Who knows, I may be inspired to post some of my own experiences on your thread, if that is OK. Let’s just hope us and other passengers can find out where to go today to drop our luggage, without too much trouble!
  16. We have been at the Falls the last 2 days. Not a single insect bite for us!
  17. What a lovely send off! My wife and I are on this cruise as well. I heartily mirror these best wishes for a great cruise for “0106” and everyone else aboard with her! 😆
  18. slewis7

    Brazil visa

    It is pretty amazing but given how incompetently the processing of applications has been, it is hardly surprising that they had to postpone things to avoid significantly damaging their tourism business. Many of us are upset that a lot of effort and expense was wasted making applications but folks who had to alter or cancel travel plans due to an inability to obtain Visas would be even more angry.
  19. slewis7

    Brazil visa

    Thank goodness. Their visa system has been a total clown show. 🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡
  20. Excited to follow along. We board the Oosterdam when you disembark. Have a great cruise!
  21. @MEFIowa I agree that the PH cabins are not a good value. However, we read that the R-Class bathrooms and showers are tiny on non-PH cabins, so we went for the PH cabin on the Insignia. Otherwise, that ship is a no go for us (yes, we are a bit spoiled). We may find the regular veranda cabins on the Vista class ship to be acceptable and a better value and it would dispense with the unnecessary butler.
  22. I enjoyed meeting Felicia onboard this cruise. It the first Oceania experience for my wife and myself (we had an earlier South America booking which was mysteriously canceled by either our travel agency or the cruise line - they blamed each other) and we had a somewhat different take on the cruise. Overall, we enjoyed it, but we were not at all blown away. Our recent cruising experiences are mostly on Celebrity and Viking Ocean and Oceania didn’t compare favorably in our opinion. Perhaps we had higher expectations as we paid for a Penthouse Suite cabin which was not a bargain like Felicia’s booking. What we liked: - the convenience of a small ship - the buffet food had excellent variety for such a small ship and we appreciated the nice selection of cooked to order dishes. Also, it was never super crowded like most ship buffets. - service and crew seemed about par for the course - our cabin was comfortable enough and the balcony furniture was nice, but then again we paid for it. Actually when we pay extra for nice cabins in other lines we get a much larger amount of space. - main dining, the few times we tried it, went much more quickly then posts in this forum had me expecting - the ship TV had a good selection of live broadcasts and an excellent variety of movies and television shows. It also worked pretty consistently throughout the cruise. What we did not like: - the evening entertainment held no interest for us - very much an older crowd, but probably the time of year and itinerary had a lot to do with it - main dining food was pretty average with some hits and some misses and not a lot of choices - specialty dining was sometimes very good and sometimes not very good (lukewarm dishes a number of times) - if your tagline is “finest cuisine at sea”, we will hold you to higher expectations and Oceania fell well short - WiFi was just adequate and there was a lot of things blocked that I can usually accomplish on other lines (eg, uploading photos to Google, downloading podcasts,YouTube, etc) - the whole butler thing, a first for us, did not amount to much of anything - the one Oceania shore excursion we took was very pricey and the promised “included food” turned out to be two varieties of cheese doodles (if you are going to serve alcohol, you should also serve food) - we missed having a phone app like we have had on every other line. As a result of this experience, we are still on the fence as to whether we will sail on Oceania again. We prefer our Viking experiences.
  23. My application was approved (after several attempts) supplying a screen shot of our flights in and out of other countries in South America. That same image of our flights has been rejected for my wife’s application. I have not been any to get any feedback now as to what alternative is required. I will try the chat function this week and see if I can get anywhere since they are not responding to emails from me. If that fails, I will see if I call make a phone call for help. SO FRUSTRATING!
  24. Has anyone had success recently getting responses to emails sent to Brazil eVisa Customer Support? I have tried sending several emails to them over the last week but only once got a response and it was an automated one. One of the pieces of information requested in that response is the “Application Centre”. Does anyone know what they are looking for here? Even though I have received an eVisa for myself (but still trying for my wife), I am close to giving up on this process. It is not worth the continued frustration for a one day visit to the Brazilian side of Iguazu Falls.
  25. Just a couple of days ago, they accepted my November bank statement. Now if I can just get them to accept our South America flights (not into Brazil) for my wife’s application that they already accepted for mine, we would be all set!
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