Argentina to Antarctica and Beyond

Blog One: Buenos Aires

February 10-14, 2026

Isabelle, formerly known as “The French Girlfriend” and now known as “The French Wife”, has always had Antarctica on her bucket list. To me, it’s all about penguins and ice, and while I have nothing against either, spending ten days and extensive travel to see them has not been high on my travel destination list. Nevertheless, here we are with promises from her that this will be a very exciting trip. And cold.

We arrived 3 days before our ship boarding to enjoy Buenos Aires, a city of 3 million. We’d been here once before, two years ago on a cruise from Santiago, Chile, around Cape Horn, and finishing here. Checking the map, you’ll see that Buenos Aires sits quite far south, a geography that has created a unique culture as compared to other Latin American cities.

Isabelle loved the city at first sight. She claims that it feels like 20th century Europe, with a sense of cleanliness, multiple parks, and active night life where it feels perfectly safe to walk alone at night down darkened roads. Buenos Aires claims to be the safest city in South America and the cleanest in the world. While the storefronts have gates they close at night, in contrast to most Latin American cities with their barbed wire on every gate, there’s more a sense of trust and openness. The citizenry looks European as well. We never saw Africans, Asians, or people dressed in religious garb. Spanish is ubiquitous, with only the occasional signs in English.

The city offers a wide range of barrios, each with their own personality. For the beginning of this four-week adventure, Isabelle and I landed in Palermo, one of the more fashionable districts. Tree-lined, one-way, narrow roads run in parallel and perpendicular lines, parked cars on both sides reducing traffic flow to a single lane. Eight-story apartment buildings fill most blocks, with their bottom story devoted to shops on the busier slightly wider streets. It reminds me of urban Brooklyn, London, or Chicago, but much greener. The trees on our hotel’s street towered fifty-feet high.

It’s summer here, with temperatures in the low 80s at midday. Both genders walk the streets wearing t-shirts, shorts, and tennis shoes, occasionally in slacks or jeans. No one smokes. Little boutique stores sell hardware, clothing, toys, or my favorite, a whole shop dedicated to candy. Restaurants on every block have outdoor seating reminiscent of Parisian cafés. Walk-up empanada stands dot every street, where the customer has a choice of a dozen flavors, each hot, fresh, and delicious. These generally run about $2, although I saw one crowded stand selling them for 1000 pesos, about seventy-five cents. And speaking of delicious, Argentinian beef and wine are as tasty as can be. I dined at a white-clothed, waiter-attentive restaurant with heavenly Argentinian “New York Strip,” glass of champagne, a tub of fresh mashed potatoes, and apple flambee for dessert, all for forty dollars. Tipping is optional, at ten percent.

Beyond food, prices throughout are similar to those in America. Their new president has successfully dampened the triple digit runaway inflation of his predecessor. I brought back a big stack of bills from our trip two years ago and discovered that today they were worth $1.07 total. Now inflation is down to 31%, which is still high, but much more manageable. Our hotel was $230 a night the first two, and for our last night here we moved to the Hilton where rooms run $350. Clothing and souvenirs run about the same costs as back home. There are no coins. When an item costs 1000 pesos, you fork over a thousand peso note and its done. Like in Europe, no added tax to make purchases complicated.

I always enjoy strolling to enjoy the sights, smells, sounds, and tastes of a city. I just posted a YouTube video of murals we photographed in a ten-block area near our hotel. On Wednesday, our arrival, we did little exploring, recovering from the overnight 15-hours of travel. Thursday, as Isabelle rested, I walked 14,000 steps through the city, taking a tour of their Eco park, a 44-acre central park established in 1875 (or 1888 depending on the reference) as a zoo. The zoo closed in 2016 due to perceived animal cruelty and reopened 2 years later as the eco park, although it still houses a few animals, with one pathway showcasing a tapir, 2 giraffes, and a family of hippos. A few other animal cages throughout the area contained residents, including a large condor cage. But most of the fauna houses stood empty, pretty architectural remnants offering a lovely background to what is now a free-entrance park for families. Wild peacocks, geese, and little bunny-like things (Patagonia Maras) romp freely through the acreage, the avians begging breadcrumbs from delighted children. Off the main paved wide paths, wood chipped passages meander through butterfly gardens and native flora.

As always, I’m a museum aficionado. If one knows anything about Argentinean history, certainly one has heard of Eva Perron. A peasant girl who, as a teenager, became a movie star, she married a rising politician and became the country’s first lady in 1946. She instituted progressive reforms including labor laws, health care, nursing college, child welfare, and woman suffrage, all before dying at age 33 of cancer. She led an amazing life, becoming a heroine of mythical proportions. Her second home located near the eco-park has been turned into a museum, a three-story tour designed to progress throughout her history. It contains her artifacts, movies, and the stories of her legacy. I’ll make a YouTube video of it soon.

Friday, we checked out of our little boutique hotel and took an Uber to the Hilton. As in most cities, Ubers are ubiquitous, although they’re busier here than in many places I’ve visited, often resulting in a bit of a wait before being hooked up with a driver. Not one of the drivers of the several we took spoke English. The rates haven’t caught up with inflation, running about $4 for short trips, and $8 for a forty-minute crosstown jog.

After dropping off our luggage, I booked an Uber to the Museum of Fine Arts, or so I thought. It turns out that a rustic tourist area near the major port is called the Museum of Fine Arts Outdoors, in a barrio called La Boca (the mouth). This colorful noisy several block area is packed with tourists, sampling food, shopping, and dancing to the local music. Tango was invented in this part of Argentina, and dancers showcase their talents on the street. La Boca is also home to the soccer stadium, with statues and shops dedicated to their heroes. Isabelle bought $100 worth of Mafalda souvenirs. I wasn’t familiar with this cartoon character who apparently is the Mickey Mouse of Latin America.

After an hour or two in La Boca and more delicious empanadas for lunch, we took an Uber to the actual Museum of Fine Arts, a huge red granite building where the entrance fee is a suggested donation of $5. Already tired from our adventures, we only managed two hours of admiring the classical and modern art offerings. I’ve always been a fan of the details found in the 16th century Dutch paintings! There was a large selection of French Impressionistic and Goya’s works as well, and also 19th century Argentinean paintings. Yes, I’ll put together a YouTube video on that soon.

Back at the hotel, we rested before dining at the Hilton’s restaurant, “El Faro” the lighthouse. Isabelle claimed their steak tartar was the best she’s ever had! I had a delectable clam soup. At $30 for a delicious dinner for two, one is tempted to move to Argentina just for the inexpensive delightful food!

Saturday morning, we loaded onto a bus to the airport, and onto a chartered flight to Ushuaia, reputedly the southernmost city in the world. Here we will board the cruise ship on our way to Antarctica.

I mentioned that the cruise to Antarctica is 10 days, but our trip is 4 weeks. On our return, we have a hired guide who will take us on a 2-week journey through the Argentine mountains.

Blog 2: Antarctica – Feb 14-18, 2026

Antarctica is the world’s fifth-largest continent, covering approximately 5.5 million square miles, making it roughly 40% larger than Europe and nearly twice the size of Australia. It is larger than the contiguous United States and Mexico combined. About 98% of it is covered in ice, most of the rest are isolated mountains known as nunataks showing bare edges of coastal bedrock.

Isabelle and I are on a 13-day Viking Cruise. We landed in Buenos Aires on the 11th, enjoyed 2 days of touristy things there, and then flew down to Ushuaia to board the Viking Octantis. We’d been to Ushuaia two years ago, finding it small and cold. This time we had a more extensive view, traveling by bus from the airport to the cruise port, a whole 20-minutes’ drive, giving us an opportunity to see the beauty of the town. Rows of narrow steep roofed homes crawl up the snow-capped mountainsides. We stopped at a park to snap selfies with cute little sail boats bobbing in the bay behind us. Besides that, there was no time to explore the town before boarding and settling into the ship which departed at 5 pm, we will have time to explore on the way back since we will be overnighting there. Being in the summer deep in the Southern Hemisphere, daylight stretches for about 14.5 hours.

I presume most of you reading this blog have been on a cruise ship trip. This is our fifth Viking cruise, and certainly the most unique. Viking has three types of ships, ocean, river, and expedition, this one being the third type. It holds 370 passengers, few enough that we have made several friends and see familiar faces frequently. As always, Isabelle’s ability to make friends with everyone holds true, especially getting to know all the staff. With so few people, the food variety is limited, although excellent. My favorite is the grill which offers lobster every evening. I can eat a LOT of lobster. We attend the interesting lectures or watch them later on the close-circuit television in our room. In the public areas, passengers group around jigsaw puzzles, scrabble games, or relax in a lounge listening to the piano players on two different levels. Some sit sipping wine staring out the windows, captivated by the landscape. Others relax with one of the thousands of books stuffed into every nook and cranny, all about Antarctic and also Arctic explorations.

The Viking Cruises sail two Antarctica expedition ships, the Polaris and the Octantis. We’re on the latter. The lowest level is packed with exploration vessels, including motorized rubber rafts called Zodiacs, kayaks, special operation boats, and a submarine. The first floor is administrative, the second and third holding most of the rooms, with a few more expensive quarters on the two floors above. There’s entertainment every afternoon and evening provided by duos at their two pianos, one with violin, the other a singer. The second floor also holds a spa with a hot water pool, a sauna, a snow closet, and a power shower. Lectures are given in a 2-story auditorium.

Two years ago, we crossed the Drake passage under the sun over calm water, floating around the heated outdoor pool of the Viking Jupiter. This time, nature showed what it could shove at us, with two days of 30-foot swells as we traveled south. If you check out a map of Antarctica, you’ll see a series of small islands stretching like a horn off the corner of Antarctica towards Argentina. This is our destination, in fact, the only destination that tourists can visit. Under one million people have ever visited this continent, and fewer have set foot on land; most cruise companies only offer float-bys. With Viking we’ll be walking on paths they set up onto the shelf, as well as touring by the motorized rubber Zodiac rafts.

On the 16th we arrived at Fournier Bay, our first destination. The landscape is incredible! Snow covered mountains tower one or two miles high (per google AI: 6,500 to 13,000+ feet), dwarfing everything around. It’s almost eerily quiet, the air crisp and dry, belying the 31 F degree temperature. The water is just as cold, since it’s salt water, it doesn’t freeze. On our arrival we photographed pods of whales swimming by, welcoming us spouting out fountains from their blow holes, groups of penguins popping up as synchronized swimmers in circled flight, and icebergs streaked with the deep blue of anciently packed snow. We have an electric roll-down window in our cabin that opens for a panorama view and opportunity to photograph.

In the afternoon we loaded 10 to a Zodiac to take an hour jaunt around the bay. I overdressed with two hats, two pairs of gloves, two layers of socks, three pants, and five chest coverings. I was stripping off layers, down to no gloves and opened jacked, doffed hat, and still was way too warm. Isabelle snapped a great photograph of a whale tail. As I write this, I’m in my room watching a dozen penguins bobbing through the water just out my window.

On the 17th, we eased into Damoy Point. For our second trip off the boat on a Zodiac, we went ashore to get a close view of a penguin rookery. This was a colony of gentoo penguins, identifiable by their all-black backs, white belly, and a band of white across their scalp in the shape of a bonnet. They’re the ones famous for the males picking out favorite stones to garner the favor of their mates. They’re the third largest of the 18 penguin species and, based on our experience, spend a lot of time standing around. They eat mostly krill and shrimp, making their poop pink, which makes their rookeries pink as well. Don’t eat the pink snow. Check out my cute penguin video: https://youtube.com/shorts/-_DAHTt_Itw

The next day started with a morning surface boat tour, an hour in a 12-seater special operation boat in Flander’s Bay where whales were congregating. We filmed dozens of them coming up for air, and a few tails, but none breached for us. Our guide told us that whales breach during mating season, which happens in the northern hemisphere. Still, the views were magnificent. We were surrounded by jagged icy mountains as background with bluish icebergs floating by. In the afternoon the weather cleared from morning low clouds to bright blue, and we took our Zodiac out on calm waters. We took a bunch of photos of a somnolent leopard seal sunning itself on a flat low iceberg and listened to our guide tell us a small encyclopedia worth of nature facts.

I will post one more blog from Antarctica. Thank you for reading them. Please feel invited to send a response.