20221215 Thursday, December 15, 2022- Off to Antarctica. Getting There May Be the Hardest Part.

20221215 Thursday, December 15, 2022- Seattle to Buenos Aires.

This begins an Antarctica Expedition on the Viking Polaris.  This trip has been long in planning with our initial booking being made in February 2021.  Yet, it was a very close call for the trip not happening at all.

On November 29, 2022 the Viking Polaris encountered a freak rogue wave in the Drake Passage that smashed in multiple windows on Deck 2 and flooded multiple staterooms and passageways.  One passenger died and four others were injured.  As more details leaked into the media about the event, it was revealed that the ship was headed to Ushuaia in a hurry because of a medical evacuation.  While in the Antarctic peninsula, passengers were being shuttled via Zodiac from the ship to one of its submarines.  One passenger from Tulsa was excited to catch video of penguins leaping out of the water less than 6’ from the Zodiac.  Then suddenly, there was what she described as an “explosion” under the bow of the Zodiac that tossed two passengers up into the air.  One was tossed entirely out of the Zodiac, while the other, a woman, came back down with a terrible leg fracture.  The man was pulled out of the water within moments by passengers and crew otherwise unharmed.  The ship’s medical facilities were insufficient to stabilize the woman’s fractured leg, so a decision was made to evacuate her ASAP back to Ushuaia, cutting the Antarctica tour short.  As they sped north toward Ushuaia they encountered bad weather and at about 10PM, the ship was struck by the rogue wave which passengers said sent a shudder throughout the ship, tossing furniture about.  Fortunately, most passengers were in bed.  Many wondered if they had hit an iceberg.  The rogue wave smashed through the floor to ceiling French balcony windows of several forward port side staterooms on deck 2.  This sent panes of glass into the cabins and even ruptured some walls and piled up furniture against the stateroom doors.  Two of the staterooms we had booked were located on deck 2, just forward of the staterooms with visibly smashed windows on photos in the media.  

The balance of that cruise was cancelled and the ship was taken to Punta Arenas for emergency repairs. The next scheduled cruise, which was to disembark in Ushuaia on December 17 was cancelled.  We were worried that we would be impacted if the repairs took more than 2 weeks, but last week, we received notifications from Viking that our embarkation was still scheduled to take place on December 17.  Then just days ago, we were notified that the two staterooms we had booked on deck 2 (standard Nordic balconies) were being upgraded to deluxe Nordic balcony staterooms on deck 3 at no cost.  That was a value worth $1200 per passenger x 4, so that was a nice early Christmas present from Viking.  But it remains to be seen what condition the ship is in when we arrive in Ushuaia.  

It was a beautiful crisp morning with a red sky sunrise greeting us as we headed into Seattle at 7:35am.  We chose to drive ourselves and self park at the Ajax Park-R-Us rather than use the shuttle since there were three of us travelling to SEA (Ben, Janet and Price) and the trip will only be 2 weeks long.  We were fortunate that our flights out were today because the same lot is sold out from December 17 through the end of the holidays.  

Janet and Ben flew from SEA to DFW on Alaska Airlines while Price flew SEA to DFW on American Airlines.  Tom and Ciara were scheduled on  American Airlines from ORD to MIA, while John flew American Airlines from EWR to MIA.  Then everyone boarded connecting American Airlines flights in either DFW or MIA to Buenos Aires (EZE).  With so many flights coming from different corners of the US ultimately converging on Buenos Aires, there is bound to be stresses related to flight delays and cancellations.  We were fortunate to have dodged a band of severe weather that sent tornados through the Dallas Fort Worth area yesterday which had severely impacted flights.  

Janet and Ben’s SEA>DFW flight was delayed by an hour, but fortunately, there was enough of a layover (originally a 2 hr layover in DFW) that there was no problem.  

Ciara and Tom were more severely impacted by a delay in their ORD>MIA scheduled flight.  This caused their arrival in MIA to be 10 minutes after the originally scheduled MIA>EZE departure.  They had to call the Viking en-route emergency line, Theresa, our travel agent, and American Airlines to scramble and find Ciara and Tom seats on an alternate flight from ORD to DFW, and also to rebook them from the MIA>EZE leg to the same DFW>EZE flight as Janet, Ben and Price.  This alternative flight was supposed to get them into DFW with 40 minutes to make the connection, but after they pushed back from the terminal, their plane to DFW was further delayed because of a backlog to de-ice the planes.  They ended up landing at DFW just as the DFW>EZE flight was pushing back from the terminal and onto the tarmac.  We had pleaded with the gate agents and flight crew to hold the flight for Ciara and Tom to make their connection, but our pleas fell on deaf ears.  

There is only one flight from DFW to Buenos Aires daily.  If they took the next flight, they would have arrived in Buenos Aires 3 hours after the charter flight to Ushuaia departed.  And even if they flew to Miami where there are 3 daily flights, the earliest would have arrived too late for them to make the chartered flight to Ushuaia.  In short, Tom and Ciara were screwed.  There was no way for them to be able to board the Viking Polaris in Ushuaia short of them knowing a billionaire with a private jet who could have flown them in directly.  Their only option was to turn around and head back to Chicago.  At least they could spend Christmas with Tom’s parents in Kalamazoo Michigan.  

John thought he was good to go as he boarded his plane, but then while sitting on the tarmac, their flight was delayed 2hrs, which would have also caused him to miss the flight from MIA>EZE.  Fortunately, whatever had caused that 2 hr delay to pop up resolved as mysteriously as it had appeared, so his flight was only delayed by 30 minutes.  His flight ended up arriving in MIA at 10:08 while his MIA>EZE flight was scheduled to depart at 10:35.  

We texted John and told him to let the flight attendants know he had to make an extremely tight connection and should be allowed to deplane first so he could run to catch his connecting flight.  We saw that American Airlines actually delayed that flight’s departure to 10:54PM so we hope John made that connection.  

It is incomprehensible to us that American Airlines wouldn’t delay our departure by 15 minutes on a 9 hour flight so that Tom and Ciara could make their connection in DFW.  Knowing that Ciara and Tom could not possibly join us of the Antarctica cruise upset both Ben and Janet terribly.  We are extremely mad at both Viking Air and American Airlines.  

Although our first class cabin for the DFW>EZE flight has fully reclining seats, it will be a rough night.  We can only hope and pray that we will see John at the hotel in the morning.