December 27, Day 8 of 9





It's drop-off day! Sorry, bad Below Deck reference. Secretly, I had been hoping that maybe we would get an extra day or two onboard to maybe make up for the time we had lost on the front end. The weather looked iffy for today, anyways.

However, at the captain's briefing and farewell the night before, the captain said "we don't have a departure time for you tomorrow, but we are confident you can fly tomorrow." Those were the most sure words all of us had ever heard on the trip so far with regards to our flight!

The night before, we were instructed to put our luggage out in front of our rooms at 10am. Rooms were to be vacated by 11am so that housekeeping could turn the cabins for the next arriving guests.

The crew had also setup a desk of sorts near Reception that had plane assignments, a scale (to weigh your luggage in case you bought too many things at the gift shop), and a place to donate any unwanted (i.e., overweight) clothing. Ribbons were also available to tag your luggage with the right plane if you had somehow lost yours.

After breakfast, we had a nice talk from a Nat Geo naturalist who had spent 18 months in Antarctica on a previous assignment. After the talk, the Expedition Leader mentioned to us a change of plans for the day:

• After lunch, the crew would be able to accommodate a Polar Plunge (yay!) at 2pm (this had previously been scheduled for the day in Deception Island where we didn't end up being able to go off the ship due to weather)
• Luggage and room checkout at 3pm
• Then, TBD on disembarkation and flight times

American BBQ lunch - feels like maybe provisions are running thin


My humble plate

A note about these egg tarts. The head chef onboard was actually Portuguese, and my mom absolutely adores Portuguese egg tarts. She mentioned this to him and they were able to pull off an encore of the tarts. Very much appreciated (and tip to interact with the crew and tell them what you like!).

The restaurant staff even delivered four to our table... Don't worry, none went to waste.


Portuguese egg tarts!


A classic Baked Alaska

The polar plunge was indeed conducted after an hour after lunch (have to digest a little bit right?).

I don't have any good pictures, but the crew essentially setup two Zodiacs with a floating swim platform in between. You headed down to the back in your swimsuit (and slippers and bathrobe), and then jumped off the side of a Zodiac and swam to the swim platform.

It was indeed freezing (apparently 28F), but your brain is so pre-occupied with getting onboard that the cold maybe lasts 5 seconds. Honestly, it felt more cold out of the water than in it. The lovely crew had hot chocolate, tequila shots, and a Polar Plunge patch waiting for you when you came back aboard.

It seemed like maybe 60-70% of the ship did it. It was hilarious to see a lounge full of white-clad guests ready to go jumping in sub zero water.

After a quick hot shower and a repack, we were back out to the lounge to await a flight and disembarkation time.

Most of us just passed the time playing cards and lounging, as the lounge staff were still on hand to provide drinks and snacks. At one point Lindblad staff did pass out boarding passes to everyone.

Since we had a late (and TBD departure), there was a "heavy" afternoon tea served which consisted of:

• Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches
• Chicken salad sandwiches
• Various pastries (macaroons, palmiers, and I can't remember what else)
• Split pea soup

To be honest, this was the weakest "meal" of the day, though I don't think the crew expected to serve us another meal so I think maybe it was pulled together quickly.

Around 5:30pm, it was announced that we had a flight time. However, due to the late flight time, the Puerto Natales airport would be closed when we arrived.......

Which meant we had to fly to Punta Arenas (PUQ) instead.

Oh god.

Good news (well bad if you, like me, wanted to stay onboard another day)? We were flying today.

Bad news? This mean we would land at Punta Arenas and be bused over to Puerto Natales (3 hours) to return to the Hotel Costaustralis.

I had actually asked the Expedition Leader if it was possible to just not take the bus from PUQ to Puerto Natales and instead just get a hotel at our expense in Punta Arenas and switch our PNT-SCL flight to be PUQ-SCL instead tomorrow morning (Punta Arenas, being much larger than Puerto Natales, has far more flight options, not to mention frequency).

He told me "you are totally welcome to do that," but I would just need to inform staff of our decision, as well as ask another guest to help return my rental boots / gear (in Puerto Natales). However, then I realized that I had left a bag of summer clothes (since we were heading to Buenos Aires and Sao Paulo after) at the Hotel Costaustralis, which rendered the whole option moot. Dangit!

At 5:30pm, we began the disembarkation process. This involved donning all of our gear, boarding Zodiacs, and going back to shore where we would do the reverse of embarkation. Lifejackets were put away and DAP had buses to transfer us from the shore to the "holding area." You could also take a short 250 meter scenic walk, which I elected to do so I could see China and Russia


One last Zodiac ride and one last iceberg


Russia in the distance

The holding pens would be the closest thing to a gate area. Apparently one of these is heated, and one of these is not. Both were astroturfed and staff had set up coffee and tea stations. We were advised that there were no bathrooms here, and we would be here at most an hour.

I heard that there is an emergency bathroom (that needs to be used sparingly), though, so if you really are in an emergency, ask staff.

It wasn't an unpleasant place to wait, though it definitely got crowded with everyone and their bags.

According to my timestamps, we arrived at the tents at 6:15pm and then didn't begin the boarding process until 8:20pm, so we were actually here for a bit over two hours.


Holding pens

Flight: V5 943
Routing: TNM-PUQ
Aircraft: CC-ARN (BAE 146)
Scheduled: 8:15pm - 10:20pm
Actual: 8:45pm - 10:45pm
Seats: 9D, 9E, 9F


Boarding commences from the gates, with red plane assigned guests first. Boarding passes were scanned and we were bused to the waiting planes.

This time, red plane was the penguin plane

We boarded at 8:30pm and departed around 15 minutes later. Funny enough, we had the Nat Geo photographer and the doctor (and his partner) on board with us as the I assume their assignments were finishing.




I won't cover the flight in-depth this time since it's essentially the same as the inbound flight, with one exception - alcohol (beer and wine) are served on the return, as "you don't need to get on a Zodiac after you get on the plane."

The same cheese, chicken wrap, and rhubarb crumble were served. The cheese was good. The chicken wrap was frozen, and the rhubarb crumble was 2 days past its expiry... Didn't finish the box this time.

Funny enough, my friend who had done the Fly the Drake on the National Geographic Explorer a month prior, mentioned that her wrap on the return was also frozen, and obviously DAP has to double cater, so I guess these are the ones that are sitting closer to the dry ice

Bring your own snacks! Indeed, we finished off the insurance tube of Chilean Pringles we had bought from the PNT airport on the inbound.


Absolutely frozen (and partially expired)

We landed around 10:45pm. From TNM, PUQ is a bit shorter to reach than PNT, about 15 minutes.

Deplaning was efficient and we collected our bags.




Neat to see the origin as "Antarctica." I will note, however, my boarding pass said V5 943 but this says 941. So who knows. I think charter flights don't really operate under the same rules as commercially scheduled flights.



We hopped on waiting buses (there were probably 3-4 for the ~100 of us), and thankfully we had room to spread out. Snack bags were waiting on each seat (nice thought), which consisted of:

• A mandarin orange
• Water bottle
• Cereal bar
• What appeared to be the Chilean equivalent of saltine crackers
• ... and I think maybe some nuts?

I don't quite remember. I didn't really eat any of it. Buses did have a bathroom, and the recline was amazing.

We departed PUQ around 11:15pm for our 3 hour drive to the Hotel Costaustralis. It took more like 3 hours and 15 minutes, and we arrived around 2:30am. I tried to get some sleep on the bus, though a bus being a bus, it was definitely difficult.

Once we arrived, everyone had to grab their luggage, check-in, return rental gear, and pickup any stored bags. It was quite organized chaos so late into the night, though all of the Lindblad staff (including our hospitality queen, Sharon!) were on hand to assist with whatever. Huge kudos to them. It seems like this season they had to deal with a lot more late arrivals than they expected.

I received a room on the 4th floor, stepping in around 2:50am. This is a non-refurbished room, so maybe you can see some slight differences from the previous room I stayed in. It was nice that it was further away from the constantly chiming elevator, though.

A "light meal" had been left, which consisted of a steak and some rice... looked like buffet leftovers. Again, a thoughtful and detailed consideration, but I didn't touch this at such an hour. Apparently chicken was an option some guests received as well.



One bed to unpack and repack all of my crap, one bed in which to nap

Most noticeable is the bathroom.



They had plastic wrapped the dish so tightly you could barely see it. Good job


Thoughtful, but really bad

I crawled into bed around 3:30am and then was back up at 7:00am to get ready to go.

My parents did breakfast at 6am but I opted to get an extra hour of sleep. We met in the lobby at 8am and saw Sharon (still there!). Apparently she got 2 hours of sleep on a couch in a backroom. What an incredible woman.

The official Lindblad transfers were not until later (11am and I believe 1pm, to coincide with the 12:45pm LATAM flight and the 2:45pm SKY Airlines flight). However, Sharon called us an Uber and said it was on Lindblad. Very kind of her (even if it's only $5).

Honestly, getting back to Puerto Natales was a huge headache. The biggest annoyance was the need to bus so late in the evening, but obviously there was no other way. I will say, again, that it is such a huge logistical challenge to pull all of this off, so kudos to everyone who mobilized within a matter of hours (can you imagine the person who gets a call at 7pm that they need to build 100 snack bags? The person who has to make 100 dinner plates and just hope that he / she got dietary preferences right? lol) to make it all happen. It was relatively seamless, but just made for very exhausting day.

I wonder why Lindblad has Fly the Drake departing PNT, when it seems like so much more effort to do it from here. Puntas Arenas is far larger (with many more accommodation options), more flight connectivity (and DAP has a base there). It seems that on a normal day, flights that go TNM - PNT return to PUQ anyways, so I'm not sure the benefit to starting from PNT (unless it's to sell a pre- or post-expedition trip to Patagonia). But it does seem many other tour operators depart out of Punta Arenas.

I think the pre-expedition hotel of choice in Punta Arenas is the Hotel Cabo de Hornos, which looks far nicer than the Hotel Costaustralis (but again, this might be suffering from Instaglam). I digress.

Next up, a very long, full day of travel heading to Buenos Aires.

Side note: This change to fly to PUQ instead of PNT seems actually decently common. When we boarded the Orion, the guests who were leaving and got on the return flight also had to fly to PUQ (according to FR24). You may recall that we did not land in TNM until 10pm that day, which meant that the return guests did not board their flight until at least 11pm, which, given the 2 hour flight time, means they didn't land until at least 1am... and then given the 3 hour bus ride, means that they did not arrive in Puerto Natales until probably 4:30am / 5:00am... Rough.

I'm sure each guest would be willing to chip in $20 to keep the PNT airport open - that's $2000, which seems like it could be in the range of keeping the airport open an extra hour, right?