By Joel Berman Published on January 11, 2026

Cruise to Antarctica - Part 1

A wonderful cruise to Antarctica. Part 1 is a Layover in Panama City, a few days in Buenos Aires, and on to Punta Areas and Ushuaia.

I will start with some sites in Buenos Aires, but will put them in a few different blogs. First though, we flew to BA via Panama City and while we have been through the canal on ships, I did manage to capture some arials of the city. You can see the Western locks and the city skyscrapers as well as some container ships waiting to go through the canal. (If you are interested there are posts of the canal Here from an earlier cruise)

Some sights in Buenos Aires.

We first went to the Jewish Museum which you can see Here. Then the buildings around our hotel, and last a tour of two areas. Recoleta Cemetary where Eva Peron as well as many prominent families are in mausoleums and then a tour of La Boca which is one of the older neighborhoods. The homes are different colors because the people were poor and used whatever pain they could find. Soccer is cherished and the Boca Juniors have a stadium here. The reason for the Ikea colors is that they couldn't decide which colors so they said they would use whatever the flag of the next ship coming in to port was flying and it turned out to be a Swedish ship.

Sights around the city.

Punta Arenas

Our first stop after departing BA was Punta Arenas in Chile. I took a trip to see the Andean Condors and indeed I saw many. The bus ride to the condor area was fun as well. Here are a some shots, look carefully in the rocks. The wind turbine is a self contained system to make hydrogen for fuel. Called "green hydrogen" it just uses wind power and sea water.