Help Please - BA to LA or LA to Rio

[joybook]

My wife and I have been planning to do the BA to LA cruise on Golden Princess from the end of Feb 2015 and we are well advanced in that we are just about to book. We have now realised that we have overlooked an important family situation in March which we are reluctant to miss.

 

We are now looking at almost the same cruise in reverse - LA to Rio starting in early December this year. Once again on the Golden.

 

Would appreciate help from people who may have done these cruises.

 

While understanding that a very wide area is covered, how would you compare the two periods weather-wise?

 

Secondly, while not the most important part of the cruise, which cruise is likely to give us the better time for viewing penguins? I understand the Feb/March cruise may well be right at the end of the penguin season.

 

As always I am sure I can expect some informative responses. Thanks in anticipation:)

[fishywood]

I sailed from Buenos Aires to Santiago in Feb/Mar (not on Princess) and can offer the following:

 

You are correct that by two months after Summer Solstice most wildlife will have already come and gone. Your only real opportunity to see penguins at the end of the season will be at the rookeries in the Falklands; those on my cruise who took the Magdalena Island tour from Punta Arenas spent five hours in the rain on an open boat to see less than a half-dozen.

 

Since you would be sailing with the wind at your back rather than into it, in theory the weather will feel much calmer on the Beagle Channel between Punta Arenas and Ushuaia, and around Cape Horn, going West-to-East rather than East-to-West. On my East-to-West cruise the weather was perfect as we rounded Cape Horn (which the Captain repeatedly remarked on) but sailing westbound on the Beagle Channel, and on our day in Punta Arenas, the wind picked up and the temperature plunged. The naturalist lecturer onboard made much of how Patagonia is actually much further south than the southern edge of Australia, in spite of how it appears on classroom maps; I offer this only to point out that the days will be longer in December rather than March.

 

Note that there is at any time of year the possibility of cool and windy weather at sea between LA and the Baja peninsula. So even though I can't speak directly to the December sailing, if that is the more convenient date for you, book it.