V. Expeditions: Everything Galapagos+Machu Picchu

[CharTrav]

1 hour ago, SantaFe1 said:

as for laundry...I wonder if we could send out laundry at the hotel in Cuzco, where we spend two nights, the afternoon we check in and have it returned the next day.  (That would be day 6-7).  That’s something the Dec. 31 group can report on. 

Aye! Aye! Will do. Provide full and complete report as it happens! 😊

[Peregrina651]

21 minutes ago, SantaFe1 said:

And, btw, there are three Galapagos expeditions.  Are we all on the 15 day East Galapagos expedition?  It sounds like it.

 

Three configurations but none of them running concurrently --only one ship. It looks like everything is planned to keep the ship at sea for an many days as possible. They do this with their river cruise in China: one ship sailing back and forth between Wuhan and Chongqing but multiple land itineraries which all feed into those sailings.

 

CharT., you aren't quite the maiden voyage!! There is a 13 day starting on Dec 27. They will be the first to do the land portion and the first to sail. But, you will see all of this when you start adding these voyages to your databases (the links to Char's databases are in her signature file and eventually we will post them in a thread so that even mobile users can access them, because signatures are suppressed on the mobile website. 😞 )

[CharTrav]

18 hours ago, Peregrina651 said:

 

Cuzco to Guayaquil is 2256mi or so, that is two thirds across the continental US. That trip is going to take all day. Hope the hotel in Guayaquil has a nice pool for us to sit around.

Per the narrative for that day we don't fly direct to Guayaquil but go thru Lima

"Fly to Guayaquil, Ecuador via Lima today, arriving in the late afternoon. " 

So banish those fears of a 5.5 hr flight. 😃

[SantaFe1]

Well that’s just what I was going to work on this afternoon!  Thanks for beating me to it.  Flights for August 2021 won’t be up yet of course, so I thought I might work with our same dates in 2020.  And, since August is the low season, I assume there won’t be as many flights. I think I am just going to keep checking back, and trying to get didferent agents to see if the responses change.

[SantaFe1]

1 minute ago, CharTrav said:

Per the narrative for that day we don't fly direct to Guayaquil but go thru Lima

"Fly to Guayaquil, Ecuador via Lima today, arriving in the late afternoon. " 

So banish those fears of a 5.5 hr flight. 😃

Ah ha!  I’m sure you are right.  Now that makes sense!!

[CharTrav]

10 minutes ago, SantaFe1 said:

Well that’s just what I was going to work on this afternoon!  Thanks for beating me to it.  Flights for August 2021 won’t be up yet of course, so I thought I might work with our same dates in 2020.  And, since August is the low season, I assume there won’t be as many flights. I think I am just going to keep checking back, and trying to get didferent agents to see if the responses change.

Since we're within the 11-12 mo window for flight schedules I was able to work with real data not extrapolated. Guessing from current year what will happen 1 or 2 yrs hence on the same day of the week. 

[CharTrav]

55 minutes ago, Peregrina651 said:

 

CharT., you aren't quite the maiden voyage!! There is a 13 day starting on Dec 27. They will be the first to do the land portion and the first to sail. But, you will see all of this when you start adding these voyages to your databases (the links to Char's databases are in her signature file and eventually we will post them in a thread so that even mobile users can access them, because signatures are suppressed on the mobile website. 😞

 

 

Boo hoo! We're not the first. Can I live with the disappointment???😥😃

 

Already have the spreadsheet updated. Just haven't pushed it up to DropBox yet. Will do later today. After my eyes lose the dilation (at the eye Dr right now for annual). How did I not remember the cruise on Dec 27?? 🙀

Edited February 29, 2020 by CharTrav

[Peregrina651]

13 minutes ago, CharTrav said:

Will all 90 of us be on the same flight? Is that possible?

 

We don't all have to stay together; we just all have to get there by dinner time.

 

Viking China uses multiple flights for 300 pax. In China, we were each assigned to a bus and an escort who accompanied us through the entire journey. With 300 pax to deal with,  it was just one or two buses per commercial flight and we spent the day getting from place to place. Meals had to be factored in as well and some of us ate lunch before our flights and others when they landed. All was very well organized and each escort knew what his plan was for the day -- how to spend the morning, when and where to eat lunch, how to spend the afternoon. We did not have to worry about these details; we just followed the lollipop. Our escort did not have to worry about what the other groups were doing; he just had to get his job done.

 

Seats were assigned in alphabetically order by name one bus load at a time. If your last name was different from your traveling companion, you were not assigned together. If you were assigned an F seat, your companion was either next to you in E or across the aisle one row back in A. We just changed as need once we got on the plane.

 

I AM GUESSING but I expect/hope that Viking will organize us by bus loads. There is a certain comfort in always knowing that you follow the same lollipop held by the same escort and your bus number never changes. (I also think that they should use guides from China to train all of their CDs and guides, but that is another story). Chartered flights would be nice but in the end, it will be what it will be.

 

The other good thing is that Viking is joining a market that has been doing these kinds of guided tours for a while, so there is some infrastructure already in place that is familiar with the rigors of people moving.

 

54 minutes ago, CharTrav said:

I've had great fun laying out in TripIt my estimation of a detailed itinerary

 

I'm another TripIt fan. I can lay it all out on the desktop (in my browser not an app) and then consult it from the mobile app  en route. Very helpful -- and it is free. I also follow TripIt on FB because occasionally they have interesting travel articles.

 

I also do a lot of note taking/list making on Evernote, which also syncs to my mobile. Also free.

 

Also, at this point, I am taking most of what the agents are saying with a grain of salt. I don't think Viking has all the details nailed down yet and so this hasn't yet trickled down to the telephone brigade. But I don't care at this point! We have a date and a cabin and 10 months to work out the details of the first iteration.

 

[Peregrina651]

44 minutes ago, CharTrav said:

Per the narrative for that day we don't fly direct to Guayaquil but go thru Lima

"Fly to Guayaquil, Ecuador via Lima today, arriving in the late afternoon. " 

So banish those fears of a 5.5 hr flight. 😃

 

Banished! 

 

But maybe not if they go the charter route out of Cuzco. Why land and change airplanes if you don't have to? Same for Baltra to Quito.

 

And, if they go charter, we can have a sleeping section and a party section. We won't be nailed to the same seat for the entire journey.

 

Time will tell!

[Peregrina651]

11 minutes ago, CharTrav said:

Just haven't pushed it up to DropBox yet

 

Then post the link from your sig so mobile users can see it?

[SantaFe1]

Can I just jump in here a minute and ask about the CC USA boards.  Is anyone else having trouble with them?   For the last two days I haven’t been able to use them on my iPad because a drop down menu appears over the actual board.  I can’t get rid of it, I can’t work anything on the board.  But then when I responded to Haworth’s post a little while ago, it took me to CC UK which worked fine.  Periodically yesterday I got a super text on CC saying they were working to fix a problem. Sorry to stray from the topic...

[Peregrina651]

Yes, they were having issues. The "Issues" banner which has been at the top of my desktop screen is now gone. If you are still having issues, report it to help@cruisecritic.com. Tell them what platform you are on and what the problem is specifically. Send a screen-shot or a screen snip if you can.

[CharTrav]

19 minutes ago, Peregrina651 said:

 

Then post the link from your sig so mobile users can see it?

Mais oui!!!

[SantaFe1]

15 minutes ago, Peregrina651 said:

Yes, they were having issues. The "Issues" banner which has been at the top of my desktop screen is now gone. If you are still having issues, report it to help@cruisecritic.com. Tell them what platform you are on and what the problem is specifically. Send a screen-shot or a screen snip if you can.

Thanks, I’ll do that.  Now back to laundry... the hotel website for the Belmont Monasterio, says nothing about laundry, so I went to Trip Advisor and entered the word laundry as a search term in the review section for the hotel.  Lo and behold, they have very fast, but expensive, laundry service.  And this would be in the middle of the trip.  Otherwise it is true, there are going to be 45 loads of laundry as each couple boards the ship.  

[CharTrav]

36 minutes ago, Peregrina651 said:

 

Then post the link from your sig so mobile users can see it?

Mais oui!!!

[CharTrav]

Re the issues on mobile devices I had it with Chrome but not on Safari. Earlier today was having different issues with Safari but Chrome was ok. Go figure! Am on Safari now. And it’s ok. 

[CharTrav]

6 minutes ago, SantaFe1 said:

Thanks, I’ll do that.  Now back to laundry... the hotel website for the Belmont Monasterio, says nothing about laundry, so I went to Trip Advisor and entered the word laundry as a search term in the review section for the hotel.  Lo and behold, they have very fast, but expensive, laundry service.  And this would be in the middle of the trip.  Otherwise it is true, there are going to be 45 loads of laundry as each couple boards the ship.  

As I wrote earlier - I asked my Viking TA about that issue and she will get back to me. Hopefully soon. And will share ASAP. 

[CharTrav]

43 minutes ago, Peregrina651 said:

 

Banished! 

 

But maybe not if they go the charter route out of Cuzco. Why land and change airplanes if you don't have to? Same for Baltra to Quito.

 

And, if they go charter, we can have a sleeping section and a party section. We won't be nailed to the same seat for the entire journey.

 

Time will tell!

Woo woo woo!!! 🎉🎉🎉

[Peregrina651]

1 hour ago, CharTrav said:

Mais oui!!!

 

I know you are practicing for May, but we are headed to a Spanish speaking region, so some new vocabulary for us all...

 

The correct response is: claro que sí or simply claro will do the trick but you might also hear que sí.  They all work.

 

 

[geffric]

Claro

[CharTrav]

1 hour ago, Peregrina651 said:

 

I know you are practicing for May, but we are headed to a Spanish speaking region, so some new vocabulary for us all...

 

The correct response is: claro que sí or simply claro will do the trick but you might also hear que sí.  They all work.

 

 

Ooooo.  Ok. 😮
Need to start Spanish in Duolingo then???

[Peregrina651]

17 minutes ago, CharTrav said:

Ooooo.  Ok. 😮
Need to start Spanish in Duolingo then???

 

Only if you want to. But you can find the basics in any guide book.

 

 

[CharTrav]

5 hours ago, Peregrina651 said:

I'm another TripIt fan. I can lay it all out on the desktop (in my browser not an app) and then consult it from the mobile app  en route. Very helpful -- and it is free. I also follow TripIt on FB because occasionally they have interesting travel articles.

 

I also do a lot of note taking/list making on Evernote, which also syncs to my mobile. Also free.

I use TripIt to figure out how the itinerary will work esp the flights. Then render the itinerary again in Excel adding different bits of info to it. Not only can I print that out easier than TripIt but can also print it to a PDF file to provide to our daughter and sister/brother in law just before we leave so they have what they need. 

 

I use Evernote to record notes about the trip as well as a detailed log of all my photography by file name. Thus not only do I capture info about these pix while the memory is fresh but also remind myself which pix will need to be stitched together into panoramas or will need special HDR processing. I've found these notes invaluable given that I have a backlog of pix from previous Viking cruises that are still waiting to get organized and poster to my photo site.  Years later, these notes are enough to bring back a flood of memories. 

[CharTrav]

5 hours ago, Peregrina651 said:

 

We don't all have to stay together; we just all have to get there by dinner time.

 

Viking China uses multiple flights for 300 pax. In China, we were each assigned to a bus and an escort who accompanied us through the entire journey. With 300 pax to deal with,  it was just one or two buses per commercial flight and we spent the day getting from place to place. Meals had to be factored in as well and some of us ate lunch before our flights and others when they landed. All was very well organized and each escort knew what his plan was for the day -- how to spend the morning, when and where to eat lunch, how to spend the afternoon. We did not have to worry about these details; we just followed the lollipop. Our escort did not have to worry about what the other groups were doing; he just had to get his job done.

 

Seats were assigned in alphabetically order by name one bus load at a time. If your last name was different from your traveling companion, you were not assigned together. If you were assigned an F seat, your companion was either next to you in E or across the aisle one row back in A. We just changed as need once we got on the plane.

Excellent! Thanks! So we get divided into manageable groups of 30 or even smaller. Mmm. Makes sense. Hadn't thought of that. You're a true fount of knowledge and experience. 👍🏼🙂

[Peregrina651]

Just now, CharTrav said:

Excellent! Thanks! So we get divided into manageable groups of 30 or even smaller. Mmm. Makes sense. Hadn't thought of that. You're a true fount of knowledge and experience. 👍🏼🙂

 

Not necessarily. It is only the way they handle it in China. I should have been more clear. No guarantee that it will be handled the same way on this adventure, especially if they are working with local companies to provide the land services.  Only time will tell. I know TellUs is following along🙋‍♀️, so maybe they will pass our thoughts and observations along to Operations. HINT, HINT!

 

So this thread is less than 24 hours old and we are about to start page 3. I am amazed. Let's try to keep it on page 1, until they find us a home of our own --hopefully.

 

12 minutes ago, CharTrav said:

I use TripIt to figure out how the itinerary will work esp the flights. Then render the itinerary again in Excel adding different bits of info to it. Not only can I print that out easier than TripIt but can also print it to a PDF file to provide to our daughter and sister/brother in law just before we leave so they have what they need. 

 

TripIt can print to PDF and the TripIt mobile app can be used off line if I remember correctly. Still, I make a PDF copy and put it on my phone, just in case -- like floating in the Galapagos, where they say that internet service is is iffy.