Queen Elizabeth 2 - 2003

South American Adventure - Overview

Our cruise on the Queen Elizabeth 2 from Southampton down towards Africa and then across to South America before returning to Southampton gave fascinating insights into another area of the world we knew little of. Except for the Panama Canal we had never been close to South America. The cruise was for 31 days, and visited Brazil, Uruguay and the Falkland Islands. It is too far to go straight across from Southampton - most passengers would revolt at too much time at sea - so there were also stops in Madeira, the Canary Islands and Dakar. Having booked, it was only when we looked at a map that we realised just how far south it was to the Falkland Islands, and made us appreciate how difficult it must have been for everyone involved in the war in 1982. Thankfully we were visiting in their summer.

Usually we book an inside cabin; we prefer to have longer and more frequent holidays in comparatively less luxury. This year we had been upgraded to a comfortable C4 grade cabin. This meant we had flexible mealtimes in the Caronia restaurant, whereas M-grade cabins are linked to fixed times in the Mauretania. Cabin sizes vary enormously on QE2, and at the same grade the cabins in the middle of the ship tend to be smaller than those forward or aft. Our C4 was a 3 berth outside cabin, with a convertible settee instead of chairs in the extra sitting area, and 3 wardrobes and 3 chests of drawers. Plenty of space for Pauline's dresses ! It also had a bath, not just a shower, bathrobes and a small fridge.

As Cunard World Club Platinum card holders we had priority at check-in and boarding. We also found a bottle of cold Cava waiting to welcome us in the cabin - another good idea.

Using the same style as previous journeys, the write-up is in several parts with navigation bars at top and bottom of each page allowing you to move from page to page.

Firstly there is a comprehensive introduction to cruising on the QE2 writen by Peter - this may be skipped if you have read about our previous experiences. It has however been updated to include many details and cameos of life on board from this journey. That is where you will find information and pictures of everything from galas dinners to ice carving and tug of wars to crossing the line. This is common to several years cruising so use the links at top and bottom to return to this cruise, the South American Adventure.

Secondly there are a number of sections based round the ports we visited. They have been extracted from a daily log kept by Pauline and make comprehensive use of photographs she took - a picture is worth a thousand words. All the small pictures (icons) give details of where they are if you hover the cursor over them and enlarged versions will pop up if you click them. The popup windows are reused and then tidied up when you leave the page.

There is a lot of detail, even with the small pictures, so the pages are large and slow to load the first time you visit them. You should have text in seconds but the last pictures may take over a minute to fill in and it is best to wait before clicking on the popups - you may have to refresh some browsers to get the last icons filled in if you interupt them.

We hope you will enjoy the write up as much as we enjoyed the journey

Copyright © Peter and Pauline Curtis Most recent significant revision: 17th December, 2003