charm. After seeing the sights briefly there, we took a bus to San Antonia where we boarded the Quest with Seabourne and started down the Patagonia Coast.  Life aboard was quite luxurious with many stops and excursions ashore.  Our first stop was Puerto Mont with a European chalet atmosphere.  Then it was on to Castro, a colorful picturesque village in the Chilean Fords.  The ship continued working its way down the Patagonian Coast through the narrow channels to the Strait of Magellan with a stop at Bruno Glacier along the Way.  Once in the Strait of Magellan, the Quest turned eastward and worked its way up the channel to Punta Arenas where we did a city tour.  Particularly interesting was a stop to an open-air ship museum with replicas of Magellan’s ship, Darwin’s Beagle, and Shackleton’s lifeboat, the James Caird.  Leaving Punta Arenas, we headed back down the Strait of Magellan picking our way through the tight channels of Terre Del Fuego and into the Beagle Channel.  From there we headed east to Ushuaia.  After we had a scenic bus ride through landscape at the “bottom of the world,” the Quest sailed on out of the Beagle Channel and left South America to cross the Drake Passage to Antarctica.  Often the Drake Passage is fraught with strong winds and seas circling the Southern Ocean.  But we experience the “Drake Lake” with calm conditions.  We arrived at the Antarctic position in early morning wake up to magnificent views of a dreary cloud covered mountainous landscape of snow and ice.  Our first stops were at some of the outer islands along the Antarctic Peninsula.  At Yankee Harbor we went ashore and met our first experience with Gentoo Penguins.  We departed Yankee Harbor for a sunset cruise to see a 26 km long iceberg before returning to Halfmoon Bay to visit a colony of Chinstrap penguins.  From there we made an evening visit to Deception Harbor, and ancient volcanic cone, before heading on down the coast through the Newman Channel and to the Lemaire Channel.  Although planning to pass through the Lemaire Channel, a spectacular vista of mountains, water, snow, and ice, our passage was block.  With weather of 45 mph winds and waves pushing icebergs into the channel.