Aurora Expeditions are set to shake up the traditional Antarctic cruise itinerary with the launch of an exciting new ‘Antarctic Gateway’ in their 2014/15 Antarctic program. The Chilean port and nature haven of Puerto Williams will be used as an alternative to the usual Argentinian port of Ushuaia, with voyages either starting or ending on the eco-rich Navarino Island along the Chilean banks of the Beagle Channel.
Argentina’s Antarctica campaigns are losing their flair and the country is having difficulties to fill vacancies for the 2013/14 season. This follows repeated claims of alleged corruption and delays in supplying the bases and stations plus an overall lack of support from the Defence ministry.
Argentina’s ongoing attempts to strangle the Falkland Islands economy by intimidating cruise vessels from calling at Stanley and other islands has been picked up by the Daily Mail in an article written by Ian Drury.
The Chilean government efforts to develop Puerto Williams in the extreme south of the country as an austral tourism centre and gateway to Antarctica received an ‘excellent’ feedback from the recent IAATO annual meeting held in Punta Arenas.
Five Argentine and Chilean Patagonia ports have teamed up to promote their tourism attractions and potential for the cruise industry by launching a hardcover limited edition book (1.000), in English and Spanish, with digital support under the heading of “Patagonia, cruises destination”.
An Argentine radical group involved in actions against cruise vessels and maritime traffic with the Falkland Islands has promised a similar campaign against Lan Chile offices in Buenos Aires, the airline which flies the only link of the Islands with the continent.
Punta Arenas in the extreme south of Chile will be hosting until next Thursday the four-day annual meeting of the International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators, IAATO which has a confirmed attendance of over a hundred representatives from the industry.
A demonstration by pickets in the Argentine Tierra del Fuego port of Ushuaia protesting the docking of the ‘Star Princess’ cruise which arrived from the Falkland Islands was contained by local security forces and the blaring of ‘God save the Queen’.
By John Fowler - According to the Argentine view of things, the Falkland Islands are Las Islas Malvinas and the capital city is not Stanley, which was founded in 1844, but Ushuaia in Tierra del Fuego, which did not really begin to be a town till 1881 with the establishment of a penal colony there.
Most probably this cruise season 2012/2013 will be remembered not for the record number of calls or visitors (estimated in half a million) but as a new case of Argentine intolerance with the Malvinas Islands in centre stage, writes La Nacion columnist Emiliano Galli.