Los Angeles, CA, USA, Repeat Country, Stop 55

Jan. 3-14

Home, sweet home. We fly from Ft. Lauderdale to Los Angeles and head straight up to Casa Kalmenson. We are lucky to have such a wonderful place to rest our weary travel bones for a bit. We have no idea how long we will be here or if we will be able to see friends and family. It's a very strange time. Omicron is running rampant. The last few days of our cruise, things were randomly canceled and we started noticing a staff member shortage which pretty much meant people had been exposed to covid. It was a pretty big fail that the cruise line not only did not alert us to the fact but let us all get off and fly off to all parts of the country/off to other countries. Sigh. Only later do we find out that the next people aboard the Norwegian Pearl make it out to sea for 2 days before they have to return to Miami to disembark. What a mess!

Luckily, we all test negative! Holly and Howard are in Maui so we don't have to worry about possibly infecting them. We decide to see some friends, in the safest ways possible. We will need to retest before our next stop, Peru.

After much hemming and hawing, we decide to go straight from L.A. to Santiago, Chile. We are worried about possible exposure in Peru, or also being stuck there. We figure we will get to Santiago well ahead of our cruise. January 27 is the check in date for our Hurtigruten cruise to Antarctica. Of all the things we have planned, this is one of the biggest and most expensive. We *cannot* miss this cruise. We need to be present and healthy with negative tests on January 27.

It's like Christmas all over again unwrapping the packages we sent to ourselves from various stops!

We take some down time in LA to get hair cuts, visit doctors, see friends.

Cindy S, LM, Dawn, Joni, Ellie, Christine and me!

We also go pay a visit to Bali. She is the same as ever! We are all very excited to see her and she barely appears to care. BALI!!!!! We missed you so much. But we are happy she has been well-looked after.

Time flies by and it's time to leave home again and head out into the world!!! Chile, here we come....