I had not sailed this portion of coast north of Valpraiso. This trip from San Diego to Valpraiso was changed or diverted from Valprqiso to San Antonio two weeks before us all being willing to npay for decent food by going to a sailing. Many of us had prepaid car and hotel reservations in or near Valpraiso that were non refundable. We spent $150 USD getting backce t way.o our hotel and rental car and Holland America would make no arrangement unless you purchased a $86 excursion to the Santiago Airport. Not Sure why I should have paid as it wasn't my screw-up.
The food was mediorcre as we have witnessed the last several years across thee cruise fleet. This was facilitated by going to up-charge restaurants so they could let the food quality decline. So we who use the up charge restaurants.
These ports are mostly industrial ports,normally you could visit them only on a freighter cruise. Many excursions from these ports inviolve 2 hour or more bus rides each way. Not much here for any tourist.
This is a port side cabin on deck 6 well forward. The noisy booming as ship pounded into seas was very loud. We are experienced sailors but this forward cabin was noisy with lots of motion (roll and pitch). They were having lots of plumbing problems with some grey water leaking into hall carpet on deck 6. They claimed to b making all the shower water with their water makers but had signs posted asking you to conserve water shile setting in billions os cubic hectares of it. In at least one port there was a barge marked agua dulce making a delivery to our ship by hose? If a water maker is functioning all it needs is ocean water and pressure which it has if engines work. So why were we conserving?