My wife and I have been on numerous cruises throughout the globe on different cruise lines over the years. This is our fifth cruise with HAL. The 20-day South America and Antarctica Explorer Tour started in Valparaiso, Chile on January 10 2013.
We arranged our own flights and actually arrived a few days early to explore Santiago, Chile. We stayed at the Grand Hyatt. We toured the city using the Turistic hop on hop-off bus. This worked very nicely. We also used Turistic to travel from Santiago to the port in Valparaiso. We had no problems in Chile. You will need local currency ... available through ATMs at the airport. It would nice to know some Spanish.
Boarding the ship was no problem. We got on board quickly around 3 pm. Our room was 799 on A Deck. This is a lower level room but, actually, very nice in rough water.