Having motored through Ecuador. we left the rental car at Guayaquil Airport, and took a taxi to the port to board the Silversea Explorer. This exercise was less straightforward than you might have thought, as the information the Silversea had given us just said "Port" as the place to pick up the ship, but a taxi driver needs more than that. Hertz were kind enough to phone the local Silversea agents, and that got a slightly better address, but still not too precise. Anyway taxi gets to port gate, a bit of kerfuffle, and eventually the statutary armed guard lets us through to immigration.
In common with most ports that do not handle many cruise ships, immigration is a odd affair. Here we were instructed to knock on a locked door, admitted to an office where the very friendly immigration staff were enjoying their luch, they processed us quickly, and sent us on to the next hurdle. This was getting our luggage past the xray scanners, then through a revolving gate that was designed for admitting people, not luggage. Anyway we got past that gate, and were picked up by a Silversea shuttle to get us to the ship itself. Our luggage then sat on the quay for a couple of hours, as the drug sniffing dogs were having their lunch, and could not sniff till they had finished and had a siesta.
Once on board, we were faced by the po faced ship's doctor (him of the yellow fever certificates in Cape Town) who would not let us board till we signed a piece of paper to say we had not been to Ebola Land in the last year.. Once we had cracked all these hurdles we were finally admitted to the ship. As this was October, and we had only left the Explorer in April, many of the crew were old friends
The voyage would take us all the way down the coast from the equator to Ushuaia on Tierra del Fuego