Six weeks ago, it would have seemed like the birding adventure of everyone’s dreams. The Dutch cruise ship MV Hondius left Ushuaia, Argentina, on April 1, 2026, with roughly 150 people on board, bound for the islands of the South Atlantic. Among them was couple Leo Schilperood and Mirjam Schilperood-Huisman, seventy- and sixty-nine-year-old Netherlanders who had been travelling for around three months in Chile, Uruguay, and Argentina.