2 Days at Sea

We spent 2 days at sea (Monday and Tuesday).  The sea was not so nice, and in fact a couple of nights ago, we had "hurricane" winds.  But the sea could have been worse.  I still think it was worse the day we sailed to the Falklands.  But we got through it.  We would sail out in the Pacific, then into channels - called the Chilean Fjords.

This was a tug boat waiting for us to leave Punta Arenas.  It was taken through a dirty window, so it's not so clear.

A couple of the sights we saw along the way.  The fjords are quite nice to see.

Our steward, Norman, makes these animals every night.  Here are 3 of them together.

So those two days, we sailed up the Pacific coast of Chile on our way to Puerto Chacabuco, which is where we were yesterday.

Punta Arenas, Chile

We had gale force winds Saturday night, but the sea wasn't bad at all.  Lots of twisting and turning to get through all the islands making up the archipelago at the end of South America and up to Punta Arenas (means "Sandy Point").

We arrived at Punta Arenas (pronounced Punta RNS) this morning and got off the ship at a pier, but had to hire a taxi to get into town.  We were 5 km from the town.  (Normally they use tenders here, but there was an opening at the commercial pier, so they took it.)  Anyway, a taxi for about $10 for 4 people wasn't bad.

It was Sunday in Punta Arenas and nothing much was open at all.  We found the tourist information office, but lots of people from the ship were looking for things to do, and they had 1 guy working, so we left and went into a private tour place.  We booked a tour for the afternoon, and went off to look at a few things ourselves.

In the main square is the statue of Magellan.  We are on the Strait of Magellan, which was the main shipping route before the Panama Canal was opened.  It was found by Magellan in 1520 - you probably remember your Grade 6 or 7 history.

Punta Arenas was a thriving town in those days and boomed as it was directly on the shipping route.  After the Panama Canal things declined, but it boomed again when oil was discovered in Tierra del Fuego.

We walked down the street and visited the Braun Museum, which is a house owned by a family who ran many businesses in this area.

A little further on was the Cementario Municipal.  What a unique cemetery.  Very large and has a lot of these types of sites.  They're bigger than an urn might hold, and not really large enough for a casket (we're not sure).  But it was certainly different.

And a couple of rows of these evergreens making up an aisle.

After the cemetery, we went to the Maggiorino Borgatello Museum which shows the flora and fauna of the area and was established by the Salesian missionaries.  We found an old kind of French Horn there!  There was another instrument that looked like a Coronet.

We grabbed a bite to eat at a local establishment on the way back to the square.  Things were starting to open up.  We then made our way back to the tour place, hopped in a van and went to Fort Bulnes, which is about 60 km down the coast.

This is Chris, our guide at the Fort.  He just graduated from teacher's college and will teach English, so Gerry was chatting with him about that and languages in general.

The Fort was established as a penal colony and lookout over the strait.

But it is harsh.  They eventually closed it and moved to where Punta Arenas is now.  A shot of the some of the buildings of the Fort from below.

We arrived back at our ship around 6:15 pm.  We had dinner then went to see the show - The Shouts - impersonation of The Beatles.  It was their early songs.  Since they're on again in 2-3 days, we think it will be their later songs since no show is repeated.

We were at sea for 2 days after this.

Ushuaia, Argentina

What a beautiful spot for a city - well, in one way.  The beauty is the natural area - a backdrop of the Andes Mountains on one side and the Beagle Channel on the other.  On the other hand, I wouldn't want to be here in the winter.



We docked this morning along with 4 other cruise ships that were already here.  But those 4 were much smaller than us and at least one of them does Antarctica expeditions.  I wouldn't be surprised if a couple more of them did too.



We made our way to the tourist office mainly to check out when the city bus tour leaves.  We were just in time as one arrived shortly after we got there.  So off we went.



Ushuaia was established here as a prison town (and they exploit that for tourists), but it did not have that many residents until the 1970s.  Argentina decided to provide grants to industry to open up here.  Then the city boomed and is currently around 80,000 people.  We were surprised at the size of it.  There is a naval base here too.

As I said, it's on the Beagle Channel, so named from Darwin's ship on his way to the Galapagos Islands.

These are some of the surroundings.  Too bad it was as cloudy as it was.  But it could have been worse.

How about this small plane about to land - over our ship yet.

We were on a double-decker bus and sat up top.  It was probably imported from Britain - very telling as the driver sat on the right side.  We couldn't help but notice the "no smoking" signs. I enlarged the photo so you could read them.  I think it's cheaper to smoke on the right.  And in case you didn't get the idea in English, there's a Spanish sign too, which does look very similar.

When we were finished our tour, we had to go to the "oldest pub in town", of course.  This is it.

It was pretty cool inside.  One of the things I sometimes look for is how people translate another language into English.  It makes for some humorous reading at times.  Like this menu.  We had the Cond-Cuts and the boston-butt.

This is "Beyond Everything", er, I mean "Beyond Everithing".  It's our silly language.

But we should not raise these issues with the Spanish-speaking people and just let sleeping dogs lie.

After our stop, Gerard and I went on a bit of a trek through the city, while Dan & Joanne headed off to the museum.

Understand that the city is built on the side of a mountain, so it goes uphill as you go further from shore.  One living here must deal with the slope.  We saw this car park along the way (I had to take the photo through the gate boards.)

Here we are back at the port.  It wasn't quite this far via ship from Buenos Aires.

When we left Ushuaia, we went through the Beagle Channel.  On the way, on our side of the boat (Starboard), we went by 5 different glaciers that were visible.  Only one still touches the ocean - this one, called Italia (Italy).  You can see the bits of ice floating in the water after breaking off.

 

The glaciers were named for the countries from where the workers came from on the ship that named them.  This is the Alemania (Germany) Glacier.

Seeing these glaciers was a bit of a bonus today.  We didn't expect them.  And we are now in the country of Chile and will be for the rest of our journey.  "Don't cry for me, Argentina."

The End of the World

No - not as in catastrophic disaster - but geographically, the end of the world.  Our ship was at the arrow, and you can see we're pretty darn close to the Antarctic.  We also were in a spot where 3 oceans meet - the Atlantic, Pacific, and Southern.  A very cool and unique experience.

So this is it.  There is no land any further south than Cape Horn, except for the Antarctic continent of course.  Originally the explorers thought it was solid land out here.  They couldn't get their boats around to check it out because the water was so rough.  But eventually they discovered Cape Horn is an island.

And here it is, close up.

The captain of our ship said he could count on one hand the number of times he's seen the sea this calm here.  It doesn't happen very often.  With the merger of the 3 seas, it can be VERY rough.  He's been here in 30-foot waves so has not been able to get very close to the Cape.  Yikes!

So he said since it was so calm, he would take a different passage up to Ushuaia, through some islands he wouldn't normally go.  (Hope he's not like the captain of the Costa Concordia!)

This is out of a window on the ship.  There was moisture on the outside of the window, but it was still a nice picture.  The sun was setting, but it doesn't go down until almost 10 pm.

After dinner tonight, Gerard decided instead of having dessert, we should go down to the Champagne Bar and have a chocolate martini.  Perfect!

After the martini (for me it was during the martini), we went to see the show at the auditorium.  Tonight it was Cripton and Renata.  They're an illusion/mentalist duo.  Pretty entertaining.

We have seen some really great shows here.  The talent of the main band, singers and dancers is quite amazing.  The night before was a rock show.  Great tunes of the 70s, mostly.  The night before that was a tenor who was absolutely terrific - and the main band backed him up.  Again, terrific show.

So this morning, we docked at Ushuaia, Argentina - the last city at the end of the world.  Now I'm caught up!

Falkland Islands

Nope - had no internet access until this morning (Saturday).

We got through it, but we had our roughest day at sea on Wednesday.  The waves got up to about 5.5 metres (16 feet).  The ship was definitely moving around, but it just plowed through that water like a hot knife through butter.  No problem.  Gerard was armed with his wrist bands and ginger Gravol.  So he "sailed" through it.

I took this photo of the sea, but it's hard to get perspective - and I think it was rougher after I took this photo.

So we arrived in the Falkland Islands Thursday morning, and the port town of Stanley.  It kind of reminds me of the far north of Scotland.  Very bleak landscape.

The first thing we did was hire a local guide to take us to Gypsy Cove to see some penguins (hopefully).  It wasn't very far away.  On the way, we went by our ship in the harbour.  We needed tender boats to get to shore.  Smaller ships could get in further, but not ours.  Anyway, pretty good shot of our ship (say that 10 times fast).

So Emma (our guide) told us a bit about the Falklands and the war between Argentina and the British (we all remember that in the 1980s).  Unfortunately, Argentina planted a whole whack of land mines along the beaches and any areas where they thought the British would try to land...and some are still there.  So there are beaches the local people cannot go to.

Just to finish that off, the British didn't come ashore where the Argentinians expected, so surprised them and Britain won the war within a couple of weeks, I think.  Related to the land mines, they hire Zimbabweans to find the land mines for them so they can explode them in a controlled environment.  The Zimbabweans are the best at doing this because, sadly, they've grown up with it.

This beach is good though.  And here's a Magellanic penguin going out to grab a bite to eat.

And here's another one guarding its nest.  There are some baby penguins in these nests.  We saw a couple in nests along the trail, but the photos are not good as they're tucked way back inside.

So that was a worthwhile little adventure.

Here's a shot of the flag of the Falkland Islands.

Dan & Joanne's concierge told them this place was the best spot to eat lunch in town.  So we took him up on that.

I wouldn't mind playing this instrument.  Kinda hard to see the beer tap on the side of this, but it's there.

After lunch, we went for a bit of a walk.  This is the Anglican cathedral.

We went inside - beautiful church.  We ended up chatting with an older local gentleman inside.  He was quite interesting and would have talked to us for longer if we let him.  He has been in the Falklands for 58 years - he was a sheep farmer from England and continued to do so here.  He told us more about the war here.

A little further there was a museum and this at the post office.  Been a while since we've seen one of these.  The red, round thing on the left is the mail box.

It ended up starting to rain, and the seas were a little rough.  The gentleman in the church told us about one time approximately 1,000 passengers from a cruise ship were stranded there overnight (most stayed in the church, but some were billotted out) because they couldn't get people on board the ship from the tenders.  The waves were just too high.  The cruise ship went out to sea, but came back the next day after things calmed down, to pick them up.  So, we didn't want to get caught in something like that.  We went back to the ship.

Puerto Madryn

We woke up this morning half way down the country of Argentina, but only about a quarter or maybe a third of the way down the coast from Buenos Aires.  It seems we have a lonnnggg way to go yet.

Yesterday we just hung out around the ship.  It was nice to sleep in and not be "on the go".  After breakfast, Gerard and I went out for a brisk walk around the ship a few times, on the walking/jogging path.  The sea has been fairly calm so far, fortunately.  The unfortunate part is...I'm gaining weight!  Way too much food.

I took these next 2 photos from our TV screen, so they're a little "off".  The first one shows our route so far from Buenos Aires to Puerto Madryn at the bottom (the arrow was where we were when I took the photo).  The green dots are our ports of call.

This one shows the whole cruise, with it's various stops.  They're not named on here though.  Again, the green dots are the ports of call.

The housekeeper for our room leaves the towels in various shapes on our bed.  I thought he hadn't done one yesterday, but then I discovered it - a mouse in a coffee cup.  I thought it was cute.

So today we stopped at Puerto Madryn.  Nothing too special about this place.  There are bus trips to a cape where there are apparently lots of wildlife, but nothing's a guarantee, and the bus ride is about 2 hours each way.  Not.  So we just hung around town.

Here's a pretty good shot of our ship at the pier.

And here's Gerard checking out the water in the south Atlantic.  Kinda coolish.

While we were sitting at a restaurant on the beach having a brew, these little kids were learning how to handle a kayak (we assume).  They were so cute.  They all had wet suits.

And here they are in the water.

A shot of Puerto Madryn from the pier.  You can see the restaurant where we had a beer and a bite in the middle of the picture - the really low blue and white building on the beach.

We're sailing again at 5 pm and our next stop is Stanley in the Falkland Islands.  Again, we'll be at sea all day tomorrow, docking Thursday morning.

The food has been pretty darn good - as you might have guessed.  We usually go to the entertainment lounge at night after dinner.  Some of it is really good.  There are lots of things on the ship to do, if you want.

So, until Thursday!  On second thought, I don't think I can do anything from there unless I can find an internet cafe, or something.  The Falkland Islands are not covered in the "roam like home" deal Rogers has with Latin America.  Only the South American countries, and of course the Falklands are a British holding.  It could be Saturday until you hear from me again, when we're back in Argentina.  We'll see.