Tuesday 3^rd February – Punta Arenas

No internet. Nice start. Sometimes happens when we’re in places with a strong military presence.

Tendering ashore was quite painless, although until we cast off, it was a bit rough – mostly because of the waves bouncing off the ship and coming back against the little boats alongside. Once we were moving, however, the sea was like glass; mirror-smooth.

Punta Arenas means Sandy Point, apparently. And here, they check your bags when you arrive, not for bombs, but food. They are as paranoid about invasive species here as they are in Australia.

There is a very welcoming, bright yellow-painted tourist centre on the quayside, full of vastly over-priced souvenirs, not enough maps and unhelpful but smiley people – all the things we need! We negotiated a route through the taxi drivers punting for trade, and walked from the port gate into town – two blocks away from the water, uphill, and then three to the right, through a residential area, which was pretty, if a little run down.

In fact, the whole town was run down, with individual buildings varying from breathtakingly pretty colonial architecture, to, um, utilitarian ugly basic, often right next door to each other. If it keeps the rain off and the tsunamis at bay, it’ll do. This place used to be a major coaling and supply port for ships rounding the Horn, and was once one of the busiest ports in the world. It had a second wind of success when oil was discovered nearby in the forties, but it is not the hub it used to be – other than as a jumping off point for trips to the Antarctic, which is now the major trade here. It is not the most hospitable place on Earth, with strong winds blowing all year round and heavy snows in the winter – the Patagonian permanent icecaps are not too far to the west of here.  This planet has permanent ice in other places than the two poles. Don’t forget the permafrosts of Siberia either. This is part of the world is further South than anywhere else on Earth – it will take us three days to get back up to the same latitude as South Africa, for example. Today was breezy and sunny, with one or two spots of rain (calling it spitting would be a compliment). I wore a long sleeved t-shirt under  my thickest cardigan with the fluffy hood, and overheated in very short order.

We stopped for a cold drink at a very anonymous-looking café, called the Discovery. It was pretty basic – the chairs were plastic, as were the tablecloths, and the lighting was dingy to the point of obscure (seriously, couldn’t read our maps, it was so dark), but the toilets were clean and well-provisioned, so we were quite happy. Even after I noticed that our drinks were best before the end of February 2014. Meh, it is February. Close enough.

Then we continued on through the town until we found the main square. This is pretty much the only thing marked on the maps they supply. Never mind the insults our port guide woman usually indulges in; this time, there really is nothing here. There are a few museums inside a few mansions built by founders and millionaires who made their money here, but that’s about it.

The square is very pretty, and the buildings around it are colonial ornate and expensive-looking (you know the style by now – French/ Spanish/ Victorian/ Georgian). In fact, the cathedral was probably the plainest building in sight. We walked around the square, and found the rather splendid edifice known as Sarah Braun’s house (she and her husband pretty much built this town). It was supposed to have a coffee shop inside, but the man on the door wanted us to pay to go through the museum first, before he would allow us to go to the coffee shop, so we just kept walking.

On the east side of the square, we found the Hotel Cabo de Hornos (the Cape Horn hotel) which was very nice indeed – modern but with some unusual touches, such as llama-hide chair covers. We went and ordered a snack lunch and I used the wifi for a while. Well, quite a while, because the service was so lethargic that it was virtually going in reverse, so there was definitely no rush. Most of the hotel residents seemed to be on their way to Antarctica, or on their way back home from there. Antarctic adventurers are not as young as I expected them to be – there was a surprising amount of grey hair in evidence. Maybe they’re the only ones who can afford it these days? Their presence may be why the owners decided not to heat the place too much – to allow them to acclimatise! I kept my coat on. The food was fine and the bill was reasonable (although at 1015 pesos to the pound, it didn’t LOOK it at first glance!), and we did manage some Skyping before all the other cruise passengers arrived and started clogging up the bandwidth.

There were market stalls set up in between the trees on the square (seems to be a theme around these parts) and so we browsed them all and bought some bits. Having purchased Stanley, the penguin mascot of the Falkland Islands, I duly bought him a companion, whom we have named Olly – as you do (well, he’s short and round and going to live with Stanley for the foreseeable future, so…) – along with the obligatory t-shirt, magnets and postcards. Perhaps by way of compensation for how little there is to see or do here, they have made all of their postcards uniformly HUGE, so anyone who receives one from here will find it had to be cut down to size to fit in the P&O envelope (we find they arrive quicker and with more predictability/reliability in envelopes than if sent loose).

We then strolled back to the ship in the sunshine, via a different route, to see a little more of the place. It was all blessedly downhill from now on. Mum was a bit perturbed by the number of stray dogs we saw, but they didn’t seem unhappy. For the most part, they just dozed in the sunny patches of pavement (which were all smooth as a baby’s behind, not a pothole in sight) and ignored the humans entirely. We went past the naval headquarters on our way back – which may explain the internet being jammed this morning.

The queue for the tenders was stupid, and even though it goes down 100 people at a time, it took us a while to get back to the ship. At dinner, we found out that it had become so rough around BOB-time, that they had actually stopped running the tenders for a while, which meant we left an hour late. The captain announced we would be doing a “fast run” to make up the time tonight, so we will get to the glaciers as planned tomorrow. I don’t know who he thinks he is fooling, but eighteen knots is not a fast run, and anyone on this ship who has ever cruised before knows that full well. Whether he was trying to impress us, or keep our ship’s true capabilities under wraps for some reason, I don’t know, but he failed on both counts.  But bless him for trying.

Side note: on my return from dinner, I found Stan and Olly in bed together, with Olly sitting on Stan’s head and Stan resplendent in my sunglasses, looking very pleased with himself. My cabin steward must get really bored.

Sea Day 3 of 3. Beagle Channel.

Here come the glaciers. (Insert debate here: GLAY-SHER? GLAY-SEE-ER? GLA-SEE-ER? We settled for the middle one probably being the most grammatically correct, but the third one feeling the most natural to say. The announcer on the Bridge worked his way through them all).

Now, for those of you who really know your geography and/or have an atlas open at South America in an attempt to follow my journey, you will see that things got even more bizarre last night, after I stopped typing. Having gone past the Cape twice East to West, we then did it West to East, as I told you, and then we just kept going. We went back up the eastern side of Patagonia and entered the Beagle Channel this morning, which will take us back from East to West. Whoever designed this route was on some serious substances at the time. I want some. This is weird.

Anyway, now we are in the Beagle Channel and, once again, heading in the correct direction – East to West. We have had announcements alleging penguins swimming around the ship (although I have yet to find anyone that saw that) but “No whales yet”. The Beagle Channel is basically a calmer route across the bottom of the continent, that obviates the need to actually go around the Horn at all. It feels like you’re in the Panama Canal, but instead of marvelling at the human ingenuity/ perseverance necessary to cut it, you’re gazing at the glaciers that cut it instead, and the (fairly little but admittedly permanently snow-capped) mountains on either side that were separated in the process (twice the height of Ben Nevis is hardly huge by global standards, I don’t think).

The weather was varied – clear and cool but not damp, so you could cope in just long sleeves and trousers –  rather like Alaska – with occasional bouts of bright sunshine and the occasional, short but unenthusiastic, rain shower, that passed by as quickly as they arrived.

And that was it for much of the day. We passed some pretty scenery – snow-capped mountains and barren landscapes and a few waterfalls and some glaciers. That’s it. That’s a summary of the past twelve hours, right there.  Now, please don’t get me wrong – I love a pretty view as much as the next person – but twelve hours of what essentially amounts to the same stuff can be a little wearing. We had stopped bothering to take photos by about 3pm. There’s only so many mountains and glaciers and pretty water patterns you can stand. Frankly, I think if I hadn’t stopped, the camera would have refused anyway – like a horse coming to yet another jump and thinking, you know what, enough already.

I spotted one condor and we saw a whale come up for air (which is essentially a few inches of hump and a bit of spray;  no point in staring – it can be 20 minutes before you see another, and we were moving at 20mph). That was pretty much it for wildlife. For the whole day. Apart from one or two other small birds (some people swore they saw penguins on a little island/rocky outcrop, but I remain unconvinced), that was it for the whole day’s viewing and doing.

It would probably sound appallingly blasé to say that, frankly, if you’ve seen one fjord full of glaciers, you’ve seen them all, but, really, they do look awfully similar. A breathtakingly beautiful, awe-inspiring field of ice slowly carving its way between the mountains is very similar to the next breathtakingly beautiful, awe-inspiring field of ice slowly carving its way between the mountains. And remember, we have sailed the fjords of Norway AND I have flown over the fjords of Alaska in a seaplane, as well as sailing them, so when I say we’ve seen a few, we’ve seen a few. I do feel extremely grateful to have the sort of life where I get to just gaze at this level of natural beauty all day, but, at the same time, the novelty does wear off after a while.

All in all, our transit of the Beagle Channel can be summarised as pretty, but dull. Which is probably one of the meanest things you can say about a person, and it doesn’t seem any kinder to say it about a landscape.

Tomorrow? Punta Arenas. And if you can find that on a map, you get a prize.

Sea Day 2 of 3 – Cape Horn – Welcome to February

This has been a quite bizarre day. Not content with sailing us around Cape Horn once, we have actually done it three times. No, really. The first time it was misty, so we went again, and it was sunny, so we got better photos, and then they turned the ship around and did it again, so the people sitting on the other side could have a look. There are no words for my bemusement. They managed to find us an island to go around, so we weren’t just shuttling back and forth, but it was still pretty odd.

Luckily, it has been relatively calm – Force 6, and pitching, but not much rolling, with only a few white horses and a little spray now and then. We have all heard the stories of the Roaring Forties (where there is no land, and the seas and winds circulate around the planet unimpeded, and therefore run MUCH faster than elsewhere), and this is also the point where the Atlantic meets the Pacific. So we were expecting it to be rough. They even put out the “Motion Discomfort Bag” dispensers. But we haven’t really experienced much rough weather at all – no one I saw was ill or even queasy – and bearing in mind we have been tootling around here all day, we have been pushing our luck to its absolute limits on the bumpiness front.

Today, I have particularly enjoyed listening to the creaking of the ship. When you can get away from the clattering of cutlery and the banging of plates and the nattering of people and the piped music and muzak and the screech of the coffee makers and the bings and bongs of the lifts (bing means going up, and bing bong means going down), you have the chance to hear the ship creaking, as the movement of the water pulls the vessel in different directions. If you close your eyes, you can imagine yourself on something much smaller, like the Grand Turk (used in the Hornblower series) or the small ships that the original explorers came here in. The creaking sound is the same, only the size of the waves needed to cause it differs.  And although those old ships were wood, and we are made of metal, even metal creaks under these sorts of stresses. Magellan was here for months, tootling about mapping things, finding the passage through from the Atlantic to the Pacific that he had been sent to find, and exterminating his crew in the process. He arrived with 250+ men in six ships, and when he got home, about three years later, I think, he had one ship and about 18 crew left.  Darwin came by here on the Beagle, as well. I doubt their time here was as relaxed and calm as ours. I did notice that there were a lot of small rocks sticking their heads out of the water, not far from land. I think I am not making too much of an intellectual leap to say I know precisely what happened to a lot of the ships that came this way, particularly in the dark…

But driving around in circles looking at precisely the same view several times over is a very uninteresting way to spend a day. Whilst the scenery is pretty breathtaking, it doesn’t get more so with a second viewing, or a third, come to that. We took some photos of the chapel on the southernmost tip of the southernmost landmass on Earth, if you exclude Antarctica, and the flagpole next to it, and the beacon for shipping. And that’s it. Apart from a few birds (much less than yesterday – they’re not dumb enough to fly this far south if they don’t have to), there is nothing else here but sea and rocks and the one crashing (rather prettily, I’ll grant you) into the other. Worth doing? Definitely. Nice to be able to say I’ve done it? Definitely? Worth doing three times? Nope, definitely not.

Sunday 31^st January – Sea Day 1 of 3

The next day or so will be the Bumpy Bit.

Things I have learned today #1: Prince Charles is a fully-trained commando and helicopter pilot.

At 10am, they played the church bells through the cabins. Apparently, we now all have to go to church, whether or not we are Christians. Registered my (perhaps unsurprising) protest. They didn’t play the bells through the cabins on the first leg, so why they have started to convert us all now, I have no idea. Not a pleasing start to the day.

Round The World lunch today, so needed to get up anyway (although not admitting that to them). As this may be the roughest/second roughest day (Cape Horn tomorrow) of the whole cruise, possibly not the best choice, timing-wise, but I suppose it will serve as a distraction for 400 of the passengers.

It was quite a pleasant meal, all in all. We had a Third Officer, on our table, Robert Waite. Lovely young man, who was the epitome of an excellent host, listening to our stories about other ships and other cruises, and politely declining to tell us stuff we were not supposed to know! We also had some obnoxious twit called Chris, a fellow passenger, who was so rude, he would not only interrupt anyone else who was speaking, but also talk over people, and even tried to butt in and tell a story I had already started! I let him join in for the punchline, but he was really getting on my nerves by the end. For those who have REALLY been paying attention over the years, the punchline was “Prove it”; do you remember the story?

Overate somewhat, so then went for a siesta. That’s the nice bit about cruising. Want an afternoon nap? Have one. No one minds, no one cares. Do what makes you happy. And it is Sunday, after all. If I was at home, I’d probably be having one there anyway!

Today the sea is a turquoise-green colour (or for the painters, Pthalo Blue and Transparent Yellow combined about 40:60), the sky is blue, the sun is out, but it’s a bit windy (Force 6, gusting to Force 8 at times) and consequently a bit bumpy, and a little chilly (11 degrees Celsius). It’s nice if you can find shelter from the wind but still in the sunlight, though.

We are, as I type, absolutely level with the tip of Patagonia right now, if you want to find us on a map. Go to the very bottom of South America and where it curves to the right at the bottom? We’re about half an inch to the right of that. I will take a photo of the map and add it here. We are the big, white, not in any way to scale boat/bullet-shaped item.

After dinner, watched The Imitation Game (this time with uninterrupted audio). The sea is surprisingly calm, considering where we are. It was almost like a mirror at sunset. I hope it stays like that tomorrow!

This is the one we have been waiting for.

Saturday 30 January – Port Stanley, Falkland Islands

Things I have learned today #1: the highest YouTube use per capita in the world is in Saudi Arabia.

Definitely the best day so far. In fact, this may be hard to beat at all over the coming months.

The tenders ashore were prompt and the sea was calm. The sun shone and the sky was a startlingly bright blue. There was barely a breath of wind.  It could not have been more perfect, weather-wise. In fact, we all got a little burned, because the weather we had been promised by the ship’s forecast was so entirely wrong. We were all bundled up under copious layers and when we took them off, in the blazing sunshine, we had no suncream with us!

We came ashore and immediately went into the Tourist Information/ Gift Shop called the Jetty Centre (no prizes for guessing its location). In fact, I bought so much stuff, that they offered to hold it all for me to collect on my way back, so I didn’t have to carry it all around all day!

We discussed the various penguin viewing trips available with the tour guides outside and they said that mum would not be able to do them, due to the uneven surfaces and long walks. So we just pootled through town. I made a point of visiting the Conservation Centre and every Gift Shop I could find. If I have to contribute to the economy of anywhere, I would like it to be here. So I shopped and shopped. Chances are, when I get back, if you get anything by way of souvenir, it was probably bought here. [Irene, I got you a spoon. I hope that’s okay.]

We had a bite of lunch (sandwiches and cold drinks) at the West Store Café, which was basically in the building between the supermarket (ostensibly Waitrose (no, really, they stock Waitrose Essentials), but with some Tesco and Iceland products too) and BHS. Their wifi didn’t work though, so we headed back towards town.

Dad eventually managed to book a taxi to take us on a tour of the East Island – there aren’t many taxis here and we have, by disembarking, doubled the population of the town (what it will be like on Monday when there are two, bigger, ships in at the same time, I dread to think) – and while we waited for it, I used the Jetty Centre’s wifi to send a couple of emails (although it was almost as expensive as the ship’s!). Then Colin (and his wife) picked us up in their car/taxi. Almost everyone here drives a 4×4, and we were shortly to discover why. Whilst the streets of Stanley are smooth and tarmacked and lovely, outside of town, things are not quite so uniform or predictable. We dropped Colin’s wife at home, so she could check on the dogs and chickens, and then headed off on our tour.

He took us to see the bay where the Argentinians landed in 1982, but this is now inaccessible, because as soon as they were ashore, they mined it furiously, assuming that the British would land at the same point. They didn’t; they landed about 70 miles away at the other end of the island. It’s a beautiful spot and, if they ever clear all the mines, you can bet someone will build a very expensive hotel there. Apparently, the mines are being cleared by a firm from Zimbabwe – I imagine they have a fair amount of expertise in these matters, because there has only ever been one accident. The main problem is that the mines were planted in sand, and sand SHIFTS with wind and water movement, which means the mines MOVE. This does not make them easy to find and renders any maps or plans utterly useless. When we talked about using the grazing sheep to clear the mines, Colin said he thought that was an urban myth. I have my doubts. It seems a very sensible way of doing things, to me. Come to think of it, I don’t think we saw any sheep at all on our tour. We saw geese, and horses, and penguins (OBViously), but I don’t recall any sheep. That’s odd!

Anyway, he took us to a viewpoint where we could see Arcadia out in the Sound, and some shipwrecks closer inland (hence us tendering in!), and then he showed us some of the ‘sights’ – such as Government House, the statue of Margaret Thatcher, and the memorial to the 255 who died “to liberate us”.

Then we parked ourselves in the Waterfront Kitchen Café to while away the time until the tender queue subsided – it never did, but each boat holds over 100 people, so the line moves fairly rapidly – and we were back on board by 5.30 (BOB was 6). I shook all my bags out on the bed. I think I will need to check my credit card, to make sure it hasn’t melted at the corners. It seems to have worked VERY hard today.

Things I have learned today #2: The Romans quarried under their own city to such an extent that more than one new sinkhole a week opens up somewhere under the modern inhabitants  – around 80 a year.

Bed straight after dinner. Utterly shattered.

Sea Day 1 of 2.

No fruit. Didn’t get there in time. They put it away at 11.30 and mum and dad were at a talk that overran, so they couldn’t get it for me either. Apparently, our current captain (we changed Master at Rio) was on board the Canberra during its participation in the Falklands War, so he has some very interesting stories to tell. Sudoku, swim (10 lengths – the current was pretty hard work today, and it wasn’t very warm either, but then the sun came out, so I dried off the lazy way). Dinner (the chef needs more practice with the GF Yorkshire puddings – so far they are more like US biscuits and gravy than anything else), cinema (good film, glad I finally got to see it!), bed.

Sea Day 2 of 2.

Ditto, but tonight is a formal, so will have to get all togged up and stuff.

Wednesday 27^th January – Montevideo, Uruguay

Well, that started badly but ended well.

There was a notice in the Horizon paper last night, saying that there would be crew drills at 10am, but I wasn’t worried, because we gained an hour last night, so even I would be awake by then. Needless to say, this is not what occurred. Actual start time? 08.50. Not 9.50. EIGHT fifty. And not only that, but all the announcements came through the cabins. What I call the pillow speakers. Which are only supposed to be used for emergencies. So if you were ill, or old, or choosing not getting off here, or unable to, for whatever reason, you were shaken from your bed by the noise anyway. And it was continual. Not just one announcement; there were dozens, for over an hour and a half, to my knowledge – they apparently continued after we had disembarked – they even did an abandon ship drill, which we have never heard before. We are going to do this. We are doing this. This is what is being done. This is what was done. This is what should have happened. Stage Two will be this. We will now do this… Bells and alarms and announcements. On and on and on. And REALLY loud. At the same time, when room speakers are used, the television is automatically muted (apparently in an emergency, they REALLY want us to hear their announcements). So every single one of these meant a portion of The Imitation Game where I was expected to lipread to follow the plot. Very VERY irritating. I reported it to Reception in the evening, and Mika seemed surprised that the cabin speakers were used. She said she will pass on my comments.

While I was at Reception, I booked a seat at Mission Impossible tomorrow evening, which my more loyal readers will be aware was not shown on the first sector due to “issues” in the Screening Room.

Anyway, we disembarked and walked to the port gate. We tried to book the hop on hop off bus, but they wanted eighteen quid a head, so we had a good laugh and then beat a hasty retreat. The pedestrianised part of town starts immediately opposite the port, so we strolled for a while. There is an indoor market, where lots of separate barbecue stalls, with real fires, cook your meat in front of you. We only wanted a drink at 11am, but this took a while and several tries to negotiate. In the end, one guy ‘allowed’ us to sit at his table and drink his drinks and then DOUBLED the cost when we tried to pay the bill. Fine, hon, but we considered having lunch here, so I hope that extra three dollars keeps you warm at night, while we eat somewhere run by someone more honest. I don’t mind paying ‘tourist tax’ but doubling the price is a bit rich, if you’ll pardon the pun.

It was a beautiful day, weather-wise – about 28 degrees, with a light breeze and virtually no humidity. We had blue skies and everything. As the forecast in the Falklands is 12 degrees, this may be our last day of warm for a while.

We found a delightful souvenir shop, with even more delightful staff, who took care of our every whim with a smile. I would tell you the name, but the shop did not seem to have one! So I took a photo of the shop, and the girl outside, and I can tell you it’s about the eighth shop on the left as you come away from the port.

We then pootled a little further and, when we came to a junction where we had intended to turn left into town, mum said that, as we could see the sea up ahead, we should keep going that way. So we did. The port is on the north side of a finger-shaped promontory that sticks out from the town, and we essentially walked straight across from one side to the other.

The maps here are quite bizarre. Some have north at the top, as one might expect, and others did not! They inverted the whole town, and put north at the bottom. I suppose they think it makes more sense that way around, but it makes finding your way using more than one for information a decidedly complex operation!

We found a beautiful beach, that stretched for miles, curving all the way along the edge of the town around the bay. The sea was a bizarre colour here, though – a sort of mixture of purple and brown. It looked nothing like the usual blues and greens we might expect. We speculated that it was silt and sand kicked up in last night’s wind, but it looks very odd in the photos.

A little more wandering found us at the NH Columbia Hotel. Those who read my blog last year will recall me raving about a buffet in one of the hotels in this Spanish chain. There was no buffet today, but the food was still very good. We used their wifi to Skype home, and the signal was excellent here. In fact, there is a LOT of free wifi in Montevideo. There is even wifi in the middle of the parks – they signpost it with bus stop signs!

After lunch, we took a cab to Punta Carretas Shopping Mall, which is a rather expensive choice, but as it was built in a converted prison, it was a very interesting building! Turns out that, although this feels like a very Spanish country, their McDonalds do not do gluten-free burgers. In fact, gluten-free generally is not well-serviced here. They’ve HEARD of it – it’s just a fruit salad and ice cream kind of a place. This place looks so Spanish, though, in fact, that, if I muddled up my photos, you will have no idea where in the world it is. It’s nice to find it easier to communicate, as well, because while my Spanish is fairly poor, my Portuguese is virtually non-existent! Also, whereas in Salvador, the predominant identity seemed to be Afro-Caribbean, down here in Montevideo, it is definitely Hispanic. And most people speak at least a little English. Although by no means all. Oddly, English was particularly in short supply at the Radisson Hotel in Independence Square. In the past, I’ve always thought that big, posh hotels chose staff with language skills. Not here, apparently. But we got by.

After the shopping trip – fairly unproductive, although Dad got a new pair of plimsolls – we took a cab to Constitution Square and then walked two blocks through market stalls to Independence Square, where we had tea at the aforementioned Radisson. I had a plate of fruit, and mum had the biggest piece of chocolate cake we have ever seen. Dad had to eat half! After using the rather lovely loos, we took a cab back to the ship. There was a free shuttle bus from the ship to Independence Square and back, provided by one of the large stores, but they stopped running at 2pm. Not hugely helpful, seeing as we are in port until half eleven tonight! So we took a cab, and the driver managed to talk his way into the port and drop us right at the foot of the gangplank! Nice!

We made it back just in time for dinner, and Chris, Fran and Abigail arrived not long after. They also had a good day, although they did a historical walking tour, which sounded a lot of work for very little gain! They are going on a battlefield tour in the Falklands – Chris is into war history – so we chatted about Normandy for a while. Dinner was fun. I like these tablemates.

Then I crashed. Absolutely shattered. I’m fine until I stop, and then you could not get me going again with gunpowder. In bed by ten (which admittedly is 1am GMT).

Monday – Sea Day 1 of 2.

A very lazy day indeed. Got up. Late. Not the best night’s sleep ever. Sudoku and fruit. Lunch. Swim. Shower. Formal night. Burns Night. Possibly my least favourite P&O event. Bagpipes and haggis and unintelligible poetry. Bleurgh. Oh well, it’ll be over soon enough.

Managed 18 lengths today (it’s not a huge pool), as the water wasn’t fighting back quite as much as usual. We are in VERY calm waters indeed. Which, considering that, according to the BBC’s weather forecast, we are between two storm fronts – one over Rio and one over Montevideo – is quite surprising. It was very hot and sunny today, but not as humid as it has been. Which is also odd, considering. The question is whether the front that is currently to our south is heading north, or whether it will move west and let us pass unmolested. Or, indeed, whether it will simply sit over Montevideo and wait for us to get there. Only time will tell.

Dinner was fine. The haggis nonsense ended blessedly quickly – we didn’t have a live piper, and they have no concept of volume control as regards the taped version – but the poem was also joyfully short, and the food was excellent. Nicky and Peter didn’t show, again, but Chris and Fran and Abigail are enjoyable company, and we have plenty in common, so conversation flows easily, and everyone enjoyed their meal.

It’s a pretty short summary of a twelve-hour day, but that actually just about covers it!

Tuesday – Sea Day 2 of 2 between Rio and Montevideo

Been trying to download stuff I need for my next Open University essay, so the minutes have really ticked by today. Ouch. I could have waited until tomorrow, but while I was feeling so enthusiastic, it seemed a shame to waste all that intellectual energy… Now I have a week to write the thing. Philosophy of group agency referencing the Borg and Midwich Cuckoos (I kid you not). All suggestions gratefully received.

The sea has gone from a striking cobalt blue colour yesterday to a stark grey, reminiscent of Welsh slate, because it is not sunny today, but grey and overcast. No swim today. Not warm enough. It seems the water needs direct sunlight to keep it warm enough. In fact, we sat inside to eat lunch. Might be the first time since the Western Approaches that we have done that. Eventually, they got the hint and closed the roof! It’s not quite as calm as it was, as the wind has picked up somewhat, but you can still barely feel that you are moving. If it wasn’t for the hangers jingling in the wardrobe, you’d hardly notice at all.

Today, at lunchtime, we overtook the Costa Luminosa (the one that was parked in front of the MSC Lirica in Rio that no one could remember the name of). We weren’t quite close enough to make waving worth the effort, though.

According to the nice weather man, we are currently passing through the front of thunderstorms that is heading north as we head south, so the forecast tomorrow for Montevideo tomorrow is 27 and sunny, not the 37 and stormy we were threatened with yesterday. All sounds much more bearable.

Clocks go back (again) to GMT -3 tonight. Can’t complain. An extra hour in bed never goes amiss, even if it was taken away again before. Maybe this time we’ll hold onto it?

24^th January – Rio

What a lovely place.

We disembarked about half ten. It wasn’t easy. The quayside is unusable. It is dangerously uneven, with potholes, tram rails and so on. In addition, because it is so dangerous, and we were so far from the terminal  (with the MSC Lirica and a Costa ship moored between us and there- P&O are clearly not the only cruise line that cuts corners on the parking spaces), there was a shuttle bus service to get us the half mile or so to the terminal. But there wasn’t much space. So you had the added risk of shuttle buses going in both directions, and, Heaven help us, doing three point turns between our two gangplanks. What a dangerous farce.

Once we got to the terminal, we tried to negotiate with the accredited taxi confederation, who offered us an excellent price, as long as we were prepared to wait for an hour. Which, oddly, we were not. So we kept walking. We walked about a half a mile to get out of the terminal and across to where the (not accredited but still officially licensed) taxis were, because the road between the terminal and the town has been completely dug up, ready to be replaced in time for the Olympics. Or not in time, as the case may be. This town needs a LOT of work between now and then.

The taxi we eventually found took us the nine miles down to Copacabana beach. We could not go into town, because this is a Catholic country on a Sunday, so it was shut. All of it. Every last bit. Museums, galleries, shops, the lot. We drove through it. In nine miles, I saw two corner shop cafes open. It’s like the City of London on a Sunday – shuttered and deserted.

So we aimed for the Copacabana Palace Hotel. Well, it was marked on the map, so we figured it would be pretty posh. And it was. We sat by the pool and Skyped home, using the free wifi (at last!). It was nice to see people again, although the signal wasn’t always superb, and the screen did not cope well with the bright (hazy) sunshine, even though we were sat in the shade.

After Skyping everyone we could get hold of (and using up so much battery, I didn’t have enough left to upload any photos), we went indoors (into the air con) for lunch, which, on a Sunday is a massive buffet, and sat overlooking Copacabana Beach while we ate. Our waiter used to live in Earls Court, so LOVED that we were from London, and took excellent care of us, including showing me the gluten-free options, and also knocking about a third off the final bill (which still came to about 90 quid – I told you this hotel was posh).

We then wrote some postcards, and gave them in at Reception for posting, before heading across to the beach. Got to have a walk on the beach, after having come all this way!

Then we took a cab to a shopping centre I had spotted that WAS open, where mum bought a couple of polo shirts, and I found an amazing view of Sugar Loaf Mountain from the food court terrace on the top (eighth) floor. We met a lovely man called Gerald, who is basically just travelling around the world. At home, he worked in social care, but having rented out his flat in London, he is basically just living off the rent and bumming his way around the planet, enjoying himself as much as possible. Good for him. We chatted to him for a while, until it was time to head back to the ship. Mum wanted to be at dinner, to meet our new table mates.

Unfortunately, our taxi driver got lost. First, we got stuck in a traffic jam (if this is what it looks like on a Sunday, I dread to think what it’s like on a weekday – each time the lights changed, we moved forward two car lengths; that was it), and then he missed our turning, and got trapped in a one-way system that took 20 minutes to escape from (remember the roads are also being dug up all over the place).  In fact, most streets in Rio seem to be one-way. It’s quite an odd system. Wherever you are aiming for, you essentially have to drive past it, get to the end of wherever and then turn around and come back again. I think this would become very irritating in very short order, if I was here for any length of time. Entertainingly, when he realised he’d gone wrong, our taxi driver decided not to stop the meter and, when I finally got us to where we needed to be, he tried to charge us for the full trip. Ha bloody ha. We paid him the amount on the meter at the moment I shouted “There’s the ship” – just before we sailed past it in the wrong direction – and walked away. He didn’t come after us. He knew he had been vastly pushing his luck. And anyway, he was paid in US dollars, so he did okay out of the deal.

At dinner, we met Chris, Fran and Abigail, our new tablemates. Nicky and Peter did not make it back in time (neither did we, come to that! We were an hour late in total!). Chris is a retired train driver, and Fran(çoise) works at the Royal Mail – she sounds fairly senior, although they bickered about what her job title really means! Abigail is an apprentice engineer. And they live near me in Bedford! They seem quite lovely, although they, too, are only with us for two weeks. Landed on our feet again, hopefully. I do miss Sheila though. I hope she got off the ship okay, and is having a nice time in Rio tonight. I have no idea how she would have managed that trek to the taxis/coaches with her walker, and I did worry about her all day. I’m sure she’ll be fine, though – they are very nice to little old ladies with disabilities here (no exceptions like that obnoxious man in Salvador).

The low that has been sitting over Rio is called the South Atlantic Convergence Zone, according to Tomasz Shafenaker. So now you know. And we brought the good weather with us. People kept commenting that it was the first time in three/five (depending on who you ask) weeks that it didn’t rain all day. We had glorious sunshine all day and it was 29 in the shade. Perfect. And not nearly as humid as I was dreading it would be. Nowhere near what we had in Salvador. It’s nice to be on a ship that is a harbinger of something pleasant for a change (can you be a harbinger of something pleasant?).

The main negatives were the roadworks and the graffiti. We have never seen so much graffiti in one place. Every surface was covered. And most of it was tags, not art, sadly, so absolutely no positives to be found. Just ugly. I don’t think, even if they start tomorrow (Monday) that they could clean it all off in time for the Olympics.

But, all in all, taxi issues aside (and we’ve come to expect them, wherever we go), we had a fab day in Rio. But, remember, it is a major city – like London. What it would be like on a weekday, with commuters and traffic and roadworks and noise, I dread to think, but if you have the chance to come here on a Sunday, when the streets are relatively quiet, it’s a very pleasant place indeed.

Here endeth the first fortnight/cruise/sector.

Saturday – sea day before Rio

That was one of the worst night’s sleep I have ever experienced afloat. First the fire thing. Then I got up a few hours later to find my toilet had malfunctioned again and was full of water. So I had to call a plumber and wait for him to come and fix it. Then, when I finally got back to sleep, I was woken by screaming cramp down the front of my left shin. And then, just to add insult to injury, my bad toe started throbbing, probably caused by too much walking on it. By the time it was time to get up, I was so completely shattered, I was barely functional.

Went up for fruit and Sudoku. The roof over the pool was closed, although it had stopped raining hours before. A lady was at the bar, talking to the F&B Manager, and trying to get him to reopen it. I went over to try to get him to turn the music off. It had been quiet, and then he turned up and made them turn it on. So I went over and told him we didn’t want it on and he should turn it back off again. He said “It’s policy”. I said “We’re the passengers. It’s up to us”. He phoned someone else and then turned it off. Several people thanked me.

However, one bloke and his wife came over to my table and starting verbally abusing me for making them open the roof so that they got rained on. Which is just plain stupid because (a) I didn’t get the roof opened (b) they would not have opened it if it was raining, you imbeciles. The sun was shining. Then they walked off. I went after them and said that (a) I didn’t ask for the roof to be opened, (b) it’s not raining and (c) he had no business speaking to me like that. He showed me his glasses, with ONE drop of water on them. Moron. No way that was dislodged by the movement of the roof, or just condensation that had built up on the inside. What an idiot. He just kept yelling until an Ents Officer came over and asked him to stop. He made a right prat of himself. Several people came over to check I was okay and thank me for standing up to him.

So we had lunch and discussed our plans for Rio tomorrow. Dad went down to the Excursions Desk to ask for a better map than the one in the port guide. The girl said – and, remember, she sells excursions; it is her job to help passengers enjoy their visit as much as possible, by providing as much information and guidance as possible; that’s what she is paid to do – “I have my own personal map, but don’t tell anyone, otherwise they’ll all come and ask for one”. Er, yes, they will. THAT’S YOUR JOB, you cretin. That’s what passes for customer service on this ship. Yes, I’ll help you, but don’t tell anyone, otherwise they’ll expect me to help all of them too. Good grief. In the old days, when people gave a damn about doing their jobs properly, if they had a good map, they would put a pile of photocopies on Reception and everyone could just help themselves. Apparently, now, we’re not allowed a decent map. What a disgraceful attitude. Do we think she realises what an utter fool she is? What a shame the customer service questionnaire for the first sector is sitting on my bed waiting to be completed…

Then a swim – 12 lengths this time before my arms gave up. Not very warm today. Obviously relies on direct sunlight for some of its heating. And we have had none of that today. Met an Australian lady who used to live down the road from me, and works in the legal books business. Promised me a discount! Very nice. One woman pointed out that what we are really doing equates more to sea swimming than pool swimming, because of the waves and the currents. It is very hard work, it must be said, so I can’t disagree with her.

Then, not long after I got out, the roof closed. And the rain really did start. We have collided with the low that has been lying over Rio all week. It clouded over so quickly, they had to turn the lights on, on the deck, at 3.30 in the afternoon. In mid summer. Unfortunately, they didn’t QUITE close the roof entirely. I’m sure it is normally watertight. But not today. There’s enough of a gap to be able to hear the drops splatting onto the sun loungers below. That’s not my fault either.

Today’s BBC report regarding Zika virus was filmed today in Salvador. Weird to see the places we were yesterday on the news. Weather tomorrow for Rio: 29 and possibly the only dry day of the past week or the next. Montevideo 37. Hope that breaks before we get there!

Tonight at dinner we had to say goodbye to Sheila, who is disembarking tomorrow. She has been a delightful dinner companion and I will miss her dreadfully. We went to look for the photo we had taken together at the last party, but at nearly thirteen quid a copy, we decided not to buy it! We swapped addresses and I took a photo of her, so you can see her lovely face, and we have something to remember her by.

All the photos will be uploaded as soon as I have some free wifi with a decent signal, which, sadly, hasn’t happened yet. Still hoping.