Friday 12^th – Sea Day 4 of 9

It has finally dawned on me why we have little or no internet or television signal here. We are officially in the middle of nowhere. Easter Island (tomorrow) is the most isolated inhabited place on Earth, and we are nearly there. So the satellites don’t bother sending their footprint down here, because there is virtually no one to receive the signal. We rarely see another ship. This does make me feel a little vulnerable. We probably have GPS and radar, but with no satellite communications whatsoever, we are, to put it bluntly, on our own. This is probably the most isolated we can ever be – as a ship and as human beings. None of our tech will help us here. We might as well be a 1930s cruise liner – once you sail, that’s it til you get to the next bit of land. No one will help you on the inbetween bit. No one can. There’s no point in having an accurate GPS signal if you can’t communicate it to anyone else.  It’s a surprisingly vertiginous feeling to know that you are pretty much cut off and on your own. This is where the quality of the Bridge team and Engineering really matter. This is the bit where they earn their money, by keeping us safe and keeping us moving. This is not somewhere you want to break down. You’re thousands of miles from the nearest tow.

You are also stuffed as regards the weather forecast. They don’t think there is anyone here either. The forecast, on Sky or BBC or whatever, jumps from South America round to New Zealand and stuff you if you live in between. Or are sailing from one to the other. I don’t know where the Bridge gets their info from, but it’s all we have, as regards the weather for now. Luckily, it is warm, humid and windless, so there isn’t much to be informed about. Which is handy, considering.

MEMORY: I don’t know if I mentioned it earlier but we had a posh lunch a while ago and we met one of the Third Officers. He is from a small village called Kingsdown in Kent. Only a small number of my readers will have the faintest idea what that means, but he was as chuffed to meet me, as I was to meet him! We chatted for ages.

Laurie has degenerative disc disease in her back and osteoarthritis. She has had surgery three times on her back, on both knees and her left foot. She also has fibromyalgia, so when I said I had CFS (which is what Americans call M.E.), she understood. It’s nice to meet someone who ‘gets it’.

My brain fog may not have cleared up as much as I thought. I forgot to go to two separate things I had committed to, earlier today. Oops. Michael is taking me to the Ocean Grill tomorrow for dinner. I must try and remember to go to that!

The P&O lies and misinformation continues. People booked this cruise because it said we would be at Easter Island all day. Then they found out it was only a sail-past, without landing. Today they announced it would only be for three hours and we would be gone by lunchtime. The whole thing is a farce. We spend a whole day going around the Horn three times and yet when we get somewhere we actually WANT to be, we are there for less than four hours. Absolute farce. No one gives the passenger the slightest thought or consideration.

OBSERVATION: all over allergy itching and sunburned skin are NOT a good mix.

Thursday 11^th – Sea Day 3 of 9

1. No internet.
2. Crew drills were due to start at 10am. They started at 9am. Seriously, is there ANYONE on this ship who can tell the time?! They also broadcast the crew alerts through the cabins, despite the fact they are nothing to do with the passengers at all. I went down AGAIN and explained that if someone hard of hearing wakes up to the words “Abandon Ship” coming through the speakers, they could possibly actually kill someone through fear, but they don’t care. They have their procedures and to hell with the consequences. It doesn’t matter if you say “For exercise, for exercise” beforehand, if that person is asleep or half asleep or deaf, and doesn’t hear the whole message. It astonishes me that they are so cavalier about this, but I suppose until someone actually does die of fright, they’ll go on thinking they are immune and free to do as they please and not affecting the passengers (or interested even if they are), however many people complain.

Neither of these things is a good way to start my day. Am trez grumpy now and I’m not even dressed yet. Mind you, bearing in mind there isn’t much on telly either, I may just get some work and chores done. Oh yes, they continue, no matter where you are in the world!

We have now sailed 11,201 miles since leaving Southampton.

It was 22 in the shade on deck today, but the wind was up a bit, so I didn’t swim. It was not the power of the waves or the water temperature that worried me today, it was the prospect of getting out and immediately being hit by that (surprisingly cold) wind blowing across the open decks, that put me off. When I was very small, and I had a fever, the doctor told my parents that the most efficient way to cool down a human body is to get its skin wet and let evaporation do its work. I don’t have a fever, so I don’t fancy that, right now, ta very much, although the sunburn on my shoulders may vote differently (still warm, not as sore, thanks for asking).

Clocks go back AGAIN tonight to GMT-5. This is all very confusing. It basically means that, by the time I’m heading up on deck to meet the parents for lunch, you are all on your way home from work, and if I want to do something “in the morning”, it has to be completed by 7am my time, in order to hit your noon. Anyone who knows me in the slightest knows how I feel about single digit times in the morning, so please don’t expect too much of me for a while! At any hour. My body clock is completely versmooshed.

At dinner, I sat with Single Michael (as I will refer to him from now on, in order to differentiate him from Laurie and Michael, who went fine dining today as it is their wedding anniversary) and Paula. Dale chatted to Mum and Dad down the other end of the table. We had a lovely time. They are both excellent company and very funny. The only stumble was when I had jelly for dessert and had to explain to Paula the difference between jelly and Jell-O. I think we got there! She used to live in San Francisco, so we chatted about touristy spots and good tour guides and slightly more unusual sites to see after you’ve done the obvious ones. I think I have now pinned down that she is an accountant, by trade, although she would rather be a “retired accountant” apparently!

We have been crossing the Roggeveen Basin today, if you’re interested. The sea was REALLY calm- like glass. I wondered if we had wandered back up to the Doldrums, it was so still.  I was worried I might not sleep overnight because it really wasn’t moving much, but as bedtime approached, the captain turned the ship so that what little swell there was would rock us to sleep. How very considerate. Sea colour: that bright improbable blue of the P&O livery again. The one that you look at it and think, well, I know the sea looks that colour in paintings, but I doubt it ever really goes that colour in real life.

UPDATE: I have had some emails asking how I am doing health-wise after my glutening. How very thoughtful of you to ask. Well, the patches of skin numbness are fewer, as are the night-time leg cramps – I am down to two of those a night, instead of five or six in the early days. I still need a siesta to deal with the extra drowsiness and fatigue (and the time zone changes don’t help with that!), but I’m down to an hour, from two and a half, which is also a vast improvement. Today was the all over itchy day, so my system is really working to clear itself of the rubbish. The loss of concentration and cognitive impairment/woolly thinking are less – although I am still finding it hard to concentrate enough to complete a Sudoku in one sitting, and I have no idea what I wrote for the OU essay that was due last week! My nose is still running, but again, not as much, my mouth doesn’t feel like it has had wall to wall carpeting installed every morning, and the raging, unquenchable thirst is subsiding – which is a relief because that was getting very expensive! Walking anywhere is still more effort that it should be, because my legs still feel like they’re full of lead, but, all in all, it wasn’t too bad, thanks. The digestive discomfort went completely quite quickly (which is how I knew it was not a full-on attack) and my other symptoms are now fading. I should be fine in other week or so. If I can get away with feeling normal after two weeks, I’ll be happy. Major damage can leave people suffering for up to six months (I seem to average four to six weeks for a big one), so I’d be quite happy with a fortnight. I imagine that the cramps and fatigue will last a little longer than a fortnight, but the worst should be over by then.

Sea Day 2 of 9

I think I may be a little addicted to Ambassadors. For those of you who have no idea what I am talking about, it is a sitcom starring Mitchell and Webb, set in a made up country of Tazbekistan, where Mitchell is the British Ambassador, Webb is his assistant, and that bloke from Spooks (Matthew something?) plays their boss. Keeley Hawes plays Mitchell’s wife. It is hypnotic. I love it. Beautifully observed.

Saw the first half of The Great Gatsby today (the Leo DiCaprio one). Had to stop for dinner. Will hopefully catch the rest of it when they show it again in a couple of days’ time. Enjoyed it thus far.

I watched City Slickers last night. Haven’t seen that in YEARS. Still a very enjoyable film and Norman is still utterly adorable.

Had fruit for lunch. It’s hard to eat when you have become so heartily sick of food. If I could get away with not ever eating again, I would certainly give it a try. Right now, I couldn’t care less if I didn’t see, smell or taste anything for 48 hours. Unfortunately, the tablets I have to take cannot be taken on an empty stomach, so I HAVE to eat at least twice a day. But it is astonishing to me just what a chore it has become, even without the ordering hassles I had to deal with at the outset.

Had turkey in GF breadcrumbs this evening. Think I got away with it. Maybe they’ve tightened things up in the kitchen. Tomorrow is Sunday (yes, I know it’s Thursday, but it’s roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, so it feels like a Sunday. I call turkey and sprouts day Christmas too, fyi – anything to break the monotony of mealtimes).

10 lengths against the rather large waves. Arms ache like mad. Feel like I did 100. I have now calculated that, on average, if you’re swimming against the tide, you can do up to one third more strokes to complete a length compared to when it is flat. I nearly choked because I was laughing so hard – I was swimming like crazy but not progressing one inch forwards – the waves just left me hanging in mid-air until they had passed. It was very silly indeed. I must have looked ridiculous – paddling like Wil E. Coyote looking for a cliff under his feet that isn’t there.  I swallowed a fair amount as a result of the laughing in mid-swim, obviously, but at least that was a little less to go in my ears from when the pitches became rolls (I’m trusting you recall the difference) and slammed into my ears as the waves went from side to side instead of front to back. Perhaps I’m too easily entertained , but I laughed a lot. In fact, considering how much I swallowed in the process, maybe it’s acceptable to say I really did laugh like a drain.

Met a lady called Christine – on with her husband Peter, who was off somewhere else – who WON this cruise on the Daily Telegraph website! Apparently there are six winners around– one who won the whole trip and five more who won a sector each. Very cool. But this is her first cruise and she was sick all day yesterday. She seems very nervous about being aboard, and that she doesn’t know what she thinks everyone else knows. We tried to reassure her that there were plenty of others who had never been on Arcadia before, or maybe even never cruised, but I don’t think she was convinced!

At dinner, sat next to Michael. He is fun to hang out with. He is a (divorced with kids) law tutor and exam marker, but he has never practised law, which seems a little odd to me. He invited me to dinner at the Ocean Grill one night, which might be nice. I’ll have to keep an eye on my finances though. £12 for a meal that I could eat elsewhere for free is a bit steep, so I’ll have to think about it. Tonight was another formal and, oddly, another Black and White – I’m sure we just had one of those at the end of the last sector – but at least I can now get all the black and white smart clothes and dresses washed without having to worry about when the next one is, cos it won’t be on this sector (which is a very long one – 17 days). I seem to be missing my other black and white dress, which is worrying. May have to get everything out from under the bed and have a rummage sometime.

Have finished reading Philosophy and the Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy. Quite odd. Very deep and detailed in places and then just massively glossing over other issues entirely. Sort of “that’s a whole separate book/issue/story” type thinking. Well, that’s what I bought this book to read about, thanks very much, so a little disappointing. The discussion of the ethics of eating an animal that wants to be eaten seemed to skip most of the main ideas, and I found it quite frustrating, but other bits were very interesting. Maybe the next book in the pile will feel more satisfying (no pun intended).

Here endeth Wednesday.

Sea Day 1 of 9

Feel free to read that again. NINE sea days coming up.

A bit bumpy first thing, and the pools and decks were closed because of the wind. But by teatime, things had calmed down enough to open everything (except, bizarrely, the roof, despite the fact it was 20 degrees in the shade). I tried to go for a swim, but apparently, when they close off the pool, they don’t bother to heat it. So after getting in as far as just above my knees before realising my toes were already going numb, I beat a yelpingly hasty retreat. Settled for going back to my cabin and having a shower while it was calm – although we are still rolling a bit, so the water basically alternates between warm and icy depending on which way the ship is moving. I wanted icy, to cool the sunburn on my shoulders, so I had to sway the opposite way, at the same speed, so that I was out of the way when the warm bits flowed.  Just taking a shower becomes decidedly complicated on a ship. And you cannot weigh yourself unless you are in port, because the movement of the ship on the water means your mass fluctuates! Most passengers find all the rocking very soothing – makes it very hard to stay awake. Mum and Dad were dozing too.

Met a new waitress today – there are three types of waiting staff – food servers, table clearers and drinks sellers (who get commission on every drink they sell). Her name is Geneva (apparently) and she is from Manila. We’re going there. We could have picked her up. But instead, P&O flew her from Manila to Tokyo, Tokyo to San Francisco, San Francisco to Atlanta (?!) and then Atlanta to Valparaiso. She spent 24 hours on planes. And then boarded Arcadia. So for someone who, two days ago had never set foot on a plane or a ship, she was having a hell of a time of it. She has boarded just in time for the roughest weather since the Western Approaches and she has not been well at all, poor thing. She was remarkably cheery considering, but she did look pale. I hope she gets her sea legs soon.

Today was Shrove Tuesday, so they served a pancake buffet on deck (and crepe suzette at dinner). They didn’t bother to offer, but when I asked the Head Chef for gluten-free pancakes, he was happy to make them for me. I just had to wait for a bit, while they were made, especially for me. I just worry that all the other coeliacs on board, who are not as stubborn as me, missed out, because if you don’t ask around here, you definitely don’t get. In the end, I got three (I had asked for two!), rather pallid-looking, but perfectly yummy, pancakes with sugar and lemon juice. Yum. Good thing I hadn’t ordered a big supper (cold meat and salad).

More about the tablemates: Dale is a radar engineer for the US Navy in the Marshall Islands (American base, off Australia). Still not sure what Paula does. They say “we” a lot, so maybe she works for the DOD as well. Dunno. Her dream is to teach ballroom dancing on a cruise ship, but Dale doesn’t dance, so I don’t fancy her chances!

Michael has stories to tell about online dating. He is clearly very lonely, although I have no idea why, because he’s absolutely lovely. He says that dates go well about 50% of the time, and the best way is to talk on the phone first.  Cue discussion about the sex habits of the youth of today – Tindr, etc. All sex, no marriage, seemed to be the consensus. They looked pointedly at me a few times, but I pointed out that I am not the youth of today, by any stretch of the imagination, and we left it at that!

After dinner, we went to the show, because it was one we didn’t think we had seen before, and also, due to the first sector having no shows at all, due to the stage malfunctioning, I haven’t actually been to one yet! It wasn’t very good. They were doing a Rough Routine (they learn 17 shows, and two versions of each – one for rough weather, one for smooth (with more jumps and stuff in)) and it was a little mechanical – like they were getting moves muddled in their heads between the two versions, which is entirely possible. But the singing was quite good. And then, about two thirds the way through, the stage broke. Again. So we sat with the house lights up for ten minutes and then they finished the show – although it seemed to have suddenly metamorphosed into Jersey Boys, as all the songs they did after the pause were Frank Valli and the Four Seasons songs. I suppose there is a connection with a show entitled New York Rhythm, but if you said that Jersey was New York to a genuine inhabitant of either, I think you’d get a punch on the nose.

As the show started, Michael came and sat with me, because he said that Laurie had snapped at him twice and he needed some space. We swapped some soothing comments about people in pain and letting them have their moments. We then chatted about previous cruises, ferry journeys we have taken, and seasickness tales, until the show started and by the third song, he was asleep! He woke up for most of the applause bits. When the stage broke, he went to check on Laurie, who was sitting at the back, in the wheelchair section (leg broken in two places, remember?). But she wasn’t there. So he left to go and look for her. This may turn into a bigger barney than I was originally expecting. Doesn’t bode well. They only boarded yesterday!

Clocks go back tonight to GMT-4, which won’t help with anyone’s sleep patterns.

Monday 8^th Feb – Valparaiso, Chile

We expected disembarkation to be chaos. We’re just trying to see the town, but they were offloading 1000 passengers and loading 1000 fresh ones (who will undoubtedly bring fresh germs with them –oh goody). Having negotiated the forms, x-rays and sniffer dogs checking us for food, we made it out into the enormous terminal. As expected, the taxi drivers were very stroppy and kept insisting we had to take a tour for an hour. We eventually found someone willing to take our money to deliver us to the Ascuncion Funicular. It was down a tiny alleyway. If we hadn’t had his guidance, we would never have spotted it!

Once again, we lacked local currency (you can’t buy it out of the country or take it out of the country or spend it anywhere else, so why would you want any?!), but a very nice man in the queue, who basically wanted to practice his English on us, changed some money for us, so we could go up – and come back down later. The woman on the turnstile was unspeakably unhelpful – she could not have cared less how many tourists she turned away. I wonder if her employers feel the same about all the money she refuses?!

It was a short trip – probably less than a minute – but a ride in a tiny 1883 original funicular is a rare treat for me, so I was like a puppy with two tails.

At the top, it was still warm and cloudy – I expected higher breezes, but there were none. We strolled for a bit through the UNESCO World Heritage Site buildings, in their pretty colours and varied architecture. They are required to protect the facades, but they are happy to gut them and rebuild the insides from scratch, so there were some very derelict-looking works in progress. There was some interested public art/mural work, but a surprising amount of dog poo. Not an issue we normally face in touristy places! We found an art gallery with a café attached, and had a drink on their balcony, overlooking the whole bay. Spectacular.

We had to change our planned route because the funicular we had intended to head towards, in order to come back down, was not working. So we wandered a bit further, and I found the particular piece of public art I wanted mum to see – a staircase (yes, there are hundreds in this place – it’s built across (allegedly) 42 hills) painted like a piano keyboard, located on? Beethoven Passsage, of course. I saw it on the port talk, which, as usual, I duly watched with the sound off. The bits I did hear involved her describing the whole town as one big, very steep, staircase. I have no doubt she put some people off from bothering to go ashore. In fact, it was quite similar to Salvador in its layout – some bits are up and some are down. There’s plenty of “flat” available. Even the funiculars have level access. But I bet she didn’t tell anyone that.

From there, we found ourselves walking downhill and so, instead of taking a second funicular, we walked back down. The murals and art became ever more spectacular as we descended, climaxing at a Café Sunflowers with Van Gogh’s Starry Night painted on the side! Sadly, with the really amazing art increase came a commensurately massive surge in tagging. This is, without a shadow of a doubt, the most graffiti-filled place we have ever seen. There is not a single surface that has not been tagged. Even the canvas fences around cafés have been tagged. Hotels? Hospitals? Government buildings? Glass? Brick? Antique plaster? Nothing is immune, as far as I can see, except churches. It’s hideous. This could be quite a nice place, but the tagging makes everything look so ugly and neglected, it’s hard to see past it.

At the bottom, we found a taxi to take us to the market, but when he explained that the food court was upstairs, and there was no lift or escalator, he instead took us two blocks away, to a lovely little local café, where we had a very nice lunch. It had little individual booths/houses (with proper tiled roofs) if you wanted more privacy during your meal. Mum and dad had toasted cheese sandwiches and I had steak and chips – there aren’t many options for lunch in Chile if you can’t eat cheese, ham, prawns or bread!

The sun came out after lunch, so we then went to the Tourist Information to ask their advice, but it was shut, so we got a taxi to the Ibis (the only hotel we could find that we had heard of!) and used their wifi to Skype home. The signal at the London end gradually deteriorated as more and more people logged on after work (we are three hours behind – so it was teatime for us, but home time for London), so we gave up after a while, and went back to the ship. Mum wanted to shower while we were still in port;  I wrote and posted some postcards before dinner.

The best bit of advice I can give you for here is, get a decent map. The one handed out at the terminal was RUBBISH, and did not show either all the roads – which you would have was a given for a tourist roadmap of your town, wouldn’t you? -, or differentiate between up and down, or even explain where the funiculars really went. The map handed out at the Ibis was much better and more helpful, but, sadly, we were almost done by then. Go there first. They have a whole drawer full of maps you can pinch.

We found out at dinner that there was a Sheraton somewhere, but as none of the maps here show any hotels (another first for us!), we made do with the Ibis, which was fine.

Our new tablemates are:

Laurie and Michael – American, live in LA but from New York and Alabama via Brazil. Laurie broke her leg in two places three weeks ago, and had an operation last week, so Michael is going to have to push her around in a wheelchair for their entire holiday. They are leaving in Auckland, because the whole point of the trip is that Laurie wanted to see New Zealand. They were not over-enthusiastic about the food, and Laurie point blank refused to drink the coffee when she realised that decaff means instant! Michael works in International Sales for FedEx and Laurie is his third wife – he has children by both the previous ones. Sounds like a good reason to leave the country as often as possible! His employers pay for his internet when he is away, so they can keep in touch with him. This makes me VERY jealous indeed!

Paula and Dale – American, also Californians, I think, and also from the LA area. They live in Australia, on a 39-foot yacht. They had to buy some dress shirts for Dale to come on this cruise, because they don’t have enough storage for things they don’t need regularly. Mum and Dad talked to them, mostly. I’ll try and learn more tomorrow.

Michael. Travelling alone. From the UK. I don’t think I’ve established where he is from or what he does yet, but he is certainly very nice.

My sunburn is very sore.

UPDATE: Our luck may have broken. We have pootled around South America under what seemed like our own, personal high – low pressure, sunshine, calm seas. Wherever we went, people said it was the first decent weather they had had in days/weeks/months. We got sunburn in the Falkland Islands, a place renowned for being none too hospitable, weather-wise. We went round Cape Horn three times, because it was so calm, we could. Well, we got blasé and a jolly good slap in the face is now being duly administered. The Pacific was not called the Pacific because of her peaceable nature (despite what the psycho port talk lady might say). Quite the opposite. In fact, she was given the name, in the somewhat superstitious and clearly very over-optimistic hope that it would encourage her to calm the hell down, in order to live up to the name. She hasn’t. We left Valparaiso during first sitting dinner, so we got our dinner in the calm of the bay. I don’t know how well second sitting ate.  Since we left Valparaiso and headed west, it has been getting steadily bumpier. Suffice to say, I am writing this at 4am local time.  It’s bumpy now. very bumpy.

Sea Day – 6^th February

Weather is now 16 in the shade. Might take my cossie out today and see if the pool is back in use (it has been closed for maintenance).

12 lengths, once the roof opened. First, we had to ensure an hour of angle-grinding and hammering as they did something to the roof mechanism. You don’t realise quite what an echo chamber it is until you are sat enduring that! Ended up having to take two Paracetamol, because my head was pounding.

Once we entered the South Pacific during dinner yesterday, we have really pegged it north overnight, covering over 400 miles – we usually average between 300 and 350, so the Captain must really want us to feel warmer! (If we ask him, he’ll probably gloss over the following wind that is helpfully shoving us ever northwards) So this will count as a success. It is now 17 in the shade and probably well over 20 in the sun, the roof is open, the sky is a cloudless blue and someone thinks they saw a dolphin. You don’t get passengers any happier than that. Throw in a penguin memorabilia sale in the shops, and the mood is positively cheery.

Update: I may have been glutened at dinner. I had breaded fish, which was supposed to be in gluten-free breadcrumbs. Since our initial issues, they have so far never failed to protect me, and serve me ‘safe’ food, but right now, I feel REALLY ill. I’m hot, to the point of sweating – it is literally trickling down my face and back, my stomach hurts, a LOT, and my dress got so tight I was worried I would have to be cut out of it. It was fairly snug when I put it on, but I was really frightened I wouldn’t be able to get it off. I did get out of it in the end, but I think my stomach is still swelling, and if we’re short on motive power, I have an endless supply of burps available to push us along. None of these are good signs. All at once bodes even worse. Don’t think I’ll be straying from my cabin again any time soon.

The head waiter, Shelton, rang my cabin at 8.45, to see if I was okay, which was very sweet of him. I told him it was probably cross-contamination, rather than a full-on glutening, as although I still feel ill, I haven’t deteriorated the way I expected I would, so maybe the worst is over.

Sea Day – 2 of 2

Sunburn. It’s scorching out there.  18 in the shade – high twenties in the direct sunlight. There was a slight breeze, which was surprisingly chilly, but the warmth was definitely winning. Did 20 lengths today – less current. I also got distracted chatting to a lady about glaciers we have seen, which meant I got more done before I noticed my arms aching.

My elbows are a mess. Not only are they being abused by frequent reading/leaning on stuff, but they are also used for pushing lift buttons, so they’re taking a fair amount of abuse. Not somewhere I normally focus on moisturising, but I may make a little more effort for a while.

Gosh there are a lot of Aussies on this ship, all of a sudden. And apparently, more get on tomorrow. It’s the end of the second sector, so we lose 1000 and gain 900, allegedly, mostly Aussies. Spiffing. Also means we had to say goodbye to Chris, Fran and Abi. Much kissing and promising to stay in touch. I’m really sad about losing them. Just when I was starting to like them! Early start tomorrow. Port Day. Valparaiso. Here endeth the second sector.

Sea Day – Amalia Glacier

Well, at 4.30pm approximately. Until then, it’s just more lovely scenery, Sudoku and lunch.

And random announcements from the Bridge, such as the fact that, near where we are passing by now, there is a settlement of around 1500 Welsh-speakers, in three towns. The Welsh came over to help settle this area, at the request of the Chilean government. Well, there you go then. Apparently, their Welsh is still intelligible by those from Wales ‘proper’, unlike Brazilian Portuguese, which is utterly incomprehensible to Portuguese people from Portugal. I have witnessed this myself. When I lived in Caen, I had a Brazilian boy and a Portuguese girl in my class, and their common languages were English and French. They couldn’t understand each other when they tried in Portuguese. So huzzah for the Chilean Welsh people (or are they Welsh Chileans?).

After dinner, we had our photo taken in front of the glacier, out on the open deck at the back of Deck 9, at 8pm at night, in sunshine so bright we were squinting (sunset is 9.30pm-ish around here), standing in our shirt sleeves, as we did in Alaska. Allegedly, the Chilean pilots have said this is the best weather they have ever done this tour in for over ten years. I don’t believe a word of it. This is glacier weather. We always have beautiful weather when we visit glaciers. It’s something about the conditions necessary to make the darn things – it can’t be too wet, or they will flow too smoothly and quickly to become glaciers, and the snow will just rinse away. So the air here is always dry and clear. One of us does not understand how glaciers work, and I’m starting to think it’s not me that’s getting it wrong. Glaciers form when the snow moves too slowly and so it stays at cold altitudes long enough to accumulate. If it’s wet, it won’t stick. Stands to reason. It’s hardly rocket science. I’m not an expert in fluid dynamics, but I think even I get this.

Sea Day – Pio X Glacier

Although for some reason, the Bridge crew and some of the staff have decided it was named after Pope Pius the Eleventh, not Pope Pius the Tenth. Seriously, how hard are Roman numerals, really?

This glacier is MUCH bigger than the Amalia of yesterday. Proper sized. And, allegedly, the only glacier in the world that is growing, rather than retreating. Well, we are in the world’s second biggest non-polar ice field, so I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised.

The weather is so glorious today, it’s actually quite warm out in the sun. Very pleasant indeed. ‘Officially’, the outside air temperature is 11 degrees in the shade, but I reckon you can add maybe five or six more out in the sun. So, like I say, very pleasant indeed.

We have been in very calm channels while visiting these glaciers, so it has been possible to have lovely long soaks in the shower without fear of the ground moving from under you.  We should enter the Pacific at just about dinner time. Could get bumpy.

Happy Friday, everyone. Have a nice weekend.

P.S. Noticed something on the credits of a film the other day. What the blazes is a Biscuit Rig?!

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.