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I woke up early, took some nice pictures of the morning light, went to a couple workout classes while making sure Margaret was OK and received her breakfast and tea. Margaret woke up with a minor relapse of her bout with bronchitis but made a comeback after taking a shower at the end of the day. The antibiotics seem to be kicking in! She worked on some work projects from bed and is excited about some new projects that she has just been assigned.
The view here just does on and on and on and on. And it is all quite beautiful. We spent the entire day cruising in the Southern Chilean Fjords. Several glaciers came and went as we viewed them from our room’s veranda. Quite a spectacular way to spend the day. The weather changes about every 10 minutes making me reminisce about the old phrase, “If you don’t like the weather, just wait 10 minutes”. Overcast, gray drizzle followed by puffy white clouds with brilliant blue skies followed by hail followed by, well, you get the picture.
In fact, after making sure Margaret was all set I went out to get more pictures. A couple more glaciers passed us by while the Wonderful Terry Breen told us all about them. I finally figured out how to do a Picture Gallery using the ship’s slow internet, edited some pictures, posted pictures, had a lunch of Chilean sausage hot dogs with some new friends from Incline Village, NV — Nick and Sherrie on the pool deck (brrrr!!!) and then more picture work in the room.
As if I hadn’t had enough, late in the afternoonI went up to the 12th deck and attempted to go outside to take a panoramic picture. After struggling to get one of the upper deck doors open, I finally succeeded and was almost blown off the ship! The wind was blowing and gusting what felt like 40 knots. I decided it just wasn’t worth it and then had a hard time opening the door to come back inside! It’s hard to believe there were people in the middle of the day walking laps on the upper deck in the cold, windy and RAINY conditions. Very committed I’d say. I decided to just go to the gym. It’s nice a warm and works just fine to get me sweating!
Finally, after I thought I was all pictured out we went to dinner at La Veranda where there was nary a soul around. We had barely sat down to dinner when the ship went past a shipwreck of the Santa Leonora. All rusted red it was listing at about a 30 degree angle with the bow sticking up out of the water This shipwreck is on the Isla Shoal in Canal Smyth just before the strait of Magellan. She sank on her maiden voyage in 1964. All passengers and hands were rescued albeit a bit tipsy as they’d consumed all of the liquor cargo as they waited for their rescue! I couldn’t help but take a few pictures!
As we ate dinner, the scenery was spectacular with the sun shining from time to time on an island here, part of the shore there in Ansel Adams style. When I get around to processing them all you’ll love the cloud pictures! We couldn’t say that it was the best dinner we’ve had on this trip and the service was a bit spotty. But, we ate, had some of the best deserts so far (gushy warm chocalate cake with nuts and hot fudge, flan, rice pudding….yummy!). (Editor’s note: Dale eats the desserts — I just have a bite of the chocolate ones!)
After dinner I spent about 45 minutes taking pictures of dramatic and constantly changing clouds from our veranda. The amazing thing about taking pictures while you are moving at 17 knots is the dynamic weather environment — you just can’t relax as the setting can change VERY quickly. It keeps you on your feet and in the cold weather outside (40 degrees plus about 25 knot wind) it’s good to keep moving. But it’s all worth it in the end and it must be keeping me healthy breathing all the clean, cold air!
Not too happy with the stock market these days. Ugh! But the lighthouse keeper on a small island that we went by in the middle of nowhere (missed that picture while at dinner) probably isn’t too concerned about it so neither should I. It just got dark as I’m writing this at about 10:30pm. We’re going to finish watching the movie Fargo that we started a couple days back and get to sleep. Tomorrow is Punta Arenas where we are doing a fairly simple city tour that will take 3.5 hours. Hopefully, Margaret will feel OK!
Hope you are enjoying our updates and we DO enjoy your comments. Keep ’em coming!
Avenue of the Glaciers Picture Gallery: http://travelwithdm.smugmug.com/Travel/South-America/Avenue-of-Glaciers-Feb-3-2010/25168388_7zBXjR#!i=2064185857&k=Hqss7bj
Dale - Get Sean McEwen to help you. He’s a PC whiz! Getting rough out on the ocean down here today.
Dale