Travel with Dale & Margaret

We woke up this morning to a great surprise.  Sunny skies with just stringy high clouds and about 50 degrees outside!  We are docked with a large fishing boat and freighter on our port side.  The walk on the dock to the buses is about 1/4 mile long but at least we won’t have to do it in the rain.  We had breakfast in the room, our normal oatmeal, fruit, scrambled egg, orange juice and coffee.  Margaret added some English muffins today along with some ham, salami and cream cheese and made up some egg McMargaret’s!  I had mine without the salami but they were quite tasty!

Margaret was feeling better today so she was able to go on the bus tour what was titled “Highlights of Punta Arenas”.  Punta Arenas translates in English to “Sandy Point”.  It is the most prominent settlement on the Strait of Magellan and the is argued by some to be the southernmost city on Earth.  It really isn’t but it is probably the most prominent southernmost city.

I decided to take the lighter weight cameras today — the D200 and the S90.  We had to walk a long block to get on the bus and we then drove a couple miles through the somewhat non-descript town, through their financial/bank district to a cemetery.  Yes, a cemetery.  It is one of the highlights of Punta Arenas apparently.  There were close to a thousand highly manicured cypress hedges, some probably 30 feet tall but all the same shape…rounded cones.

The cemetery was unique in that most of the tombs were above ground — they also have a display case where the families put pictures and flowers and other mementos on display.  Some of the tombs were quite elegant — made of marble with stain glass and intricate carvings and adornments.  Others were more like a room where many family members were buried and when we  peaked in the door we saw a very festive scene!

On the way to our next destination the bus made a stop at a place where we could see the whole city area as as well as the harbor where our ship was docked.  I bought a nice alpaca sweater and negotiated hard on the price…I ended up getting it for just $27 — down from their original asking price of $28!

Then we were off to a museum that pretty much covered the entire range of things you might want to know about this area.  Stuffed animals, historical artifacts, dioramas showing how the native people lived, nautical items, you name it, they had it.  Multiple floors and multiple restrooms as well.  The whole place had a strange smell that made you sort of nauseous after a while.  The best part of this tour was waiting downstairs with a group of fellow passengers that were telling jokes and laughing a lot.  Good time.  One of the best joke/story tellers is Terry Waite but you’ll have to wait a couple more blogs for me to tell you the story about him.

Last but not least…and I know you are sitting on the edge of your chair just waiting for the exciting end of this tour….”we went to”….get ready…..”a”….it’s coming soon….”field”…..hang on to your hat…..”where”…..almost there….”there”……”was”…..”old”……”farm”….”equipment”….”stuff”!  Yes, that’s right.  They took us to a big field that had a bunch of old farm implements, steam engines and other assorted items and out buildings.  And they wanted us to walk around and look at them in the windy, cold and wet conditions.  A few of us actually did walk around, with me taking the opportunity to do a little creative photography (the results aren’t bad and are on the blog) you can click on this link here for the photos:

Most of the people opted to forgo the farm equipment tour and instead walked across the street to “duty free shopping” that turned out to be a big retail store much like a Kmart, only poorly stocked.  That sounds like an oxymoron to me.  But, if we had seen a moron ox on the tour it would have been a lot more interesting.

They took us back to the dock, giving us another exciting opportunity to buy local wares at the town square.  We passed on that.

Some friends we have met, Mike and Cheryl, went on a penguin tour.  Here’s a picture they took there. Definitely more interesting than our tour.

PICTURE COMING SOON AS SOON AS MIKE GIVES BACK MY USB STICK WITH THE PICTURE!

Here’s what it looked like as the Mariner left this exciting place.  So I guess in the end…there was little “point” in Punta Arenas…but it is a place to stop and the cemetery was very nice.

When we woke up this morning, surprise, surprise…more Chilean Fjords and no, not the kind you can drive (ha, ha, I’m not even sure they make Fords in Chile), the kind with big snow capped mountains, beautiful waterfalls coming off the sheer mountain faces and glaciers around every turn!  Today we are going to be traveling down the part of the “Avenue of the Glaciers” where the glaciers are named after countries in honor of famous explorers who came through this area.

Glacial ice has a beautiful blue color caused by the density of the ice and it’s ability to absorb rather than reflect the spectrum of light that results in your eyes only interpreting the blue color.  Snow reflects all the light back to us, thereby appearing white.  Or something like that.  This is a travel blog not a physics class after all!

The crew in their power boat collecting a “glacier”.

While we saw a lot of glaciers today, with one seemingly around every corner, we spent a considerable amount of time hanging out around the “Italian” Glacier.  No surprise since our Captain — Capt. Felice Patruno is, in fact, Italian!  We get “Ciao– See you around” when he broadcasts updates from the bridge at noon each day.  He wanted to plant an Italian flag to update the claim on the glacier for Italy but alas there were no volunteers to assist in this endeavor.  So instead we settled on launching a few of our brave crew members, dressed in their foul weather garb, to motor out toward the glacier and nab a sample of glacial ice.  I believe Capt. Patruno will have is martini “Italian glacier-style” this evening!

Here’s the glacier on display in the main reception area.

Margaret enjoying a view of the Italian Glacier from our veranda.

Meanwhile, back at the Italian glacier, while I was gallivanting about the ship trying to find the best vantage point for pictures and videos, it turns out that the captain decided to use the bow thrusters to turn the boat 360 degrees several times so we could all get fantastic views right from our suites!  As our cruise director would say, “It was GLOOOOOORIOUS” (say that with a decidedly British accent please). As it turns out, there is only one good way to see a glacier and that is to sit in your nice, warm suite on a beautiful ship like the Mariner and watch them go by.

We were very fortunate that the weather was fairly clear with blue skies showing through puffy white clouds.  Apparently, this is rare in this area.  The water was quite calm, enough to give me the opportunity to take some pictures with a reflection of the mountains.  Gorgeous scenery throughout the day as 5,000 foot mountains rise up from the sea and the different hues of green contrast with the grays and browns of the volcanic remains and the white of the snow-topped peaks.

Some calving (ice falling from the face of the glacier) was going on and the ship would respond with a toot of the horn.  A moose (or some other large antlered animal) was responding by making strange noises and banging his horns against a tree on the opposite shore.  Perhaps the moose thought we were a “giant” moose coming to his territory to either fight (if he thinks we are a “male” ship) — or mate (if he thinks us female)..not sure if we like either idea!  Best we keep our distance from shore.  Can moose swim??

We continued on down Glacier Avenue the rest of the day but without further stops.  Just spectacular scenery, smooth waters and constantly changing weather.  The pictures in the Gallery will speak for themselves.

Avenue of Glaciers Picture Gallery: http://travelwithdm.smugmug.com/Travel/South-America/Avenue-of-Glaciers-Feb-3-2010/25168388_7zBXjR#!i=2064185857&k=Hqss7bj

I finally got a video and picture gallery up.  It will work in two ways.  First, I will be editing historic blog entries to include a link to pictures that relate to that subject.  It will go straight to those pictures.  This will be true of all future blog entries as well.

Second, there is a gallery available that will have thumbnail pictures for all the subjects.  You can click on that thumbnail to get to the pictures that are in that subject’s gallery.  Then, you can click on individual thumbnails within that gallery to view larger pictures.   There are menu items at the top of each gallery that will let you download all the pictures into a ZIP file (common method of packaging up multiple files, compressing them and then you decompress them using commonly available programs on your end), subscribe to them to get new additions automatically or pass a link to the gallery to a friend.

When you click on individual pictures, it will let you download only that pictures with the option on the lower left.  You can also go forward and backward to other pictures.  Try it out!

I will be continuing to add more galleries over the next few days until I’m up to date.  There are also individual videos you can play.  The link to the entire Gallery section is:

http://gallery.me.com/travelwithdmcontent#gallery

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

Some reporter I am.  I had the hot story, the hot pictures, the hot videos and what did I do?  Waited a week to post them.  Duh.  I’ll never get a job with the AP with that kind of turn-around.  Oh well, I’ve learned to be better prepared, always hoping to get caught in a disaster that I will uniquely be able to report on.  I’ll take my card reader next time!

Better late than never but here are some links to YouTube with a few videos from our Machu Picchu experience:

This one shows the Bumbaya river from the patio off the dining room of the Inkaterra hotel where we stayed.  It was this way or worse the entire time we were there.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0BYiD1eo9A

This one shows a helicopter taking off from the grass landing area about ¼ mile down a jungle path from the Inkaterra.  This is on the hotel property although it might not be owned by them.  We left in a helicopter similar to this.  This one held about 20 people.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSV2gS7j8jw

This is the video I shot as we ran to get on the helicopter.  Sorry for the shakiness but we had guys with guns aimed at us telling us to hurry and the helicopter was big and had a lot of downdraft.  More to come.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFSvtu88tyE

Hope you enjoyed these snapshots into the experience.  I have to upload the videos after midnight (when everyone else on the ship is asleep!) or it takes forever and usually bombs out before it finishes. Tomorrow, I’ll start posting pictures.  I’ll start from the present and continue to some of the historic pictures.