Brujo Glacier...and then the Strait of Magellan

Tuesday, February 5

A sea day...but also an early day to be out of bed. The When & Where indicated that we would be sailing by the Brujo Glacier and commentary would begin at 7 am. We flipped on the TV when we got up and by tuning into the channel showing the front view of the ship we could hear when Kevin, one of the expedition guides, began talking. That was our cue to head up to the bow.

The sun was just coming up over the mountains and when the ship turned towards the glacier we were looking directly into the sun. It made for lots of squinting and lousy photos. It was hard to even look at the glacier without being blinded. Just as the captain started to turn the ship to leave, the sun finally ducked under a cloud.

So hard to see the glacier when we were looking directly into the sun.

In the opposite direction the mountains were highlighted by the rising sun.

Brujo Glacier...and the sun finally ducks behind a cloud.

A close up of the waterfall in the previous photo.

Once the ship pulled away from the glacier, I went back to the cabin and did my daily chore...backing up the photos from the previous day. I mistakenly thought that the port talk on Punta Arenas was at 10:00 am so went to the theater by 9:30 to get a good seat. Turned out that the talk was at 10:30 but getting there super early wasn't a bad idea. By the time it started, the theater was standing room only with many people sitting on the steps in the balcony.

Tip:  We learned it was necessary to get to the theater early for most scheduled events...port talks, lectures by the expedition guides and the evening entertainment. To pass the time we played games on our phones. Bob and I discovered a game called Wordscapes that is similar to the game Boggle...fun and somewhat addicting! Sometimes I would also take my iPad and update the notes for this blog. It was so nice to have most of it written BEFORE I was dead tired and wanting to go to sleep. Laurel had just gotten a new Kindle for Christmas and actually read quite a bit while she was waiting. And as a low-tech alternative we would pick up the puzzle sheets from guest services and do a crossword or Sudoku.

A map of the highlights in Punta Arenas

We kept our seats and stayed in the theater for the next talk by expedition leader, Scott, on whales. He was still speaking when the captain gave his noon update. Instead of stopping so everyone could hear what the captain was saying over the speaker, Scott just continued talking. We could only hear bits and pieces of the captain's announcement but did understand him to say that we would be heading out into rough open water from 1:30 pm until the evening when we would enter the Strait of Magellan.

I left the whales talk a little early so I could hear the organ in the atrium at 12:15. In the 23 days we were on the Zaandam last April, we never once took time to hear it play. It sounds a bit like an old time music box. When the music starts, the many of the figures on the organ begin to dance or play an instrument. The whale lecture still hadn't finished so after listening to the organ, I went directly to the buffet to beat the crowds. I grabbed a table for four and just waited until the others arrived before picking up any food.

The top of the organ on deck 4 by guest services.

The bottom of the organ in the atrium on deck 3.

Skies were cloudy and by the time we finished eating, visibility had dropped to almost nothing and it was raining. So different than the blue skies we had experienced most every day until now.

At 2:00 pm we went to Tamara's lecture on the heroic explorers to Antarctica. I was familiar with Shackleton's story but we also heard about some of the other expeditions from the same time period. The fact that I stayed awake in a semi-dark room right after eating is a testament to how interesting the talk was!

But...when the lecture was over we all headed back to the cabin for our siestas. As the captain had predicted, we had entered open waters and the seas were quite rough. After dealing with motion sickness last week, Bob was proactive and took some meclazine. The seas were so rough that waves were washing over our window. And even though we are on deck 1, our window is still quite a distance from the surface of the water so you know the waves were high!

I slept longer than I intended and then had to hustle to get ready for dinner. It was our second gala night which we noticed produced a very wide range of attire. I'm convinced some people just forgot that it was gala night based on their clothing. Many of the men (including Bob and Kent) wore just a dress shirt...some with ties and some without. A few guys had sports coats and even fewer were dressed in suits.

Cleaned up for gala night!

No menu had been posted on the Navigator app. (We usually looked at the menu ahead and knew what we wanted to order by the time we got to the dining room.) I had shrimp cocktail for my appetizer and sole with lime rice for the main course. Dessert followed the lime theme...lime coconut souffle. The other three had filet mignon.

I had to run outside after dinner to get a photo of this rainbow!

The show in the main theater was a rerun of two of the past entertainers...Martin Beaumont, the comedian, and Andrea Amat, the flute player. Comedians aren't usually my first choice for entertainment, but this guy was pretty funny and didn't resort to foul language or off color jokes to get laughs.

The meclazine that we took during the afternoon was starting to make us sleepy so Bob and I called it a night right after the show ended. From my maps.me app I could see we were entering the narrower portion of the Strait of Magellan. The seas had calmed and we were on our way to Punta Arenas.