I feel like one eye blink has happened since I last wrote, but it’s actually been like 4 days and that’s a lot when you’re rolling along the South American coast.
We last left off in Puerto Montt- home of the huge cherries. The next day was a sea day while we cruised past the Amalia glacier. Our onboard historian lady said it was the largest one off mainland Antarctica. Pretty cool. I’ve seen a glacier before but never sailed up to one so I have to say it was pretty cool to look out the window at some point and see a glacier just hanging out. Jason woke up, looked at it and said, “Yup, looks like a glacier.” Ha! He’s done many Alaska cruises.
Anyway, it was a calm sea day that ended up with us entering the Straight of Magellan. That was cool! I still have plenty of the world left to see, but I’m becoming aware of my limited opportunities to see things for the first time. It’s one of my biggest joys - to see something with my own eyes that I’ve read about or heard about my whole life. Anyway, I still felt the thrill of it even though absolutely nothing looked different out the window when we turned into the straight.
I’ve been watching for wildlife and haven’t seen anything yet. Ok, well, I’ve seen birds but I didn’t want to see birds so who cares. You’d think there weren’t any fish down in these parts.Vickie, the lady who talks about all the things, said we might see otters near the glacier and I spent a long time sweetly staring at a brown rock that I’d convinced myself was an otter. It was a nice moment.
We arrived in Punta Arenas the following day, which was Christmas Eve. Jason and I had a wild excursion planned because sometimes I convince myself that things are a good idea so we were supposed to talk a strenuous walk into the national forest and see the condors. Condors are birds. This is the problem. Also, they are large. Very big. Large and birds at the same time. I don’t know how big. Could they swoop down and grab me? Thank God I’ve gained some weight lately. That will help.
All that said, oddly, after breakfast, Jason starting feeling a little sea sick. This was strange on several levels- 1) the ship was parked and honestly really not moving much at all and 2) I felt fine and if someone is going to be sea sick, it’s for sure going to be me!! Anyway, I decided to grab the water shuttle over to town to pop around a bit in case he decided he was sick and didn’t want to do the excursion. Ok, that didn’t make sense as I typed it. I was afraid he would decide when it was too late for me to still look around town and get the excursion. You get it.
The water shuttle decided it was time for a long winter’s nap, however, and it took me about 45 minutes to get to the shore and almost an hour and 15 to get back! Sheesh! While waiting for the shuttle on the ship, I could sense a good brouhaha forming and you know I love a good brouhaha. BTW- I had to look up how to spell that. Did you also look it up to see if I spelled it wrong? What a weird one!Anyway, back to the brouhaha- so we started all piling up because there wasn’t a water shuttle at the ship so we had to wait. Old people and lines are a guaranteed recipe for disaster! It was going fairly well until some people came down the elevator which emptied them out into the middle of the waiting area- in which the line was wrapping around. Rather than looking around and then joining the end of the line, they stood in the middle. This immediately made every person in the line suspicious and angry. But most people are also not confrontational so they just grumbled and fumed. Finally, the moment came to board the water shuttle and the ‘new’ people just pushed forward to the front. Well. Good Lord.
The man behind me said to me, “Are you ok with this?” Which made me feel like I was in charge. I’m very good at being in charge, but I’m also on vacation from having to think that hard so I said, “No,” and then did nothing further. Then the man said, “I’m not a dickler, but this makes me mad.” It was all I could do, guys. Somehow, I held it together but then he decided he was a dickler, I suppose, and he went forward to yell at the people. And you will NOT believe what they said!!! “We have privilege.” Oh my word did that get the line riled up! Oh the eye rolls, the sighs, the loud repeating of, “OH THEY HAVE PRIVILEGE.” My man the dickler felt this reaction was acceptable so he calmly stepped back in line with me and his wife who was walking that perfect line of being completely mortified and 100% on his side.
Anyway, we all made it to shore without a mutiny. I poked around a bit, walked a few city blocks and then gloriously found the local grocery. Man, do I love a grocery store in a different country! And not that I wanted Jason to not feel well, but him not being there allowed me to walk around the store 8 thousand times looking at every single bottle, package, piece of fruit, and chunk of cheese. The bliss! I have such good news for my friends who have big teeth! Check out the toothpaste available.
I rolled through the self checkout like a freaking Spanish speaking wizard but then I had a conundrum. I told Jason I would either be back in the room by 1:30 to go with him on the excursion OR meet him in the terminal building on shore at 1:50 when the tour was supposed to meet. I was sort of right at the time where either was possible if everything worked ok. There wasn’t really anything to eat or drink right there so I quickly decided I better pop back to the ship to grab a small sandwich and bottle of water before being murdered by condors during a strenuous walk. And, this is when the process took 75 minutes. During this time, no WiFi, so I was somewhat worried that Jason would in the meantime hop on a tender to shore and we would cross. And I wouldn’t have time to make it back again the way things were going.
All this to say, in the end, neither of us went to meet our bird demise. It’s fine. It was Christmas Eve and if he wasn’t too keen to go, I didn’t want to go badly enough to go without him. Problem solved.
We went to the steakhouse for dinner, which was absolutely delicious but more importantly, as a substitution for us not wanting dessert, our waiter offered to sing us a song. Never heard of that before, but hey, why not? He had me pick between Bruno Mars and John Legend. I picked John Legend and he proceeded to sing a gorgeous accapella version of All of You- so good I teared up at the end. What a treat, indeed!
Back in the lobby, the staff read the Night Before Christmas and then a ton of the ship crew and staff came out and we all sang Christmas carols. A snow machine rained snow down into the piazza. It was perfect! I can’t say it really felt like Christmas when you are at home having Christmas, but it was really nice all the same.Truly nothing can beat the warm and cozy feeling of Christmas home with your family and friends and all your normal traditions, and we were missing that.
Hmmm…somewhere in all this, we went and had the most fabulous massages. I would try to think of when that was but you don’t actually care, it doesn’t matter, and I don’t want to think.
We grew sleepy watching Christmas movies in the room and sipping red wine. The next morning would be Christmas Day and there was a lot planned with the Malbec Crew!
No comments:
Post a Comment