All shook up

Christmas  Eve in Ushuaia was, um, interesting. As an apology for some less than perfect service from our travel agent, she gifted us the celebratory Christmas Eve dinner at our hotel.  Before I continue, I want y say that we’ve used Journey Latin America for many successful trips, and we have found them always to be fully on top of things, accessing great local input to trip planning and possessing a keen understanding of what we like or don’t like in our travel plans. So, when I say less than perfect service, I really mean the one small issue out of 100 efforts, so the apology dinner was very much appreciated. Well, the thought was very much appreciated.  The execution, not so much.  In true Latin fashion, the first sitting wasn’t until 8:30, by which time both Sadie and I were both so hungry that we considered sucking our complementary tea bags as a source of nutrition. We went to the dining room precisely at 8:30, and we were alone there for at least another 20 minutes. We had pre-ordered our three course meal, and it had all sounded pretty tasty. We were very inclined to be appreciative.  I won’t go into details, but I can say without a single hint of hyperbole, it was probably the worst meal either Sadie and I have experienced.  Please keep in mind, I have been offered pigeon head in China, tripe soup in Romania and guinea pig in Ecuador.  My bar is pretty low. This meal did a limbo right under it. We left most of our starters, had one bite of inedible mains and left before discovering what abomination was to be presented for dessert.  Luckily there was lots of semi-stale bread and crackers to see us through, though we gave a miss to the slightly rancid chicken spread that accompanied the bread basket. To be fair, mid-level hotels rarely shine on the “special dinner” front, but this really belonged in zero stars in trip advisor category.

The next morning ww ordered an Uber to take us into town to drop off our bags at the Oceanwide Expedition office. For some unknown reason, we aren’t permitted to bring our own bags to the ship.  Maybe they were screening for unauthorised whaling weapons. We dropped off the bags at 9:30, as requested, and then found out we couldn’t board the ship until 4:00 pm. On Christmas Day. We had six hours to kill in a town where we could see metaphorical tumbleweeds careening down the main drag.  For a few moments, I even considered finding a church to go to just to pass the time. It was our great fortune to discover a cafe associated with a hotel that was open so we could plunk ourselves down and try to eke out coffee for as many hours as we could. After a few hours, I discovered a beauty “spa” that was due to open later, but I wasn’t entirely clear on exactly what types of massage they offered.  They  had a WhatsApp number to contact for availability. They responded quickly saying that they would be open from 1 and didn’t offer happy endings on their menu of treatments so I figured it was probably the kind of massage I might like.  I was therefore able to treat  myself to a very expensive, mediocre massage whilst Sadie discovered a newly open pizza place.  By 3, we were ready to head to the port but stopped off at a teeny convenience store to stock up on boat snacks. Just in case things got really desperate on the lifeboats, we could always use chocolate and crisps as bargaining chips.

We weren’t entirely sure where our ship was berthed,so we simply walked through the port until we found it, right at the very end of a long pier. First we had to pass the Princess Cruise ship, a vessel that holds 3000 people, and is my own personal vision of hell.  I understand that this type of holiday is heaven for some people, but I genuinely don’t get the appeal of a floating hotel. Why not just stay on land?  As we walked up the pier, it was very easy to determine who was a Cruise customer vs who was an Expedition customer.  The Cruise customers were all dressed in “cruise-wear”, some of which involved white trousers and navy blue blazers in a valiant attempt to look nautical whilst boarding one of the least nautical vessels one could imagine. No shade to them (well, maybe a little); I’m sure that they all have a marvellous time on the giant floating resorts that are WAY to big to go anyplace really interesting in the area. The expedition people were dressed in leggings, jeans, t-shirts, fleeces and carried well-used rucksacks.  I hope I remain an expedition person for the rest of my life.

 Seeing Plancius for the first time was when the excitement hit my gut like a tsunami, perhaps not the best metaphor for a sea based expedition, but it’s the best one I’ve got for the feeling.  I came very close to weeping with the emotion of it.  We were greeted at the foot of the gangplank by two charming crew members who kindly offered to take our pictures and who injected an immediate sense of joy and frivolity. As we continued  up the gangplank and onto the deck, we were greeted my more crew members which led me to wonder if physical attractiveness is a condition of Oceanwide employment. It is a thought I’ve often also had about ski instructors and beach lifeguards. Hard to know what is causation and what is correlation.

We were shown to our cabin which was surprisingly large and well equipped. It is about the size of a standard university dorm room with an en suite bathroom. The clothes and equipment we’d hired were already in our cabin, along with not one, but TWO life jackets for each of us. We are located on the 4th level so we have a large window which provides a great view.   Unpacking was quick and easy as there is tons of storage space, and it is easy to secure everything.  I am a fanatical user of packing cubes which made the process even simpler.

Before we could cast off, we had to attend the mandatory safety briefing, led by the ship’s safety officer who gave his briefing in a strong Russian, or possible Ukrainian, accent. Luckily, my ears are well attuned to this. We learned about what working signals sound like. Seven  short blasts, followed by one long one  means we are to return to our cabins, get our main life preservers and calmly return to the lounge where we should await further instructions.  One lang blast means abandon ship, and when we hear it we should remain calm (hah!), grab the smaller life jacket and make our way to our respective lifeboats.  Each lifeboat holds 56 people and is fully enclosed like the ones in the film ‘Triangle of Sadness”.  Having seen that film, I am always careful to be very polite to every last one of the crew members, especially the cleaning staff.  After our drill, we returned to our cabins and watched us move away from the pier to be on our way.  We then had our captain’s welcome, also delivered in a strong Russian accent.  I learned an interesting fact that the captain refuses to have his back to the ship’s bow whilst it is moving.  Sailing superstitions are way more interesting than land based ones although for most of human history, it was considered bad luck to have a woman aboard.  We’ll see about that. 

The first few hours were spent travelling through the Beagle channel until we hit the Drake passage.  I’d applied my seasickness patch so I felt ready for anything.  Two days later, we are still in the Drake, and whilst I can’t deny it’s been pretty rough, it isn’t nearly as scary as I was expecting.  The swells are only about 3-4 meters and as the patches have worked their magic, both Sadie and I are rather enjoying the rolling motion of the ship.  Strangely, I feel ever so slightly disappointed that the waves aren’t even higher as lord knows, I love me some drama. All corridors have handrails (and available sick bags should they be required), and the rule is “one hand for the ship and one for you”.  In other words, don’t attempt to walk anywhere without a firm grasp on something that can’t move.  You quickly get a feel for how the motion of the ship works, and years of applying mascara in a moving vehicle have served as great training for anticipating bumps. 

The next day was spent listening to lectures from the crew members on Antarctic geology, weather, animal life and all sorts of other interesting things. They are careful to manage our expectations about what we may or may not see, but it’s really hard to contain the excitement. Sadie and I also spent a fair amount of time sleeping, with drowsiness being a major side effect of the Scopaderm patches.  At one point, Sadie was sleeping so soundly that she neither heard the tannoy announcement for dinner nor did she hear me trying to wake her up. I had to check to make sure she was actually still breathing. Thankfully she was,and I managed to wake her up without the use of a cold glass of water to her head which might have put a significant dent in our ship-board relationship.

Announcements are made throughout the day telling us where we need to be or what we need to be doing.  I can’t help but think of the Love Boat, and I find myself quietly searching for Isaac, Captain Steubing and Julie, the cruise director.  I will eventually get over this, I’m sure.

 

Today was devoted to hearing talks about all the activities on offer - mountaineering, kayaking and camping.  I very confident about the camping (probably the only activity on the planet I am more confident about than Sadie) and kayaking.  Having camped in England at Easter, I feel well prepared for the temperature.  I was originally planning to give mountaineering a miss, but after my solo hike up to the glacier, I’m feeling a teeny bit better about the option. Anyway, the “mountaineering” trek I signed up for  does not involve crampons, belaying or crevasse rescues (I hope) so now that I’m an absolute hiking veteran, this should be a piece of cake.  Let’s hope that you are not reading about an international rescue effort in a few j

There is so much more to write about (the people, the food, the ship), but I will leave this here for now.  My mountaineering trek is scheduled for tomorrow morning, so I will take this opportunity to go to my cabin and stress for a bit before dinner.