Saturday, March 22, 2008

T minus 3 hours

Our boat is scheduled to leave doc in 3 hours, finally. It seems like I've been here for quite some time now, and I'm ready to get underway with the boat. Let's just hope I have the fortitude to keep my food down. From what I understand, the sailing is pretty smooth for the first 12 hours or so, as we travel through the straights of Magellan, then it gets rougher. Its pretty windy this morning too. I've been able to notice the boat rocking a little bit in the dock, but its not given me any kind of bad feelings. Hopefully I'll be alright. I've also heard rumors that one of the birthing rooms is called "the anti-gravity room" As its located at the forward most point in the ship, of any room. From what I can tell of the floor plans, I have that room. Oh Joy! I took the top bunk, as it has the port hole with a view. I hope I don't regret it.

Punta Arenas is nice. I've got some decent pictures, but since I've been shooting in RAW format, I haven't had a chance to process them to jpegs to upload. I'll make sure I get them all done so I can send them up when I get to Palmer Station. Last night we went to a nice fancy restaurant called "Remezon" where I had some Garlic Soup (amazing!) and some Manta Ray (interesting...)

The boat is pretty cool, even if it is small, its cool to see how things are designed to handle the fact that normally horizontal surfaces aren't always horizontal. The scientific equipment is of course intriguing to me. I wish I could be on a cruise when science would be done, but alas, tis not the mission of this cruise. The food has been really good here too. I had heard cooks in the past just present fried food to the crew, and that's it, but the current cook (Bob) does a really classy job. We've had spice (cumin?) crusted salmon and sea bass, and some other yummy things, of which I have a hard time remembering. I just remember it was good. So as long as I can keep it down, I think it will be a good trip.

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