On the Way Back to Ushuaia

I’m taking the risk of writing tis in the middle of the day as I don’t think that anything much is going to happen here for the rest of the day.

We are now at sea on our return trip to Ushuaia with another day and a half of sailing. We are blessed with calm winds and the sea is dead flat. This is an interesting contrast to my previous trip where we had 8 metre waves as we crossed the same stretch of sea – the Drake Passage.

Yesterday, on leaving Antarctica, we handed in all of our ‘dry skins’ (outdoor wet weather gear), gumboots and waterproof back packs. The crew now have the job of sorting then and getting them ready again for the passengers on the next trip which will depart on the afternoon that we arrive in Ushuaia.

Last night we had an auction of various goods, with the money raised going to a variety of environmentalist organisations. The top items was a chart of the ship’s route, signed by the captain and expedition leader. Its old for $2000 with the buyer also able to make the morning wake-up announcement in their own way. It was very well done by Pam as she attempted to take off the normal morning details provided by our expedition leader in her soft english voice.

Meanwhile, we are enjoying the opportunity to unwind from the frenetic levels of activity that we have had during our time in the south. Our expedition leader tells us that we have had many more landings than most other cruise ships would normally have. I think that this is because we have been relatively lucky with the weather, and also, that his detailed knowledge of the area has meant that he has been able to position us in places where we could go off the the ship for a variety of activities. It is nice to be able to sleep in until 7.30 am, rather have a call to be at the gangway at 6.00 am to fit in an excursion because there was a window in the weather that would allow us to go somewhere.

So far today, we have had two extremely different talks. One was by the most boring specialist on the ship who gave a talk on how to identify albatrosses (I, along with most people, didn’t go) and at the other extreme, we had an interesting session on photo editing by our very creative and flamboyant photo expert, Kyle from Canada.

The most interesting thing that filled in our time was watching a pod of dolphins swimming in the bnow wave of the ship.

Lunch is now over and people are either snoozing in their cabins, chatting in the lounge, or editing their photos because we know that people at home will only want to see the best 100 rather than the 3000 that we actually took.,