So this starts of with a bit of bad news. Last week our captain, Phil, fell ill and passed away. We had to turn around and return to port in Punta Arenas to drop his body off. It was a pretty crazy and surreal experience. To make things worse we had to travel through 20+ seas to get back, which slowed us down by about a day. We had to sit in port for about 6-8 hours waiting for the weather to calm down enough to approach the dock. The boat quickly became saturated with Chilean authorities of all sorts. We had a memorial service for the captain on the back deck.
On a lighter note we were back in port for two days! I was glad that we came back b/c my computer crashed and I lost all my pictures of the Strait of Magellan and wouldn't have been able to take more since we would be coming back a different way. Also it gave me some time to go out on the town and explore a little more. They have bikes on the boat, which is really convenient and quite brilliant as I would not have thought to have them on board. It makes sense though if you think about it. So we, Andrew and Angel, borrowed a couple of the bikes and went and explored Punta Arenas. Being in the Andes it gets steep relatively quickly and you can see in the picture we only road a mile or two and were able to get a pretty amazing view of Punta and the bay. You can partially see our ship in you look in front of the huge cruise ship and just past the left side of the blue roofed building. There was a nice little coffee shop right next to where I took this and we stopped in for a drink. Right outside the cafe they had a few wooden poles with signs of cities around the world and what direction and how far they where from Punta. I looked and they didn't have Pensacola, but they did have Houston! So Sarah I knew that you were 9487 km away from me at the exact moment! We ended up riding around for about 5 hours. On the way back we stopped by the Square where they have a pretty cool statue. It has a native chilean? with a worn bronze foot that you can see at the bottom right. Everyone rubs in and takes pictures with it. I think it is supposed to give you good luck. I did it, but I wasn't all that happy about it not being a big foot person. I think the naked lady would have been a better specimen personally.
We returned to the ship and put the bikes back in storage and got cleaned up for dinner. We went to this cool restaurant that had an open flame cooking the lamb that I would soon consume. They are supper nice and the let us in the room and took our pictures next to it. I'm not sure how the health inspectors would feel about that in the U.S., but I don't think they could give two shits down here! I think they do it so that you will order it being the most expensive thing on the menu, which I believe was about $9,500 Chilean or about $18 US dollars! It was absolutely delicious and they aren't shy in there serving size. I couldn't even finish it all, but I think that's more due to the fact that lamb is a pretty rich meat. We had a great bottle of wine to go along with it and just had a great evening. I've really enjoyed the Chilean wine and hope to bring a couple bottles back, which I think is all that you are allowed by customs. After that we went to a cool little bar under one of the hotels that surrounds the Square and ran into a crew from a NOAA boat that had just got into port. We ended up hanging out with them for a while and eventually making our way to the Disco with a few of them. We got there about 11pm local time and didn't leave until around 4am and there were no signs of it closing anytime soon. The local women really seemed to enjoy my beard, which caught me off guard since it is slowling consuming my face. I had a few of them just come up and rub it, perhaps making sure it was real!. So they weren't shy to say the least, at least with me. I was under the impression that they women down here where more on the conservative side. This worked out great for me b/c I ended dancing with them throughout the night and had a great time experiencing the Chilean disco scene!
We've since headed back to the open ocean to continue our research. I'm going to try to get an entry of our daily operations when we deploy our instruments at the stations. Hope you enjoyed.
-J
On a lighter note we were back in port for two days! I was glad that we came back b/c my computer crashed and I lost all my pictures of the Strait of Magellan and wouldn't have been able to take more since we would be coming back a different way. Also it gave me some time to go out on the town and explore a little more. They have bikes on the boat, which is really convenient and quite brilliant as I would not have thought to have them on board. It makes sense though if you think about it. So we, Andrew and Angel, borrowed a couple of the bikes and went and explored Punta Arenas. Being in the Andes it gets steep relatively quickly and you can see in the picture we only road a mile or two and were able to get a pretty amazing view of Punta and the bay. You can partially see our ship in you look in front of the huge cruise ship and just past the left side of the blue roofed building. There was a nice little coffee shop right next to where I took this and we stopped in for a drink. Right outside the cafe they had a few wooden poles with signs of cities around the world and what direction and how far they where from Punta. I looked and they didn't have Pensacola, but they did have Houston! So Sarah I knew that you were 9487 km away from me at the exact moment! We ended up riding around for about 5 hours. On the way back we stopped by the Square where they have a pretty cool statue. It has a native chilean? with a worn bronze foot that you can see at the bottom right. Everyone rubs in and takes pictures with it. I think it is supposed to give you good luck. I did it, but I wasn't all that happy about it not being a big foot person. I think the naked lady would have been a better specimen personally.
We returned to the ship and put the bikes back in storage and got cleaned up for dinner. We went to this cool restaurant that had an open flame cooking the lamb that I would soon consume. They are supper nice and the let us in the room and took our pictures next to it. I'm not sure how the health inspectors would feel about that in the U.S., but I don't think they could give two shits down here! I think they do it so that you will order it being the most expensive thing on the menu, which I believe was about $9,500 Chilean or about $18 US dollars! It was absolutely delicious and they aren't shy in there serving size. I couldn't even finish it all, but I think that's more due to the fact that lamb is a pretty rich meat. We had a great bottle of wine to go along with it and just had a great evening. I've really enjoyed the Chilean wine and hope to bring a couple bottles back, which I think is all that you are allowed by customs. After that we went to a cool little bar under one of the hotels that surrounds the Square and ran into a crew from a NOAA boat that had just got into port. We ended up hanging out with them for a while and eventually making our way to the Disco with a few of them. We got there about 11pm local time and didn't leave until around 4am and there were no signs of it closing anytime soon. The local women really seemed to enjoy my beard, which caught me off guard since it is slowling consuming my face. I had a few of them just come up and rub it, perhaps making sure it was real!. So they weren't shy to say the least, at least with me. I was under the impression that they women down here where more on the conservative side. This worked out great for me b/c I ended dancing with them throughout the night and had a great time experiencing the Chilean disco scene!We've since headed back to the open ocean to continue our research. I'm going to try to get an entry of our daily operations when we deploy our instruments at the stations. Hope you enjoyed.
-J
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