Sunday - February 03, 2008

Port Stanley, Falkland Islands, Punto Arenas, Chile, and Cape Horn

Captain Mc Naught, who earned the nickname Miss-a-port McNaught on the 2005 World Cruise after missing 5 ports, is not having any better luck on this voyage. (Maybe he would say that it's not his bad luck at all, but ours!) So far we have had two tender ports, Port Stanley and Punta Arenas (the most southern city of its size in the world), and we have not been able to see either. We missed Port Stanley a few days ago because of strong winds and expected heavy rain, and we are now pulling up anchor outside Punta Arenas because the winds are blowing at 40 knots and expected to reach 60 by late afternoon. I am not upset about missing the city of Punta Arenas, but I am disappointed that we're missing our last opportunity on this trip to see a penguin colony. I think that would have been quite a sight, and quite a smell! But as my mother always says, what can't be cured must be endured, and we are going to be rewarded by being able to transit the Strait of Magellan in the daylight instead of night. 

All was not lost in Port Stanley however, as we still had the thrill of having two Tornado fighter jets doing a fly by over the ship. The two jets did a number of passes, and I can't possible describe for you how loud it is when they going screaming overhead, or how fast. I could see them coming around in the distance, but by the time I was able to find them in my camera lens as they appeared overhead, they were gone! So the pictures I have are at quite a distance. There was also a helicopter so close to us that you could see the cameraman hanging out trying to take pictures of the ship. In addition to these flying "birds", we also saw a pair of albatrosses (albatri?) swooping up and down alongside the ship. 

We had also been invited to a Port Stanley Sail Away party by another couple on our deck, and they decided to go ahead with the party anyway. People kept coming, and because it was so windy, we couldn't spread out on the balcony. We joked that it was starting to feel like scene in the Marx Brothers movie where people keep pouring into a tiny cabin and end up crawling over each other to get a drink! But it was fun and a good party, so nobody minded. 

The passage between Port Stanley and Cape Horn was pretty rough. We were going to enter the Beagle Channel to receive our clearance from the Chilean authorities, but they told us to stay out due to 50 foot waves, and just emailed us our documents. We were already bouncing around a fair bit, to the point that a number of people were missing from their dinner tables, so I'm glad we didn't have to endure those conditions. Luckily, I had taken one of my magic pills when I heard the seas were going to be rough, so I was fine, although I did stay towards the middle of the bed at night. We ran into Mimi, our night stewardess, as we left the dining room and she said, "It's a bit wobbly, isn't it." She is a master of the understatement. 

We were also given a treat yesterday when we circumnavigated the island of Cape Horn, the most southern piece of land in South America. Did you know that it is named after the city of Hoorn in Holland? This is city from which the Dutch ships departed in 1615 on their way to find another passage, besides the Strait of Magellen which the Dutch East India Company had a monopoly on, to the spice trade in the east. It was rather sad, in a way, because the Captain announced that the QE2 would never be this far south again ever. 

From the balcony I was on, I could see the Captain and the officers taking pictures of each other out on the bridge wing. Then I could hear a bugle playing Taps. It was an English gentleman, who has a cabin on our deck, who our stewards all call Major ("Major, do you have your ears in?"), playing his bugle out on his balcony. He had planned to do this in Port Stanley to honor the British soldiers who had fallen in the Falkland War, but having been denied the opportunity, he chose to do it at this time instead. It seemed quite fitting and I had tears in my eyes as I listened to it. I expect I was not the only one. 

Here are a few pictures of the Cape, which looks distinctly like parts of Scotland, don't you think, Gavin? The weather was pretty similar too, being mostly cloudy with occasional showers and some bright spells (which Mike says is the daily weather report for any place in Britain on any day) - and a rainbow.

So after missing the two ports, and having been at sea for 3 days, we now have 3 more days ahead of us. This is longer than it takes the QE2 to do a crossing from England to New York! I, for one, will be glad to put foot on land again in Valparaiso. People joke about having cabin fever; we are having the real thing.