January 27 – Oh What a Night (and Day)!

I’m on board and I’ve had another great day.  My driver for the last two days Adolfo had been sent to do an all-day tour so today I had Rodrigo to drive me to San Antonio to catch the ship.  As usual I sat up front and it was an interesting ride to say the least.  Rodrigo is Chilean, 52 and spent a few years in the Chilean army.  Somehow, I’m not exactly sure how, he spent two years in Afghanistan working with a K-9 soldier doing bomb detection assignments.  He showed me pictures of him with his dog, a video of them standing by a Blackhawk at Bagram, and a letter of commendation from a Colonel.  I don’t know exactly how or why he was there, but I really think he was.  As we were talking he asked me if I liked the singers Elvis and Neil Armstrong. That caught me off guard and I said’ Rodrigo, I think Neil Armstrong was an astronaut.” He said he always gets confused and it was that black singer with the raspy voice. Aha, he meant Louis Armstrong.  I told him I liked both of them. So he  got his phone out again and showed me videos of him singing two Elvis songs and the Armstrong song What a Wonderful world. Honestly, if I hadn’t been looking at the videos I could have believed that I was hearing the real thing; he was that good. I told him he was missing his calling being a driver and tour guide.

The drive went very fast because I was thoroughly entertained.  Check-in was easy and I was on the Quest in no time. My cabin was ready so I plopped my purse and carryon down and headed for lunch in the Colonnade. As I sat there a couple I met at the hotel in Santiago came by and joined me. They are a delightful couple, Sam and Alexandra, who live part-time in Alaska and part-time in Nebraska. Sam runs a mining company in the former and is a UNC grad. We had a leisurely lunch, and just a little wine, and then it was time to go and see if my suitcases had arrived.

They had and I found a place for everything.  My bright orange Seabourn parka for Antarctica and my boots also came.  On one of the sea days I’ll have to get someone to take my picture so you can laugh at how I look.  Around 5 PM we were sailing so I went up to the pool area where the singers and dancers introduced themselves and sang a couple of songs.  The highlight was meeting Arty.  Arty the penguin has been waiting for three years to go down to Antarctica to say hello to his family and he’s finally on his way.

I had a pretty jam-packed day because after we sailed away there was a cocktail party for us solo travelers.  There were several there.  One of them is a lady from Germany via New Jersey and I can tell she’s going to be fun to be with.  Two of us were invited to dine at a table with the lead female vocalist so we had to scoot.  Sometimes hosted tables don’t work, but this one was delightful.  The food was good and we did a lot of laughing so it was fun. Amber convinced me I should go to the show down in the club which is kind of a nightclub sort of place with a dance floor.  The vocal group did a selection of Frankie Valle songs, hence the name “Oh What a Night.”  One of the male singers has an absolutely fantastic falsetto voice and the show was great.  As has happened on the last few cruises I’ve done, several women got up and danced. The lady who I mentioned earlier, was the leader of the pack.   Well, the music was catchy and I guess I’m losing some inhibitions so I got up and danced.  When the set was finished a woman who had been dancing next to me asked me if I happened to be Sunviking, my Cruise Critic name. I told her I was and I got a big hug.  She’s someone from Australis with whom  I’ve exchanged posts and I had been trying to figure out how to find her on the ship.  I moved over to the table she and her husband were at and we had a lovely chat, and we danced some more.  I knew I would like her because we share common ideas about expectations of cruises and how to engage with people.  I had recommended a hotel we stayed at in Rome and they tried it last summer and loved it.  They’re on until Miami so I’m looking forward to spending more time with them.

Now that I’ve perhaps bored you with the day’s agenda, I’ll say good night for now. I had to write this stuff down in large part to try to remember the names of the lovely people I met.  I’m going to upload a few photos of my cabin.  I know I’ve done it before but you can see what my home for the next 58 days looks like.  And, wonder of wonders for the second day in a row I’ll upload a picture of me, only because I’m holding Arty.  Oh, while Santiago was hot, at the coast it was actually chilly. That’s because the cold Humboldt current is off the coast. When we got out of the port we picked up some nice seas too.  That made dancing a little tricky.  Picture a bunch of women occasionally lurching on the dance floor as the ship did a twizzle, kind of a roll and pitch combined.   I don’t know if these seas are  a sign of things to come in the Drake Passage.

Anyway, hasta mañana!