January 28 - Heading south off the coast of Chile

Today is a sea day as we sail off the coast of Chile on a heading of 179.1°, so almost due south. The air is cool, around 60° and there’s a pretty brisk breeze of 21.5 mph out of the south. Because of the combination of course and wind direction we aren’t experiencing a lot of movement on the ship.

This morning after breakfast I went to the “Meet your Expedition Team” event.  I’m truly impressed. We have a couple of marine biologists, two geologists, some ornithologists, and a variety of other scientific disciplines.  The team numbers about 20.  A couple of them will lead kayaking tours around Antarctica and South Georgia; others will accompany the zodiac groups ashore.  I’m going nowhere near a kayak.  The last time I tried that Al and I tipped over and couldn’t get back in.  I’m not going to risk that in these frigid waters.  Actually, if I’m honest, the biggest reason is that I don’t want to have to be hauled back in like the great white whale.

At noon it was time for Trivia, so naturally I had to join a team.  I’m on one called the Travel Warriors and we placed respectably in the middle.  Trivia is cumulative for this leg of the cruise so no prizes were awarded.  (Darn, I really did want a fake leather passport holder!) The lounge was full though.  There were 12 teams of 10 each.  We have about 420 passengers onboard so nearly one third are playing.

After lunch I went to a talk by one of the geologists on the expedition team.  She was on my last cruise over Thanksgiving and I enjoyed her talks then.  Today she gave us, and I’m passing on to you, a geology lesson. Along the western coast of South America two tectonic plates meet. The plate which forms the continent is fittingly named the South American plate. To the west under the Pacific is the Nazca Plate. Where the two plates meet there is a subduction zone, which in this case means that the Nazca Plate is being driven down while the other one is moving up creating the Andes Mountains.  On the ocean side a deep trench is formed which is named the Peru-Chile Trench or the Atacama Trench.  It has depths of up to 26,000 feet. On the continent the Andes have mountains over the height of 20,000 feet with the highest being Mt. Aconcagua, which is nearly 23,000 feet tall.  I find some symmetry there with such highs and lows. 

The Andes are relatively new so they are still very jagged and rugged because they haven’t been worn down by wind and water.  There are estimated to be around 150  volcanoes along the Andes chain, some of them very active.  My tour tomorrow from Puerto Montt will take me near one of those so I’ll tell you more then.  One of the most interesting things about the talk was a series of slides she showed of  close ups of different things around the ship, like countertops and floors.  She explained that these were mainly igneous rocks (like the Andes are made of) and in some of the slides she pointed out fossils of spiral shelled creatures or other things in the granite we were looking at.  It has given me a greater interest in paying attention to granite and marble floors and counters.  Who knew (not I) that those nice designs were sometimes fossil cross-sections.   

Tonight I went first to a cocktail party with the captain and his chief staff  members and then I dined with the Future Cruise Consultant.  We had a table of six and they were all delightful. There were two British ladies, a New Yorker, an Aussie woman who lives in Houston and a gentlemen from Harrisburg, PA. Our host is from Holland, as is our captain.  We had interesting conversations about all sorts of things. The Australian woman had suffered something which is one of my greatest fears – she shipped her luggage with a company called Luggage Forward and it didn’t arrive!  Tonight was a formal night and she had managed to piece together  a rather bohemian outfit that really didn’t look out of place. 

Well that’s it for tonight.  I’ll give you a pretty easy trivia question from today’s game.  Can you name two countries whose names begin with A but don’t end in A?