Cruise Days 11 and 12 and Final Travel Day – The End of Our Antarctica Story!
Greetings, everyone!
It’s time to wrap up this journey! We were told at the Recap and Plan Briefing on Jan 13th that the Captain expected our Drake Passage crossing to be pretty smooth until the end. Schalk continued to say this little ship can scoot a bit faster if the weather front that is threatening our arrival in Chile gets too close. Well, the smooth crossing didn’t happen. Almost as soon as we pass Robben Island the seas pick up. There will be no smooth passage on the back end of this cruise.
It is now Jan 14th. For my first time ever, I apply a motion sickness patch instead of relying on my daily Bonine – this three-day patch helps me ride out the two days of extra motion from this Drake Shake. But I learned when I tested the patches last year that on my first day I will be a little nauseous regardless of the weather as I adjust to the drug. The seas are not very rough – only 3-5 meter (10-15 feet) swells – but this is a small ship (only 286 passengers) and hobby-horses far more than a larger cruise ship (2,800 or more) would in these seas. We are on the 6th deck and the spray easily reaches our level! The roll is not bad – the stabilizers are able to do their job well!
Today is packing day. We just need to be smart about what we need to wear tomorrow, and the day after when we disembark and fly home! Despite to the seas and my reaction to the patch we succeed in getting 90% packed, and we remember to set aside the last two day of clothes and PJs!
Tonight we have our last reservation at Hot Rocks – the Pool Grill, in case you forgot. But Duane and Joy are not up to sitting out in the cold – they are both fighting off colds. Lu and I agree to have one last chilly meal. We arrive at our appointed time, and we have our choice of table – no one else is there! We choose the only table that has two radiant heaters on it!
Now it is Jan 15th – our last full day on the ship! The seas calm as we get closer to Chile on our way to the Beagle Passage.
We have a special event planned for the afternoon – Tarik, our butler, has been wanting to do something special for us for days! Duane’s birthday is in February, but Joy and I will not be able to celebrate with him and Lu. We asked Tarik to coordinate a birthday party for Duane and settled on scheduling it on our last afternoon at sea – today! We requested a small chocolate cake with banana splits! Champagne tops it all off! The ice cream flavors are vanilla, strawberry, and pistachio, and the sauces are fudge, caramel, and strawberry. Yes, there is a split banana at the bottom of those bowls! Perfect!
Our birthday party is rushed a little by a rescheduled ship’s event in the lounge – the Captain’s Farewell and Crew Parade – that was supposed to happen yesterday but moved due to the weather! There is also the scheduled Expedition Crew Parade and auction of the ship’s voyage chart with embellishments added by one of the talented crew! The proceeds of the auction will go to the Crew Wellness Fund! I tell Joy I’m willing to go to $2,000 for this, and she agrees to let me! I heard some rumors that previous charts have gone for as much as $15,000! I decide if I can’t win the chart for us, I’m going to work to get the price as high at least to $2,000 for the crew!
The Captain has a part of the crew come down the lounge. We see a lot of the Housekeeping staff, the “AB”s (Able Body seamen), the restaurant Maitre ‘ds and Head Waiters, Chef Dev (far right) and his chefs and cooks and waitstaff and bar staff! I don’t see, or recall seeing, any of the butlers.
The crew is followed by the Expedition team! That’s Schalk with the microphone. He cleans up pretty well!
The Expedition crew are the reason our cruise has been so great!
Then it is time for the auction! Schalk has the voyage chart brought out and shares the identity of the artist who embellished it. (I apologize for the poor quality of this photo.)
Here’s a better picture of the voyage chart itself. The box at the top lists the executive staff. On the left is a compass with a humpback whale tail. in the center is the Silver Cloud. And on the right is a Weddell seal, Gentoo penguin, Chinstrap penguin, and Adelie penguin. The ship’s path is marked on the chart in pencil, so the lines are difficult to see in this view. But it is still very beautiful, huh?
Schalk opens the bidding at $500. After a few moments I raise my hand to get things started! Schalk asks if anyone will go to $600? Soon a couple to my left raise their hands. $800? A couple to my right yells, “eight hundred!” Schalk asks for $1000? I wait. No one responds. I call out, “one thousand!” $1200? The couple on my right take the bid! Schalk asks for another bid. I call out, “thirteen hundred!” Schalk mis-hears me and yells “We have $1500!” I let it ride – it’s in my budget, and I don’t think it will be the last bid. The couple to the right immediately yell, “two thousand!” I am right! But rats, I wanted to bid $2,000 and force someone to go higher! Now I think about pushing it to $2,100, feeling the couple on the right will still go higher. But I hold back. No one else counters and the couple get it for $2,000!
This is fun! I get a little adrenalin rush when bidding!
We learn that couple have a collection of charts, and they paid $12,000 for one of them.
Leaving the lounge to head to dinner we see we are at the southern tip of Chile! The waters are getting very calm.
We enter the Beagle Channel. Chile is on our left and Argentina on the right!
As the sun gets close to setting we arrive at Puerto Williams. That’s another Silver Sea ship at dock, the Silver Endeavour. They will leave at 10 PM and we will then dock. Until then, we anchor in the bay. Time to finish packing and get the bags out into the hallway!
Now it is Jan 16th. Time to say goodbye to the Silver Cloud and head home!
This is the charter aircraft we have for our hop to Santiago. We learned a long time ago that the Puerto Williams runway is too short for these jets to take off with a full fuel load. As we did on the flight down two weeks ago, we’ll have an intermediate landing in Punta Arenas to take on a full fuel load for the rest of the trip to Santiago.
A little over three hours later we arrive at Santiago.
We get tapped by Chilean Customs for an extra bag inspection, but that turned out to be simple – just another x-ray pass. We didn’t have to open the bags for them to poke around. Soon we are on the American flight back to Orlando! All our bags made it!
I’ll close this blog here. Thanks for following along, and thanks for the comments!
