Sunday, February 26, 2012

Sunrise 5:06  Sunset 21:32 Morning 6°\42.8F. Afternoon 6°\42.8F Overcast, early fog, rain

Photoo

True to his word the Captain lingered to show both sides of the ship Cape Horn in the fog, from what he said was his legal limit of 3 miles without a Chilean pilot. He said he planned to drift closer to cheat them, just because and he did. The closest I heard him say he got was 2.5 miles, but I would bet he was closer to 1.5 to 2 during breakfast right before he zipped off to the east to go pick up an Argentine pilot for the sail up the Beagle Channel.

We should be docked in Ushuaia before 4:30am tomorrow. Evidently, our group will be the first to disembark for our bus tour of the National Park before our 1:33pm flight AR1892 to EZE. In EZE, we should be transferred to the International Terminal and be reunited with all of our luggage before a 9:30pm departure back to the USA.

Today in the newsletter, there was this For the Logbook link, since Internet onboard is a joke, I will have to post it here to check it after we get home: blog.ponant.com/les-expeditions   I hope that works because they had an accented e in there that I don't have on my keyboard! Try this:

http://blog.ponant.com/2012/02/27/boreal-february-18th-27th-2012/

http://blog.ponant.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Logbook-Boréal-AA-180212-EN.pdf

I am a little worried about flying with my ear already popped and deaf, but I will use my EarPlanes as always and hope for the best. Who knows maybe cabin pressurization will unpop it. I can hope! As the ENT asked, I will post the answer here also; flying was no better or no worse than without a popped ear. I credit the EarPlanes! FWIW, I buy and use the children's size. I should also mention that I have used store brand equivalents with equal success, so I think anything that works the same way will work, no matter the brand.





We watched The Adjustment Bureau and once we got inside the Beagle Channel, we went up to deck 6 Observation Lounge and watched Puerto Williams go by as well as a lot of whale blows. Clay caught the Argentine pilot boarding. We are mostly packed. We went to Le Boreal's Antarctica season final recap. All the naturalists except the one from Costa Rico are going home tomorrow just like us. Marcel is sailing on to Valparaiso tomorrow, then to Central America. Maybe since he is from Costa Rico, he is getting a cruise home. The Captain had told us the ship looked in such bad shape because in Ushuaia and Antarctica during their 4 month season, they are not allowed to do any scraping or do any cleaning. So, we had assumed they would want to sail off and do that immediately, and maybe they will but tomorrow starts another load of paying passengers traveling up the west coast of South America. We are docking in Ushuaia as I type this at 7pm. I think this means the ship will go ahead and get cleared early and disembarkation will go smoothly.

The ship was cleared by dinner time and that was when the announcement was made. It was too late for most people to go ashore for dinner, but there were plenty headed ashore after dinner. There is a casino in Ushuaia that does not open before 3pm. I don’t remember that being here in 2008. It snowed in Ushuaia while we were gone! We stayed in and finished our packing for suitcases in the hall after 10pm.

Luggage must be out by 4:30am at the latest. Breakfast tomorrow is at 6am. Pick up passports at 7:45am. Cabins vacated by 8am. No room service is available on disembarkation morning. Our disembarkation will be by 3 groups and they will happen as announced. We are to have a guided bus tour of the Tierra del Fuego National Park that ends at the Ushuaia Airport. Our flight AR1892 departs at 1:33pm. We arrive in EZE at 4:53pm, transfer to the international terminal and get back our left luggage. Our overnight flight home leaves at 9:33pm. This time we really don't expect to return to Usuhaia!

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