Thursday, November 12, 2015

Antarctica day 6: crossing the Drake passage

The rest of day 5 was pretty uneventful, we're on a boat. boarded, got our key to our room and were delivered to it by staff. unpacked our bags into the closet which was very nice to not be living out of a suitcase for a few days. Then ran upstairs to the welcome cocktail hour, met some of the staff, returned to our room to grab the camera, went outside and started snapping pictures of Ushuaia before we set sail.

The only beverages included are water, tea and coffee, may be hard to mix drinks with just that. Then we had the mandatory welcome meeting where they explained how things were goign to work for the next nine days at sea, incuding the horrible turbulence of crossing the drake. Soon after that we had dinner, joined a nice older couple from chicago and they were intrigued by how matt and i met online. After dinner we retrieved our bright yellow jackets. and our boot rentals then after that, we retreated to bed, as we had been up since 4 am.

Actual day 6 started out with brunch served at 730, we ate that, then went to short lecture on how to use our camera outside of the auto function. Then we had mandatory IAATO meeting discussing the rules of landing on antarctica etc. After that, matt and i grabbed our cribbage board and played a few hands. We also attempted to do some laundry in our sink, worked out pretty well, atleast our clothes now smell of laundry detergent instead of BO. before we knew it it was lunch time. just had some stirfry and some veal. then we went down to our room where i took a nap, these transderm patches are very drowsy i slept for about two hours while matt watched a movie. then we went back upstairs to play more cribbage and wait until dinner. We were one of the first ones in, and sat on the right hand side with a table for six. 4 asian tourists joined us. Did i mention crossing the drake has some rough waters?`it does. one of the people at our table had their iphone set as a level to see what degrees the boat was rocking it. about 10 degrees was the highest. I ordered the capresse salad and some beef stock soup. and then plates starting flying everywhere. another wave hit and all 3 peopl on my side of the table were pushing me into the wall, with dishes and nfood flying EVERYWHERE! poor older lady at the table across from us fell out of her chair and cut her hand on some glass. The staff worked very quickly to tidy the place up, the MD rushed into assist the cut hand, and we all pitched in to help with the cleanup. It was quite scary in the moment but afterwards seeing all the broken items and the adventure we were going on, people were very light hearted about it.

After dinner, which we still got the 4 courses, we played some more cribbage and then called it a night. Tomorrow, the crew expects us to be to the south shetland islands, and we are preparign to go ashore! oh, and wifi we have to pay for by the megabite. we did get 40 mb free, so we will try and update the blog as best we can, but the pictures may be far between :-/ its like 20$ for more internet, and it is kinda fun being of the grid for a bit :0)

Ready to fall asleep watching game of thrones, andrea and matt.
Sent from my iPad

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