Saturday, February 24, 2018- Cruise Day 32; At Sea

Saturday, February 24, 2018- Cruise Day 32; At Sea

We spent most of the day cruising through the Strait of Magellan, a passage that connects the Atlantic to the Pacific.  When we awoke, we could see a series of striking looking islands out our balcony with some jagged splash rocks rimming them along the channel.  In the background were very high mountains with glaciers and jagged peaks.  This passage threads its way through what appears to be thousands of rocky islands made of worn down ancient granite.  The seas were moderate (4-8’ swells) with white caps as there was a 25-35mph wind.  It all looked very rugged and extreme outside.  

We went through our daily sea day routine of breakfast, trivia, Effy drawing and exercise.  We won the morning trivia with our usual team.  There as actually a 3 way tie for first.  The tie breaker was to guess the host’s age, and we ended up winning string bags.  There is now a fair bit of swapping and trading of these prizes as some people want bags, others want bottle stoppers and others still want the coasters and note pads.  We have yet to win any note pads, but did trade a bag for another wine bottle stopper with another team that has been winning frequently as well.  

We didn’t win anything at the Effy drawing.  We watched Megan Leavey on the TV- a movie about a marine who serves in Afghanistan with a bomb sniffing dog.  They both end up getting injured by an IED, and she ends up separated from her dog while she recovers from her injuries.  She spends the rest of the movie trying to get her dog retired as a war hero so she can adopt him.  Long story short, she succeeds.  It did illustrate that dogs, as well as humans can suffer from war with PTSD.  

We enjoyed the ever changing views out our balcony as we sailed past an endless number of crazy shaped islands.  Thank heavens for modern day GPS, because it would be easy to get lost in this maze of thousands of islands with lots of rocks just waiting to rip a hole in the bottom of your ship.  Those early day explorers really had some nerve.  

After lunch, we attended the afternoon trivia and tied again 3 ways for first.  This time we lost the tie breaker, which was to guess which country had a population closest to the population of Wales.  We guessed Ireland, but the answer was New Zealand.  

We got changed into our formal clothes for another formal night, and had an early dinner.  No lobster, but they did have surf and turf with huge prawns that could have been mistaken for small lobsters.  We attended the early production show with the Island Princess Singers and Dancers.  It has been some time since we last saw them. Their show as called Stardust, and highlighted music from the late 40’s and 50’s.  It was a good, but short show, lasting just a half hour.  

We kept our selves entertained in the evening with 7:45PM TV Themes Trivia. Some of our regular partners can’t make the 7:45PM activities because the are on fixed dining so we teamed up with Roger, Ted and Kathleen (from the Iguazu Falls trip) and Erica, who got booted off her team because they had too many players show up.  That worked to our advantage, as she was probably the only person in the room that knew that the villian in the Smurf’s cartoon show’s name was Gargamel for bonus points.  We handily won that trivia, and won champagne to share and string bags.  We let Ted and Kathleen keep the champagne in exchange for their bags.  

We grazed the buffet since we skipped dessert at dinner, and then attended a 9:45PM Movie Madness game show.  For each question, there are 3 levels of possible points.  If you submit your team’s card with just the first clue, you get 3 points.  After a second clue is revealed, you can get 2 points, and after the 3rd clue is revealed, just 1 point.  We didn’t end up winning that game, but we all felt it was getting to be past our bedtimes, and placing 1st in 3 out of 4 games for a day wasn’t bad.  

Tomorrow we have to get up early as we arrive in our next port of call, Punta Arenas, Chile.  This is another tender port and we have a Princess excursion booked to do a city tour and museum.  We hope that the two tenders that developed engine problems were fixed while we were in Ushuaia.