Saturday, March 3, 2018- Cruise Day 39; At Sea

Saturday, March 3, 2018- Cruise Day 39; At Sea

We awoke to a brilliant sunrise warming up our balcony.  It has been distinctly unusual to see clear blue skies and calm seas, but that is exactly what we have had for the most part today.  When we were heading south down the east coast of South America, we had the sun on our balcony in the afternoons, and now that we are heading north up the west coast, we get morning sun.  When the seas are calm, it is easier to spot whales in the distance by their spouts, but spotting them is like looking for shooting stars at night.  We rarely get close enough to see anything besides the spouts.  

We had breakfast in the dining room, followed by morning trivia.  Our team scored 15/20, missing the win by just 1 point.  We then went to the fitness center to work off some guilt, and to try to stay in adequate shape for our upcoming Machu Picchu excursion.  

Yesterday morning, the ship did have a meeting of the 166 passengers who are booked on the Machu Picchu excursion in the Explorer’s Lounge.  Most, if no all of our fellow Iguazu Falls travelers are going to Machu Picchu as well.  It was supposed to be a Q&A session, but it was poorly organized, and the speakers failed to repeat the questions, so they kept being asked the same questions.  There were a few slides showing the hotels and sights that we are going to see.  They did reassure us that there would be adequate time to see the Machu Picchu site, and that the stairs and walking would be manageable.  We are supposed to be broken into groups of 12-16 for the actual tours, and the whole group will be arbitrarily split between two hotels.  

We had lunch in the buffet and watched the Princess Pop Choir.  Roger (Santa) and Bob’s wife Mary were both in the Pop Choir, which did several songs from Grease, lead by Holly.  They put on a decent show, not unlike a high school choir concert.  

We had a relaxing afternoon.  We have both picked up books from the ship’s library to read.  The one Ben picked is titled “Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist”.  It turns out this novel is set in Seattle’s 1989 WTO riots.  

We attended the afternoon trivia but found two people in our spot, but Cathy and John didn’t show up, so Lorraine and Charles took their places.  They didn’t contribute to our answers, but we scored 16/20, winning our first Trivia in more than a week. It felt good to break that dry spell.  We won Princess notepads.  

We opted to skip the second Showtime performance of Rogerio Tutti, the flashy pianist, and spent the evening watching the Cruise Destination expert’s lecture on Santiago, and reading.  

We did get out to attend the Liar’s Club gameshow.  The four words were Clatterfart, Wiskititi, Gubbertushed, and Packapoo.  We knew from prior Liar’s Clubs that Packapoo was a lottery game, but the other 3 words were all new to us.  We managed to guess one correctly- Clatterfart is a gossip or blabbermouth.  The wiskititi ended up being a small South African monkey, and Gubbertushed is to be buck toothed.  The winning teams (2) had managed to guess 3/4 right for bottles of champagne.  

Tomorrow we arrive at San Antonio, which is the port gateway to Valparaiso and Santiago, although Santiago is a 2.5hr drive from San Antonio.  We have a Princess excursion booked to see Valparaiso, Vina del Mar and the Fonck Museum.