Saturday, February 8 - At Sea in Drake Passage

 One correction to yesterday.  Roger reminded me that Captain Ahbi said we came within 10 meters (not 30 meters, I was thinking 30 feet) of that iceberg.  I can vouch that it looked that close!

As I mentioned, we are hurrying across this part of the trip (Drake Passage) to get to Ushuaia as soon as possible for the patient with the medical condition.  The weather has fortunately been very good for this expanse of ocean so we're making pretty good time.  It is notorious for being rough - it is sometimes referred to as Drake Savage - but it's been OK for us.  There is a little bit of rock and roll, but not as bad as it was coming down from the Falklands Islands.  We should be out of this by 4 or 5 pm today when we will enter the Beagle Channel which is much calmer.

We had some onboard credits for this trip.  I used some of them for a haircut a while back and we were saving the rest in case we needed them at the end of our trip.  We get off in Valparaiso and since our flight (arranged by Regent) doesn't depart until 10 pm we were hoping there might be a tour along with the included 90-minute transfer to Santiago airport.  We weren't sure if there would be an upcharge for that, but it turns out a tour will also be provided complimentary by Regent.  I decided there was no point in letting those credits go to waste, so I had a 75-minute massage this morning.  Lovely!  

No more photos of icebergs today, so here are photos of some of our wonderful servers on board.

This is Maricor, assistant waiter.

And Edwin, our usual wine server.  He knows his stuff.

One of our waiters, Mario.  He was on one of our other cruises also.

Michael went to the fitness center again, then napped.  We both went to hear Terry Bishop tell us all about Sir Francis Drake, who has this passage named after him even though it's likely he never actually sailed it.  Trivia was pathetic with only 9/15 for no points.

The seas got much calmer late in the afternoon and just looking out our balcony door I saw dolphins frolicking and whales slapping their tails and a close-by floating bird facing us who stared at us the whole time we passed by - maybe making sure we didn't head in his direction. It cracked me up.  When the water is calmer, you can see the "footprints" for a short time that whales leave as they come up for air.

Tonight up at Sette Mari was a special dinner that they bill as food from Street Trucks from around the world.  They had it last night also and it was very popular, so they repeated it tonight.  The place was full by 7:00 pm and it was really good.  

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