Puerto Madryn and Thereabouts

Next morning the Jerome Sterns and mum gather early for their tour of Montevideo. Unfortunately Justin is all stuffed up with a cold and spends most of the day in bed while Danielle takes me on a two hour walking tour of the “old city” part of Montevideo which she had recently visited. This city didn’t do much for me – a sleepy Spanish style town with significantly less affluence than Buenos Aires.

Back to the ship for lunch with Justin and a general mooch around the ship till it departed at 16:30 – seemingly they worked out it wasn’t worth a late departure. At 17:30 we meet for Trivia where we scored a big 4/20 although in our defence the winning score was 8/20. Try these:

- who was the first Soviet president born AFTER the revolution
- which two countries still manufacture the VW beetle
- what are the three most successful box office movies of all time
- who officiated over Giuliani’s 2003 marriage
- what was discovered to share 70% of DNA with humans in 2006

OK so now you know why we flunked this test.

Drinks in Gerda’s cabin before dinner. Now there are eleven restaurants (and eleven bars) on board of which five have a supplement of between $US10 and $US25 per person. Some have lobster and it was Jerome’s task to find out which two nights had lobster in the non-supplementary restaurants – bingo – tonight was the night. Everybody ordered various appetisers and mains after which we sheepishly asked the waiter to bring 6 lobster ‘solo’. He came back apologising that the lobster was finished – he wasn’t apologetic enough for my liking and turned up with 6 tails which were devoured with gusto.

Now many won’t know that Gerda has two birthdays, 28th December (actual) and 5th January (registered) so being the latter the waiters brought a birthday cake and sang happy birthday along with everybody else in the restaurant.

After dinner some went dancing and we quickly visited the stargazing session with a very knowledgeable instructor who used a laser pointer very effectively to assist his discussion. Surprisingly I am guessing there were 300 people at this activity at 23:00 which I found surprising.

Anyway off to bed, watched some TV shows I brought with and a relatively early night.

Next morning 07:00 and Danielle and I had coffee before we fulfilled our agreement to go to stretching classes and a short gym session. Shower and breakfast. Basically we then spent a day of light activities and sleeping punctuated by the ship listing dramatically to one side and stopping suddenly. Nobody was too concerned as the alarm did not sound but it was more than a little disconcerting – that is until the captain announced that there had been a problem with one of the rudders but were soon underway again.

That evening there was a breakup of the group when Danielle, Justin and I went to the steakhouse and it was exceptional. I went through a series of appetisers including

- beefsteak tomatoes with onions and balsamic which the waitress kindly explained that despite its name it didn’t come with any beef.
- Portobello mushrooms with blue swimmer crab
- Rockefeller oysters
- Lobster bisque
- Prawn cocktail

All of which I would rate as 8.5/10 or better. Justin reported that his rib eye was superb as was Danielle’s double cut lamb chops with rosemary. Needless to say that the desert matched the mains. Certainly worth the $US20 supplement or in Justin’s case $US30 as his rib eye was accompanied by lobster tail – yes folks Justin eats lobster.

We all met up afterwards in the lounge to listen to some music and another late night.

Next morning the ship docks in Port Madryn, a town of 90,000 people 1,400 kilometres south of Buenos Aires. It’s black beaches are popular as siesta time arrives and interestingly the tide has a depth of 4 metres from top to bottom and even 10 metres further south.

Jerome, Ludmila, Anna and Danielle have booked a tour to a penguin rookery. As that tour involved three hours each way on a bus each way for just one hour there Justin, Michael, mum and I booked on a tour which took us to a sea lion colony, sheep shearing on a ranch – yes folks we travelled exactly half way around the world to see sheep shearing – and an eco museum. The sheep shearing was in fact very interesting and Justin fell in love with the two lamas who enjoyed being approached and petted while the other group reported that the penguin colony was also a great tour.

Back to the ship before our 18:00 departure, check for email – yes there is internet on board but quite expensive so I do two runs a day to receive and send my emails and of course post my blog. A family dinner in the large restaurant and some light evening activities finish off the day.

As the ship moves south we certainly feel the weather cooling down – 23 degrees today but more importantly the wind seems the norm.