Spring Moon of the Southern Cross

Outside our room and down at the deck just above the waterlines, refueling is again underway. The promenade deck in front of our room and for about a hundred feet toward the stern of the ship has red cloth barriers over it, preventing other passengers from getting close to the refueling. We, however, can just open our door and go see. Which we did. Then, being the good northern European adults we are we turned around and came back inside. After all.

Way back in Santa Marta, after paying for our lunch at a bayside restaurant, I turned to go next door and follow Kate into the souvenir shop. When I put my foot out, only open air was available. There was a step, in the same white tile as the floor, and I didn’t notice it.

At the time I was proud of my ability to react quickly, turning back and onto the upper floor where my other foot already resided.

However. In so doing I wrenched my back. That’s how I got the foot back on the same surface as my other one, whipping my back around while my planted foot remained steady.

Since that afternoon, our first port in South America and our first one of this trip, I’ve had a sore back. It’s gone up and down in inflammation, mostly background noise, but today I torqued it again. This time I can’t move easily, even with some significant pain meds Kate has along. That means that, though Buenos Aires is within walking distance, I can’t walk the distance. So. No wandering around here, which I had very much wanted to do. Mark O. gave me a neighborhood, San Telmo, and it sounds wonderful. Maybe next circumnavigation of South America.

As Evita said, don’t cry for me, Argentina.

Tomorrow we head out onto to the pampas by bus so I’ll see some of it on the way there. Also, we’re here overnight again tomorrow night, so perhaps I’ll have a shot then. Gauchos and boleros.

Even so, the travel malaise I spoke about in recent blogs has abated and I’m eager to get outside.

We watched cormorants or grebes today, flying between our ship and the Log-In Pantanal, a cargo ship being loaded just across the way. These birds are fish eaters, with the ability, like loons, to turn and suddenly disappear under the water. When one comes up with a silvery, squiggly catch, the race is on to get it eaten. The others flock to the successful bird, flail around, trying to knock the fish out and eat it themselves. In one scrum I watched the fish passed among five different birds until one of them got that long neck pointed skyward and let the fish slide in.

We are in shirt sleeve weather here, perhaps 80-82 and sunny, a change from the cloudy jacket weather of the Chilean fjords and Ushuaia.

Got good news today. We discovered that our checked bags going home have a 70 pound weight limit. That means we should be able to check bags without penalties and carry our fragile treasures on board.

Spring Moon of the Southern Cross

51 degrees 40 minutes S 57 degrees 49 minutes W

N.B. The correct analogy, I know, is the season of Beltane on my Celtic calendar, but here I have chosen to go with the meteorological, seasonal descriptor since we’re in a Latin American country. True, there is Galicia and the Latin emphasis on bulls and bull fighting, both Celtic influences; however, in the main the larger influence is Roman Catholicism, but I no longer use Christian liturgical seasons either. So, Spring.

(sign on one of the Landrovers taking us to see the Rock Hopper penguins)

Having said all that I might post Beltane for today only since we have left Latin America behind today by coming to the tiny Falkland Islands (aka Malvinas) and their stoutly British population of some 2,500 souls. Two thirds of the citizenry live in Port Stanley, capitol and our present location, while the remaining 800 plus live in what the locals call the camp.

This is not a distinction without a difference. Among the many differences camp and town see between each other, an important one is that Port Stanley observes daylight savings time and the camp does not. I would be in the camp camp.

These are flat islands 1150 nautical miles from Buenos Aires. Kate and I have signed up for the exclusive, once in a lifetime opportunity to see the elusive rockhopper penguins. If I counted up the number of once in a lifetimes we’ve done on this trip alone, I’d have to have three or four more go rounds at least.

(we did see the rockhoppers and they were, well, cute)

Once in a lifetime means, in this context anyhow, this costs so much that you’ll probably be able to afford this only once in a lifetime. Besides, just because it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity doesn’t mean it’s worth doing. Visiting the Freshkills landfill in New York would be a once in a lifetime event and I don’t intend to pay anyone to take me there.

We probably won’t see rockhopper penguins (though I confess I have no idea what rockhopper penguins are, but being elusive makes them necessary to see if at all possible. Irony.) again so I suppose this is a true once in a lifetime opportunity for us. I’ll let you know if it was a worthwhile way to spend four hours.

Did I mention yesterday that we returned to the Atlantic once we left the Beagle Channel? We have, and it has been suitably gray and inclement though the Pacific, once we made our way into Peru and the cold waters of the Humboldt Current, was gray and chill as well. It seems appropriate to visit a British outpost as our first port once returning to the Pond.

This morning, finally, I feel back to my pre-cold energy level though I hadn’t realized I’d gotten somewhat sluggish. Now I’m ready to hop on that 4X4 and ride out to the rockhoppers and follow them rock by rock if necessary.

Kate’s going along though the ticket says not for folks with back problems. Usually that stuff’s just hype, sort of macho marketing, I hope that’s true in this case.

Spring Moon of the Southern Cross

Valparaiso, Chile

Kate went out today on a Chilean Spirit: Wine and Horses excursion and I stayed behind.

The city of Valparaiso, like Coquimbo, rises from the ocean on a rocky peninsula. Different from Coquimbo, Valparaiso has two levels, a commercial, educational and institutional level near the port with some residential and a second, higher level filled with neighborhoods and little else.

Since the division between the two is quite steep, there are several ascensors located along the hill, funiculars that take regular traffic up and down in gaily colored cars. The fare saja, rising, is 300 pesons and 300 pesos for basada. 300 pesos is the equivalent of .60. At the top of the funicular I rode is the Naval Historical Museum and a lovely overlook with two cupolas with benches, a long promenade and several handicraft stall selling better than usual quality work.

I bought a nice wood engraving of the funicular for $16.

While walking a twenty minute stroll from the embarkation center for cruises, I had several interesting experiences.

The first was Mercado Central, open and buzzing on a Sunday, filled with fruit and vegetables for the most part, but there were also stalls selling wheels of cheese, pickled vegetables and pickled onions. Many men worked here essentially as beasts of burden carrying large sacks of onions, lugs of banana’s, boxes of artichokes.

My destination, Plaza Sotomayor, lay a good way away, so I walked along a boulevarded street with statuary and palm trees in the large planted area in the middle. Though nothing was open and traffic was light I did begin to notice graffiti that interested me.

Whipping out my spanish-english dictionary, I soon became fascinated by: Without profit, without capital. Organize. Revolution to the middle. Communista=fascista. This is a university city, so much of the material seemed to come from students, but nonetheless it spoke to a vital underground political community.

It made me wonder what it would be like to be a radical in one of these countries, say Peru or Chile. The pull would be incredible because the gap between rich and poor is so vast and the government so often heavy handed and greedy. On the other hand radicals here often pay the price. There were several spray painted pictures of individuals with asesenio on top: murderer or assassin. Politics would not be for the faint hearted, especially politics outside the normal order.

Fall Waning Autumn Moon

At 4:30 am the Veendam had a small tug pushing it toward the south to better position it for entering the Gatun Locks. An upside down sliver moon hung in the sky and the smells of a large oil refinery floated on deck from a brightly lit facility on the north shore of the canal’s entrance.

(frigate birds watching the ships go by)

Out in the ocean, behind us, were numerous ships, all brightly lit, all waiting for their turn in the long canal connecting the Atlantic basin and the Pacific.

Lockmeister Odegard would find this a fascinating journey through the Mother of All Locks. The Gatun can take ships up to 996 feet long and 110 feet wide. Even those generous dimensions long past feel outside the girth and length of the true ocean going monsters, mostly oil tankers, built so big that it still made economic sense to round Cape Horn. That problem with the Canal has a remedy underway, largely financed by the Chinese I think. It will build a third set of locks with capacity to handle these huge super ships on their journey from the oil fields of the Middle East to the oil hungry nations on the Pacific Rim.

The day is warm, though not so warm as the first time Kate and I made this journey. Starboard, our side, has the good fortune of facing north as we sail east to west, so our deck chairs have good shade.

Right now we are in Lake Gatun, the big artificial lake that provides the 51 million gallons of fresh water needed to step a ship up or down through the massive locks. These locks still  use the same massive doors and valves put in place in the early twentieth century.