Back through the Drake Passage

Well, we are on the downhill journey now through the Drake. A couple of days of really relaxing, going to lectures, settling up our bills, starting to pack and getting ready to a return to society. Of course, many of us still have one more marathon to do, but it will take a while to pack up from this part of the trip.

We spent the day not doing too much. Saw a lecture on Frank Hurley (and slept a little during it). Had an afternoon power nap. Then had people sign my “yearbook”, the Antarctica table book I had bought at the gift shop, including getting the captain to sign and stamp the book, which was nice.

It has become so amazingly routine on the ship. We are like Pavlov’s dogs. We get up to the voice of Annie at 7:30 for breakfast. We do stuff until lunch at 12:30. More stuff in the afternoon until tea at 4:00 and then sort of happy hour at 6:30 counting down the minutes, as I am doing now, until dinner at 7:30. We will all shuffle to the dining room at that time, get our soup first, then optional salad, then the main course brought to us while we entertain people we know or don’t know with small talk for the next ninety minutes; through desert until some sort of announcements at the end telling us what we will do tomorrow. At least now we know that, more cruising towards Ushuaia, settling our bills, starting to pack and generally winding down until we land around 8:00.

Thursday, March 3^rd

A totally uneventful day through the Drake Passage. Most of us just lounging around and killing the day. I wound up a good movie in the presentation room, The Shawshank Redemption and watched it with just a couple of people off and on, and that was ok. I started packing during the day to get that out of the way and that felt good. That night we had a dinner hosted by the captain with all kinds of desserts. Mostly we were all kind of tired of eating a lot and at regulated times. I also had people sign my “yearbook”, which was one of the Antarctica picture books. I had one page for captain and crew and one for people on the trip. Got some really nice words and stuff on the pages.

We got our first sight of Cape Horn late in the day on that Thursday and we did not hit too bad weather, though it was very windy and choppy in the seas.