On the sea day, the captain answered questions from the guests, and Richard got a tour of the ship's bridge.
The ship has two 27,000 horsepower "Pods", which are electric motors attached to fully steerable propellers. It has three bow thrusters. It draws 8 meters of water (approximately 26 feet).
During the bridge tour, they did not want us taking pictures or even looking at the work areas in the rear of the bridge; not sure what they did not want us to see. The captain and most key officers are Greek; on the tour, they told us that they only spoke English on deck, right after one officer called another in Greek. ;-)
The passenger list included people from 42 nations, 836 of whom were not native English speakers. The crew is from 60 nations. The ship feels like the united nations, with many languages heard in every corner. Their philosophy is that if the crew is happy, the guests will be happy.
The dinner was formal night, including Bill's 88th birthday! The entertainer was Billy Fellows, songs and jokes, pretty good.
In Puerto Madryn, Richard got on a tour to the Penguin colonies. There was no space on the English speaking bus, so Richard ended up on the Spanish language tour. The guide was Luis Rufino Fuentes. His family grew up in that area. His grandfather ran wagons through the area, using horses and mules. His father did subsistence farming. It sounded like a brutally hard life.
The terrain south of the city of Trelew, near Puerto Madryn, was scrub brush, semi-desert, and amazingly empty. We were on the important north-south highway 3. I saw no side roads, no gas stations, no houses, nothing. I think that it may be even emptier than Wyoming.
One amusing story was about Gauchito Gil, a kind of criminal/saint. We passed one of his shrines, surrounded by red flags, where people leave offerings. A not so amusing story had to do with a military base that we passed, where the military dictatorship executed dissidents, using a phony breakout as a cover story.
At the penguin colony, we saw thousands of Magellenic Penguins (around two feet high) nesting under bushes. We also saw hundreds of humans gawking at them. A Guanaco ran by, apparently wild.
This was Ash Wednesday, and conveniently there is a priest on board to say mass and dispense ashes.
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