Travel With Betsy

As it turns out, the beef is in Montevideo, Uruguay and Buenos Aires, Argentina. WOW! Did I have some beef…. If I don’t turn up back home at the expected time, you might check in with my hotel in Argentina. It’s possible that I have had to get the Argentinian version of “RotoRooter” in to suck the fat out of my arteries. Honestly, between the meat, all of the cheese that I had on the ship and in France, and the butter I kept slathering on the yummy baguettes on the ship, it wouldn’t surprise me to find that I have a need to seek this out!

Here’s the story….

Our last stop on the cruise was Montevideo, the capital city of Uruguay. We really didn’t have a plan there, except to do our own unstructured walking tour. The city seemed similar to Buenos Aires (albeit a tad more expensive and a little bit more dangerous, according to the local Argentinians…..actually, we didn’t find this). We figured we would walk around for an hour or so and then get back on the ship and check this one off of our lists of places we have seen. Sounds good!

I didn’t report this when I started out, but, at the beginning of the trip, I was, once again, plagued with the flu/cold/sinus infection….who knows….so, I wasn’t feeling great. UGHHHH……..Getting very tired of sickness….YUK!……..Thus, I didn’t get in the requisite amount of wine tasting that has become the norm for me on these trips, and that I was hoping for in Argentina. I just didn’t feel like it….and, I didn’t want to get a headache. But, by Montevideo, I was starting to feel better. So, I did some research on the local wine and thought I would give it a try if the opportunity arose. And, of course, it did! After we did our walking tour, Lee decided that she had seen enough and dropped me off at a cute “degustacion de vino” (wine tasting) store that we had passed along the way so that I could catch up a little. It was a great stop!

The local wine in Uruguay is Tannat, which is a grape that typically is found in the Pyranees in France and also in the northern part of Spain. We don’t have much of this in Paso Robles where I work, but it’s one of my favorites. It’s a bolder, more tannic wine that reminds me in some ways of a cross between Cabernet and Syrah. Its flavors go really well with the beef that I mention above. I tasted two of the yummy Tannats, a rose made from Pinot grapes and a Cabernet Franc, which I also thought was quite good. One of the Tannats is in my checked suitcase on its way to Costa Rica to join me on the next leg of my journey! I’m hoping it gets there in tact. We’ll see. I may be wearing purple for the next few weeks. HA!

Anyway, I hadn’t had lunch, so after a few tastes of wine combined with sun exposure (the sun is brutal here) and another bout with a very bad sunburn, I was feeling a little woozy and thought a snack might be in order. I thought I would stop by one of the small stands on the way back to the ship and have an empanada. But, as I was walking along, I saw some smoke rising from a building close to the ship and smelled meat cooking, so decided I would check it out. When I entered the “pavilion”, I realized that I was in the famed BBQ section of Montevideo that many people on the ship had been talking about. There were many BBQ restaurants there….I don’t know how many…maybe a dozen all lined up. Each one had an open kitchen where you could see meat being cooked on a grill with flames leaping up all around the meat. It looked intriguing and smelled great! It’s was settled…I was in!

So, I found a spot and bellied up to the bar at one of the restaurants to have my first bite of South American beef. The menu was in Spanish, and I couldn’t read it, of course. (Funny….but, my French lessons did me precious little good on this trip!) As I perused the menu, the woman sitting next to me looked up and asked me where I was from. AHA……. an English speaker! I told her, and then asked what she liked to eat here. Her response was the “deer in the headlights stare” and “no habla ingles”. WHAT?! But, she called her sister over who had a few more words and the three of us together managed to get me one of the biggest steaks I have seen in quite a long time. It was so good….and pretty cheap….about $15.00 for the steak and a big bottle of water! Much to my surprise, I ate just about the whole thing before saying “ciao” to my two new friends and waddling back to the ship. What an experience. People are so nice!

Then, yesterday when Lee and I returned for our final day in Buenos Aires, we decided that we should try the parrilla (steak BBQ restaurant), “Don Julio” that everyone had been raving about. It was our last day, after all. Remembering the steak in Montevideo, we decided that we should share something. Then, we decided that we had not had enough vegetables on the ship and decided to share an order of grilled vegetables as well. I didn’t think it was possible, but this steak was even better than the other one and the vegetables were just as good. The waitress helped us select a sirloin, which was melt in your mouth tender, moist, and juicy. And, you all know the reason for that, fat and lots of it. But, it was so good!

So, I have now circled back to where I started wondering about the fat-sucking “RotoRooter”.  I’m hoping that we counter-balanced the fat by having the vegetables, and I won’t need this. But, I might inquire about the local equivalent just in case!

I’m so full!

Have you ever seen the movie “A Christmas Story”? It’s the one where the little boy wants a “BB” gun for Christmas and is willing to do almost anything to get it. If you have seen the movie, you may remember the scene that takes place just before Christmas. It’s snowing and the neurotic mother of the neurotic younger brother has bundled him up in his snowsuit for his trek to school so tightly that his arms are raised and lifted straight out from his sides….and, he can’t move them…..and, he is waddling along to school with his brother….and, he is crying. (It’s also the movie where the older brother is dared by his friends to lick a frozen flagpole and gets his tongue stuck! This always makes me laugh! Does that make me a bad person?!)

Anyway……I was reminded of this movie (not the flag pole scene, but the scene with the bundled up boy) in the last days as we visited Port Stanley in the Falkland Islands (or the Malvinas depending on your perspective) and Puerto Madryn in Argentina and viewed the Magellenic Penguins strutting their stuff on the beach. Every time I looked at them walking, I thought about that little boy with his arms raised at his sides. The Penguins looked just like a cross between the little boy and a very old man in a tuxedo who was waddling home from a formal event. They were so cute, and they made me laugh. And, I just couldn’t look away.

The Falklands and Puerto Madryn were the best stops we had for actually getting up close and personal with these black and white water birds. We didn’t choose to do the tours where you could walk alongside them down the path and have a conversation, but we did see them congregated on the beach, in their burrows, playing in the water and on the glacier (as I pointed out in my last post.) In Puerto Madryn, we got within 5 feet of them as they climbed the hill from the beach to “check us out” and protect their nests.   I loved it!

I learned a little bit about these creatures from the movie “March of the Penguins”, which I watched in my cabin on the ship. They are an interesting group. As far as I can tell, their main purpose is to be cute and birth more penguins. But, we could all take some lessons from them on relationships. They mate for life and, to a large degree, share the responsibility for caring for the penguin eggs and the little chicks that pop out. It’s a bit of a role reversal from what we humans are used to. The males take much more responsibility than the females by keeping the eggs and the chicks warm under the long feather coats of their bodies by balancing them between and on their feet until they are ready to be on their own. The mothers are the primary breadwinners by seeking out the food for the babies. The fathers stay behind keep the chicks in line. We saw some video footage taken by fellow cruises where the fathers were actually pecking at the chicks when they got a little bit out of line. It was funny to watch.  But, it was touching in some ways to see how involved the males were with their babies.  Very sweet!

I also learned that penguins actually flap their wings and fly through the water instead of swim. When I looked at some footage of penguins mid-swim it was clear that they were actually flying.  It was fascinating to watch!

Even though the penguins were my favorite, we did see other things, too. In Puerto Madryn we saw sea lions…..lots of them…..big ones, little ones and one baby albino that was, of course, all white. There are often elephant seals there, too. But, they were not in residence when we visited. And, on the drive to the beach where we saw these animals, we also saw herds of guanaco (like our llamas) and choique (like our ostriches). They were very elegant and stopped up traffic just like the deer that we see in my neck of the woods in California.

In the Falkland Islands, Lee and I also saw the inside of a British pub and had some fish and chips and a “pint” which was quite tasty and a lot of fun!

All in all, it was a great few days mixing and mingling with the “locals” in the Antarctic!

Also, on another note, I will tell you that Lee and I both laughed more than once as we observed our little penguin friends about my French experience with the word for “penguin”, which happens to be “penguin”, with a little bit of a nasal sound on the “en” and the “in”. As I was studying the Rosetta Stone in preparation for my immersion in France, the word “penguin” kept coming up in the lessons. For some reason, the Rosetta Stone people thought it was important for me to know how to say this in French. Maybe they knew I was taking a trip to the Antarctic! How did they know?!

I can’t tell you how many times in the last days that we have been cruising through the Antarctic that Lee and I have looked at each other and said,

”Can you believe we are here? Who gets to do this?!”

As it turns out, at least on this cruise, those who “get to do this” are people who have been just about everywhere else. They are well-traveled, adventurous folks who are looking for an extraordinary experience that is just a little bit off the beaten path. We have met all of them……on tours, at dinner, in the drink lounge, at the local pub…and the list goes on. I don’t think I have ever met such a large group of such interesting people from so many different places who have done so many exciting things!  I’m out of breath just thinking about it! We are, indeed, fortunate to be sharing the incredible experience of cruising around the Antarctic with such a distinguished group!

I am going to tell you where we have been and what we have seen in the last few days. But, I am not a cartographer, a zoologist, a geologist, a historian or anything even close. So, if I miss a few of the details, you will have to forgive me. I am, however someone who studies people. I’ve done it all of my life. So, as I reflect on the last days, aside of the sights I have seen, I think what I have enjoyed the most about these days in the Antarctic has been connecting with my own feelings about this experience and watching my fellow shipmates connect as well.   It’s an interesting sense of “community” that I saw emerging as we all viewed the vastness of the waterways and observed the icy landmasses and glaciers and helped each other pick out the flora and fauna that was available as we traveled through. I enjoyed watching the child-like wonder that you could see in the faces of the people as we rounded the edges of the Antarctic to see breathtaking sunsets set against the mountainous landscapes, animals frolicking in the wake of the ship and some extraordinarily large icebergs. I also enjoyed reconnecting with my own inner child as I have been racing back and forth across the ship to see things. It’s been awhile since I have seen that kid around, and I kind of enjoyed the visit. In all, it’s been an experience that I will never forget and one that makes me long for more!

I will, again, give Celebrity a hand for providing us with an interesting and understandable account of the action that surrounded us. One of the speakers who presented information in our first days on board did a very interesting narration as we traveled. He did his best to present us with interesting facts and to point things out as we went along. Well done! We also had great sunny and clear weather the whole way through, which was not the work of Celebrity, but nevertheless, I thank them for helping us to make the most of it!

On the first day of our journey, we rounded Cape Horn, the southern tip of South America. As I pointed out in my last post, this was an early morning. We were up at 5:30 am so that we could get to the deck and get the first sighting of the “horn” at 6:00 am. I haven’t been up for a sunrise since I left work a few years ago, so this was quite a shock to the constitution! But, it was well worth the effort.

I find it difficult to put into words the beauty of the sunrise. When we emerged onto the deck, we saw a ribbon of pink against a graying sky. As the sun got higher it turned into a bright yellow band that eventually disappeared into the bright blue sky. We all ran from “port” to “starboard” and from “forward” to “aft” as the ship moved around the horn, so as not to miss a single view. It was spectacular!

On the second day, we went through the Schollart Channel, Paradise Bay and the Gerlache Strait in the northernmost part of the Antarctic Peninsula. As we moved through these areas, we experienced all of the “seasons”. We had rain, sleet and then snow. (For some of the crew, this was the first snow they had ever seen. Hard for this western Pennsylvania girl to believe, but it was so!) When we finally stopped in the middle of Paradise Bay, the sun broke through and the waters were calm. The ship took a small pause and did a slow spin in the bay so that we could get a panorama of the area. We sat in the water in the middle of a circular cove. We were surrounded on all sides by huge mountains covered with brilliant white snow periodically interrupted by lines of black rock. I needed sunglasses in order to look directly at the snow. It was stunning!

During the passage, we saw a variety of wildlife to include Penguins, hump-backed whales, a myriad of birds and a seal or two. My favorite was watching the Penguins as they played in the water around the ship. They looked like small dolphins as they jumped through the waves. They looked so free and joyous! Sadly, they move too fast to get pictures. But, as Lee said, we have the memory in our hearts! So true!

Our last passage was around Elephant Island. The Penguins alongside the ship guided us in to the largest glacier I have ever seen. The size even astounded the narrator as he gave us the relative dimensions. We were hoping to see seals here, but sadly, there were none. However, on a small piece of ice that jutted out from one side, we saw a flock of Penguins sunbathing on top of the ice. It made my day!

I am still blown away by the spectacle of things I have seen on this trip. It’s daunting to think about the first explorers that came through here not knowing what they would find, if anything. I would not have the courage. But, I’m grateful for those that did. They have provided me with an experience I won’t soon forget.

And, as an FYI……in case there was any doubt, it has been wildly cold here as we have sailed through the Antarctic. Kudos to Costco, who sold me an amazing wind-breaking down jacket that rolls up and fits in a tiny pouch; Keen, who produced some of the best walking shoes I have ever had; and my friend Kathy, who lent me her warm socks. I am also, again, thanking Celebrity. They sold me a “snood” (scarf with a hood) for $10, which I have taken some ribbing for purchasing and wearing. It makes me look like a “smurf”. But, I have worn it everyday. After a few days of icy cold weather, one forgets about appearance and just “bundles up”.

Stay warm!

This is the way Ushuaia is described…..and rightly so. It is the southernmost city in the world, nestled in the tail of Argentina very near to the bottom of South America. It is the last bastion of “civilization” before embarking on the journey through the Antarctic….the beginning of the real adventure!

We spent three days cruising south and preparing for our Antarctic experience. Truth be told, based on past cruising experiences, I didn’t think I would have too much to report from these first few “sea days”. Usually, these days are a mélange of sleeping, eating and drinking more than we should and not much else. But, much to my surprise, this has been a bit of a different experience. While I have to admit to partaking in the aforementioned gluttony, this time I have also participated in many of the onboard educational experiences. I have traveled so much in the last months, that I didn’t have time to do the proper research to gain a good understanding of what I would see here in the Antarctic. I thought I should get a tutorial! There might be a test later!

I have to give Celebrity a hand on this. They have found several excellent speakers who have given us a very good and understandable overview of things to look for as we cruise through the Antarctic. They have also given us a great overview geographically of where we are and where we are going. Not only are the speakers knowledgeable, they are also entertaining. Just great! They have encouraged us to “do something great” as we move along on the ship. I like this!

In the presentations, we have been educated on a multitude of fish, animals, and birds that are native to this area and readily visible from time to time as you look out to the sea. I have already seen several schools of jumping dolphins and some Albatross that, as predicted by the speakers, are following the ship as we head south. Remarkable!

I also found our stop in Ushuaia to be quite remarkable.

We spent our day there touring through the Tierra del Fuego National Park, which is a great example of the absolute splendor and diversity of this little slice of Patagonia. Our tour guide, Gabriel, walked us through a forested area filled with webs of birch trees to a waterway where some of the local beavers had been industriously building dams. The beavers, quite numerous in this area, work at night, so we didn’t actually see them, but we did see some of their handiwork. They had been quite busy.

We also viewed the coastal areas of the park as well as Lago Acigami, which were all just breathtaking.   We walked alongside the water on “board walks”, took pictures and just took it all in. The water, set against the snow-covered mountains in the background, was some of the most stunning scenery I have seen. It looked like the back drop for a movie.

Gabriel then took us to the post office, which was also situated on the waterfront, where many of us mailed postcards to ourselves from “the end of the world”. It was quite an experience for all of us.

After we left the tour, a group of us had lunch at a restaurant where the “locals” in town go for “Fuegian King Crab”, a specialty of the area. We had a very large bowl of crabmeat submerged in a pleasantly spicy red sauce. It was very like the ciopino we get at our favorite restaurant in San Luis Obispo.  And, of course, I had some wine. YUM!

Lee and I boarded the ship late in the afternoon, but not before picking up a certificate from the local tourist office proving that we had, indeed, been to the “end of the world”…..a little kitchy, but a nice memory!

Tomorrow is the “beginning of everything” part. We will be rounding Cape Horn at about 6:00 am, as we continue south to the top of the Antarctic. We will be up and at ‘em at 5:30. Wouldn’t want to miss anything!

So, I will sign off for now. But, until we meet again, I will challenge you to “do something great!” It’s working out for me!

Ciao!

By the way, for those of you following my fun bathroom tales, here’s another for you.  I think these are the funniest of the signs I have seen so far on this trip.  We found these in the national park.  Also, check out the flushing mechanism in the port-a-potty!  It was like being in a video game.  HA!