PUNTA TO PUERTO

9 PM, Sat, 9 Feb 2008, MS Nordnorge, at Sea

SATURDAY'S LECTURES

On Patagonia there is less conjecture
After Franz Gingle’s learned lecture.
Manuel Marin was our informant
On the much maligned cormorant.
From Stefan Kredel we got the drift
About consequential continental drift.

Last night and today we have been entirely at sea. We’re due to land at 1030 PM at Puerto Natales. Tomorrow we will visit Torres del Paine National Park from there. We have to start early. Breakfast at 6. Get on the bus at 7:30.

We had to go the long way around from Punto Arenas to Puento Natales. It is about 1200 miles by water (vs. 150 miles by the road). This is one of the most desolate places on earth. In that 1200 miles there is one community of 300 people, and that is all. We’ve seen a few only very few other vessels en route.

Today was lecture day. Helen and I attended three optional lectures. One was on Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego (many aspects); one was all about cormorants, and one was about plate tectonics. The speakers were very informative, enthusiastic, and humorous. I was awake and alert for the first two, but I lost it during the plate tectonics lecture and so didn’t get much out of that. Franz and Stefan are Germans with excellent English but German accents.

The cormorants lecture was the most interesting of the three to me. I took a lot of notes. A cormorant is an amazing bird – the ultimate fishing machine. Fantastic divers. Can’t walk or fly very well. Working together, they herd fish. They eat 1/3 of their weight each day. Fishermen (except Asians who used them to fish) hate cormorants. The anchovy industry hates them and has decimated them (by removal of the anchovies). A very subordinate subject is the industry that once flourished (1840 to 1915) in cormorant poop. Exported to England. Nitrates for gunpowder. Phosphates for fertilizer. Some men got filthy (excuse the pun) rich on the poop of one particular species of cormorant. Many laborers died young in the industry: First Chinese slaves, then black salves, then prisoners were used. Cormorant poop even figured as the cause or a cause of the war of 1879 of Chile with Peru and Bolivia that I mentioned in an earlier posting. A single bird produces 11 KG of poop per year.

The food served on board is very good and the servings are generous. If today is typical, it is buffet except for the evening meal.

I thought I would have time to do a lot of deck walking on board, but that’s not been the case so far. I did do 3 miles of walking around the deck today.

The days are very long. Still some light at 9:10 PM.

The weather, I guess is typical for summer. Light rain. Dark. Windy. Cool. Comfortable walking in a long-sleeve running shirt topped by the light water-proof jacket they issued.

It’s been a frustrating day in two ways. But the problems are solved now. Our power adapter wouldn’t adapt to the particular plug arrangement here with their 230 volt, 50 Hz AC system. We couldn’t borrow, rent, or buy the correct adapter. Fortunately there is a place to plug in 115 volt AC in the bathroom. It would be nice to have an extension cord for 115 volt AC, but that’s not available either. But we’ll get along. My computer cords are long enough to reach to the little table in our small basic cabin.

It was even more frustrating and quite time consuming to learn how to cope with the wireless system for which we payed good money to connect my computer to the Internet. First for a long time I couldn’t get on. It was due to my own stupidity or bad memory. I have to activate my wireless from a button on the lower right of my screen. The other problem was in logging off. We had been warned and given some information, but left with confusion as to exactly what to do. If you don’t log off properly, you keep getting charged minute by minute after you have exited the Internet. It turns out that, after you get to your screen saver, you have to go to a particular URL and log off. In addition to frustration, the learning curve involved nearly half an hour’s worth of charges prior to doing any useful work. But now we have it down and can do it smoothly. And what I do is prepare a blog entry off-line and cut and paste it onto my blog, thereby minimizing my time on-line.

Two items from earlier, not having to do with cruising:

Chile has a 99% literacy rate. Education is compulsory through 8th grade. A bill in congress would make it compulsory through 12th grade.

A few times I have seen a mechanical system which interests me. I’ve seen it on big buses and once on a truck. A tube comes down from the body of the vehicle to the hub of each wheel. It has to do with tire pressure. Apparently it measures tire pressure so the driver can monitor that just like he monitors oil pressure in the engine. Maybe it also puts air in to maintain a set pressure.

It’s 10:10 PM. We have docked at Puerto Navales. I’m going to deck 4 where the wireless is hot and post this entry. (Our cabin is on deck 3.)

Bernie