Almost at Montevideo
Well out with the winter wardrobe and in with the summer one. We’ve re-found the sunscreen and sun hats last worn in Buenos Aires. Apart from our camping on deck experience last night, I think the long johns can now be declared obsolete. That is if we don’t end up onboard to Vlissingen. We’ve transitioned from 5 layers in Antartica to T-shirts in under a week.
Plans for ‘Plancius has got talent’ are well underway. The mind boggles. Given some of the passengers onboard it could range from the wildly inappropriate to the truly talented. We’ll keep you posted. Surprisingly, this morning we have a lecture on “Gender Differences: He said, She said”. I’m not sure if it will be a populist poke or perhaps we have a gender expert onboard that I haven’t discovered. This afternoon’s lecture on the weather in Antartica is being given by a genuine retired meteorologist - Jode is excited, loves a weather chat!
Some of you are optimistic about the communication possibilities onboard. We have tried everything with the kids, and know calling through WhatsApp is not a goer.
In that same vein, please don’t be offended if we don’t reply to you individually. The connection for webmail is flaky. If we start responding directly to your email in webmail, we lose it all if the connection drops out, and have to start again. This email we write in a different app and copy and paste into webmail and press send as quickly as possible. We can do this for individuals too but every time we want to go out to get the text to copy and paste, we have to log back in again. And if the connection is lost re-connecting may or may not occur. We end up chasing a connection all over the boat and it can become all consuming.
We’ve also had some interesting tourist (have a poke) suggestions re Uruguay. In Argentina before the borders slammed shut people were only able to disembark under police escort and directly to the airport. If we do manage to get off the boat that will, I’m sure, be the extent of our sightseeing. The ship is currently arriving in the vicinity of Montevideo a day early, tomorrow, in order to take up any berth that becomes available. It will need to re-provision regardless. The main question will be if we are allowed to disembark. We have a flight booked for the 26th.
Many of you are suggesting we stay put, that in fact our reality is preferable to yours. We certainly do have some advantages. One of our fellow passengers remarked that they didn’t join the murder mystery game because you become paranoid about everyone. Funny that we should create that artificially on board while you are all experiencing that for real. We have absolutely no inhibitions about our contact with each other and that is a luxury that will disappear the moment we disembark.
I was also reflecting on the trivial nature of what we are communicating back to you. Jode and I are doing virtually no, non-essential googling, so no news sites or social media. Over lunch six of us, two Dutch, two Greek, and two Australian’s pooled what we knew about populations that are particularly vulnerable to COVID. Very sobering stuff.
Jen
My turn, whilst Jen is at this morning’s lecture I’ve decided to stay put on the deck in the sun. It’s mostly very quiet, bar the exercise fanatics who are doing endless laps on this very small boat!
I’ve been thinking about extroverts & introverts.......you can see some of the introverts squirming, jangling as the extroverts loudly go about their business with seemingly little self awareness. Maybe it’s also the young ones who are chaffing at having their wings clipped & just need to blow it out somehow? Anyway for me, last night camping out under the stars in my bivouac, seeing the Southern Cross from an entirely new perspective was beautiful and quiet. Showing our new Dutch friend Rose how to find the South Pole from the Southern Cross, she was delighted!
Which now gets me thinking about the people we have met. I feel like we are having our version of that musical ‘Come from Away’ currently on in Melbourne about the 9/11 planes that diverted to a small town in Newfoundland. It’s funny how you find your people in all sorts of circumstances. I’m pretty sure we are the only gay couple on the boat, yet of course we are more than just our sexuality & that has proven to be the case here. As I mentioned earlier we have linked up with a mostly Dutch crowd of varying ages (Ruth & Rose, Sander & Anna). But we also made friends with a lovely Vancouver couple (Rosemary & Gordon), a young Birmingham chap (Tom), a San Fransisco couple (Rebecca & Dave), Bristol grandma (Kate)....we know quite a few more by name, but as introverts have mostly stuck to our small group. Of course we have Dorette our Dutch friend who is one of the guides, it’s wonderful to have her to share this experience with.
And now a confession......our last WA trip north in August 2019, I quite got into twitching (birding)......so I’ve been loving watching the large Southern ocean birds via binoculars. We had 8-10 wandering albatrosses following us through the Beagle Channel. We are now too far north for them, but there are 22 species of albatrosses & now I’m following the brown albatrosses between spotting dolphins & whales.
Our unexpected cruise of South America might sound idyllic.....but there are many simmering anxieties for all of us (crew & passengers), our leader Iain (a Scott) is the most humble, smart, lovely guy....he listens & is very empathetic......I’m sure he would love to tell all of us at times to just bugger off! As we get nearer to Montevideo I can feel the tension rising......my “F” (Myers Briggs....I’m an ISFP) is just going off all the time. There are a few random oddballs (which is saying a lot given how much of a weirdo I am 🤪) who seem quite disconnected from everyone & I can’t help but engage even though I know they’re not my type.
Jode