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Published: January 24th 2013
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Hola and Happy New Year from the Southern Hemisphere! We are still in the UTC-3 time zone, so we even beat the East coast of the U.S. to 2013 by two hours. Docked in Puerto Madryn at 0700 this morning, but slept in and left the dock about 1000. Wow! What a beautiful little resort city, and better yet, most everything was closed for New Year’s today so it was nice and quiet. We just lazed along the beachfront all day, took some photos, had coffee and lay in the sun reading books, and snagged some cold stuff at the Farmacia. When we do the “ultimate bank robbery” this is where we will re-locate to spend our loot! Two interesting stories of note:
Look at the photo of the sea lions sleeping on the baluster along the dock area. When we left there was this un-accompanied pit bull just running back and forth, barking his ass off at the sea lions, all along about a 50-meter space. When we returned five hours later, her was still there doing his thing…. Talk about relentless! Second thing is the photo of Carol in the Farmacia…. This is how you purchase ANYTHING (at
least legal) behind the drug counter in Argentina (even nasal spray): 1. You ask the pharmacy tech for the product; 2. S/he bags it in a LOCKED bag and tapes a receipt to the top of the bag; 3. Then YOU hand carry the locked bag to another line where you wait to check out; 4. The checker opens the bag, verifies what you bought; 5. You pay and get the drugs in another “carry-out” bag. Next time you bitch about waiting in line at CVS, remember, there is always another way that is probably worse….
We have also seen an increasing number of people since arriving in Punta Arenas drinking mate’ tea here, in café’s (café here is a “real” café = coffee/tea house with light snacks only). They have an intricate ceramic or wooden mug with a metal straw, stuff the mug full of leaves, and add boiling water in small amount, sipping the tea. Do not know a lot about it except the dictionary here states that mate’ tea has very high caffeine content. Carol says, “Ummmm, I might have to check into that.”
Backed off the dock at 1700 sharp, and will head out
into Golfo Nuevo for 40 miles or so and then into the South Atlantic, where El Capitan says we’re gonna run hard all night, as when we hit the Rio de la Plata, which is very shallow, we are going to have to slow down very much as we make out entrance into Montevideo. Steve gets a super tour of the inside of this ship tomorrow, which never ceases to amaze us. We shot some photos of our side thrusters backing us off the dock today, completing a 180-degree turn of the ship in about 90 seconds. Remember, this tub is 1,000 feet long and weighs 110,000 tons!
Went to the Elton John music show with the pianist on board (not real good), and then Steve returned to the room to finish watching the Rose Bowl (Yeah Stanford) before hitting the track at 0030.
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