Lacking A/C in Coyhaique

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The elevators greet us as they have every morning, informing us today that it is Monday. We made our way to the Lido at 6:45 AM to start with the continental breakfast, only to find the full buffet up and serving people. I guess there were a lot of complaints about the full buffet not being ready early when there were so many early tours. I am again had a bowl of oatmeal, but couldn’t help adding a side of pork link sausages and potatoes. Sharon stuck with her single slice of French toast and bacon. We both had some apple juice. The Lido was crowded when we got there, so it looks like a lot of tour goers today. We were in the “RED 2” tour group (with HAL’s reddish orange sticker badge). The “tour color” is now printed on the ticket, so I guess that makes it easy to give out stickers.



We were in the first of two groups to depart for the tender. We had a short five minute ride across to our concrete dock, with several old tires serving as boat bumpers hanging on the side. The ride was uneventful, until we seemed to be approaching the dock at much too high of speed, and much to straight on an angle (about 45 degrees). I thought, well I guess he must know what he’s doing, when noticed that beside the driver another HAL person looking rather concerned, as the tire gave the full effect of its cushioning ability before we heard the rather disconcerting raspy sound of concrete grinding against the fiberglass hull of our tender/life boat. Sharon and I look at each other with the “that can’t be good” look. We supposed that the driver was being trained. Our bus was near the end of busses lined up to pick up tour-goers, backed in diagonally and facing the tender. Our guide for the day was named Karla, and she had everyone pronounce her name, twice. She said she teaches small children, and that for today, we would be her class. She was young and lively, from the town we would be visiting later, which she referred to as the best place to live in the world. She had gone away to school, and at the time, couldn’t wait to leave, but she said after school she couldn’t wait to get back.



We had what can only be described as a picture post card perfect day as far as the weather is concerned. In this rainy climate where summer temperatures may reach 60 degrees Fahrenheit, Beautiful/population/weather unusual, today’s temperature would reach the mid-80’s with solid blue contaminant free skies. And of course there is green everywhere, with trees growing out of what appears to be vertical walls of rock. The striations show the vertical movement of uplift that created these rock formations as the Pacific plate presses against the continental plate. There were several false starts with the microphone, and the air whooshing in through the several top vents and two side window vents didn’t help. Still early in the day, people started to complain about the cold, and one by one the vents got closed. Karla was doing her spiel at the front of the bus, and then again in the middle of the bus, so that everyone could hear; but, then miraculously the microphone began to work so that she could talk, sitting down if she wanted, from her seat in the front. Of course, it wasn’t long before the same people who wanted the windows closed, wanted the air conditioning (A/C) turned on. Alas, with the two or three days per year like the one we were enjoying, that you might need A/C, our busses weren’t so equipped. It was much harder to reopen the vents than to close them.



We first stopped at a small park with a very small museum. Two groups were ahead of us, and how RED-3 passed us, I don’t know. One group went on the left path, and the other down the right, so Karla suggested we start with the wildlife museum. It was a one-room small shack of a building that contained a panorama display featuring stuffed wildlife of the region, mostly birds but also a fox. Notably it contained a condor as its centerpiece. There was also a model of the geographic region that you could walk around. We then walked around the park trail, down to the water, and took a picture of Indian rock, which was a rock abutment with a face when viewed from the size looked like the profile of an Indian.



We continued our bus trip to Coyhaique, passed a waterfall, and on to a summit view, where we stopped to take pictures below of Coyhaique in the valley below. This was an extremely scenic vista. We continued on, down into the town that Karla called home, and where she would be married in just two weeks. We stopped in the market area, and found a restaurant with an outside facing case and counter offering several flavors of freshly made ice cream. It was 2700 Chilean pesos or $3 for a single scoop. Fortunately, she accepted US currency, and even made correct change for $10 for the two of us. Sharon got a scoop of bright green mint with large chocolate chips, which was probably a better choice than the cinnamon ice cream I chose. Mine was good, and refreshing on a day like today, but not as good as the cinnamon ice cream that I make at home.



We then drove back down the road we had arrived on, stopping this time at a restaurant near the waterfall. There was a table laid out with Chilean delicacies for us to sample, including cheese empanada, meat empanadas, fish on cracker hors devoirs, grilled beef/sausage/chicken kabobs with onion and green pepper, and assorted cookies and cakes. Complimentary glasses of cabernet sauvignon or chardonnay were also available along with water, orange juice and kiwi juice (which was excellent). These empanadas, although they looked much the same as yesterday’s were much better (they were hot for one thing). Sharon tried the kabob, but I had to finish it for her. Sharon didn’t try the wine, so I finished hers for her too. Sharon did zero in on the white and chocolate butter cookies, a round flat cookie which had the chocolate dough in the top left and bottom right quadrant of the cookie and the regular butter cookie dough for the other two quadrants. She kept having me go back and get her another one, until there were none left. She said they were pretty good, which is high praise from a cookie maker such as her, who has been known to bake many hundreds of dozen cookies of many types for Christmas. After I filled up on empanadas and wine, and Sharon on cookies, we walked over to the waterfall that falls from the top about halfway down the side of the hill, collects and cascades again to the river below.





We got back in time for Team Trivia at 3:30 PM. I stopped by the Exploration Lounge to pickup today’s Sudoku, then headed up to the Crow’s Nest to wait for our team. The first Sudoku was easy, but I evidently made a mistake doing the hard one, which is supposed to be easy on Monday. Having found that the 5’s should run, I went through again on the spare sheet I’d gotten for Sharon, and found that there was a conflict with the 5’s… they’d given us a bad puzzle (one that has no solution), or more likely, copied it incorrectly from the NY Times. I’d never had that happen before on HAL. No previous team members showed up, so it was just Sharon and I, until the team that has been winning all week invited us to join them (their team members were evidently still out on tour). Sharon and I didn’t contribute much, but we wound up with the highest score I’ve ever heard of in Team Trivia (21 out of a possible 22 points). The lady running the game made it a 7 point bonus question, hoping this would knock of the top team, or at least make the others competitive. But she used a question that had been used before on other HAL cruises, and ours was the only team that got it right (not that Sharon and I knew the answer). What ball, did they use for volleyball, before the current volleyball was invented? I’m told the volleyball today has the same stitching pattern as that other ball… so I guess that rules out soccer ball which seems to be everyone’s preferred choice. Don’t think too hard, it’s a basketball, and I guess you wouldn’t have to get one of those spiked in your face too many times before you decided that something needed to change.



Every once in a while you meet a truly incredible staff person on HAL, that makes everyone’s cruising experience that much more pleasurable. That’s what happened tonight for us when we sat at a table served by “The Ice Man”. When taking our orders, he made a point to learn everyone’s name, and he made sure you knew his name, and say things like “I live to serve you and make you happy.” I enjoyed the three-cheese soufflé, and also the cheese and bacon soup that Sharon ordered for me. I ordered the curried pasta fagiole, and when it came, I couldn’t remember what the soup was supposed to be, sort of minestrone-tasting but very brothy. The soup was very good tasting, but as a pasta fagiole I wouldn’t give it great marks. My entrée was the Asian noodles, a vegetable dish, to which I added the 8 ounce sirloin steak. Sharon had an ample serving of roast sirloin, which is one of her favorite dishes on HAL. I had the poached pear with chocolate ganache for dessert, which is a new one for me. It was very good, though I don’t know that I would get it again. Sharon had ordered the no sugar chocolate delight, but she thinks she wound up with the chocolate dessert with big pieces of walnut in it… She does not like nuts in her desserts.



We went to the show to see Marty Brill, a TV and movie comedy writer that Sharon say on this cruise five years ago. She said that he was hilarious, and he lived up to her billing. He came out and did a non-stop forty minute stand-up routine… okay he sat down for some of it. He is a Korean War veteran who wrote for shows such as “All in the Family” and M*A*S*H. He took shots at the airlines, and their cost saving measures, and how he expects if the air mask ever needs to drop down for him, he’ll need to swipe his card for the $4.95 charge for using the air. Time just seem to fly by when watching his act.



We met up with Sharon’s friend Ruth later in the Piano Bar to see Jamm the Piano Man. We talked about the Show and she noted that she liked Marty very much, having seen his act on several different cruises, and appreciated that he always seemed to change the material up for each cruise so it was always fresh. Jamm’s fingers seemed to fly magically across the ivories as he sang oldies tunes from Cole Porter and Gerswhin. With no casino luring us, we retired for the evening.

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