Two more days at sea February 16 and 17

Two more boring days at sea.  In the past we enjoyed cooking demos, wine tasting, extra lectures, etc.  Not this time, because of the continuing code red there is very little going on.  Noel has read three books in the last four days!  We have watched several movies in our room, luckily you can select form about 160 different movies.

Thursday evening was the Captain's farewell and "Krew Kapers" (crew talent show).  The talent show is always fun to watch, especially when you recognize the crew members that might be your steward, waiter or wine steward.

In the past shows, the first thing they showed was a video requesting that you fill out your "comment card".  This video was not shown, probably because they anticipate the comments would not be good.  We have heard many people really upset and stating they will never cruise Regent again.  I am sure that there will be lots of complaints to the main office of Regent.

Captain Teo giving his farewell speech 

Crew member from Bali 

We even have a Filipino Elvis

They always do a skit making fun of the stupid questions that passengers ask

Cruising the Atlantic February 14 and 15

The first two days of our 4 sea days seemed to pass rather slowly.  The water has been mostly calm with little wind.  Everyone is grumbling about missing the Falklands as it seems that the weather is not really the cause but in fact the problem with not being able to cruise at full speed. There was nothing special for Valentines Day other than fancy desserts at tea and giving roses to the ladies at dinner.  We had dinner in Prime 7, the specialty restaurant that serves steak and seafood.  The meal was better than the first two times we had eaten there, at least the food was hot this time.

Special goodies for Valentines Day at afternoon tea

Everyone on board seems to be getting rather tired of the code red restriction and they don't really tell us many details other than we need to keep following the protocol.  We have noticed a lot of the crew must be sick as we are seeing many new faces in positions where the regular crew members are missing. We are scheduled to have the big deck party BBQ on the 18th but have been told that it will not happen unless there have been no new cases of illness for 72 hours prior to the event.  We will keep our fingers crossed as the party is usually really nice and the one on the last leg basically got rained out.

Ushuaia, Argentina February 13

We got up early to see the "Avenue of the Glaciers" along the Beagle channel.  We saw a few but nothing like the last time we were here when the weather was much better.

Pretty views along the Beagle Channel














We arrived in Ushuaia at 11 am.  It is the southern most city in the world and is the gateway to Antarctica.  There were three smaller cruise ships along the same dock that are the ones that go to the arctic for ten day trips.  For a change we were the largest ship in the port!  All three of these ships left port in the early evening.  Our tour guide informed us that they get about 350 cruise ships each summer (December to May) and most are going to the Arctic.

Our small ship looks huge campared to the Artic ships 

The dock is right in the middle of town 

One of the arctic cruise ships as it leaves the dock















Our tour today was mostly a scenic bus ride over a low point in the Andes.  We were actually driving on the Pan American Highway.  We also had a typical lunch at a "snow resort" where they have dog sledding and other winter activities.  The main part of the lunch was lamb that had been cooked on vertical racks placed around a fire of large burning logs.  We were told that lamb is the only meat they have in this area and that all of their supplies have to come by truck from Buenos Aires which is a four day trip.

The lamb cooking inside glass enclosed building 

Beautiful flowers in front of the restaurant














One of the interesting things our tour guide told us was that in the 1940's fifty pairs of beavers were brought to the area from Canada to start a fur industry.  Unfortunately the winters here are not that cold and the fur was not of good quality and now the beavers number in the hundreds of thousands and are destroying the ecology as they have no predators here.

The weather was quite cold and we had periods of rain, sleet, hail, and even some snow flurries.  The wind was also blowing quite hard so we were glad that most of our tour was just a bus ride.

Just after we sat down to dinner the captain came on the PA and stated that we had apparently run over a fishing net or line and that one of the propellers might be damaged and we could not cruise at top speed so we were going to cancel our next scheduled stop at Port Stanley in the Falkland Islands.  This is very disappointing as this was a stop we had missed on our previous cruise in this area.  We were really looking forward to our planned tour to see penguins and to have real English fish and chips.

We are still under code red restrictions and now we cannot even get any of the usual snacks at cocktail hour.  Tom misses the mixed nuts and Noel misses the potato chips!  They also do not serve any hot or cold canapes.  No one can use the laundry rooms, no salt and pepper or sugar and cream on the tables.  We can't even have the jigsaw puzzles or table games. It is really getting to be a real pain but we have managed to stay healthy.

Punta Arenas, Chile February 12

We arrived at Punta Arenas early in the morning.  Since we had done the highlights tour here before we decided to just take the shuttle bus into the main square.  The bus was packed and it was obvious that a lot of passengers were not on the tours.  The highlights tour was the only one that was free and the paid ones basically did the highlights tour with one additional item.  Our shuttle bus was packed and when we took the return shuttle the one that was dropping off was also packed.

Punta Arenas is supposed to mean "Sandy Point", but Tom thinks it means "colder than other places".  Down jackets, turtle necks, stocking caps and gloves were the order of the day.  Good thing it is summer here.

Some of the vendor stalls were cute little wagons 

With all the Brits off the Queen Mary it was hard to look at the merchandise

Touching the foot of the statue is supposed to bring good luck.  We took a picture of  Noel here on the 2012 cruise. Tom thinks the same dog was lying here then too!














The Queen Mary arrived in port just after we arrived.  Nothing better than three thousand Brits running around.

The Queen Mary at anchor















We had dinner in the main dining room "Compass Rose", where a waiter accidentally knocked over a glass of red wine on Tom.

We had some very rough water for a short while during the night when we had to make a run out into the open ocean before entering the "Beagle Channel".  It woke Noel up as the shower doors were sliding back and forth and other things in the room were banging around. Tom managed to sleep though it all.

Cruising the Chilean Fjords February 10 and 11

We cruised the fjords for two days.  The water was quite smooth until we had to go out into the open ocean for about 12 hours before ducking back into the fjords.

The weather was not good with cold, fog rain, and even a few snow flurries.  We were unable to go to the Amalia Glacier as it was quite windy and the icebergs were moving around and it would have been a danger to the ship.

The virus conditions on the ship seem to be getting worse and announcements were made that you must report to the doctor if you have symptoms.  They do confine anyone with symptoms to their suite.

This is what the view from our suite looked like for two days 

There were many small islands throughout the fjords 

We did see a bit of hazy sunshine late on the second day

Puerto Chacabuco, Chile February 9

Our port for today is Puerto Chacabuco, Chile, or Port Chewbaca as Tom calls it.  This is where we start our cruise through the Chilean Fjords which is one of the most remote and beautiful places in the world.  It will be around 1000 miles before we reach our next port, Punta Arenas.

Due to a medical evacuation last night in Puerto Montt we left there almost two hours late.  All the days tours have been moved back and our tour was rescheduled to leave at 3 pm which would have not gotten us back to the ship until around 6 pm.  This would have really cut into Tom's cocktail hour (and since we had been here before) we turned in our tour tickets and stayed on board for the afternoon.  We tied for first in trivia, mostly because so few passengers were there!

There was a very nice event at 10 am for the passengers of gold level or above that featured the ballroom dancers performing latin dances.

The dancers performing a tango 

There was a beautiful background photo of Buenos Aires behind the band

The female ballroom dancer Tatiana














When we arrived in Chacabuco there was a small Princess ship already anchored in the small harbor. We had not seen many other cruise ships after leaving the Caribbean.

The fjords have a lot of these fish farms.  They raise mostly salmon 

There were a number of waterfalls 

These peaks had been under cloud cover all day and this was a beautiful view just before sunset














One highlight of the day was for the first time they had sliced mangoes on the buffet at breakfast, yum!!

Puerto Montt, Chile February 8

We arrived in Puerto Montt on schedule (for a change)!  Since we had been here before we decided to not take a tour but to just go ashore and walk around the port area.

This is a small tourist town, mostly for people from Argentina, and since schools are on vacation there were lots of Spanish speaking families walking around. There was about three blocks of small stalls selling handicrafts.  They all seemed to have most of the same items, lots of alpaca sweaters, ponchos, hats, scarves, etc.  There was also carved wood items, copper things and Lapis jewelry.  At the end of the street was in interesting market with stalls selling fish, fruits and vegetables, cheeses, sausages, and colorful candy.  We went back to the ship in time for a Chinese lunch in honor of Chinese New Year. The weather was overcast and it did rain a bit in the afternoon.

This was a busy main street with lots of traffic and this horse was just standing there untied. 

 There were about three blocks of these venders stalls on both sides of the street.

Lots of different types of cheese and sausages in the market area

They have hundreds of varities of potatoes in Peru and Chile

Before dinner there was a lecture by an interesting speaker who had served as a military aide in the White House for five different presidents.

We had dinner in Prime 7, the specialty steak house.  Since we are both still fighting colds we skipped the evening entertainment and went to bed early.