In the early morning the passengers from our last cruise
left the ship and started their long journeys home- Ushuaia is a long way from
everywhere! But just a few hours later our new passengers arrived and in the
evening we started our new trip to the Antarctic Peninsula.
It is always a hard day for the crew to prepare the cabins
and the whole ship for the new incoming guests. After everything was shining
again on the ship, cabins, floors, restaurant and lounges, the luggage arrived
and had to be distributed to each of our cabins.
Shortly after the passengers
arrived the check in started.This cruise will be a very special cruise – an
almost full Chinese charter. 156 Chinese people people boarded in the early
afternoon. After the check in they started to explore the ship. All over the
vessel you could hear them laughing, and nearly always smiling even though they
were tired after the long flight from
China. Everyone looked like they were on holiday, which they were!
As the weather in Ushuaia had been so wonderful nearly
everybody spent time outside on deck when we left Ushuaia. The Beagle Channel was
flat like a mirror. The sky was deep blue and the high mountains, the very end
of the Andes, showed up clearly against the sky. The highest tips are very
sharp, indicating that they were not covered in ice during the last glacial
period. Then they would have been surrounded by ice and called “Nunataks” (a term
from the Inuit Language).
The southern beech (Nothogagus) forest that covered the
mountain sides down to the will the last
really green vegetation we will see over the next 10 days. We said “good bye”
to the beautiful and colorful spring time in South America, and look forward to
the more or less icy spring time at the Antarctic Peninsula.
