RIO, CARNIVAL and the hunt for Indian food

 

USHUAIA and the PASSAGE

19^th Feb was the designated day for us to join our Antarcric shipmates. I must add a few words here about the cruise. Usually the the tour operators give you a nights stay at Ushuaia, when you land there and put everyone on their ships the next day. Ponnant, a French cruise liner. on which we are booked, do it differently. Thy provide accommodation in BA and then fly you out by chartered aircraft the next morning to Ushuaia, tour the Tierra del Fuego, the national park in Ushuaia, and then board the  ship by 4 pm. Hotels are better in BA, they said, which is partially true.

So next morning we checked in Hotel Madero , a good hotel for sure. The catch was they said we leave for Ushuaia next morning and the bus leaves at 5.30 and breakfast would be served at 4.30 am. That was a bummer ! I thought  maybe we could pack something and take, as most people wont be  eating at the unearthly hour. Surprise !! People were gorging on ham and bacon and cereal and fruit and you name it. People are the same everywhere. Offer something for free and they will take it !!. I was glad to know its not only Indians who succumb to this freebies.

 And when we went to the airport, we realised the flight was actually at 9 am. A  bit much , I thought . Breakfast at 4.30 for a flight at 9 am. We dont do that even in Bengaluru. It was a 3 hr 40 minute flight, gives you an idea of the size of Argentina . They threw in a  gourmet lunch with lamb after we landed ,  and so yours truly made do with bread and wine. Oh sweet Jesus !

Our first sight of Ushuaia

The Argentinian Carne special !

Cooked on this Argentinian Tandoor

Ushuaia is a town of about 80,000 people , the guide told us. The town mushroomed with a spurt in the Antarctica travel  business. With more people coming in  , fishing developed as a business . Apparently there  are some  factories making electronic goods, though I did not see any. Nothing really grows here and almost everything comes in from Buenos Aires and other places .Not surprisingly, the Argentine navy has a presence here , Ushuaia being at the southern tip of the country.

Boarding the ship

We made our way to the port area and there were about 5 ships in port. Three were scheduled to depart that evening. We boarded our ship the L’Austral,  amongst very strong winds, which did not bode well for our journey through Drakes passage. The ship looked good and they had a smooth  check in process and we were led to our state room. This was Devika's and my first cruise and we knew the rooms would be small. . We did not know how tiny.  To be honest, it was tidy and had everything a hotel room has, plus some. It just needed a bit getting used to not hurting your elbow when undressing !. Fortunately we had a balcony and large windows and a glass door leading to it. That helped create an illusion of space.

The ship was carrying about 145 passengers  and a crew of 140. We were immediately involved in a flurry of activities, an introduction to the main team members, a mandatory safety drill, dealing with wifi connectivity problems and similar first day issues.

We were on level 3 and the ship had 6 levels. The staff was probably on 1 and below as were the kitchens  and other facilities. They had 2 dining rooms and 3 bars with a spacious lounge with a  piano and  viewing deck on level 6. In this cruise all drinks and food are included, unless one wants some premium stuff like single malts. This is not usually the case. Usually the food is a part of the package but the booze is extra. On our ship , not only was the booze free, so was the mini bar and room service. They also threw in free inlimited wifi but to only one device per person. I never had to resort to the mini bar since the they had a bar lounge on our deck which was open from  6 am to midnite. They served Champagne and some good wines, several cocktails and anything else one could ask for. The service was very good as was the food. I am sure the carnivores had a better time feasting on salmon, or prime steaks. The veggie types had lots of salad to chose from plus other stuff. This kind of cruise is not for those eho need Indian food , unless you book  with an  Indian tour group. They also made occasional extra effort to  throw in some decent vegetarian fare too, I must add. In case you are wondering why so much detail on the layout. I am coming to it. We sailed at 6,00 pm.

 

High winds made the sea choppy even as we set sail

 

The Drakes passage, the waterway we cross to reach the Antarctica is a choke point around Antarctica. It’s a narrowest sea  passage around Antarctica  to other continets. Apparently the geography seriously influences the circulation of water, wind and the oceanic currents not only here but globally. Google and wikipedia describe it as the worlds worst sea crossing! I  believe them ! Without getting into more technical stuff, one just needs to know that the wind is coming in from  3 directions   leading to rough to very rough  seas . Throw in some random  drifting icebergs and a rough passage could become really tricky. We already had an inkling that we were in a for some tough times when we were informed that the 6^th floor restaurant was closed due to bad weather. We were told that passage would be difficult when we navigated the beagle channel leading out to the Drakes passge fro Ushuaia. and hit the open waters, sometime after midnite.

Anyways, I did wake with some movement in the night and peeped out and I saw choppy seas and waves out of the large windows. We were rattling around like a Rajdhani express at some speed !.  By the time we woke up the next morning we are  stumbling quite a bit in the corridors as we  went for breakfast. We realised in a briefing that they held ,that we were  heading east and skirting south in the night so that our first night on board could be comfortable!  We  were scheduled to turn south by 10 am and we were told the seas could get rough !!

Beaufort scale is a wind measurement scale and this is what it says

When I later checked the logs on a visit to the  bridge, I found that the night was around 6 on the scale , and  passed through 8 (close to 9, I was casually told on the bridge)  between 1 pm to 6 pm . I can tell you experienced or novice, there were a lot of affected people  and the proof was in the low turnout for lunch on the 20^th.  We could see the rough seas from the large windows in the restaurant on Deck 2. The waves were smashing regularly against the windows, eliciting gasps from the passengers. We could  see and feel the ship cresting a wave and hitting the troughs. The waves were below us and the suddenly above our eye level and crashing on to the glass windows. The wind  did scale down to level 6 by evening and 4 by the next morning, but we had been put through the proverbial wringer. People , including those in our group had applied scopolomine patches, while some had swallowed Dramamine tablets.  This is a ship equipped with 2 stabilizers with dynamic fins to cancel out the rolls of the waves !! Point was no one hit the bar, check out the ship or relish the food being dished out aplenty. I am pleased to say I was one of the few still standing without medical or physical assiatnce.

I am unable to post videos on the blog site. Will recheck how to do that. The photo may give you some idea.

The morning of the 21st was spent in keeping us busy with distribution of parkas, and life vests to wear when out on the ice and measurement for shoes. The shoes were returnable but the parkas were ours to keep. By the afternoon of 21^st Feb, we had passed the Drakes passage and we were down to a Beaufort 2 or 3 for the most times. Ponnant being a a European company, that too French, they held two formal dinners on board. They had thoughtfully kept one of these on the 20th night to help us celebrate the trip the Drakes . We had been warned earlier , and we had prepared for it. I dressed in a dhoti kurta just to be different and you bet I was !

The on board programmes included two sets of briefings. All the briefings, lecture demos etc  were in a small theatre in deck 4. One was about the continent itself and , and an interesting talk by a Ben Saunders, the first  and the only man to ski to south pole and back unsupprted.It took him the best part of 3 and a half months.  Absolutely fascinating talk .  The Ponnant had a  tie up withe theSmithsonian institute and they had about 2/3 specialists on board each cruise. These were subject experts, on contract and different experts were on on various Ponnat ships. Ben was one such person.

Thats Devika and me with Bill Saunders

The other was on how the trips from  the ship would take place, attire and safety instructions on board and on the Zodiacs.  Now, Zodiacs are the ‘Xerox’ to the  world of the inflatable boats with an outboard motor, with a capacity of 12 to 14  people. Now all such boats are  called Zodiacs irrespective of origin or manufacturer. They also had a separate briefing for those who had prebooked a kayaking trip and others who were considering it. I had mentally pepared myself for a polar puge and was diappointed to find that Ponnant didnt offer that. Perj\haps a bit relieved too. But I did want t do soethig to make this trip stand out. So, for  a lark, i attended the  kayaking trip and ia fit of bravado,I signed for it, Apart from the fact that ot cost 350 euros extra, They said  participants should be 50 meters of swimming was soe kayaking experience  was desirable. I had only swimming pool experince and I was pretty sure I could not manage 5 meters in that ice cold water, let alone 50!. And I had zero kayaking exprience.  But the kayaking leader was all confidence , and I signed up. Bravado, at its worst or best, I was to find out.

By evening we had started seeing small icebergs and it was getting exciting. We were getting close ! The ship has a mini printing press and we got our printed daily programmes  by 8 pm each evening. They had divided the passengers in 4  color coded groups. As per the norm , not more than 100 people are allowed on the ice and out of the ship at any given time. So two groups of about 70 odd people with the zodiac crews and naturalist to guide you on land ,we had about 90+ people  at any given time on the ice. We were in the yellow group, and we slated to be first off the boat the next morning at 8.15 am.

The first sighting

The next day  promised some exciting stuff and we were looking forward with some excitement and a bit of fear of the unknown. How to get in and out of the Zodiacs and woud be be seasick on them ? Would  we slip on the ice ? Though I must say the expedition team, who would be lrading us on and off the zodiacs  and in the ice lands were absolute professioals and gave us loads of confidence.