Up bright and early because this is a tender port. But the weather looks awful – rain, cold, wind, overcast. We have a tour scheduled, but it’s not pre-paid and we are thinking of ditching it. However – there is one piece of extraordinarily great news: WE ARE CLEAN! YAY! The ship has been released from the Noro-precautions. We can actually pour our own coffee! Make our own salads! Get our own sandwiches and desserts! Oh yay, oh yay! The staff is overjoyed as well – one of the girls said this had been going on for 90 days – and you could just tell the toll it has taken on all of them. Doing double duty and cleaning, cleaning, cleaning. We’re so excited (silly as that sounds – it’s been a real pain with the poor staff having to get you all your food, drinks and condiments! So now, we’re back to being on our own, yay!)
After that bit of cheery news, the weather isn’t going to dampen our spirits. But we do decide to bag the excursion. It’s a boat ride to a penguin preserve that is smaller than Punta Tombo. It’s the same Magellanic penguins, and the boat ride is supposed to be really, really bumpy. It’s raining, it’s cold, we’ve seen the penguins, so we told another couple who was on the tour to let everyone know we probably weren’t coming and not to wait for us.
We ended up hanging out aboard, waiting for the rain to stop, then wandering around the town of Punta Arenas. There are lots of little museums, a nice park/square area with craft vendors and shopping and banks and internet connection shops. There is also a cemetery that everyone seemed to enjoy, but that we never made it to. We were content being slugs and just walking around in the sprinkling rain, catching up on our internet access and shopping at the craft stalls (finally bought some penguin earrings and little penguin statuette – the only things we’ve purchased this whole trip).
We started getting hungry so looked around at some restaurants and settled on a traditional Chilean restaurant called Sotitos. The sign says it’s a bar, but it’s far from what we would consider a bar. It’s an upscale traditional restaurant with incredible food and service. All local seafood and regional specialties. They had a ton of entrees and appetizers with king crab – and we looked at those, but ended up ordering chicken stuffed with seafood and Conger Eel. Yep, Conger Eel! Ed went all out on this one.
The food was incredible. The chicken was stuffed with huge hunks of crab and celery and spinach, with a great cream sauce. The Conger eel was not anything like we expected – it was huge and grilled to perfection, slightly sweet and very light. It was excellent. Two beers, two wines, and an excellent afternoon with fabulous food.
The rain had stopped once we left the restaurant, we headed back to the port, stopped by the grocery store for more supplies, and then hit the tender boat just in time. Last ones on before the tender left, which means first ones off at the ship. Good timing!
Back aboard, we hang out wasting time until we sail. This is a hugely long port stop because they have a tour that goes to Antarctica – so we’re here until 7:30. But the last tender doesn’t even come back until 7:40 – so somebody is running late. We finally leave around 8:00 after having issues getting the last tender loaded. We had dinner reservations in the Pacific Heights restaurant – which is excellent. Different, “light” food, no extra cost. They have a grilled chicken salad as an appetizer that is like a main meal. We sit at a two-top right on the picture window watching Punta Arenas slip into the sunset as we sail away.
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