All Aboard!

In just another hour we will board our ship, the Lyubov Orlova, and begin our journey southward. A large group of us just finished "patching up." By that I am referring to the motion sickness patches that you place behind your ear and leave in place for three days. We just had a wonderful lunch of king crab in the port town of Ushuaia and then placed those magic dots of medicine behind our ears. Sara put two on, logically thinking that since we have two ears, we must use two patches, right? Not right. Luckily she happened to mention that to us at the table and we could stage an intervention before she got too much of the medicine in her system and started to hallucinate! Ushuaia is a smallish town (70,000 people) located at the base of the Andes mountains. It reminds me of some of the Alaskan towns I visited while doing the glacier cruise a few years ago. There is a rustic charm mixed with the many tourist traps selling stuffed penguins, post cards, and liquor to bring aboard ship. I will pick up a bottle of wine to bring with me because I am optimistic that my patch will work and I'll actually be able to eat and drink. Then again, sometimes the swells on the Drake Passage are over 40 feet high and it is all you can do to stay in your berth and not be bucked out!

By the way, the Crown Prince of the Netherlands made it in okay. He joined us at the restaurant for lunch. No sign of the couple from the French Polynesians though.

Next stop--Antarctica!