Laguna San Raphael, Chile

Tuesday January 31, 2012.  Today we are anchored out in the middle of nowhere.  We got up and had breakfast in La Veranda.  Then I went up to needlepoint while the cabin was cleaned.  In order to view the glacier, you must take a catamaran to go up close.  Our ship is too large so we were all given a time to view.  We were scheduled for 10:50am.  The boat was late, so we finally got on at about 11:30.

The Southern Patagonia Ice Field is the third biggest extension of continental ice after the Antarctica and Greenland, located at the Southern Patagonic Andes between Chile and Argentina.  The ice field was first studied in 1943 by aerial photography made by the USAF.  The journey from our ship to the glacier took about one hour.  The catamaran was very nice.  Large seats and the ship had lunch for us since we missed lunch on the ship.

Catamaran

San Rafael Glacier is a popular tourism destination.  We got a great view of the glacier but were not able to see tit calve or any wildlife.

Glacier

It was cold

We returned to the ship and went up and spent one hour doing water exercises.  It was raining but not hard and the water was warm.  Of course, we were the only ones in the water.

We came back to the cabin to clean up for dinner.  We are eating with Jack, Norma, Tom and Alice tonight.  More on that later.

We were to meet the four others in the Mariner Lounge.  We arrived early and they soon met up with us.  O'Neal (Tom goes by this middle name) told us they called him and asked if he wanted to dine in Prime 7 tonight.  He said if they could make it for six and they said no problem.  I had the Dover Sole and Bob had lobster.  All very good.  O'Neal and Alice have been married for 57 years and Jack and Norma have been married for 53 so we were the newlyweds.  Good food and great conversation.  Nice people.  They live in Jacksonville and Jack and Norma know our good friends the Edmonds.

We returned to the cabin to ready for bed when the Captain came on the PA to tell us we would be getting into some rough seas from midnight until noon tomorrow and he was right.  So Bob duck taped the drawers so they could not slide open and anything fall out and break.