South America Day 8: Pinin' for the Fjords

Thanksgiving Day

I slept like a baby last night, rocked by the waves in my little nest of a bed. There's kind of a hollow in the mattress and I curl up in there all cozy. We woke up late, and barely made it to breakfast.

This is a sea day, and the sea is a little eerie. We are cruising around the fjords of the Chilean Archipelago (all the little islandy bits along the coast) and we will duck into the Strait of Magellan later on.

The deeper in the fjords we go the stiller the water is. The ocean surface is like glass and the clouds are so low they hover over the water like steam:



Our library recently bought a cute little Flip Video camera and I took it out on the balcony last night and this morning:





Today has been a really lazy day for us.We alternated between informal Spanish lessons in the Windjammer Bar, various meals (belly up to the trough, boys!), naps and puzzles. As the day progressed the weather became steadily more dramatic and our balcony was not exactly welcoming,



but I kept going out there to feel the wind and the waves. In a sort of meta moment, Dad photographed me photographing the ocean. Now if only someone had photographed him....





We got gussied up in our fancy clothes and went early to Thanksgiving Dinner at the Four Seasons, where they served a traditional Thanksgiving turkey dinner. For the first time, we were seated with several other couples (two American and one from Montreal) to fill the table. We had a nice, lively conversation, and enjoyed our dinner, although I missed carving our own turkey and getting just the parts I like best.

Dessert was unsurpassable: a caramelized apple tart, with the apple slices delicately arranged on a circle of puff pastry, topped with a dab of cinnamon ice cream, and the whole thing drowned in crème anglaise. I bet I can recreate this...Must try!

I could barely keep my eyes open till 10 PM, but I woke several times in the night as the water became much rougher - we are swinging out into the Pacific as we prepare to enter the Strait of Magellan tomorrow. Every time I looked out I saw a type of beautiful bird I'd never seen before soaring and dipping above the waves. They're white on the bottom with a brown-black outline all the way around. On top, they looked like they had four white spots across their shoulders, sort of like this:

Turns out they are Cape Petrels. Up close, the white spots are more like patches or splashes:

A much better photographer than me (dfaulder, on Flikr, via Wikimedia Commons) took that photo.