Wednesday, January 8, 2014

      We finally made it!  We’re on the ship and have set sail into the wild blue Pacific about 1 hour ago at 8:30 PM.  The ship is moving very quickly even though the seas are quite rough with 10-15 foot swells. We have a a beautiful and comfortable cabin with a large picture window so we are able to see a lot without having to be on the deck, where the wind is blowing so hard right now that its hard to even stand up. 

      Like all of the other days so far, this has been a long one also.  It all began with a very early 5:30 AM wake-up call with breakfast at 6:00 AM. Shortly after breakfast we departed on our tour bus for the 2 hour trip to the coast where we toured a couple of very old and historic cities, Valparaiso, and Vina del Mar. 3PM soon arrived, so we began the process of getting checked into our cruise ship docked in Valparaiso.  

      Our first of many cruise ship meals came at 6:00 PM and it was delightful with shrimp cocktail, coconut encrusted scallops, farmers salad, then the entree where we both chose the delicious prime rib.  Dessert consisted of a balsamic strawberry parfait and a hot fudge sundae.  We're feeling the weight already. We're going to have to be very careful as this cruise goes on for nearly four weeks.

      After dinner we got registered for our shipboard Internet access account, and were informed of the type of service we can expect.  The internet is 100% satellite based which connects to a satellite situated 22,000 miles out in space.  It costs about 75 cents per minute to use and the speed is quite similar to the old dial-up system we all remember from the 90's.  So, it may turn out to be a real adventure trying to stay in contact, but we'll do our best to stay connected and keep you all updated via this Blog.        So we found out that this really is a small world.  Brent & Joy Thomas from our old Fruit Heights 7th Ward are on board, and the Twogoods from our son's Fruit Heights 5th Ward are also here.  But the biggest surprise came when I ran into one of my old missionary companions from 42 years ago....Scott Keller and his wife Karen.  Needless to say, we had a great reunion and hashed over some wonderful memories.  

      We took a lot of pictures today and once we get them downloaded to the laptop we hope to be able to attach some and update the blog.  Tomorrow promises to be a real busy day again with landfall at Puerto Montt and a tour to some early historic European villages in the Andes.  Also we get to hear our first lecture in the morning by Dr Michael Wilcox, our tour guide.  He'll be speaking about the historic events surroundingthe 1913-1915 voyage and loss of the Endurance and the incredible survival story of Captain Ernest Shackleton and his entire crew of 27 men.  I first read this book about 10 years ago, am re-reading it right now, and I’m still astonished at just how anyone could have possibly survived that experience.

      Well, that’s all for today.  I’m going to try to download some pictures, and then attempt to get on the internet to post this update on our blog.  Til tomorrow, we love you all.      Tom & Marla