This trip entails a number of days at sea which sounds like it might be tedious or boring but is far from it. The Marina is a lovely ship and offers enough amenities for our age group. We have a starboard cabin with a small balcony on the 7th floor adjacent to Brenda and Craig. I purposely picked this side of the ship so we would have land views when we sailed close enough to see land.
There are about a 1000 passengers on the ship, ranging from 50s to 80’s. There are a couple of cafeteria style restaurants with one offering outdoor dining at the stern of the ship. And there are four “fine dining” or specialty restaurants (Italian, steak, French and Asian themes) which all require reservations. Access to food is not a problem and room service is available 24 hours a day – which I have partaken of more than once. None of these food options costs anything extra other than alchohol. Overall the food has been quite good and it is possible to make healthy choices to balance the number of meals we eat. My hardeset challenge has been avoiding the desserts. So far we have eaten at Toscana, the Italian themed restaurant and at Jacques which is French inspired food. On those nights we get a little dressed up. On excursion days, we default to the Terrace Cafe(teria) with our daytime outfits.
A variety of other activities abound – swimming and hot tubbing when the weather was still warm at the beginning of the trip, walking, some other outdoor games like miniature golf, ping pong. Indoors there is a small gym with classes, a spa, well outfitted library, a variety of coffee bars. Classes offered include watercolor painting, beginners bridge, tango and line dancing, various lectures etc. There is a tea time in the afternoons and happy hour to follow. After dinner in the evenings there are shows in the auditorium and other musical entertainment that we never stay up for. Brenda and Craig who are experienced cruisers have taken advantage of most of the onboard activities.
Brenda and I took a watercolor pencil drawing/painting class. I drew the view from my bed on a couple of nights when I could see the full moon reflecting on the water as we sailed in the night.
We have met some nice people on this trip, whom we had made prior arrangements to do private excursions together. The cruise included four excursions for each of us. For the rest of the days at shore we booked with local tour companies to do basically the same trips with 6 – 10 people in a private van/car instead of 40 on a big bus.
After leaving Uruguay, we had two sea days scheduled and then were supposed to stop in the Falkland Islands with an excursion to see penguins at Volunteer Point. The weather kicked up on the day prior to landing and the entire Falkland Islands stop was cancelled because the seas and winds were too high for tenders to safely pickup passengers. So we had a third sea day but got an extra day in Ushuaia, Argentina. By the way, there is still very much hard feelings in Argentina about Britain taking control of these islands which the locals call Las Malvenas. See next post for a rundown on our 2 days in Ushuaia, at the fin del mundo, the end of the world.
