Another day at sea, headed north instead of south. And a continued dose of the Drake Passage. While it wasn’t truly highlighted yesterday (with the other news to relay), the 2nd day on Drakes (heading south) was again very “fresh” as our captain called it, with swells back up in the 8 to 10 meter range. Soooo, 2 days on the Drake (the typical), but now 2 more back.
So as a sea day, there is not much activity to report. The captain had a ship-wide meeting to discuss what will happen for the remainder of the trip as well as what Hurtigruten will do compensation-wise to make up for the fact that the highlight of our trip did not happen.
As expected, a few people were surly about the situation. One person said that we “have a right to know” what the person’s medical condition is that created an entire trip to be cancelled. She was booed by many passengers, while the captain nicely said that would be a violation of the person’s privacy and he declined to provide details. Another person said he paid $20K AUD for airfare and wanted to know if Hurtigruten would refund him for that. Yep, you read that correctly….. $20,000 Australian Dollars to fly to Santiago. Maybe the tickets were super platinum first class?? Anyway, enough of our shipmates’ whining and complaining. 😉
The other challenge the staff faced is what to do with 300+ people in Ushuaia for four days. We have no envy of the captain, the staff, or Hurtigruten overall for the difficult decisions they had to make, as well as the contingency plans they had to quickly pull together!