Wednesday Jan 25, 2023
Hi Gang! Today was a nice relaxing sea day. Didn’t do a whole lot but got a lot of education. We felt like we were back in school! There were three speakers today all on very interesting topics. First was the story of Ernest Shackleton‘s expedition to Antarctica as well as finding his ship the Endurance at the bottom of the ocean. Second was all about the Falkland Islands where we’ll be tomorrow. And the third was all about Ferdinand Magellan the explorer who was the first to circumnavigate the world.
The talk on Shackleton was given by Neil Gilbert, one of our Antarctica speakers, and he actually was involved in the search for the boat the last few years. They tried finding it in 2019 and were unsuccessful but on their second attempt they found it on March 5, 2022. The boat had been at the bottom of the ocean for over a hundred years and was very intact. Parts of the boat were exactly as it was when it sunk (from the crushing ice when they got stuck) and since it was so far down no fish or other creatures had chewed away at it and there weren’t many sea items attached to it. If you want to learn more about it, they said a good website is Endurance22.org.
The talk on the Falklands was also very interesting. It was first called swan island due to all the swans they found there. But due to the very high winds there are no trees or much vegetation there. The population of the various islands combined is only 3500 with some of the smaller islands having populations of only 6 or 8 with just one family living there and mostly being sheep farmers. There are also several Penguin colonies there and we’re going to see one of them tomorrow. Can’t wait!
The last speaker was on Ferdinand Magellan and how he navigated around the globe. He was from Portugal and commanded the four ships that set out on the journey but the 3 other ship captains were Spanish and back then the Spanish thought they were superior to the Portuguese. So he had several of the ships create a mutiny to prevent him from being successful but he quickly squelched them and ultimately made it thru the Strait of Magellan aptly named for him since he found the route. He eventually made it to the Philippines and found the spices he was looking for to bring back home and become rich. But he was killed in the Philippines when he tried to convert all the people on one of the islands to Christianity and they revolted against him. Sad ending to an amazing explorer.
After all those speakers we took our siesta, had a great dinner and listened to our piano players. Wash rinse repeat but we love our nightly routine!Tomorrow we have a very early day and an all day excursion to see PENGUINS!! Hope to send pictures soon! Hope everyone had a happy hump day!
The Wandering Italian 