After a wonderful day in Genovesa yesterday, we had in the evening a lovely barbecue in the open air on the Teak Deck, enjoying the moonlight from the half moon up in the sky. Suddenly, after the presentation of some of the crew involved in setting up and preparing the barbecue, some of them showed up giving us a good surprise and laugh. Felipe dressed up as a Hawaiian beauty and was accompanied by the pastry cook, Carlos, singing and the boatswain, Neri, playing the guitar. The boatswain is one of the 41 crew which guests hardly see during the week, unless they pay attention when we anchor during meals, at that moment the boatswain can be seen from the dining room windows where he controls the anchor dropping.
Felipe invited Sven Lindblad, the Captain and the First Officer to dance with him and we all had good fun with that. After dinner we went up to the Sundeck where lights were turned off and I explained the constellations of the Southern sky. All recognized Orion, here on the equator in winter high up in the sky and others as Taurus, the Pleiades, Gemini and Leo, that you can also see from the Northern hemisphere. For several months now we can observe Jupiter, the giant amongst planets, and Saturn, close by the Taurus constellation. And then the big moment came to explore the part of the sky never to be seen above the equator line or only very low to the horizon below 40º latitude as Argo's ship, a large majestic group consisting out of 4 constellations: Carina (Keel), Puppis (Stern), Vela (Sail) and Pyxis (Compass). Canopus, a very important first magnitude star, very easy to spot, is part of the Stern. The False Cross is part of the Argo Ship group, many mistakenly taking it for the Southern Cross. Guests were thrilled when as last constellation I finally pointed out the "real" Southern Cross that just had risen above Genovesa's cliffs.
After what seemed a short night, some of us were up at sunrise (insert) to watch the Zodiacs being lowered and to prepare for the climb up the 372 steps (depending whom counts!) at 0630! After breakfast the beach was very popular with 79ºF (26ºC) water and some great snorkeling was done.We ended the day with a lovely walk along the shoreline of Puerto Egas, on the island of Santiago.
