Well we had our second disappointment yesterday as it was too windy to go into Punto Arenas. The weather looked lovely from inside the ship but despite the sun, it was blowing 60 knots so taking tenders ashore was not a possibility. The golden lining was that we sailed up the Straights of Magellan by daylight rather than at night and the views were spectacular with great mountains rising on either side. There were a few glaciers and in the distance several snowcapped mountains. At tea time there was a very unusual rainbow behind us. It was very close to the water hardly higher than the horizon between the shores-sort of short and fat. I took a photo then saw a better opportunity but my memory was used up so I erased the first one to make room and by the time I had done that the rainbow has gone. Dad had taken my memory card out of the camera and forgotten to put it back.



Last night was so rocky that our room steward had taken our plant and the ice bucket and glasses off the table and put them on the floor-a first. Today thankfully was very calm but we are far from land and there is nothing to see. We heard a lecture from a geologist who spoke about glaciers and global warming. He was a voice of reason in terms of global warming pointing out the history going back millions of years as to just how often the earth has cooled and warmed up even before there were people to blame. He sees evidence that there are actually some cooling trends beginning. Another lecture was a second by a woman who worked on the original English version of Antique Roadshow. She is a terrific speaker although I enjoyed the first one in which she spoke about her own experiences as opposed to today when she showed a film that she produced for the BBC about Thomas Chippendale. Then I had to rush off for my tea with the captain in his quarters this afternoon. He is a delightful man and very easy to talk to. We all enjoyed ourselves and I didn't spill my tea or upset my cake. He leaves the ship in Singapore to return home until September when he will return to take the QE2 to her final destination in Dubai.