Finally, on board the Ortelius!!

We have a nice little cabin with windows in the center of the ship!  Hopefully this helps with sea sickness.  Once all passengers were on board, we had mandatory safety briefing and emergency drill.  (let’s hope we don’t need to use this training)

Welcome drinks with the crew tonight. There are people from all over the world on the ship, we are meeting very interesting people.  …and yes, I am talking to strangers!  We are the only Americans on board; Trump is the big topic of conversation… everyone has said they cannot believe what happened with our election… we told them we are still in shock.

We are now headed to Chile to pick up the helicopters at Porta Williams.  Should be a hoot watching the helicopters land on the ship.  Wow, it was something watching them land on the ship… once they land they need to take the blades off so the helicopter can fit into the garage.  Second helicopter just landed on the ship.

We will be in open waters around 1:00am and the waters are rough… we have a storm coming which will just make the conditions worse…ugh!

Houston we have a problem… internet situation is really bad, so bad that our expedition leader told us not to purchase the internet, instead they said to purchase a ship email account.   So this means we will be sending posts to our sisters to post on the blog for us.  We will not be able to post any pictures until we return.

This is going to be a real adventure!

Casualty report:

• We both still have working iPhones!