I am Bruce Good, Seabourn’s director of public relations. I am currently sailing aboard Seabourn Sojourn on a Patagonian Passage East from Valparaiso, Chile to Buenos Aires, Argentina. It’s a region I’ve always wanted to visit, and I thought I’d blog from here to let you know what it’s like. Hope you enjoy it.

One of the nice things about this itinerary is its pacing, with relaxing days at sea interspersed between the compelling ports of call. I already wrote  about the scenic cruising in places such as the Chilean Fjords and the Beagle Channel. But sometimes a day at sea is…a day at sea. On those days, the ship’s staff takes extra care to schedule a lot of alternative activities for various interests. Everything from contract bridge to language and fitness classes, deck games, team trivia tournaments and much more is available throughout the day. On Seabourn, these are simply listed in the daily onboard Herald program, and guests are free to pick and choose among them and make their own way to the location at the scheduled time, without irritating PA announcements throughout the ship. On this cruise, executive chef Andrew Soddy has held two cooking demonstrations, both well attended and popular. Chef Soddy is British, with a slightly irreverent sense of humor that guests find very appealing. His first demo was a butter-poached Atlantic halibut dish garnished with clams and mussels in a casserole, followed by his award-winning lemon tart dessert that delivers lemon flavors in three or four different ways on the same plate. His second one, delivered today, concentrated on chocolate and dessert recipes, with special attention to the different ways of preparing and using caramel syrups. Recipes were handed out, as were scrumptious samples of the finished products in all cases.

One of Seabourn’s most popular day-at-sea activities is the Galley Market Buffet luncheon in The Restaurant. Guests enter to find a pair of magnificent dessert buffets center-stage in the beautiful dining room. At the back, twin buffet lines offer an impressive array of salads, cold cuts, seafood cocktails and breads and rolls. Then diners are invited “behind the swinging doors” into the galley proper, where stations have been set up serving roasted meats and fowl, fresh pastas, soups, colorful sushi and a variety of vegetables and side dishes. All told, the Galley Market is a tour de force of temptation guaranteed to please any palate.

Of course, Seabourn guests do not live by bread alone, and intellectual nutrition also finds its place during time at sea. On this cruise, we have heard from two of the top experts in their respective subjects. Dr. John Billingham is a luminary in the scientific pursuit of possible extraterrestrial life in the universe. His lectures unfailingly inspire deep thinking about how little we know and how much we wonder at our place in the grand pattern of spinning bodies in space. Anthony Maingot’s lectures on Latin America shed light on the roles, both obvious and obscure, of economic forces, military misadventures, pure happenstance and human foibles in the unfolding drama of geopolitics from century to century. On Saturday, November 19th, they participated in a fascinating roundtable discussion that had them fielding questions about their own and each other’s specialties from the audience.
As always, these and all activities on board are completely optional, and subject to the urge to simply curl up with good book, a movie on the interactive TV or just a well-deserved snooze after lunch.

Chef Andrew Soddy incorporates the caramel

Artful: Chocolate Mousse Gateau with glazed berries

Galley Market cold buffet

One of two Galley Market dessert buffets

Anthony Maingot (L) and Dr. John Billingham share a laugh with guests

I am Bruce Good, Seabourn’s director of public relations. I am currently sailing aboard Seabourn Sojourn on a Patagonian Passage East from Valparaiso, Chile to Buenos Aires, Argentina. It’s a region I’ve always wanted to visit, and I thought I’d blog from here to let you know what it’s like. Hope you enjoy it.

The entrance to Stanley Harbour is guarded by reefs of rock which intercept inbound seas and send them skyward in eruptions of white spray. Threading around these, Seabourn Sojourn made its way into the sheltered waters and found an anchorage in Port William between low-lying points tufted with dun-colored scrub and occasional outcroppings of whitish rock. In brilliant sunlight, the harbor was patterned with whitecaps and scoured by a cold, steady wind from seaward. The port itself was obscured by Cortley Hill and Navy Point, and tenders began churning through the chop to disappear around the point. The tender ride was about 15 to 20 minutes, and once around the point we could see the whole town, which is about seven streets wide at its widest point, climbing the slope above the harbor. We passed along the neat, well-kept houses, most with corrugated metal roofs painted in assertively cheerful hues of cosmetics-counter pink, canary yellow, crimson and green. The town cemetery was visible, with a memorial wood dedicated to soldiers lost in the 1982 war. Another ship, Hapag-Lloyd’s Bremen, was anchored in the harbor, and zodiacs full of passengers in red parkas and orange life vests ferried back and forth to and from the shore. We arrived at the hospitable public jetty and went ashore at the visitor’s centre. Since I had an hour before the scheduled departure of my excursion, I walked down Ross Road, the main waterside thoroughfare, and visited the Christ Church Cathedral, the southernmost Anglian church in the world, and its arch of blue whale jawbones, constructed in 1933 to commemorate 100 years of British administration. I also passed Victory Green, with a gaggle of Upland Geese grazing contentedly. Across the harbor, the names of the warships that defended the islands during the 1982 war were spelled out in white stones on Cortley Hill.

Back at the visitors’ centre, a party of 12 of us was gathered for a tour to the Rockhopper Penguin colony on Murrell Farm. We were loaded into a small coach driven by Mrs. Lisa Lowe, who owns Murrell Farm with her husband. Lisa is a cheerful woman who pointed out the town’s highlights as she drove down Ross Road and out of town. After a 20-minute drive, we pulled into the farmyard and were divided among three 4WD vehicles for the drive over the peaty moors to the colony. This entailed a 50-minute, slow crawl over a pitted and rutted countryside with deep peat bogs, presently dry, and rocky outcrops. We learned that Murrell Farm is 10,000 acres, one of the Falkland’s smallest, supporting 3,000 sheep, 60 cattle and various other animal resources. The Lowes are surprisingly self-sufficient, burning peat for heat, generating electricity with a windmill, and otherwise taking every advantage of the spare but sustainable resources of their island home. Presently we came out onto a high bluff overlooking the sea, and there, on the rocky edge of the bluff, were the penguins. A rope was stretched along the edge of the colony, a bare few feet from the penguins, beyond which we were asked not to stray. The penguins went about their business regardless, but not entirely oblivious to us. The bolder ones wandered over toward the visitors, watching carefully for any proffered bit of stick or weed that they might add to their nests. They alternately nestled affectionately or squabbled noisily with each other, and raised shrill alarums whenever one of the ever-hovering skuas got too close. They were tending their eggs, which will hatch in a matter of a couple of weeks. True to their name, they hopped artfully over the jumble of rocks that is their home. We had an hour to photograph, observe and fall in love with these irresistibly endearing birds. A small cabin nearby gave shelter from the relentless chilly wind, and offered tea and home-made cookies and cakes (by Mrs. Lowe) and souvenirs of various sorts, plus an amiable chat with the wife of the warden who tends the shop and the kettle. In hindsight it’s difficult to say which was the more satisfying, the birds or the chat, but in the brilliant sunlight, with the shining sea below and the rolling moors behind, and the endlessly engaging penguins arrayed at our very feet, the experience was everything we could have asked and much more. Just as we were about to succumb to the chilly wind, the vehicles came crawling over the peat and brought another dozen visitors. We happily took their seats and began the trip back to the farmyard. Our driver this time was Mr. Adrian Lowe, Lisa’s self-identified “second in command.” As cheerful and whip-smart as his spouse, Adrian began to recount the chores his wife does on the farm. She drives the coach and sometimes the 4x4s, bakes the cookies and cakes, cooks and cleans, hand-milks six cattle (soon the be 10), and then he began to laugh. She also herds the sheep, on her ATV with the working dogs, mends the fences, cuts the peat and makes the butter. He quickly added that he does the separating of the milk, but sheepishly admitted that it is an electric separating machine. Raised on this farm, she has done this all her life and raised five children. He laughed again and said that he personally leads trout-fishing trips, which, he said, is “very hard work.” One of us asked him whether he was born in the islands, and he said no, he was from England. And why did he decide to settle in the Falklands? He chuckled as if it were self-evident: “For the women!”

Christ Church Cathedral, Stanley

Cheerful Roofs Competition

Star attraction

A squabble

Close encounters

Loveable birds in a beautiful place

I am Bruce Good, Seabourn’s director of public relations. I am currently sailing aboard Seabourn Sojourn on a Patagonian Passage East from Valparaiso, Chile to Buenos Aires, Argentina. It’s a region I’ve always wanted to visit, and I thought I’d blog from here to let you know what it’s like. Hope you enjoy it.

Monday was a day of spectacles from beginning to end. The Beagle Channel is one of those classic cruising icons, along with Milford Sound, Geirangerfjord and Glacier Bay. The day started with a glorious sunrise that ignited the snow on the nearby peaks. Seabourn Sojourn was gliding along at close to 19 knots with a favorable current, as the walls of granite slid by. Terns danced above the mirror surface, dipping to pick up breakfast and raise a dimpled ring on the water.

A sea lion broke the surface and left puffs of steam as it undulated along. A pair of dolphins briefly arced alongside, but decided the pace was too energetic for them and left it. Ducks scurried toward the shoreline as the ship passed. We slid past a single house standing alone on a small flat at the base of one of the mountains. I guessed this must be home to one of the loneliest men on the planet, watching the occasional ship go by. Small glaciers began to come into view high up on the surrounding slopes. And then, in late morning, Captain Elliott announced that we were entering Glacier Alley, a passage lined with great hanging glaciers on either side. For close to an hour we dashed around on the sun deck in glorious sunshine, snapping pictures and gaping and shaking our heads in wonder at the scale, beauty and color of the ice rivers. Several had dancing waterfalls leading down over the rock at their bases. One hung off the slope in a great, blue overhanging crest, like a breaking wave in a Hokusai woodblock print.

Captain Elliott announced at his noon briefing that the weather was favorable and we would go ahead and make a run to Cape Horn. All afternoon we enjoyed the sunshine despite the chill wind. Guests were wrapped in blankets lying on the loungers beside the pool and on the terraces aft of the Club and Seabourn Square. I was in my suite reading in the late afternoon when I noticed a change in the light. I went to the veranda window and saw odd, billowing cloud formations in the distance. I got my binoculars and scanned the horizon, seeing wind-whipped waves and curtains of rain. In five minutes we were in a squall of 70-knot winds and horizontal rain. I laughed out loud. It was Cape Horn defending its reputation! “You come down here and mess with me? I’ll mess you UP!” We passed through the dark and rain for a couple of hours.

Albatrosses swirled around the ship. Then it grew calmer. We passed rugged, upthrust slabs of rocks fringed with dashing whitewater surf. Birds circled endlessly. The sun broke through in the west and lit the scene with a dramatic golden glow. Dinnertime approached but the Restaurant was nearly empty as guests stayed in the Observation Bar and near windows watching the drama outside. Finally Captain Elliott came on to announce that we were passing Cape Horn and that we could wave to the lighthouse keeper, who is on duty for a year with his wife and young son. We were less than 400 miles from Antarctica, and more than a thousand miles further south than Africa’s Cape of Good Hope or the tip of New Zealand. We lifted our flutes of Champagne in a toast to reaching another far corner of the world on our steady Seabourn Sojourn.

Morning in the Beagle Channel

The incredible hanging glacier

In Glacier Alley

Another view

Cape Horn bound

Five minutes later...

I am Bruce Good, Seabourn’s director of public relations. I am cruising the Patagonian Passage East aboard Seabourn Sojourn, from Valparaiso, Chile to Buenos Aires, Argentina, and blogging as we proceed.

About mid-day Friday we re-entered the protected channels and fjords that provide a dramatic course southward along the Chilean coast. All afternoon we cruised between massive humps and walls of glacier- polished granite. The scale is beyond my photographic skills to capture, so I won’t bore you with the dozens of images I gathered hoping for the perfect one. The image below I hope conveys some of the Wagnerian character of the rocks—rippled and muscular, furred with scrubby vegetation wherever there are crevasses, and tinseled with lacy ribbons of cascades from the mists above. I had the album Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares on my iPod, and the majestic harmonies and wild, rustic timbre of the women’s voices made the perfect soundtrack for the passing splendor. Just at dinner-time, we cut back west toward the Pacific, and as we encountered the first vigorous swells of the open sea, we passed a huge flock of seabirds, albatrosses, fulmars and shearwaters, bobbing at rest in loose rafts on the rolling silver swells or wheeling effortlessly in lazy circles and figure-eights in the frigid, whistling wind, their wingtips just inches above the waves.

First thing on Saturday, I noticed that we were lying still in the water. I went to the veranda doorway and swept back the drape to a glowing blue expanse of glacier right outside. The clouds hovered over the tops of the peaks, and a shining river of ice curved down the valley toward the glacier face and the sea. The weather was perfect for glacier viewing, with low clouds masking the glare and bringing out the myriad blue colors. Amalia glacier is just one of the numerous ice-flows that make up Chile’s Los Glaciares National Park. Captain Elliott slowly turned Seabourn Sojourn in the ice-littered bay, and sent a team off to gather in a small berg to bring back aboard. Again I am suitably humble about my photography, but I hope the images convey even a hint of how magnificent the sight was. After a while, we left Amalia astern as we threaded our way back down the channels of the incredibly gorgeous and unspoiled Chilean Fjords. Tonight we turn eastward into the Strait of Magellan.

Along the Chilean Fjords

Amalia Glacier from my veranda

Amalia Glacier's "river of ice"

Bruce Good, Seabourn’s director of public relations, is currently sailing on a 14-day Patagonian Passage voyage aboard Seabourn Sojourn. He will be blogging throughout his cruise and sharing his experiences as he explores the beauty of South America.  Here is his latest post; stay tuned for more updates!

We anchored at Puerto Montt about 7 AM today. The day was gray and threatening, but oddly perfect for this location. The town appears to be a real workaday port. They do ship a lot of fish our of here, but quite a lot of it is trout and salmon from the nearby lakes, notably Llanquihue,(pronounced roughly Yankee-way) which is South America’s largest at 877 square kilometers. Puerto Montt was founded by an arranged immigration of 200 German families in 1856. The Chilean Catholic church arranged for the president, Manuel Montt, to invite the Germans from Kiel, because the local population was made up mainly of fishermen who were not clearing or planting the land. Once here, however, they discovered that the volcanic soil and poor drainage made agriculture unproductive on the coast. They did begin industriously clearing the virgin forests of the huge alerce trees, the same as the sequoias of North America. This straight-grained, durable wood leant itself to the split-shake shingle industry and thus the predominant building style with typical German-style shingle facades which are seen everywhere. Harvest of alerce is now forbidden by law. I took a tour which climbed from the port to the higher plateau, which was handsomely cultivated for agriculture and dairy grazing, and elsewhere covered with golden swaths of blooming gorse (also imported by the Germans.) We visited Puerto Varas, on the shores of Llanquihue, a resort town that has on occasion views of snow-capped Osorno volcano across the lake. That’s the rumor, anyway. I may have glimpsed its big toe under the drifting clouds. Nevertheless the town is charming, and I did take pictures of its red-roofed cathedral, built out of the alerce wood, and an early harvest of cherries, strawberries, lettuce and English peas that some enterprising gardeners were hawking in the street. Then we continued up the lakeshore to Frutillar, another atmospheric little German settlement, with a colonial museum showing a working watermill and gardens. Below is a picture of a Seabourn guest sheltering under a huge leaf in the garden, looking like an elfin queen. Back on board, we were entertained by a spirited folkloric troupe of young people dedicated to preserving the local music and dance.

Puerto Varas' cathedral

garden fresh

Frutillar waterwheel

Elfin Queen

Bruce Good, Seabourn’s director of public relations, is currently sailing on a 14-day Patagonian Passage voyage aboard Seabourn Sojourn. He’ll be blogging throughout his cruise and sharing his experiences as he explores the beauty of South America.  Here is his first post; stay tuned for more updates!

My entry to Chile began with a flight that was changed from simply long to slightly cruel by mechanical delays. It also pruned my adventure by half a day, leaving a Sunday afternoon and Monday morning to explore Valparaiso. I did so under the expert care and guidance of Doctora Juanita Fernandez-Alamos, a practicing pediatrician and passionate advocate for the cultural life of her cities.

After a rudimentary once-over of Santiago (the city deserves much better from visitors) we turned for the coast and navigated two tunnels and two fertile valleys green with orchards and vineyards to the beach resort town of Viña del Mar. On this spring Sunday, families were basking and relaxing along the strand, the children braving the chilly surf in the warm sun. After a delicious luncheon overlooking the sea, we followed the curve of the bay to the sprawling city of Valparaiso occupying an amphitheater of steep hills over the shore.

Juanita gave me an excellent introduction, including a visit to the home of the Nobel Laureate Pablo Neruda, which she knew intimately from her childhood, when her parents were friends of the poet. I won’t go into the details of the city, which are many and interesting. Rather I want to tell you why I was smitten by the place. It is not so much a city as it is an assemblage. It is a great communal work of art that is seemingly ever underway. As I walked around the arts district on Monday morning, it revealed itself, or rather its citizens, as endlessly ingenious, expressive and slightly anarchic, romantic and impetuous, as well as immensely skilled. The architecture is a jumble of periods and styles that has been piled and stacked and inserted and gerry-rigged into a massive collection of found objects. The walls of the steep canyons are lined with structures fitted like a Chinese puzzle amongst each other. And everywhere, on walls and steps and sidewalks and doorways, there are works of art. From a tiny image fitted on a curbstone to a massive mural on a wall, there are expressive, emotive visual messages everywhere. Without doubt there are academic arts endeavors In Valparaiso, schools of music and literature and the plastic arts. But the streets are a heady ferment of expression that is as delicious and complex as the finest Chilean wine.

When pilgrims came to the bay, having survived the arduous rounding of the Horn in sailing ships, they found a Mediterranean climate, sweetened by six fresh streams and bounded by fertile ground, and many quite naturally determined never to set foot again on the deck of a ship. They named it Paradise Valley, and they stayed. It’s easy to understand why. Here are some examples of the street art, both painting and architectural.

People who have never sailed on an intimate ship such as one of Seabourn’s may ask: “Why sail on a small ship when you can sail on a big ship?” There are lots of answers to that question. And of course it’s true that there are people who will prefer a larger ship. But there are some advantages that are just as clear as the Aegean Sea once you get the picture. Captain Sean Whalley captured the evidence for us on a recent call of Seabourn Pride at the Greek isle of Patmos. His picture says it all. Seabourn Pride guests stroll down the gangway, cross the street and they are in the heart of this welcoming, fascinating town. They don’t overwhelm the streets with their numbers. They are free to experience the authentic life of the people living there. Itinerary planning for Seabourn is an exercise in this sort of balance – finding the right place for the right ship at the right time. On this day, in this place, it looks like we got it just right.

Seabourn Facebook fans and their friends and families are piling on the votes for their favorite Seabourn Moments on our Facebook fan page. Total votes are climbing toward a thousand, and one story already has 163 votes! Start voting for your favorites today. Don’t forget you can vote for your favorite once a day, every day. Voting ends November 7 and the five top vote-getters will be finalists for the free cruise.
Read all the entries and vote here!

A message from Capt. Hamish Elliott on holiday in the UK.

I will be running in the “Great North Run” next Sunday, which is the UK’s best known half marathon. Having never run further than 3 miles before, I started training during my last tour onboard across 12 countries and 5 different time zones. Things only really got serious though when I returned home at the end of July and I’ve managed to slowly increase the distance I can cover over the last 7 weeks. I’m running on behalf of a local charity from the North East of England “Cash for Kids” which supports all sorts of disadvantaged and disabled children and their families in Tyne & Wear area.

I have been interviewed by the local radio station, Metro Radio last week and will be interviewed again on Monday morning as they are interested in the fact that I am at sea, so will of course be mentioning Seabourn.

I have attached a picture of myself with my race number (There are over 50,00 runners). If anyone is interested in sponsoring me they can do so on line at Just Giving / Hamish Elliott or by using the following link:  http://www.justgiving.com/hamishelliott

I appreciate any help you can give,
Thanks very much
Hamish

...a different uniform.

Seabourn’s superb service comes in all sizes.  Here are two Seabourn Sojourn staff members – Ian Clements, public rooms manager, and Johan Lovgren, bar waiter – welcoming guests back from a long day in Warnemünde, Germany.  While there is quite a height difference between them, both Ian and Johan have the same big smiles as they cheerfully greet returning guests with a special drink — warm coffee infused with Baileys Irish Cream.