Live from Oosterdam, Santiago-FLL through the Canal!

[FLCruiser97]

Hey Mike, who is the captain? 

[FLCruiser97]

4 minutes ago, FLCruiser97 said:

Hey Mike, who is the captain? 

Never mind. I just saw it on the Dailies that you posted. The reason I'm asking is that Capt Kevin is on an episode of Mighty Cruise Ships on the Nieuw Statendam. He was a Staff Captain on that ship. 

[oakridger]

I'm enjoying your postings @Mike B Landlubber.   Is it possible that chocolate milk is $5? (seems high for milk, but who knows?)

 

~Nancy 

Edited March 21 by oakridger

[0106]

@Mike B LandlubberThanks for your feedback on OJ & milkshakes.

24 minutes ago, Mike B Landlubber said:

I had the chicken quesadilla and a chocolate milk for $5.90. I suspect the charge was for the chocolate milk.

I’d use the Let Us Know feature of the Navigator App to get the charge explained. $5.90 seems like a lot for chocolate milk.  At the end of the day, we stock our frig with water and Perrier because we never drink 15 drinks.  You could ask for unopened cans of soda or beer too.

 

 

[Ready2go11]

57 minutes ago, 0106 said:

@Mike B LandlubberThanks for your feedback on OJ & milkshakes.

I’d use the Let Us Know feature of the Navigator App to get the charge explained. $5.90 seems like a lot for chocolate milk.  

 

 

I would question as well. I am on Oosterdam after you and can see the room service menu on the Navigator app. Shouldn't be a charge for quesadilla or chocolate milk 

[Mike B Landlubber]

Dolphins during lunch in Pinnacle!

[Mike B Landlubber]

At dinner last night, I discovered a food I like that is new to me. I ordered buttered garlic shrimp in the MDR, and they were served on Forbidden Rice and Spinach. Forbidden Rice, aka Black Rice, is a mutant rice that has the same purplish-black nutrient found in blackberries and eggplant. It gives the rice a nutty taste and crunchy texture that I liked, and is actually good for you! Full of antioxidants. In ancient China, it was rare because it is not nearly as productive as normal rice. As a rarity, it was only served to the emperor and to nobility. But being on HAL makes us noble enough now! 🙂

[Wehwalt]

Thanks for the daily program. Looking forward to hearing your impression of the activities you attend. We're in the on-deck circle!

[Torquer]

@Mike B LandlubberWe are carefully following your blog, since we will be on the exact same cruise in March 2025.  Thank you for doing it.

 

So my first question...are you taking a flight-seeing tour of the Nazca Lines when you are in Pisco?  If so, are you doing the HAL Shore Excursion or a private flight tour company and when did you make reservations?  This is on our bucket list so we will definitely be doing it on our cruise.

[Mike B Landlubber]

44 minutes ago, Wehwalt said:

Thanks for the daily program. Looking forward to hearing your impression of the activities you attend. We're in the on-deck circle!

The bad news is I’m not a big participant in activities, though maybe your request will cause me to break my sea day sloth tomorrow. The good news is I’m attaching shots of tomorrow’s sea day schedule, and I’ll try to come back with some menus. Note that for two days in a row we’ve moved clocks back (giving us an extra hour of sleep!).

[Mike B Landlubber]

Torques, you are in luck—I am doing flightseeing over Nazca and booked my tour with the ship months ago when it first came open. I know a group in the roll call thread was planning to book independently and it was loads cheaper. It is coming up day after tomorrow I believe, and I’m excited! I’ll give a full report.

 

i know the debate has raged for years and I ask that we not repeat it here, but my lady friends always insist that I not wear blue or purple because they clash with the huge yellow stripe down my back—I usually take excursions booked through the ship.

Edited March 22 by Mike B Landlubber

[Ready2go11]

Thanks for posting the daily program!
 

Many other threads have noted how crowded it is on the main stage for port and other talks. Nice to see they are also live streaming the talk in the Rolling Stone lounge for some extra room.

 

I think another recent Oosterdam cruiser noted they also showed these talks on the TV at a later time. If you have a chance, can you check to see if that is happening on your cruise? Seems to be inconsistent from cruise to cruise and ship to ship.  
 

thank you

[0106]

@Ready2go11on the Oosterdam in February, the lectures by the onboard guest lecturers for Antarctic were live streamed into The Rolling Stones lounge and were still overcrowded.  After much complaining from the passengers, they were recorded and could be viewed in the cabin at a later time.  The only programs that could be viewed in the cabin were the guest lecturers.  No other on board program from the Main Stage was available for viewing in the cabin.

[Wehwalt]

Thanks for the info. Do you know who the cruise staff are who are giving the activities such as the trivia games? It's always good to know if we will have friends aboard. That is, if we aren't going to wave at them leaving as we embark 🙂

[Mike B Landlubber]

If you order a Coca Cola on board, it comes in a can marked especially for onboard airline or maritime consumption?! My guess is it has to do with geographical distributor’s rights. We have been at sea two days, and won’t make land till tomorrow morning, but this little grasshopper was hanging on for dear life.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited March 22 by Mike B Landlubber

[Btimmer]

We were on the 2023 Grand South America and the 3 week 2024 Oosterdam San Antonio to BA cruises recently and I saw no such markings on the cans.  Zero is our drink of choice.

[Mike B Landlubber]

I went on the Nazca Lines flightseeing this morning. I’d expect this to be of interest, so I’m going to go into a lot of detail. This must have been popular, HAL added a second round of flights mid day. My flight was early in the morning, be there at 7:15 am! Ugh….but I understand it is better for smooth flying weather. The ticket said to bring our passports, and we had to collect them in the morning since the ship was holding them. 

 

We had a longer than I expected ride to the airport, about 45 minutes through the desert. This is definitely a desert area, even by the sea.  At the airport we actually checked in and went through security like a normal flight, including checking our passports and receiving paper tickets. Everything was surprisingly like a normal flight. We were in a little twelve-seat single engine plane, ten passenger seats actually used. They had called and asked weight on the ship a couple of days before, and weighed us before we got on the plane. Weight and balance is important on these smaller planes, especially when they are loaded. We were assigned seats with weight taken into account, so there is no rushing to get the best seat. Everybody had a window out one side. I talked to one fellow who sat by the strut under the wing and said it blocked a lot of his view, but otherwise no bad seats. I was by myself in the last two seats so I had a pretty good view out of both sides. Best seat in the house! 🙂

 

They offered us diagrams of the figures in the airport. I photographed mine for reference and put it away, but pulled it out again when overflying the figures as it was a useful reference to see what was next. I lost track about 2/3 of the way through as things were happening too fast.

 

I had read some online suggestions that the flight was bumpy, and between the bumps and the rapid banking and turning to see the figures, airsickness was possible. I didn’t take any special precautions against it, but did notice it and “think” about airsickness for the first couple of minutes over the figures, but that feeling passed. I don’t consider myself sensitive to sea sickness or air sickness, anyone who feels they are sensitive probably should consider taking some kind of remedy ahead of time.

 

Takeoff and the flight to the figure area was smooth.There was haze that concerned me for interference with photos of the figures, but we descended to be closer to the figures and it went away. The first figure we saw was The Whale. More to come!

 

Side note just for photographers—I used a 24-105 lens for my photos. Other than a few iPhone shots, it was used for everything.  I had dabbled with taking a wide angle zoom, but was glad I didn’t. Sometimes I really wanted the telephoto, and I seldom wanted wider than 24mm. I mostly just left the camera on shutter priority at 1/1000th and it worked well on this sunny day.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited March 23 by Mike B Landlubber

[Sootey66]

Thanks for sharing all the details @Mike B Landlubber  

[Mike B Landlubber]

I just heard from a fellow in a group that booked a much cheaper Nazca flightseeing outside HAL. He reports they flew from an airport a three hour drive away, and barely made the all-aboard despite driving back at breakneck speed. Do as your wallet and blood pressure dictate…

[FLCruiser97]

12 hours ago, Mike B Landlubber said:

I just heard from a fellow in a group that booked a much cheaper Nazca flightseeing outside HAL. He reports they flew from an airport a three hour drive away, and barely made the all-aboard despite driving back at breakneck speed. Do as your wallet and blood pressure dictate…

I know I am in the minority but for this very reason, I book ship sponsored tours. I have heard too many horror stories. Yes, they are more expensive, but I will gladly pay for the peace of mind.

[Torquer]

@Mike B LandlubberThanks for the excellent report on the Nazca lines, including the photographic equipment you used.

 

A couple follow-up questions (I'm trying to talk my wife into doing it with me since she is hesitant to fly in small planes).  From the photos, it looks like you had two pilots...is that correct?  Did you feel the plane was relatively new and in good condition?

[Mike B Landlubber]

1 hour ago, Torquer said:

@Mike B LandlubberThanks for the excellent report on the Nazca lines, including the photographic equipment you used.

 

A couple follow-up questions (I'm trying to talk my wife into doing it with me since she is hesitant to fly in small planes).  From the photos, it looks like you had two pilots...is that correct?  Did you feel the plane was relatively new and in good condition?

This is interesting, though it doesn’t give an answer, and actually distresses me a bit: https://www.worldnomads.com/travel-safety/south-america/peru/nasca-lines-of-peru-safety-tips-for-choosing-your-flight

 

I am retired from a job where one of my duties was environmental risk assessment. What that means here is that I don’t easily get alarmed personally over very unlikely risks…So my views are probably more easy-going than those of most folks. But I’m very aware of the risks of flying in countries outside “nice” countries around the North Atlantic, Japan, and a few other places (and even in the nice countries sometimes). My evaluation beforehand was largely that I viewed HAL as better-qualified than me to judge safety, and I trusted their incentive to avoid accidents and scandal to motivate them to do a good job screening. This may be naive, I know.

 

To answer your specific question, they had two uniformed guys up front, I assumed both were pilots, but I don’t know that. I didn’t watch during flight, though it appeared one mostly did narration during the actual flight. I assume, but don’t know, that he was capable of taking over if necessary. I’d say the risk of a single pilot becoming so incapacitated during flight that he wouldn’t be able to power his way through a landing that he does routinely several times each day is so low it is one of those “so unlikely I don’t worry about it as an individual” risks that I don’t worry about.

 

I was thinking about safety as we boarded, as an airplane buff and guy who wants to go back to the ship outside a box, I can’t help it. Things I noticed included that the paint on the outside needed touching up. This was cosmetic, but didn’t please me. I noticed the sheet metal skin seemed a bit uneven in some places. Again it didn’t please me, but I knew these planes are subject to a lot of stress because of the rolls and tight turns involved with tight coverage of a small area. I didn’t think it necessarily indicated the structural soundness of the plane. I’m not sure you’ll be able to see these at the resolution of my uploaded picture.

 

What greatly reassured me on boarding the plane was seeing that the pilots had a digital instrument panel that appeared new or at least well-maintained. Someone is spending money on this plane. You can see it in one of the photos I posted above. As we went through the flight, I also felt like the pilot(s) were practiced and competent at piloting.

 

The risk assessor in me reminds me that even an airline that is very unsafe in the aggregate is probably quite safe for one flight if it has been in business for awhile and is financially sound. An airline with a fatal crash rate of one in one thousand flights would be considered appallingly unsafe and quite properly immediately shut down by the FAA. But passengers on 999 out of 1000 flights would have been fine—You’d have a 99.9% chance of being safe from one flight.

 

My amateur unqualified opinion is that if you use an air service contracted by one of the major cruise lines you will probably be fine. Sorry to run on so long about it!

Edited March 24 by Mike B Landlubber

[Mike B Landlubber]

One more batch of Nazca stuff. There is a video where you can hear crew narration. The Pan-American Highway runs right through the figures, and an observation tower has been built to help non-flyers. Other figures here include an upside down dog, a friendly giant, the hummingbird, and a general area shot. And one shot of disembarking the plane.

[Mike B Landlubber]

Fishermen, sea lions, penguins, and other birds cope with rough water during an excursion to islands off Lima.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited March 26 by Mike B Landlubber

[Mike B Landlubber]

Seals frolicking in rough water. Turn your sound on for the video!

Edited March 26 by Mike B Landlubber