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Old Sep 19, 2021, 10:15 am
  #276  
palmanfr
 
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10 days on board Le Soleal, luxury cruise ship btw Ushuaia and Easter Island (Part 2)

We arrived in Punta Arenas, Chile in the early hours of the morning of Feb. 25th 2019. Since this stop was just to refuel and bring fresh supplies into the ship, we were not allowed to disembark.


Punta Arenas, Chile



After a good breakfast with my new friends, I headed to the cockpit deck to visit. That's one of the nice and per my understanding unique things about being on a Ponant ship, the cockpit is accessible to passengers most of the time !


View from the cockpit (not sure if there is a better word to describe the place on a ship ?)






Do not press the big red button ! :-)


Cockpit entrance, with all the different emblems of the visited ports. Going down is the area reserved to the crew.

Soon after was time to eat again... at the Deck 6 restaurant...


Salad bar and freshly made desserts


All the food onboard was sometimes simple, some other times very elaborate but overall simply delicious

We left Punta Arenas around lunch time and I spent the afternoon playing board games and quiz with other English-speaking guests before heading back to the cockpit with some of my newly made friends...


Going towards the ocean this time... in the Jeronimo channel






Despite all the modern technology, old fashioned paper maps and compass are still used






The cockpit






Can you believe that this small stirring wheel is actually how you can stir the ship !


Engine power controls


The flags are one old fashion way to communicate


That's quite some mapping here !



Despite what the lady at the reservation call center indicated to me, there was actually a captain's dinner organized on this Ocean Voyage. I definitely did not have a tuxedo with me so I had to improvise a more formal attire...
The evening started at the grand salon where Veuve Cliquot champagne was flowing in our glasses and we later moved to the Deck 2 restaurant for a formal dinner where an officer was seated on each table. My new friends Rolend and Martine were located at the Captain's table behind me (since they had one of the nicer suites onboard) while I was at a French-speaking table together with 6 other guests, including a former doctor, the lady who was living on Easter Island (and doing the "commute" just like me) and the gentlemen passionate about old cruise ships.




Aperitif in the Grand salon with Martine and Anita with Captain Le Roizic speech


Captain's dinner menu


Vegetarian option was also available


Caviar and Chilean salmon mise en bouche


Avocado guacamole with shrimps and some more caviar bits


Sole filet


I opted for the vegetarian main dish


Dessert


Classic picture with Captain Erwan Le Roizic

A little show was then organized in the theatre and then in the grand salon with more drinks being poured...



I don't know if it was the fact we were reaching the Pacific ocean or if I had one drink too many (maybe both :-)) but I felt a bit sick during the night. For my defense, the cross wind was 32 knots and this was my first cruise so after that second day I opted to enjoy the benefits of the motion sickness pills. The front desk staff was also swift providing me some Ginger ale with an apple, which seems to have done the trick too...



The following days were a sequence of breakfast, lunch, tea time, dinner, quiz games, writing a bit of trip reports and organizing the remaining of my trip. We all that food, it would have been criminal not to hit the gym for an hour daily so I also did that...


Food...


...and more food !


The joy of enjoying a selection of French cheese at the other side of the world is priceless :-)


Despite that being just an Ocean voyage, the chefs were going above and beyond in providing different culinary delights during this trip.


It was then a straight line to Easter Island

The fourth day, Michel, the passenger passionate about cruise ships was kind enough to give us a very good presentation in the theatre about the former Normandy Trans-Atlantic cruise ship, which got destroyed by fire in New York in 1942 while being reconverted into a troops transportation boat for WWII.







This was followed by a well deserved lunch :-)



... and some fitness !



And this was indeed followed by some dinner !








And some evening drinks...

So I guess by now you all understood that life onboard was mostly centered around food :-D
Since I was getting along well with most of the other French or English speaking fellow passengers, I was regularly invited to their tables and had to define a schedule to have breakfast with one group, lunch with another one and dinner with a third one. I was able to plan a 6 month trip relatively easily, but organizing with whom I will have lunch onboard without offending anyone else appeared to be a bigger challenge !

Talking about the amenities and services onboard, I did not use the spa but used the hairdresser for a well needed haircut. As in every place, the hair salon was the place for all gossips on board, and I got the comment from the lady working there "Oh, so it's you the young guy who all the other passengers want to have lunch with ?" :-)
Besides that, most of the services from a regular cruise were available on this trip with the exception of the swimming pool which got closed for several days for extensive cleaning and maintenance, and some areas of the ship too for the same reason. The (free) wifi connection was surprisingly good despite being in the middle of the south pacific and I was able to make some skype calls and surf on the internet quite well. Did not try to push the connection with streaming or video calls though...


In the middle of nowhere !


Maintenance in progress !


The hair salon

On days 5 and 8, we were given the opportunity to participate to a wine tasting organized by the sommelier onboard. The first tasting session was focused on "new world wines" while the second session was more on "old world" wines.












"Old world" wines...




One more day, one more sunset

The following days, some more speakers took this opportunity to present some of their work : Captain Le Roizic gave us a nice presentation and movie about the round the world experience he had on the planetsolar boat few years before, this ship was fully powered by solar energy, and Michel Perrin showed us another presentation about the former cruise line "Le France" which later became "The Norway". He also showed pictures of its final place in an Indian shipyard where he went to gather some memorablia before it got disassembled.









The lady living on Easter island also provided us insights on the life on the island and the recent discoveries of new moais.







At day 7, and as we were heading more north, we started to feel a raise in temperatures and had options to have meals on the outside terraces.









As I wrote before, those Ocean voyages are a way to perform some repairs and maintenance while the ship is moving to a different region. Especially on this trip, since they were heading towards the USA, special cleaning procedures had to be adopted. After an intense season in Antarctica and after hard days of work, it is necessary for the staff to chill out also after working hours. So for a couple evenings after 10pm, the pool deck was officially closed to the passengers and reserved for the crew... What happened on the pool deck remained on the pool deck !



Those 10 days flew by very fast and soon enough we were getting closer to my final destination Easter island. The day before disembarking instructions were provided to the few passengers finishing their trip there. Since there is no real passenger dock on the island, disembarking will be done using a zodiac.

The pool got reopened the day before arrival on easter island and we enjoyed the last dinner outside under great weather, providing a good opportunity to take group pictures...


The #1 crew with Rene, Anita, Marie-Therese, Martine, Rolend, Danielle and her husband Michel





Looks like there was another LEGO fan onboard !


The Belgian chef who well fed us during this entire journey !


Last evening on board

We reached the coast of Easter Island in the early hours of the morning, I had to liberate the cabin around 7am which provided me good opportunities to see the sunrise








Last breakfast onboard

We could unfortunately see that we were not the only ones near the island as a bigger cruise ship, the Peace Boat, was ashore. Having been on the island a couple years before where the only way to get there was to be on the unique and daily passenger flight from Santiago or the weekly flight from Papeete, I could tell you that having 2 or 3 daily flights and 2 cruise ships there is definitely too much. But I will talk about that in my next post...




We were not alone on the island...






One of the few flights to IPC was landing around the same time


LATAM 787 dreamliner from SCL. Used to be daily flight only, was up to 3 flights daily back in March 2019...


Total distance travelled : 2678 nautic miles (4960 km)

The other passengers (the ones continuing the cruise towards French Polynesia) were called to the Deck 2 to disembark via Zodiacs to the island and start their daily excursion around 10 am. For whatever reason the passengers finishing their trip here (like me) were held up for an additional hour. Eventually we got our stamped passports back


Disembarking by Zodiac was fun !


Finally ! The Isla de Pascua stamp is a collector to me !


First time on a Zodiac !
















Customs and agricultural checks are a serious thing in this part of the world. All our belongings had to be checked by customs at the port.


Welcome in Hanga Roa !

I know... that's a lot of pictures, but I hope you enjoyed them as much I enjoyed seeing them again.
On a personal side, I met some great people onboard, and from different social categories and nationalities, and I am happy to still be in touch frequently with several of them. It was therefore with great sadness that I learned that Rene passed away last month of COVID-19.

I was expecting to rest and almost get bored during those 10 days onboard and this was absolutely not the case ! Which also meant I pretty much did nothing on my trip report - maybe that's why I am still writing it 2 and half years later ! The service onboard the Ponant was simply great, and I was glad we were only a limited amount of passengers onboard which made the experience even better. As I wrote on a previous post, my ultimate dream is to go on a cruise trip to Antarctica, and if I am able to do so in the future, Ponant will definitely be my choice of company. I am just glad I was able to do this trip on the Beagle channel and across the south pacific ocean as this type of routing is certainly not conventional...

The Ponant is certainly not the cheapest cruise company around, but you get what you pay for as the old saying goes. However, for this first cruise, I had excellent conditions applied for this deluxe cabin. Firstly, there was no supplement charged for a single traveller. Then, I was granted an immediate discount of 500 Euros for my first trip with them and given an onboard credit of 200 Euros. I was initially expecting to use it for some satellite internet initially, but since it was free of charge, I used this credit for laundry, hair cut, wine tasting session and onboard shopping. So overall, this entire 10 day cruise costed me a mere 900 Euros, all included ! Simply unbeatable given the luxurious travel conditions !

Coming next : Discovering again the mystic Easter Island

Last edited by palmanfr; Sep 19, 2021 at 10:23 am
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