The crossing ceremony finally arrived this morning, but I will not be able to tell you much about it because I could not participate on it. I suffer of chronic headaches, and yesterday's was particularly terrible. I was in no shape this morning for the ceremony. Too bad, since everybody says it was a lot of fun. For the ceremony, people who crossed the Antarctic Circumpolar Circle are walled 'polliwogs', and those who have crossed it are the 'red noses'
I did participate last night on a talent show. All polliwogs had to participate. Even red noses had some acts. It was wonderful.
The show opened with Wilson's dance troupe. We were nine polliwogs dancing to Michael Jackson's 'Black and white' . Some pretended to be penguins while others were scientists. At one point we all danced together int e crowded mess hall. I did not take pictures, since I was already feeling bad, but here are some by Max. I am on the left side of the picture, Emily is int he middle and Hugo on the right. The rest of the troupe were in front of us.
Dance troupe in the Palmer. Wilson did an outstanding job with the choreography and every body else to learn it.
Musicians appeared after us, with Eric singing and playing the guitar. Pretty amazing, since he recently broke the left wrist. Robert followed with a very nice puppet show on his own. He had pictures of different parts of the ship as background, and very ingenious paper puppets. Not a great pictures perhaps, but you can see the dry lab on the background, Jim's computer on the left and a puppet of me a bit blurry on the right. I am John Bottle holding a camera.
Puppet show at the Palmer. Robert did an amazing job creating his puppets.
A group of four followed. Ben at the guitar, Alex Quintero at the ukelele, Ming whistling, and Sam in vocals for a memorable performance.
Singing performance at the Palmer. It seems to me Sam had been waiting for this moment all his life, as he delivered a great performance,as well as the rest f this band.
Brett recited a nice poem of his, with a cruise topic, and then I followed playing 'Twinkle twinkle little star' on my iPhone's Ocarina.
I am playing an application on my iPhone called Ocarina.
Jim played the bassoon before the last group appeared with two acoustic guitars (Stuart and Ben), one electric (Barry) and one alto saxophone (Bill).
Jim playing the bassoon at the Palmer. He also explained how the intstrument works.
About the ceremony I can tell you the polliwogs were woken up at 6:30 am, and that the ceremony lasted about 5 hours. The polliwogs had to dress with all their clothes inside out and with a sign with their polliwog name. I was to be 'bloggwog'. They had to eat nasty things and count random things, like the floor tiles. The end came with a bucket of water.
Stuart being iniciated during the Ceremony for the Polliwogs crossing the Antarctic circle
I began to feel a lot worse after the last performance and had a rough night. I am feeling much better, after waking up at 2:00 pm. We will arrive tomorrow early evening to Punta Arenas. Today we are almost in Argentina's waters. The crew is cleaning very well the ship, and the labs are mostly back on their boxes.The end is approaching at great speed!