Today we had most of the day off – things didn’t start till 3:30 (some people were flying in from as far away as Perth! Gosh….). We had breakfast in a little place next door to the hotel then had a stroll through the sunday market by the beach (which is what the marquees are in the second pic), the highlight of which was a frozen mango squeezy which I slopped all down my front (predictably). I took a few quick blind pictures of the beach with my snappy cam, which doesn’t have a view-finder, so I was pointing, shooting and hoping:

After that, coffee at one of the many cafes over the road from the beach, and then back to the hotel to move over to our proper rooms for the week. Pretty much everything seems to be within a block of the beach – if you’re not by the beach, you’re probably in New South Wales (I’m not kidding – one of our conference venues is over the road, which is in a different state. Awesome!). View from the hotel, with my iPhone:

After that, lunch at another cafe, then back to the hotel to do a bit of sitting-on-the-balcony-while-reading. The Institute started at 3:30, so downstairs to register (name tag, thick folder of sessions) and meet our group members.  We started off with some introductory sessions, then drinks, dinner, then back to our rooms for homework: questionnaire about our management style.  Result: unknown at this stage, but hopefully it won’t set any alarm bells of which would result in my immediate expulsion.

So now I know WHERE the Gold Coast is.  I must admit to some initial confusion about exactly where we were travelling to, the “Gold Coast” not being, as far as I knew, a city.  It turns out that Coolangatta Airport = Gold Coast, so here we are.

The trip over was uneventful and unblogworthy.  I should mention though that our dinner was about 1000x more appetising than that dubious grey mass that the Boss blogged about, but we’re on Air NZ and not Qantas.

Arrived at the hotel with M1 and M2 to discover a note on the front desk saying that they were having maintenance issues and would be back soon.  The note was laminated suggesting that this wasn’t a one off.  After 15 mins they arrived back and after explaining that they had a fire drill told us that they didn’t have a booking for us for tonight, but after some shuffling around managed to get us three rooms.  No apology for our 15 min wait.  Nice hotel, lovely rooms with good facilities and glorious air-con.  But the service…

After that: good calamari for dinner at the place next door, and a walk along the beach path (I thought we may have crossed over from QLD to NSW but it turns out that we didn’t) to Rainbow Bay, which has the most bizarre “Static” playground.  The oddest item was a thing that may have been a swing in a previous life, but is now tethered at all corners, meaning that once a child climbs onto it they can only be slightly jiggled.  And something which may have been play stocks, but no head is small enough to fit through it.  Sadly, it was dark and I didn’t take my camera, so no pics.

View Coolangatta in a larger map

So, to recap, the screen of my laptop is broken – no, not the MacBook, the Asus Aspire One that I got for this trip – which means I can’t use it as all (is there such thing as a VGA to double RCA cable?), and my parents have an ancient laptop and even slower pay as you go dialup, so blogging is pretty much impossible (uploading photos is actually impossible, even logging into Facebook takes about ten minutes). So all the real Internet I have is BT wireless in town type areas and any other free wireless I can discover on my iPod.

Because i have no photos to up the interest, here’s England so far, bullet point style:
• 29/01: after the 23 or so hours of travelling, mostly without sleep, spent the day trying to stay awake so I could sleep that night. Mostly succeeded
• 30/01: roadie with the parentals to the Isle of Purbeck, which isn’t an island at all. First look at proper English villiages, cute pub with “museum” of finds from the Jurassic coast including strange stuffed bat with wonky eyes, and the Bradbury (?) rings
• 31/01: day one of two day roadie, to Salisbury, Stonehenge, Canterbury etc. Abortive attempt to find The Supersizer’s Go and a cable to hook my laptop to the tv, since mum & dads villiage doesn’t stock those kinds of specialist goods. Spotted The Green Dragon pub in the town we’re staying at, took photo to show work types (for non work types, the reference won’t mean anything).
•01/02: Bath, in freezing pre snow winter wind, jam packed with lovely buildings
•02/02: snowed in! The Brits panic about snow nearly a much as we do, so everythings shut down. Mass panic an outrage re lack of public transport, schools closing etc. Balmy zero degrees in the villiage.

And in case you’re curious about the title, there’s nowhere to put my giant orange thermal mug of coffee in the parents car, so today’s handy tip is that a shoe on the floor does a good job of holding it steady. No, it is not gross, because you’re not putting your mouth on the part that was in the shoe, are you?

(reminds me of the time that a certain manager who shall remain nameless caught me stirring my coffee with a paperclip. It was a virgin paperclip from a new bag, but apparently I broke some kind of cleanlinenss rule. I was never really clean to begin with.)

Today we stopped at Puerto Montt, which is the last port day before we finish the cruise and I hop off onto dry land. The geographer in me has to tell you that it has a population of around 150 000 and is smeared along the hilly coast of central-ish Chile.

The plan for the day was to have a look at the craft market then head into town to try and hunt down some sunglasses for the flattie (I stood on one of her pairs and broke them.  In my defence, they were lying on the floor of the cabin so it was reasonable to assume that I would stand on them).  We made it through the hoards of tour people and taxi drivers trying to convince us to pay them money to take us somewhere (no, gracias) and into the craft market section, which is much like any other craft market in Chile – woolen or alpaca goods, wooden things, things carved out of stone, a few things made of leather, and a t-shirt stand and managed to pick up a couple of things that I wanted.  After that, turned back around and re-traced our steps back to the ship, then kept heading east along the waterfront, into town, past the odd person trying to sell you something undefined on a tray or blanket, a lot of stray dogs having a kip in the sun, and a few people doing the same.

Town was rather quiet, being a Sunday, and being before 11am (South Americans have an awesome sense of when it’s appropriate to start working –they might start to think about it round 10, but nothing really looks awake until 11 or 12.  If my Spanish wasn’t so horrible I might consider moving here). Winding through the streets we found McDonalds open, so I could continue my Grande Coke tour of South America, and then found the Mall, but the shopping mojo was not with us – no sunglasses to speak of, apart from ones that would be useless outdoors in the snow. Walking back to the ship, finally spotted a particular iconic South American thing that I’ve been keeping my eyes peeled for in the last three countries, but won’t disclose here lest I ruin the surprise when I post it to Nelson. I also found Coke Zero for the first time (how I have missed you!).

So, I give you, random pictures of Punta.  In case you think it’s an odd assortment of pictures, I like slightly run-down buildings about as much as, if not more than scenery, so here are both.

By the way, that’s seaweed hanging up.

Tonight there’s a Scottish theme for dinner.  More than a little ironic that I came from Dunedin, and I’m on my way to Scotland, but I’ll first eat haggis parked in a boat off the coast of South America.

I took a bit of a break from blogging for a few days there, so here’s a brief run-down of what I’ve been doing:

• chatting with various people
• going to lectures
• reading books (South & Race to the South Pole)
• sleeping
• drinking cocktails and lovely coffees in the lounge
• going to meals
• watching Dexter and going to the odd movie in the theatre
• going on a tour below-decks, to see the big machinery parts (LOL, Fulfart – pics below)
• taking a few pictures of lovely scenic things outside in the Chilean Fiords (pictures below – Romanche & Skua Glaciers)

Excellent, that takes you right up to Puerto Montt.