The Malvinas House Hotel has a sauna room with shower and jacuzzi that is rented out for four people at about twenty-five dollars an hour. After getting only two showers while on the boat, exiting the sauna room I was a god on Earth; whoever it was that built it should be given sainthood.
After the three days of hell on the seas the winds calmed yesterday afternoon, and we had comparatively smooth sailing until our arrival in Stanley at mid-morning. Upon landing Micky did a swan dive into the dock and held on firmly, and it’s safe to say that none of the rest of us will ever again take stable ground for granted.
My opinion of Stanley has changed somewhat now that I’ve had more time to visit — while it’s still a beautiful setting, there is beauracracy built into every facet of life here. One in three people (man, woman and child) works for the government, and even getting a table in an empty restaurant involved putting our name on a list, waiting five minutes for the bar to open, then waiting twenty minutes in the bar for the girl to come get us, and after all of that hassle the food still ended up being pretty horrid.
The day’s other big event was a quest for internet access. After an ungodly long search I was able to connect my laptop for twenty pence (thirty-eight cents) per minute, after which I had to wait forty-five minutes to download over six hundred spam messages and about thirty real emails. Pictures from the trip will be probably be broken until I reach Chile in two weeks since it would cost an amazing sum to get all of them uploaded.
We’re now off for dinner at a (hopefully) better restaurant, followed by an evening in the pubs — the only thing that isn’t expensive here is alcohol, and after five days without much merriment everyone seems ready to take full advantage.