Patagonia glaciers and fjords

The blue color of the ice in the glaciers was very cool looking against the mostly gray drab colors surrounding most of the glaciers. If the sun was shining then they were an even more brilliant blue color. I think we saw hundreds of glaciers in all. We got off the ship and hiked around about five of them. We waited patiently for the ice to calf while we were watching them and we were rewarded twice with big chunks splitting off. I caught them both on camera one on still and one on video. One fell into the water while were were watching in our Zodiac inflatable boats and the crew immediately made us sit down and he got us moving before the big wave from the chunk hitting the water came over us. Lots of icebergs were floating around this glacier. The fjord was just full of ice chunks. The glaciers here are some of the only ones in the world that are still growing. Most of them are shrinking fast due to global warming.

We saw some dolphins and sea lions at some of the areas we went through, but most of South Western Patagonia is pretty barren of signs of humanity and of animals on land. At one of the places we stopped there were a lot of wild pigs running around and we had to be very careful not to get into any close encounters with them because they can be very dangerous. I saw a few that were just huge hogs. I would not want to have one the size of them come at me that is for sure. We did see some strange looking large white fish congregating around in one of the fjords where the glacier water was flowing into it. I don't have a clue what kind of fish they were. I had a good pic of the fish but it was lost on my computer somehow. Maybe I will find it again one day who knows. I can be a real klutz sometimes with the high tech stuff.

The cruise wound down and we landed at Punta Arenas, Chile after the best cruise I have ever taken. I spent a night in a hotel there and had a look around the town. There was not much to see or do. I stayed at a Victorian bed and breakfast that was expensive but nice. The prices in Chile surprised me. Everything was very expensive. I do not know how the locals can survive on the low wages they make coupled with the high prices of everything. They are more frugal than I could be. The next morning I got on a bus heading back over the Andes to Argentina. I found the bus station and the bus was running late. Eventually, a couple hours late we took off in a nice comfortable bus. I sat at a window near the front of the bus next to a young man that tried to talk to me the whole way. It was difficult for me to speak that much Spanish but we did ok and we had a good time together. He actually helped me a lot when I got to the border with Argentina and the border officials gave me a hard time because I did not have a printed airline ticket in my possession at the time. He helped me explain that I lived in Buenos Aires and that my ticket was there. I had already been in Argentina for many months and I had shown my airine ticket to get in the first time. I totally forgot about the ticket requirement in my rush to get packed for the trip a week earlier. The entire bus had to wait while we argued the point with the officials. He finally offered them a small regalo and we were on our way again.

The views from the bus were large expansive vistas of mountains and arid looking brushlands. We saw lots of wild vicunas and some lamas along the way. A few scattered large farms were the extent of any signs of humanity along the desolate road. I tried to get some pics but was mostly unsuccessful due to the low poor light conditions and the bus was also going fast trying to make up for the lost two hours at the start and the lost time at the border crossing. We finally made it to Rio Gallegos in Argentina and I checked into a small hotel for the night to recover from the long bus ride that just about killed me sitting for that long. I was taking morphine for the pain and just crashed in my room after a quick empanada for dinner. The next day I went through the usual, for Argentina, airline hurry up and wait issues because of the go slow strike of the airlines. I did finally get on the plane and flew back to Buenos Aires where it took me about a week to recuperate from the twelve day trip around Cape Horn and through Southwestern Patagonia's fjords and glaciers then over the mountains again to get back to Argentina. I had thought of stopping to see Torres del Pine park and glacier but I cancelled because I just wasn't healthy enough for any more walking or anything physical. On this trip I discovered that Argentina is a really big country with a lot of wild open spaces.

Around Cape Horn, Patagonia

We cruised through the Strait of Magellan and then headed south to go around the southern most tip of South America at Cape Horn. The water was calm on the way to the cape and we had gorgeous sunny weather. We saw some killer whales in the water and watched the mountains roll by. The food was great, served family style. The Englishmen made fun of my American style eating manners so I started to eat like an Englishman making fun of balancing peas on the back of a fork and holding my pinkie finger up in the air like the Queen. We all got a laugh out of it. We talked mostly about world politics but I think we talked about just about every topic known to mankind during the week on board. Our first stop was at Cape Horn the next morning.

We put our life jackets and raincoats on then climbed into the little orange inflatable launches for the ride to Cape Horn. It was a climb up a lot of slippery stairs to get to the top of the island, then a hike to walk around and see the monument to the lost sailors, the chapel, views and the light house on the island. The wind was blowing hard as we hiked around and I was glad to be wearing the heavy duty rain gear to keep out the cold wet wind. After a few hours we climbed back down to our inflatables and went back to the ship.

As we rounded the cape the seas suddenly increased in size and intensity. Our large ship was suddenly rolling and tossing the furniture around along with us passengers. Quite a few passengers and some staff got seasick from the motion. We were only out in the rough waters for about a half an hour before we reentered the calm protected waters of the straits again. The crew fixed all the furniture again as we entered the calm water and told us the rest of the trip should be flat calm except for one ten minute stretch around midnight or one o'clock in the morning that night. We watched movies, hung out in the chairs, at the bar or in our cabins during the cruise to our next stop which was going to be an island with penguins breeding on it. I went to bed early that night because I was having some pain problems. Just like we were warned, around 12:30 in the morning we hit some rough water. Way rougher than we were told, the big ship lurched sideways and rolled as my bed went flying across my cabin and I was thrown right out of it against the wall and onto the floor. They had not warned us it would be that bad and an assembly alarm sounded. All the passengers had to assemble to make sure nobody was injured. Several people were slightly injured but just with bruises and stuff. There were no broken bones but a little bit of blood from cuts on some passengers. The crew treated us and apologized for the sudden rouge wave that hit us. We went back to bed afterward. I had a few drinks at the bar first.

After breakfast we again loaded into our inflatables and headed to the island to check out the penguins. A huge wave of penguins was leaving the island just as we arrived so we only got to see the stragglers. Our guides told us that the majority had just left for the season and the penguins still left on the island would likely all perish. For various reasons they were not ready for the long swim to their next stopping point. It could be that they were born too late or their feathers did not grow fast enough or for whatever reason but they were left behind. We took some pictures of their nesting holes in the ground and some pics of the remaining penguins. They were totally unafraid of us and totally ignored our being there with our cameras and stuff. I think some of them were posing for us.

After the penguins our next several stops were all glaciers. We saw all different types of glaciers from clear blue ones to dirty blue ones. Most of the glaciers came down from the mountains right into the sea but some of them had receded up into the mountains a bit and had waterfalls pouring out and off of them. The blue color really stood out against the gray color of the weather we encountered. We hiked up to and onto the glaciers along the Avenue of the Glaciers. There was fjord after fjord along the way, all of them gorgeous.

I was hanging out with a French girl for my partner on the excursions. We hung out together on the ship a lot also. She spoke no English so we used some Spanish and some French to communicate, or we just used body language. She did not like the English people on board for some reason and they did not like her much either. The English kept calling her your pet and your ducky and similar names. I just ignored them and enjoyed the trip tremendously.

Ushuaia Argentina, Patagonia

A couple of weeks after I went to Mar del Plata I met a couple of Germans in Shoeless Joe's. The guy was a pilot and the girl was a flight attendant for Lufthansa. We were talking and they told me they were going on a cruise around Cape Horn and then through the fjords of Patagonia. I told them I would love to make a trip like that but that it was too expensive for me. He told me he could get me a special rate and he picked up his phone and made a call to his travel agent. In about two minutes I had a reservation on the week long all inclusive cruise for $527 dollars. The normal price for the cruise was about three grand so I got a real deal and had to jump on it. Then he booked my flight from Buenos Aires to Ushuaia for me and gave me the card for his travel agent to go pick up the tickets the next day. He also got me pilot rates on the flight to Ushuaia.

The big problem is I only had a couple of days to get packed and down to Ushuaia and the airlines in Argentina were on their seemingly perpetual strike. It was only a go slow strike not a complete strike. Basically they just messed up the schedules so that everybody flying had to sit around and wait for hours at a time. The schedule was just a piece of paper to drive the passengers nuts. I picked up my tickets and booked a hotel for the nights before the cruise departure. After throwing my stuff into my backpack I took a taxi to the airport and hurried up to check in only to sit and sit and sit at the airport. I wondered if we would ever take off but eventually we did. The flight was very long with a single stop along the way to drop off and pick up a few passengers. When we flew over Tierra del Fuego we could see beaver dams and all the trees down from the beavers. Tierra del Fuego is overrun with beavers. Ships were taking live beavers back to Europe from Alaska and the ships sank going around the horn. The beavers swam to shore and established a colony and with no predators they have multiplied to ridiculous numbers of beavers. For a while people tried to raise them for their fur but due to the mild climate the beavers stopped having the deep thick fur that was wanted for the fashion trade so nobody would buy the second rate furs. They gave up and all the beavers are wild now. We could also see the tail end of the Andes mountains, the Strait of Magellan and Cape Horn the southern most point of the Americas as we circled for landing at Ushuaia and Tierra del Fuego.

I checked into my hotel and walked around town. My travel agent had thrown in a day tour so I went on that. We drove West and rode a little train around for a nice view of the Andes diving into the sea. We also visited a sled dog farm that looked like it was right out of Alaska. I walked along a stream and saw some of Argentina's famous big trout in the stream, unfortunately the season was closed for fishing. When I got back from the tour I went to the town museum for an hour or so before heading back to the hotel for an early night. I enjoyed the little quirky museum. The Story of Shackleford and his men was told and they had lots of artifacts from their ill fated attempt at the South Pole. Those guys were tough in a way that not many people are today. How they survived like they did is just amazing. Wiki has a good article on the survival ordeal here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Shackleton

There was also a history of the penal colony that started Ushuaia as a city. Many infamous prisoners were housed in this remote prison and the museum tells their stories. There was also the history of Tierra del Fuego including the original inhabitants. When the first European ships approached Tierra del Fuego they saw large fires burning on the land. The original people who lived there were a tall race of indigenous people that wore no clothing what so ever even though the temperatures were freezing in the winter. They would build big bonfires to keep warm. When the European sailors landed the indigenous people died off from diseases that the sailors brought with them. There was a picture of the last three surviving natives at the museum but they have all died off. The women used to grease themselves up with seal oil and dive for food in the icy cold waters. How they survived without clothing in that harsh climate I can not imagine. They were tough like Shackleford I guess.

Ushuaia is a small town that looks like it would fit right at home in Alaska or Norway or someplace like that. The houses are mostly built in a nordic style. There was some manufacturing of electronic devices, some oil drilling and processing and a few other small businesses along with a bit of tourism and commercial fishing. Not much else happening there. I did go to a local bar and ended up talking to a local girl that wanted me to take her traveling with me because she just wanted to get out of Ushuaia. She worked as an assembler at the electronics company in town. We talked and had a few drinks and hung out at my hotel for a few hours. We had fun so I told her to contact me in a couple of weeks and she could come visit me in Buenos Aires but she never contacted me again.

The next day we loaded on the boat for the cruise.