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.
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