Scenic Cruising the Chilean Fjords

As compensation for missing Punta Arena, they took us to see a couple of glaciers, the Skua and the Pio XI. It is nice they did something.

Here is what happened back in Punta Arenas: The ship was supposed to leave at 3:00pm, but it did not. As we were watching over the rail in very pleasant conditions, an announcement was made that the winds in the channel were too high for safe passage, so they were going to wait for the winds to slow. At 9:00 pm they announced that the stop in Punta Arenas was canceled because we would arrive too late and the weather forecast was very bad.

At 9:20, I stepped out on the balcony and saw an ambulance and some cars at the gangway. Some passengers got into the cars with their luggage and the whole group of ambulance and cars drove back toward town at slow speed with flashing lights. Immediately, we cast off and went down the channel at 14 knots, which is much slower than the regular cruising speed of 21 knots. There is no wind, so why are they going so slowly? I think they could have gotten to Punta Arenas nearly on time if they had kicked it up.

The ship did go to Punta Arenas and arrived about noon in lovely weather. That was “too late” to allow passengers ashore. It was a tender port and we were scheduled to leave at 3:30 pm. It would have taken until 2:00 to get everyone off the ship and another two hours to get everyone back on.. Some ships business was conducted – entry permission, exchange of performers, and the return of a ship's photographer who went cross country from Buenos Aires taking video, perhaps for future commercials. Then we headed down the Strait of Magellan toward our next stop. We were compensated $20.00 each for the lost port call.

Instead of Punta Arenas we cruised the fjords and looked at glaciers and stunning scenery. We had planned another tour to see penguins in Punta Arenas, but we already saw LOTS of penguins at Puerto Madryn. We probably enjoyed the sightseeing more than if we had made our port stop. The weather was perfect at the Skua Glacier but so foggy at the Pius the 11 that no pictures turned out very well.

At supper the ship suddenly began to list quite sharply. I think about 10 degrees, maybe more. Ten degrees is a lot. Things were falling everywhere. We had been hit by a sudden 70 knot wind coming at us sideways down one of the glacial valleys. It was exciting, but it as over very soon.

Later in the middle of the night something woke me up and I decided to step out on the balcony to take a look. Libby yelled at me, “Don't open that door.” Why is she yelling at me I wondered? I was reaching to open the door when I got the answer. A solid sheet of white spray came blasting by the balcony. We are a hundred feet above the waterline and the bow splash is reaching all the way up here? Wow. “They were bigger a while ago,” she says. Double wow. Today they told us the wind was 90 miles an hour wind pushing the waves up. I can't imagine how an old square rigged sailing ship could have survived. Incredible.

That was happening as we came out of the channel into the open ocean. The plan was to sail up to Puerto Montt by going on the outside through the ocean rather than through the fjords. The 90 mph wind changed their minds. We made an abrupt right turn and found a protected narrow channel that goes a fairly long way, but not all the way. There is a peninsula that blocks the route. We will still have to come out into the open ocean to get north to Puerto Montt.

We have been rocking and rolling all night and day. There are a whole bunch of small low pressure systems lined up like a string of little hurricanes. Inside them, the wind and waves are terrible. In between, the weather is OK. The captain is trying to stay in the gaps between the storms. As I am writing this, about 3 pm, we have come out into the open sea and we are in one of the gaps. The waves are not bad, but the wind is 40 knots and visibility is less than a half mile because of fog. The storms are moving faster than we are, however, so it is a race to see if we can get into the fjord leading to Puerto Montt before the next storm catches us.

This is formal night. I will be wearing my Tux to dinner. I wonder if anyone else will be there. Half the passengers are seasick.

Skua Glacier

Strait of Magellan

Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina

The town name is pronounced “oo Sh Y ya” and comes from the name used by the Indians here.

Tierra del Fuego is an island. Originally, Tierra del Fuego was used as a prison like Devil's Island. Escape was considered impossible because of the cold and remoteness and the wind. The winds are fierce from the west, so most of the trees are bent to the east. They are called “flag trees.”

The water was like glass this morning, no wind at all and nicely cool. We took a tour by bus through the Lapatia National Park and then got on a catamaran for a ride down the Beagle Channel to see islands covered with sea lions and cormorants. The scenery is spectacular – alpine forest and sharp mountains with treeline about halfway up at 1800 feet elevation. There is no snow, but you can see lots of small glaciers.

They imported some Canadian beavers about 50 years ago. They were going to raise them for fur, but the weather here is not cold enough for the beavers to develop good fur pelts, so they turned them loose. They have no natural enemies here. Now there are 200,000 of them that are doing major damage to the forest. Some of Libby's best pictures were of the beaver ponds.

Sea lions stink. I mean really stink. Every time the catamaran got downwind of a sea lion island, the stench would knock you over. The early inhabitants here, dated to 4,600 years ago, went naked except for a greasy coating of sea lion fat and a cape made of sea lion leather. It made them waterproof for collecting mussels growing in the shallows and it blocked the wind chill effect. However, it made them stink, too. The very last of the Indians, a 100 year old woman, lives in a small town near here.

Our real Cape Horn experience continues. The winds came up in the afternoon. They have delayed our departure by 6 hours so far because of high winds.

Our latitude here is 52° 48' South. It is 9 pm and it is still light enough to read outside.

OOPS. The cruise director just came on the PA system to announce that the winds are too high, over 40 knots, for the ship to go safely through the narrows in the Beagle Channel west of here and the forecast for tomorrow in the Straits of Magellan is worse. We are stuck here until the winds drop.

The port stop for tomorrow at Punta Arenas is canceled. The plan is to tour the glaciers in the Splendor.

I bought a black t-shirt that says “Ushuaia, Fin del Mundo.” It seems appropriate somehow.

Cape Horn

The weather fooled us this morning. It was fairly bright and clear and not too windy. Then we crossed some invisible magic line and we got the real Cape Horn experience: 9°C, 56 knot wind, 17 foot waves, rain and fog. The wind was howling in the lines and overhead wires and blowing the tops off the waves so that it looked and sounded like a ground blizzard. And this is high summer, their version of August. Just think how it must be in winter. Those old time sailor men must have been something.

About 10% of the passengers suited up in layers and rain gear to watch from the outside decks. The rest watched it on TV, the wimps. Some were even in the indoor swimming pool, but the sloshing caused by the big waves made that quite a wild ride too.

Our room has this nice balcony on the starboard side. The Chilean pilot running the ship went by with Cape Horn on the port side. In order to watch, we had to go out in the cold and wet too. When we came back inside to warm up, the line at the hot chocolate machine was a mile long.

Libby and I tried to get pictures to show the wind, but wind is, unfortunately, invisible. We just have some funny looking poses. One fellow got blown off his feet and took a hard fall. Fortunately, he was not hurt. We saw some cormorants and a couple of albatross and two small orcas.

The ship ran an entire circle around Horn Island and now we are headed north for the Beagle Channel to pick up Argentine pilots at Puerto Williams and then on west to Ushuaia for our next port stop..

Puerto Madryn and the Penguins

Whatever I expected, this wasn't it. I didn't expect Puerto Madryn to be a modern boom town a lot like Gillette Wyoming. I didn't expect Patagonia to be a flat, dusty, treeless, sagebrush desert like parts of Wyoming or Colorado or Arizona. I didn't expect llamas to be like antelope without horns. I didn't expect penguins to be prairie dogs in disguise. But that's how it is. I felt right at home.

We rode in a 50 person bus 2.5 hours to reach the Protected National Area Punta Tomba. We were in the first class section of the bus which is 3 across rather than 4. It was VERY comfortable and we slept most of the way there. Once we arrived we were surrounded by 400000 Magellan penguins. It is the largest penguin rookery of its kind in the world. We walked among the birds for about 2 hours.

The chicks and one parent were home. The other parent out getting fish or down by the ocean. Some of the chicks were still completely covered with down. Others had started to get their feathers. They were beautiful.

Penguins!!

Entertainment

The singers and dancers and other entertainment has been great.

Montevideo, Uruguay

Montevideo, Uruguay

The name, so says the tour guide, came from a notation on a nautical chart back in the 1500s: Monte VI de O(este), the sixth hill from the west. I do not know whether to believe her.

The temperature says 82, but it seems like 102 or more. It feels like Arizona in the middle of August.
We came into the port fairly early. Looming out of the twilight was a big building that looks like the sail shaped hotel in Dubai. The captain did a pretty good job of parallel parking into a very tight spot. The people on deck were holding their breath. He had only about a foot left on each end of his parking place.

After breakfast, we got our tour assignments: we are on bus #5, a 12 passenger Mercedes van. This was a private tour arranged by our Cruise Critic friends Gail and Murry from NY. It was to be an all day tour with a stop at a local place for lunch.

Our first stop was one of the city squares. There was a McDonalds and a Burger King and a money exchange shop. For $2, I got 45 pesos. Effectively a peso is a nickel. Gas costs about $5 a gallon, and the minimum wage is about $2.50 an hour. There were a couple of cops in the square with automatic weapons. They were guarding a bank shipment unloading at the bank on the square. Jack asked them what kind of guns they were. They are an American design made locally. He did not get the name. These people talk really fast, person to person. They seem to talk more clearly and slowly on the cellphones. Jack could understand most of what the guide said into her phone, but when she was talking to the driver, almost nothing.

We drove down to the beach at 10:30 AM on a Thursday. The beach was fairly busy and was very nice. We like this town best of all so far as a place to live in. We went through the high priced condo district to the higher priced house district and then to the mansion district. The driver said the mansions cost up to a million. We saw the presidents house and Rev. Sun Myung Moon's house. Our guide said that she did not like Rev. Moon. We said that we don't either.

Uruguay has one of the best standard of living in all South America. Most of the way, if I had closed my eyes and opened them, I could have been in the States. We stopped at parks and churches and took lots of pictures. One of the longest stops was at the Holocaust Memorial. It was at a beautiful spot on the beach.

The locals drink a tea called Mate. Everyone carries their tea with them from home. It isn't sold in the cafe..... you bring your tea cup filled with mate leaves from home with a thermos of hot water. You keep adding hot water all day. We took pictures of cups and “sipper straws” especially for the tea. I took a picture of the cups. They also had boxes of tea for sale with the cups. Jack had had Mate before so we passed on the tea. You can buy it in a 5 lb. Bag at Bi-Lo.

Finally lunch... Lunch was not included in the price. The guide took us to a Winery. It was a beautiful place surrounded by fields of sheep grazing and vineyards. It was very pricey though and we had only about 60.00 in cash with us. We ordered one appetizer and a steak entrée to share and passed up the bottled water and wine. We were surprised when the check came to see a charge of $9.00 for use of the cutlery and another $5.00 for two waters. The guide said that the charge for using the knives and forks was usual... but we disputed the water and $5.00 was deducted from the bill. I think they confused us with the guy sitting beside us who did have bottled water.

The excitement for the day was when we tried to leave the Winery. We were way out from town and our ship and it was getting close to time to be back on board. All 12 of us climbed back in the van and were ready to go. It wouldn't start........ the battery was dead. The driver messed with it for awhile as we all got a little anxious ..... The guide called for back up...... we got out of the van and waited in a small patch of shade in the 100 degree sun. We entertained ourselves by taking pictures of each other and the group. The driver recruited some winery workers to give him a push start. It worked and we all piled back in the van at about the same time the back up van arrived. We got out of the first van and into the backup van and back to the ship just on time. The ship sailed 3 hours late.

Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires, Argentina

This is a very nice city. I would trade Atlanta for it with no hesitation at all. (You've got to be kidding.... there is no comparison in the two cities. Atlanta is a favela compared to Buenos Aires!!) There are 3 million in the city and ten million more in the suburbs. It seems to have all the good parts of European cities. They didn't really show us the bad parts. Except for one slum. It was built out of the same tile blocks as the favelas in Brazil. These were built under a highway overpass and were not as extensive as the hilltop ones in Rio. Libby likes Buenos Aires better than Rio. Jack likes Rio better.

BA is on the world's biggest estuary at the outlet of the Rio de la Plata, which is an extensive river system. The water is a mottled mix of river and ocean water. The color of the water is coffee and cream, but it has an interesting pinkish tinge. It is not repulsive, but it does not invite swimming.

The current government is a modern Peronist variety. The president is Christina Fernandez de Kirchner. I think the Peronists and anti-Peronists are a bit like Democrats and Wingnuts with no moderate middle (kind of like how we seem to be going, come to think of it.). Our tour guide was an anti-Peronist, so he thinks the whole Evita thing is vastly overblown: “She would be completely forgotten, except for Lloyd-Webber.” Of course, we heard “Don't cry for me, Argentina” about three times during the day. It was the big finale at the tango show. One picture for the day was taken at the tango show.

We went to a tango show and dinner at La Ventana, Barra de Tango, in downtown. The show started at 8:00 and dinner was at 10:00. The show has a lot of tango, but the parts we liked best were the Bandoneon player (It is not an accordion, it is a bandoneon. They are different.) and the 12 string ukelele that makes “Andean” music. I like Andean music and the ukelele player was very good.

Wine was served with dinner. It was a Malbec. The day tour guide said Malbec is the best of Argentine wine, even though the name means “made bad.” The table next to us didn't drink theirs, so they gave it to me. I got a cork from the waiter and recorked it to take back to the boat. Libby thought somebody in security would not allow it, but I went right through with nobody batting an eye. Now I have to figure out how to get the cork back out. The airport security in Mexico City confiscated my traveling corkscrew last summer.

The tango started in the bars and back rooms in La Boca, the old port district. The port has been moved twice since then. The first old port, La Boca, has been turned into a Disney style tourist attraction. The other abandoned port, Puerto Madero, was turned over to real estate developers who have made a very upscale commercial and residential district out of it.

La Boca is interesting. The buildings are mostly made out of corrugated metal painted garish colors. The windows are covered with louvered shutters. Another of the pictures of the day is the Boca Babe (my name for her. The locals probably use another name). She was sitting on a second floor balcony just watching the world go by.

This place is expensive. Prices seem to be on a par with New York, but the minimum wage is about $15 per day, if I understood it right. Unemployment is severe. The tour guide said there are lots of poor people and they come out at night hunting for ….......anything of value. Maybe that is why there are so many dogs here – big dogs.

To hire a dog walker costs $90 per month per dog. The dog walkers seem to get up a pack of about ten and walk them for 5 hours a day through the extensive park system in town. They look like Cesar Milan on his TV show leading a pack around. Small dogs, like you see in Miami, were rarely seen. All these Porteños (that is what they call residents of Buenos Aires) living in small apartments with big dogs really do need dog walkers. A dog walker with his pack is another picture for the day.

Two days in Buenos Aires was not enough.