Category: Chile

Next morning, a little further down the Beagle Channel, we had another landing. The weather was still overcast and raining. Diane was still not interested in going out in it. I went ashore and walked up a short track to a vantage point. From here I could see the snout of the glacier and where it was calving off into the fjord. The ice was moving quite fast. You could not see it move, but I could hear it cracking and groaning every few minutes. There was a large block of ice which looked absolutely ripe for falling off. I found myself a good vantage point and waited for it. Never happened. The ice kept creaking and cracking. A few little bits fell off. After an hour I was getting more than a little cold and damp. Eventually, I was told we had to leave. Just another five minutes and it might have fallen.

With everyone back on the ship, we set off along the Beagle Channel. There are three ways past Cape Horn. To the north are the Magellan Straits where we had been a few days earlier. To the south is the open ocean known as Drakes Passage. This is the preferred route for commercial shipping because although it offers little shelter it is otherwise straightforward to navigate. The Beagle Channel is 240 km long and just 5 km at its most narrow. It is remarkably picturesque with five glaciers emptying directly into the waters. Named after the HMS Beagle that did the first hydrographic surveys of the area. Charles Darwin was introduced to glaciers here on the second voyage of the Beagle and noted “It is scarcely possible to imagine anything more beautiful than the beryl-like blue of these glaciers, and especially as contrasted with the dead white of the upper expanse of snow.”

Darwin probably had a nice sunny day. We were less fortunate but even so the views were spectacular. Many people came out on deck to have a look. I took a few photographs but it was difficult to do justice to the place. Heavy, thick clouds gave a dull grey featureless light to everything.

A little further down the channel we met the Fram. This is the ship we did the Northwest Passage on last year. The two sister ships engaged in some great horn blowing as they passed. The sound of the ship’s horns echoes of the walls of the fjord. On we sailed, past the glaciers to Ushuaia. Known to the Argentinians as the most southerly city in the world. This will be the eventual end of our trip. Where we leave the ship. Fortunately that is still a few days away so we carried on.

Finally, just after dusk, we arrived at Puerto Williams, population 2,800. A very small Chilean city on the south side of the Beagle Channel with the distinction of being the southernmost populated settlement in the world. Stopping here had been on our original itinerary. However, the plan, especially for the coast of Chile, was proving to be very flexible and Puerto Williams had been removed. Nonetheless, here we were. It all proved to be very frustrating. I would have loved to go ashore there if only for an hour or two. The last time I was here, I had just come from the Falklands in a small yacht, via Cape Horn. It would have been great to pop down to the yacht basin and maybe have a beer. Relive a few moments. Instead I had to content myself with scanning the shore for familiar landmarks in the distance. The Amundsen stayed there all night. Lurking a good distance from the quayside. Nobody got on or off the ship. Next day we set off for Cape Horn.

South of Punta Arenas, south of the Magellan straits, are the Darwin Mountains and the Parque Nacional Alberto de Anostini. We had skipped Punta Arenas, yet another place I would have like to revisit, but now at least we had a chance to get off the ship. We had the opportunity to do a wet landing in the RHIBs. From the landing site there was a short walk to a viewpoint in front of a glacier.

Diane took one look at the weather and said “No”. She had a point. It was cold, overcast and raining hard. We have done three consecutive sea days to here. The Chilean fjords are interesting but not captivating. It does not help that the weather has been consistently Patagonia normal. That is, overcast and raining. Shipboard there is a general air of frustration over all the landings that have been cancelled. The bar has lost its mojo. For most of the trip there was a really good vibe in the evenings. Warm, friendly and chatty. Since Valparaiso, the introduction of the new menu, and a change of bar staff things have badly gone off the boil. People are worried about unexpected charges with the new menu. There are a bunch of ‘standard’ cocktails but they are awful. Each cocktail is made of a spirit and a pre-made syrup. Two ingredients per drink. Doesn’t work. This is why the margaritas, bloody marys and others have been tasting so strange. Quick and easy to make but pointless, to me, throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Other, more elaborate, cocktails are available but then you are off into high-cost territory – which is not in the spirit of an all-inclusive package. So, the bar staff are shouldering a lot of complaints, the customers are annoyed and the really nice comfortable atmosphere that the bar has maintained for nearly three months is gone. I needed to stop dwelling on this and get out for a bit of fresh air.

It rained and we got soaked. But it was good fun. I put my camera inside a waterproof bag. The type with a roll-down top. Then I put the bag into my rucksack which is similarly waterproof and has a roll-down top. By the time I got to shore in the RHIB the damp was starting to sneak in. My trousers used to be stretchy and waterproof. Now they are still stretchy but only shower proof at best. My jacket, a newly issued Hurtigruten jacket, is moderately waterproof. The walk up to the view point for the glacier was good fun. Here I found a bunch of very damp looking people standing around. I tried to get my camera out while keeping it dry. This is not possible when it is remaining. Best I could do was manage a few quick photographs while hoping it did not get too wet. Back at the RHIB the wind had been picking up. The ride back to the ship involved bouncing through a lot of waves. We got back, beyond soaked, looking like a boat full of little drowned rats.

Fidel Castro was a Cuban revolutionary. A champion of socialism and anti-imperialism whose revolutionary government advanced economic and social justice while securing Cuba’s independence from American hegemony. He was also a dictator who oversaw human rights abuses, the exodus of many Cubans, and the impoverishment of the country’s economy. Whatever your opinion, Fidel probably never visited the lovely city of Castro, population 41,000, on Chiloé Island in Chile. But we did.

The morning began with being ferried ashore in one of Amundsen’s tenders. Then we had a walking tour. We saw the city centre church which was opened especially for us. We saw the park where Ibis sat in the trees. We saw the palafitos, traditional and colourful wooden stilt houses by the river. It was a pleasant walk and after a couple of hours we were back at the port. We still had time to kill so we wandered off in search of queso empanadas. Fortunately, we did not have to look far. Lovely little restaurant with several types of cheese empanadas. Dale and Debbie, friends from the ship, joined us. We had a very pleasant hour with delicious empanada and wine. Chilean wine. It was lovely. Diane checked the wine with her app. This stuff was rocking a score of 4.0 at a price of around €10 per bottle. Way better than the ship wine. So good that we had a couple of bottles.

Back on the ship we began the long trek south to Puerto Natales, gateway to Patagonia. I did find this a little irksome. From my previous travels I knew we were passing some terrifically interesting places. I also thought that they could at least pick up a few cases of the local wine. The weather was dull and overcast. We were passing through the inner channel and it was all very pleasant if not spectacular enough for photographs. Instead, I amused myself by trying to photograph some of the birds flying around the ship.

We passed through several narrow channels. These were fun from my point of view. Probably a bit more stressful for the bridge crew. Then we got to a particularly tricky passage, know as the White Narrows. It is passable but very tight and needs to be tackled at just the right point on the tide. The weather was against us. The wind had picked to a small gale. The vertical, flat sides of the Amundsen catch a lot of wind. Usually this is not a problem but it can affect how accurately she can be steered. The combination of a gusty strong wind and a narrow channel is asking for trouble. It was announced that we would skip Puerto Natales and continue south. This was particularly annoying. I remember Puerto Natales as a wonderful place and we had booked a long trip round the scenic Torres Del Paine national park. Ah, well.

The first place our tour of La Serena visited was a small marketplace of shops dedicated entirely to selling tourist tat. Cute souvenirs, fridge magnets, t-shirts with amusing captions and a wide variety of impractical kitchen implements that combined the words La Serena with a red heart symbol. To me this was a tricky start to a tour. These things do happen. In Morocco, any tour will include the carpet shop of the tour guide’s brother. In Thailand you will inevitably end up in a tailors shop. Ostensibly, we were here to look at a church. But we had to walk past the market to get to the church. The church was locked up and a bit dilapidated anyhow. We were given a twenty minute break in case we wanted to look at anything in the market.

Then we walked to a park. It was Sunday so all the (non-tourist) shops were shut. Made for a somewhat dull walk. But the park was in full swing with some dancing. We watched the dancing for a while and nearly bought an ice cream. The tour ended up at a lighthouse that was not really a lighthouse, it had just been built for tourists. The lighthouse was on the beach. The beach is the main tourist attraction. There was a stall nearby selling fried queso empanadas. This was truly the highlight of the day although on the way back to ship, we did spot a pirate ship.

La Serena thoroughly explored, we sailed overnight to Valparaíso. Built upon dozens of steep hillsides overlooking the Pacific Ocean, Valparaíso has a labyrinth of streets and cobblestone alleyways, embodying a rich architectural and cultural legacy. Valparaíso was declared a World Heritage Site in 2003. We did not see any of that, except at a distance. A few of us, those doing the pole-to-pole, were sent off on a tour to keep us out of the way. Meanwhile, at the Amundsen, they were preparing for the next leg to Antarctica. This meant taking on lots of supplies and also passengers. A lot of passengers. The ship was going to be just about full. 277 people.

Meanwhile, we were taken to a very nice park and a famous outdoor theatre that was closed. Next came a very tiny museum. Upstairs was a taxidermists display of Chilean fauna and a two headed sheep. Downstairs were several very dark rooms with old things in and a long queue for the toilet. Outside, as a backdrop to the tourist tat stalls, was a stone head. It looked to have been stolen from the Easter Island people. We had a walk along the shoreline promenade and ended up in the city centre square. Late afternoon we were taken back to the ship which was now starting to feel very crowded.

South from Arica but still in the Atacama Desert is Iquique, population 200,000. The history of the town is mostly associated with saltpetre mining. This used to be particularly important. Saltpetre, sodium nitrate, is a vital component of gunpowder and fertilisers. It is also used as a food additive. For more than a century, the world supply of the saltpetre was mined almost exclusively from the Atacama Desert. Since the first decade of the 20^th century, nitrogen can be fixed directly from the air (Haber-Bosche process). This directly led to the decline of the mines. Today, Iquique has one of the largest duty-free commercial port centres in South America and this is the main source of income.

We were taken on a bus trip to visit a museum and an old saltpetre mine. This proved to be remarkably boring. As I have mentioned many times before, we are not museum people. This museum represented an all-time low. The most interesting thing I found was a shed with lots of holes in it.

Meanwhile, back on the ship, trouble is brewing. Hx is busy rebranding itself as the expedition side of Hurtigruten. Today Hx introduced a new menu for the bar. Previously, those of us on the Pole-to-Pole trip had an inclusive drinks package that meant we did not have to explicitly pay for any of our drinks. Just about every bottle and cocktail was included. This was pleasant and felt like fair value. Now, Hx has substantiated the existing class divide between those in the more expensive cabins, called suites, and the rest of us. The affluent elite already have their own, exclusive, restaurant. I find this reinstatement of nobility strange. Norway is one of the world’s more egalitarian societies. Hx by contrast, despite being firmly Norwegian, is working hard to solidly reinvigorate the class system. The new cocktails and drinks top out at €50 a shot. Unless you have a suite. Making them essentially inaccessible to the proletariat. But it gets worse. The bar staff are desperately trying to learn and serve the new cocktails to the handful of aristocrats leaving no time to serve the plebians. A wait of up to half an hour for a glass of wine is now common. During one of these periods of class induced boredom, Diane and I started examining, more closely, the wine being served to those of us with a drinks package. Using the Vivino App we discovered that it is particularly cheap and nasty. Typically scoring 3.2 or less and costing and average of well under €5. You will only ever find this stuff on the bottom of a discount supermarket.

The day was rounded off by a short concert from the crew band. The ship’s crew, mostly Filipinos, are not allowed to drink at all and are paid a pittance. Despite this, a few of them have formed a quite reasonable sounding band and we all enjoy the occasions when they play to us.

The night before we arrived in Arica, Nicky did some songs outside. Nicky is our onboard pianist. She also plays guitar. Twice a day, she plays in the corner of the bar on the top deck. This is very pleasant. Adding an outdoor spot while the weather is still warm was a great idea.

Later that day I spotted a whale. Might have been a sperm whale. Difficult to say but I grabbed a few photographs anyhow.

Arica is in the far north of Chile. It almost never rains here. The Atacama Desert is one of the driest in the world. Back it the day, I was a carefree, solo traveller with a rucksack on my back. I visited Aric as a starting point for seeing some of the Altiplano area that lies eastward towards Bolivia. Here you can find massive, snow covered volcanoes, lakes, llamas, rhea, vicunas and pink flamingos. The tour description, “Desert man” sounded very promising. Sadly, instead of majestic landscapes of the Lauca National Park, we got dancing girls and modern art. I should have read the description more carefully. We were driven up one of the valleys that cut into the desert from Arica. These are irrigated from a subterranean aquifer and are very fertile. Citrus and olives are the main crops. Above the valley are four sculptures that were made about twenty years ago. I do not really have a gene for modern art and often struggle to differentiate meaningfulness from rubbish in contemporary designs. These sculptures were particularly challenging. The flamboyantly dressed youths dancing to loud, distorted music did nothing to improve my sense of artistic appreciation. My disappointment was however, slightly offset by the glasses of a very nice pisco.

Next stop was described in terms of geoglyphs. I would have managed expectations a tad better by mentioning a few rocks laid out on the hillside. Then came the museum. There are some ancient mummies here. Remains of the Chinchorro culture. They are some of the oldest examples of artificially mummified human remains in the world. 5,000 BCE makes them up to 2,000 years older than the Egyptian mummies. Many of them were found at the base of the Morro de Arica – a steep hill that looms above Arica. Our penultimate stop was on top of the Morro. Here we got some lovely views of the surrounding area.

Then it was back to town for a wander round. We found an excellent bar that served empanadas and pisco. Empanadas are a staple part of Chilean cuisine. A pastry turnover containing a filling. Often meat but also made with cheese, mushrooms and onions. The empanadas we found were queso empanadas – small and filled with tasty cheese. Went well with the Mango Sour pisco.

Quite soon after that, the ship was making preparations to leave. We were safely back on board and heading for the bar when we heard the band start up. A 21 piece band had turned up on the quayside and was serenading us as we left. Not just a couple of songs. They played for a good half hour or more as we sailed off into a particularly good sunset. It all felt very satisfying.