Birthday Aboard the Navimag

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It was with some relief that we boarded the Navimag ferry from Puerto Natales up to Puerto Montt on time. The strong winds were whipping up and I thought a delay might be inevitable. But it wasn't. The weather smiled on me for my birthday and we were off. All in all it was a fantastic trip and a great way to spend my birthday. 3 days and 4 nights on board gave us time ample time to chill out and appreciate the scenery.

The ferry itself is an old transport ferry that has been coverted to take passengers on a mini-cruise through the Patagonian fjords. It still carried some cargo, evidenced by the three truckloads full of cows situated on the lower deck. Despite the outward, rather functional appearance, it was actually quite comfortable inside. A helpful guy at check in booked us into the best cabin beds available so, although we were in a room with 14 others, our beds were at the end facing a wall giving us a degree of privacy. The boat wasn't full so there were no unwanted queues for the showers or food. Despite being quite a big boat, the passengers quarters consisted of just three decks; sleeping quarters, a dining deck and a bar on top with an outside deck.

It was quite a relaxing trip, mainly because there wasn't a great deal to do on board. The days consisted of alternating periods of checking out the scenery, reading and chatting to the other passengers. A bit of food and drinking thrown in occasionally.

The scenery was pretty incredible. We didn't have great weather but the looming grey cloud cover seemed to add to the majesty of the place. The Patagonian channels are basically uninhabited so you pretty much have the place to yourself. The majority of the trip was spent meandering through narrow channels. The mountains and hills rose steeply out of the water on all sides. There were no flat areas of land to be seen. To the east, we could glimpse the summits of the snow-topped Andes and the enormous Patagonian icefields which are made up of over 350 glaciars. We got up close to a glaciar on the first day. Although it didn't quite match the enormity of the Moreno Glaciar we had seen in Argentina, it was just as beautiful in its own right. In a way, it was a nicer experience as our boat was the only one at the glaciar, in contrast to the thousands of people that visit Moreno every day.

I chatted to some weird and wonderful people on board. Two of the most interesting, surprisingly enough, were two American birdwatchers. The guy was called Skip (honestly!) but I didn't catch the woman's name. I'd like to think it was something equally as off-the-wall like Elvera or something. American names seem to be the result of a dare or a troublesome scrabble hand. They filled me in on some good bird info but also told some good stories of their, frankly worrying, pursuits of certain species. Just before this trip, they spent three days hiking up and down mountains in an actual blizzard in order to see this bird. They also told me about how they had spent 14 days hiking through the Venezuelan jungle in order to see a bird called the Cock of the Rock. I told him we saw them in Peru having strolled 50 metres from our lodge. Skip seemed a bit cut up about that.

We met a few younger people to drink with especially on my birthday night. You could bring your own alcohol on board the boat. Its always tough to judge how much you will need for four nights so we erred on the side of plenty. In good seafaring tradition, I knocked back a lot of rum on my birthday, crawling back to bed about 2am. The next day I was not a pretty sight and I didn't fully recover for a couple of days.

For most of the route was calm sailing due to the fact we were protected from the worst of the weather by the surrounding mountains and hills. However, on the second day (hangover day) we crossed an open stretch of sea. It was reasonably bad but could have been worse. By the crew's own estimation, it was 5 out of 10. The boat seemed strangely quiet that day, a lot of people had clealry dosed up on sleep inducing travel sickness pills and spent the day in their bunks. Sophie included.

Unfortunately, we didn't get to see any whales during the trip. I did get to see a Wandering Albatross which has a three metre wing span. Absolutely huge. Skip filled me in on the details. Apparently, the bird is born on an Antarctic island and then spends his entire life at sea until he is ready to breed when he returns to the same island. The are called 'wandering' because they literally get everywhere, being sited regularly in the mediterranean or North America. Skip also told me about an eagle in Peru which has a claw the size of a man's hand and can crush a skull with it. Apparently they live on monkeys and occasionally small children.

There was a bit of a party on the last night on board. Everyone had obviously had the same idea as us bringing copious amounts of booze onboard and had the clear intention of polishing it off before docking the next day. I did my best but I really wasn't in the mood after my birthday evening. Instead, I spent the latter part of the evening out on deck. The skies had finally cleared on the third day and there was a full moon and plenty of stars to appreciate. Unfortunately, I got accosted by some girl from London who insisted on telling me about her job. I can't remember what it was but it sounded very dull.

The next day we had an early start, wanting to get off the boats in order to get a bus back to Bariloche in Argentina, where we initially hatched the crazy plot to catch the ferry. It seemed that everyone on board had the same idea of heading to Bariloche and we didn't want to get stuck in Puerto Montt for several hours or, worse, a night. It was a strange kind of traveller's survival of the fittest test. We actually came out pretty well having knocked the party on the head the night before. We were off the boat by seven and made it out of town on the second bus. We were back in Bariloche by nightfall.

The ride took us back therough the lake district (the place I was raving about a couple of blogs ago). It was a strange contrast coming from the gloomy majesty of the Chilean fjords back to the Technicolour world of the Lake District. It was possibly the prettiest journey I've ever been on; the scenery of the last couple of weeks is pretty hard to top but with a clear sunny day yesterday, the mountains seemed higher and more looming, the trees greener, the sky and lakes bluer and the snow whiter than white. It was lovely. We ended the day back at Alberto's steakhouse for an almighty feed. All in all, not a bad birthday weekend.

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