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South America » Chile » Los Lagos » Puerto Montt
March 10th 2008

Published: March 17th 2008

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El Scook Y Natalia

Floats my boat

The humble Navimag

The southern part of Chile is composed of hundreds of tiny islands, and only a small strip of mainland. One of the best ways of travelling up the coast is via the Navimag ferry, a big cargo ship that has been adapted slightly (and I mean slightly!) to allow tourists to make the trip too. Other cargo included food, scrap metal, mattresses, and sheep!

We bid a fond farewell to my (almost) namesake town Puerto Natales (which has the attractions of the best pizza restaurant we've encountered so far in Latin America, and a dried fruit and nut shop blasting out 70s rock 12 hours a day), to hop on the boat on the evening of Thursday 6th March. We spent the night moored in Puerto Natales and were off at 6am the next day.

The Navimag is notable for several things - beautiful scenery, school dinner esque meals, and perhaps most annoyingly, announcements over the tannoy every thirty minutes informing you of stuff that is going on on the boat, which might be handy if there weren´t big posters everywhere telling you exactly the same stuff. The general format was as follows:

"Estimados pasajeros! errrrm. ummmm. errrm.

Bar on the Boat

We spent some time here... They built this boat in 1974. At which point they installed all soft furnishings, and stocked the onboard music collection.

We are currently navigating the Channel de wherever!!! errrrm. ummmm. ermmm. We would like to announce that you are all invited to lunch!!!! ermmm, ummm, ermmm. Which is currently serving in the hall of dining!!!! ermmm, ummm. Thankyou!!!" etc etc. Usually about 20 minutes after you´d finished dinner. But still, we had a wicked time.

The first day was spoilt a bit by horrible rain and fog all day which got us a bit cabin fevery, as there is not much to do other than sit around, or attend the occasional educational talk or film screening.

The second day we got to get off the boat for a bit to visit a small fishing village called Puerto Eden, which was quite interesting. Its not really accessible other than by boat, so a lot of the cargo on board was stuff for the village, ranging from food to ironing boards and televisions. Having lived in London for so long its pretty hard to imagine what life might be like living somewhere so remote. By the afternoon the weather had cleared up allowing us to sit on deck and watch the world go by. Then in the evening we were

Engineering!

Shot for DeGorski

sailing in the open ocean which meant we spent a lot of time trying not to fall over as the ship rolled constantly to the left and right. We had taken some seasickness tablets so weathered it well, but we saw a few unfortunates being a bit ill over the side of the boat!

The third day was amazing, beautiful sunshine all day and some truly stunning scenery, plus lots of wildlife spotting which included dolphins and whales. The day ended with bingo and dancing and one of the most embarrassing moments of my entire life. Unfortunately there are photos. I'm not even going to go into it any further as its hard to type while I'm cringing this much. I'm sure Si will enlighten you 😞

Embarrassment aside, we really enjoyed this trip. The Navimag is a very sociable boat and we met lots of wicked people and had loads of fun. The bunks were cosy and the beer flowed and I had time to learn a LOT of spanish vocab!

Hope all is cool with all you guys.

Lots of love

Nat xxx

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