Splurge!

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Oh, we have totally blown our budget! We were chatting to a couple from Luxembourg and they told us about a boat trip they were taking from Ushuaia to Punta Arenas in Chile.

We couldn´t bear to take the bus back the way we came, so we did some further investigations. The ´boat trip´was actually a cruise, on board the Mare Australis (an almost brand new boat). The cruise went around Cape Horn then up through the Chilean fiords of Tierra del Fuego. Well, the price was pretty good (it being late in the season now and the weather pretty crap most of the time) so we took the plunge and booked some tickets.

We are so glad we did. It was 4 days of total pampering and feasting. The ship had an open bar (which we were encouraged to thrash on the first night). We duly obliged, but paid the price the next day as the ship started to roll in the swells sweeping up from Antarctica. (I´m gonna call that ´sea sickness´). There seemed to be endless food and wine. Thank goodness we were able to get off the boat a couple of times each day and walk around a bit. Otherwise, I would have very quickly begun to ressemble a giant elephant seal.

We were extremely lucky as we were able to go ashore at Cape Horn plus sail right around the bottom. The cape itself is a pretty bleak place. A guy from the Chilean navy gets to sit in the lighthouse there for a year and watch the storms rolling in. He has satellite TV, but he must get so bored. We couldn´t walk around off the wooden trails as there are still land mines from when Chile and Argentina were having a bit of a scrap over the cape.

We learnt a lot about the native peoples that used to live in the area (they were extremely hard). Unfortunately, there are few, if any, left. They were all either killed by disease or hunted by the settlers who set up estancias and tried to farm there.

Cruising the fiords was awesome. We saw sea lions leaping out of the air like dolphins. We even saw mountains - this being unusual. I was wondering why all the crew were outside with their cameras taking photos, but it appears this was only the second day that season that it has been fine and the some of the crew didn´t know what the mountains looked like! We cruised up to some glaciers in the ships´zodiacs. This was brown pants territory. Every now and again, a gunshot would go off and a piece of glacier would fall into the water, the sound thundering around the steep walls of the fiord. I coulnt help but wonder what we would do if a really big chunk came off and created a huge wave...

As with all things extravagant and luxurious, it was all over too soon. We got off in Punta Arenas and were sent off down the main street with our packs on our backs in search of a hostel. I don´t know what I will do now I don´t have an invisible man to fold the corners of my toilet paper and turn down my bed in the evening.

Ben is going on a diet for the next month, just to cope with the dent in our bank account.

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Photos

Mare Australis
Looking back towards Isla Navarino from Cape Horn

Fiords
(Can´t remember the name)