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Published: October 4th 2008
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Sept 30 - Oct 4
Patagonia Cruise
We flew from Manaus, Brazil for an overnight stay in Sao Paulo and then on to Punta Arenas, Chile via Santiago. ( long day on airplanes and in airports )
We enjoyed a relaxing day in Punta Arenas, Chile and visited some of the local attractions in this small city on the southern tip of Chile on the Straights of Magellan.
On Tuesday we began a 5 day 4 night cruise on the M/V Via Australis. This ship and it’s sister ship Mare Australis are very nice cruise ships that takes about 130 passengers on cruises between Punta Arenas, and Cape Horn, Chile and to Ushuaia, Argentina.
Our cruise took us through the Straights of Magellan past some beautiful mountains, glaciers and the hundreds of islands in the straights. We enjoyed the scenery and the very informative and interesting lectures and stops at some special places along the way.
We saw a large Elephant Seal basking on one of the beach/ forest walks we took, and visited Tucker Island where we saw a large colony of Cormorants and a had a very close up meeting with a large
colony of Magellanic Penguins along with many other birds.
We stopped for a walk and close up view of the very beautiful Pia Glacier that “calves” large pieces of ice into the sea and we cruised along the Beagle Channel and past the Avenue of the Glaciers that is home to many large glaciers in the Darwin Range of the Southern Chilean Andes. Interesting that most glaciers are receding but several are advancing. One of the very knowledgeable guides had some very interesting comments in regard to "global warming" and the conditions in the ice fields and some interesting historical data about temperature cycles over the past few million years.
Our journey took us to Cape Horn and we disembarked for an hour or so to visit a monument that was built at the southern most point in the Americas and the meeting of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. This was quite the adventure with fairly rough seas and some questionable weather for the landing in the Zodiac landing boats. We had rain, snow, sun and wind all in a 20 minute period. Typical for this part of the world in their springtime.
Generally the cruising was
good but we did experience a few hours on several occasions with rough seas and a not too pleasant ride. The cruiser M/V Via Australis is a beautiful, first class ship, very well maintained, good food and a terrific staff and crew. The staterooms are bigger, and nicer, than the rooms on larger cruise ships we have been on. The on board staff were very knowledgeable and the lectures and guidance on the excursions off the ship were very well done. All the guides were very knowledgeable about the local flora, fauna and recent, and not so recent, history of this very interesting place.
Our last full day cruising we visited Wulaia which is important historically as it is where captain Fitz-Roy and Charles Darwin first encountered the local Yamana aborigines who inhabited this unforgiving place for many thousands of years. Very interesting history.
On Saturday we landed in Ushuaia, Argentina for the end of the cruise and the start of the other part of our Patagonia adventure with a trip to El Calafate, Argentina and into the Chilean Andes.
Ushuaia is a small city of about 65,000 people that is the farthest south major city in
the world. ( the farthest south smaller settlements are in Chile ) We visited a small national park close to the city but the weather was not very pleasant and not a great day to be sight seeing.
All in all a very interesting 5 days on the cruise and we could certainly recommend this first class trip to anyone interested in the area and the history of Cape Horn. In hindsight it would probably have been better to visit closer to summer as in the spring the chances of questionable weather are greater.
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