Blogs from Magallanes, Chile, South America - page 3

R: So it has taken me a while to get round to the blog for this with Christmas in the way, but I took a lot of notes when I was away on this trip so I hope I can re-create the experience for you. The next 10 days was going to be a whirlwind trip to Patagonia - somewhere we failed to get to on our world trip. This time I was travelling solo (being in term time so Cate couldn't join, plus it involved a lot of hiking, which Cate is not a fan of). So on Friday 1st November, I headed to Heathrow after work, rucksack packed, seemingly with too much stuff for my 10 day trip. I would be camping on this trip so there was more to think about than on ... read more

Got up to pop to the loo at around midnight. Comment to anyone who’s listening that the sky is full of stars. Am just having a wee when there’s the sound of a bucketful of water hitting the floor! Maia has been violently sick, stumbles into the bathroom and delivers another load into the sink as I’m on the loo. Awesome! Try to put the light on, but there’s no electricity. Try to flush the loo but there’s no water. David is up and puts the mobile phone light on. Maia and I are trapped in the bathroom by a sea of sick. David throws me a pair of socks so I can try to hop over it back into the bedroom. I go downstairs in the hope or finding someone who can give me some ... read more

Líe in - yay! We don’t go down to breakfast until about 8.30 - absolute bliss. Surprisingly we have no aches or pains after yesterday’s exertions, so we’re ready for action. Delicious breakfast including proper mugs of tea and coffee, scrambled eggs and yummy cake. All perfect. Departure time is a leisurely 9.30. We drive through more beautiful countryside to get the Paine - Pudeto catamaran to cross the Pehoe Lake for today’s hike to Mirador Francés. It’s allegedly a 16km return trip. There’s an option to do a 24km hike further up the mountain, but the timing of the ferry at this time of year (11am), doesn’t give us time to do that hike and get back in time for the last ferry of the day ?. The catamaran trip is half an hour and ... read more

Lunes cerrado/closed Mondays! What the ….? We had just driven 250km on dirt roads in our little rentacar to find that the only king penguin colony outside of the Antarctic was closed on Mondays and it was Monday! Jane was turning crimson and I started to laugh (which probably didn’t help). The place was deserted. There was no one to plead with. We had arrived at the end of Bahia Inutil/Useless Bay (sic) a great gash in the Western side of Terra del Fuego. What tempered our frustration was the picturesque surroundings and the blue sky sliced by waves of high cloud. In the distance the snow-capped mountains of the Darwin range were visible behind the closer peaks of Dawson island. The Magellan Straits, apparently up to a kilometre deep at this point, spread ... read more

Day 5, 25 February, Southern Patagonia FITZ ROY EXPEDITION, Bárbara Channel – Helado Sound: We woke up anchored in the Barbara Channel, and after breakfast we sailed to the Shag Passage, in search of Humpback Whales. This is an area where they are feeding amongst birds and sea lions. What a day we had whale watching. All morning we spotted whales everywhere. Francesco, our main guide had worked with a researched over the past 10 years, had identified, numbered (by the whales’ flutes) and tracked their travels over these years. Every time we saw a flute, Francesco yelled their identification number. He had a book with all their photos and numbers of the whale’s tails. There was a mother with a new calf, so it hadn’t been numbered. Whales calve every 2nd year. There was also ... read more