Navimag

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We took the Navimag ferry from Puerto Natales to Puerto Montt. We spent a night in Punto Arenas on the way which was pretty uneventful! Only had the morning to explore Punto Arenas which was enough time!

As I said before the Navimag is a converted cargo ship, which now holds a few passengers. We were on the last high season tour, which was good as it meant that we got to see a glacier and had some ínteresting´talks during the journey!

The ferry was 4 day/4 nights. The first night we borded at 9pm and then the boat left the following day at 6am. We had opted for a 4 person bedroom without a window (we nearly got the beds in the corridor but decided it was worth the extra $50 to get a room!). When we got to our room we were very happy to see that not only had we been upgraded (we now had a window) we also had no-one else in the room with us, Yippee!

After checking out our luxury room we were all shipped into the dinning hall for a safety talk. Everything on the trip was in both English and Spanish which was good, although it was very hard to actually understand the guide when he spoke English as he talked too quickly and would often go into Spanish by accident. After the talk we thought we would head into the bar to see if we could meet some people. We walked in and there was hardley anyone around. Apparently the boat was only about 1/3 full. It was ok though as we managed to find another English couple who were also both accountants so we were happy! (BTW these are the third lot of other accountants we have met in South America. How can people say accountants are boring when we are clearly so well travelled?!)

We all got thrown out of the bar at 12 so we went to bed. During the evening I think the boat was being prepared for the trip so there was lots and lots of banging all night. Then all of a sudden there was the sound of cows, lots of cows. When we awoke the next morning and went outside we were greeted by the sight of three trailors full of cows. Seeing these cows packed into these trailers, the smell of them and watching them being fed by someone throwing hay on top of them was nearly enough to make me become a vegetarian. The smell by the fourth day was just out of this world. You had to literally cover your nose if you went to the back of the boat.

On the boat all food was included and I must say it was much better then I expected. We had stocked up on fruit and snacks before we got on the boat but we really didn´t need to. We got given lots of potatoes and meat or rice and meat but it was fine. We also had porridge (which was a real treat - honestly!) and jelly (which wasn´t!).

To occupy our time we did a lot of sleeping, reading and watching movies which were put on once in the afternoon and then a different one in the evening. One day we literally got up, had breakfast, went back to bed, got up had lunch, movie, bed, dinner, movie and then you guessed it, bed again! To get some excercise we walked around the boat for 30 mins a day. It made us think about what it would be like to be in prision and your only exercise is walking round the prision yard!

The scenery would have been very good as we were in the Chilian Fjords, but the weather was a bit crap so you couldn´t really go outside after the first morning. The glacier was really good and it was amazing to see all the icebergs floating past the boat - a real Titantic moment! There were some really massive icebergs around and we nearly hit one.

Didn´t see much wildlife on the trip apart from seals (we have seen so many seals and sealions now that we are a bit over it!). Sometimes you can see whales and dolphins when you go into the ocean part of the trip but we weren´t lucky enough too.

The journey was quite calm for most of the trip. When we got onto the ocean it was a bit rough but not what I was expecting. Apparently about 2 weeks before it had been really bad with 18ft waves but luckily we didn´t have that!

Most of the time on the boat was quite civil with no real partying and the bar closing at 12 everyday. On the last night, however, it was partytime as we played the international game of bingo! It was fun although we didn´t win anything. This was probably a good thing though as if you did win you had to dance infront of everyone. We had already decided that if we won anything apart from the wine there was no way we were saying bingo as the prizes weren´t worth the dancing (they were Navimag caps and jumpers!). The little party after was fun though and there was lots of dancing had by all!

All in all the Navimag was a good experience and def made a nice change from getting buses!

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