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Published: April 30th 2007
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Navimag
The vessel....bare in mind it´s main purpose is a cargo vessel The point of me being in southern Chile was in fact to catch a boat for 4 days heading north up through the fjords. The name of the vessel is Navimag and it is actually a cargo ship which they also use these days as a mode of transport for travellers. On the Thursday night we have to check ourselves in and then board the ship as the boat leaves early on the friday. Included in the trip is our voyage, bed and all our meals so we come with other necessities such as copious amounts of wine, chocolate and snacks. I am travelling again with my friends Emily and Ben from Australia and we have chosen the cheapest of berths, which to our suprise are actually quite flash and we manage to get a room to ourselves. We had heard of rooms of 24 beds and having to share the room with drunken truck drivers that are moving their cargo, so this is a good start to our trip. Off we go to explore and take in our home for the next 4 days and to have a few drinks for the birth of a volcano near by. Two
Navimag
Our path on the first day days before we heard of a tsunami near where we will be travelling as a result of a volcano birthing under the ocean, pretty major thing we think so we decide that we need to have a 4 day long celebration. Apparantly it is still moving and no one has any idea how big it is going to be or if it will break the surface but as you can imagine people in the nearby area are very nervous as to what lays ahead. That night we spend waking to the noises of all the trucks with cows and sheep being loaded onto the boat, we are on the same floor as most of the cows and sheep so by morning time the area smells like the Royal Melbourne Show cattle display. Giving more meaning to the term "cattle class". We wake on the next morning in time for sunrise as we are departing from Puerto Natales and head towards our first pass which happens to be the narrowest of the whole trip at 80m. As we get closer a beautiful rainbow appears and forms totally in front of us from one side of the fjord to the other and
Navimag
The welcoming rainbow! it's like a welcoming door for us. As we move it moves and so we have it there for about 40 minutes. In all the distraction that the rainbow causes we neglect to see all the greyness that lays ahead of us and what ends up being our next 2 days. Yes for 2 whole days it rains, blows at about 25-40 knots and is very grey that we hardly see anything of the fjords or the surrounding area. So time is spent watching movies, eating, playing cards, reading, drinking tea and then red wine and also hanging out in the fly bridge where the boat is driven from - all in the hope that we will see sun before we dock in Puerto Montt. At the end of day 3 we have to go outside the fjords and the protection that they give us and face the wrath of the Pacific Ocean. Everyone is told on que when to take their sea sickness tablets and off we go. Must admit I did feel a little quesy until we had dinner and after that I was cruising, but quite a lot of others spent most of the time in their
Navimag
The control panel for all of you that are into boats rooms or the bathroom. They have a scale that they use to estimate the roughness of the crossing, one is the lowest and 12 is the highest. We maxed at 3 (which means 2m swell and 10-15kn winds) so it was a great crossing as they are quite regularly crossing at a 9 (8-9m swell and up to 90kn winds) which definately would have been interesting. The last day we woke to actually be able to see more than 100m from the boat and to find the sun shining...yee ha! Watched a beautiful sunrise and the captain had changed his route to get back into the fjords so we could actually see something. Seeing ice capped mountains and volcanos right there on the ocean was all a bit different to what I am used to. Spent the whole day out on deck watching for the elusive whales, apparantly there are up to 200 blue whales in the area, all we got a look at was a few spouts here and there. So at least we had one day of good weather to check out what we had come to see. The last night the lounge area turned into a disco
Navimag
This is how our first two days looked...nice and grey, wet and windy! and quite cheesy music was played as the remainder of everyone's alcohol was drunk and as you could imagine things got ugly for a few people. So overall the experience was a good one even though a little dissappointing for the weather factor but I can't complain as I had been lucky up until then. One thing that did disturb me for the entire trip was the ever present moo's coming from the poor cows that were crammed into these trucks and heading off to be slaughtered. Some of them were so crampt that their heads were stuck out and couldn't move. You could see them from the window of the lounge area and I was convinced that they were all looking at us from below having a good time while they have been taken from their lovely paddocks with views of the Andes and shoved into a truck and put onto a boat. I asked for vegetarian meals whilst on the boat as the reality of it all was too much and I felt too guilty.
After getting off at Puerto Montt a group of us hung out for the day whilst waiting for buses to different places and
Navimag
A shipwreck along the way. It´s actually very close to the deepest part of our path. The owner was attempting to do a dodgy insurance claim, which failed! celebrated Rob's birthday. That continued for me as most of us headed to Bariloche in Argentina where I got to go back to my favourite hostel and see my friends, it felt like coming home. We went and had a birthday dinner at a Parilla (steak house) and were treated to some of the nicest bits of meat (how contradictive of me to eat cow now after the boat trip!). For some reason I was full of energy and not ready to go to bed at the end of dinner so Birthday Boy Rob and I headed to a funky reggae party, which didn't kick off till 3am when the band came on and it was a Monday night, and skanked out there for a while drinking cocktails for his birthday and finishing off a fun couple of days.
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barrygahan
Barry
Great blog
We're taking this ferry to Puerto Montt tomorrow. I hope we max at 3 as well!