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| A zodiac ride through icy waters ended with a a short walk for a view of Pia Glacier. |
We met our cruise ship in Punta Arenas at the end of an almost five-hour drive from Torres del Paine National Park. Punta Arenas (it means "sandy point") was given that name by John Byron, a teenaged midshipman on the Wager and eventually the grandfather of the poet Lord Byron. Today Punta Arenas is the main port at the southern tip of South America and it was from here that in September 1916 Ernest Shackleton left in a borrowed ship to rescue the crew of his failed Antarctic expedition whom he had left on Elephant Island while he made heroic efforts to find help. All his men survived in what is one of the most amazing stories of endurance in history.
On Monday, 2 December, we boarded the Australis ship the Ventus for a four-night cruise that would take us to forested islands, fijords, glaciers, fabled Cape Horn and end in Ushuaia, Argentina. The ship, tiny compared to the cruise ships that we see in San Diego, can accommodate 210 passengers, but judging by empty tables in the dining room, I guessed it was only two-thirds booked. Australis has another ship, the Stella, and when the Ventus is bound for Ushuaia, the Stella is bound for Puntas Arenas, each making the same stops. We crossed paths with the Stella in what is called Glacier Alley.
Australis gives passengers a detailed list of gear needed for the voyage, especially for the zodiac rides and landings: rain pants, rain jacket, down jacket, waterproof gloves and hiking boots, and so on. Turns out that the gear is needed in the near-constant mist, the muddy marches and on hikes across slippery rocks. The ship provides small backpacks and water bottles to use on excusions and to take home as souvenirs.
This was only the third time that Jane and I had been on a cruise, and the first two times (the Galapagos Islands at Christmas 2001 and the Amazon and its tributaries in Peru at Thanksgiving 2014) involved much, much smaller ships. On the earlier cruises, all the dining was open seating and meals tended to be buffets. On the Ventus everyone had assigned tables and ordered from menus; at breakfast we were asked to place our lunch and dinner orders.
The ship itself was pretty pleasant, with a large bar area on the top deck along with a small gift shop. On the next-to-last day of the cruise almost all the passengers were in the bar area as we passed glacier after glacier along the Beagle Channel and servers circulated with appropriate drinks: sparkling wine for the French Glacier, beer for the German Glacier, and red wine and pizza for the Italian Glacier. In all we saw 11 named glaciers that day. We learned that the number of glaciers is increasing as they melt and appear to retreat up into the valleys where they are born. One big glacier formed by the confluence of two valleys becomes two separate but much smaller glaciers.
The deck our cabin was on had a comfortable lounge, and the deck above had a lounge with a coffee and pastry counter. The cabin, which had a huge window, was small but adequate with an airplane-type toilet and a small shower. The ship was quite stable except for a couple overnight dashes through rough seas that we were warned about in advance. The zodiac excursions were fun, though two were cancelled because of rough seas or high winds: one to an island penguin colony and one to Cape Horn, which is considered the southernmost point in South America. We did get to see Cape Horn from the ship.
Here are some photos.
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| That's our ship, the Ventus, partially visible at far right, at the dock in Punta Arenas. |
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| This was my first photo during our cruise. We passed scenes like this over and over. |
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| We saw that flag several times in Tuerra del Fuego. That's the Ventus in the background. |
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| On our first full day of cruising we left the ship to hike in a sub-Antarctic magellanic forest. The path ran along the base of an incredibly tall cliff. |
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| A zodiac from our ship takes passengers close to the face of the Pia Glacier. We were told that the Pia and Porter glaciers once formed one much larger glacier, but as that glacier melts due to global warming (an accepted fact in much of the world), the two valleys that cradled it have been revealed and what was left are two glaciers, one in each valley. Both glaciers today terminate in the same bay. |
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| Everyone on our zodiac took turns posing for pictures. |
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| On shore excursions we had the opportunity to sit and contemplate the the natural forces at work in glaciers. Masses of ice such as this shaped much of the Americas. |
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| It's difficult to see, but that's a glacier at the top of this photo. Instead of disolving directly into the sea, it sends water cascading down the mountain, |
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| We saw so many glaciers, one after the other, on our cocktail-hour cruise through the Glacier Alley portion of the Beagle Channel, that I was unable to keep up with the names. This one shows how land emerges as glaciers retreat. |
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| The sun didn't set until well after 9pm on our cruise, but fog moved in earlier than that. Here it obscures the moutaintops and part of a glacier. |
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| Passengers were invited to briefly tour the ship's bridge one afternoon. From our apartment in San Diego, we often look out at docked cruise ships with their huge cantilevered bridges, so I was interested in seeing what the bridge of the Ventus was like. Above shows the starboard section that juts out. |
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| The man in the white shirt is not the captain but he was at the helm when we visited the bridge. |
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| Our last excursion on the cruise was at Wulaia Bay, where we visited a small museum and learned a bit about an idigenous people, the Yagans, who lived in canoes and in simple huts of sticks. They were among the first Patagonians encountered by European explorers. |
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| This colorful tree fungus is called Indian bread or pan de indio or Darwin's fungus. It is edible and was an important source of food for inigenous peoples and settlers in Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego. We tasted it and found it to have a slightly nutty flavor. |
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| This signage was near the small museum a Wulaia Bay. You can use your fingers to enlarge the image to make the writing easier to read. |
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| A memorial to sailors lost in these waters sits atop Cape Horn, the southernmost point of South America. We were scheduled to hike up to it but high winds meant our zodiacs couldn't be launched. We didn't set foor here, but, afterall, how many people actually get even this close? |
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