I am attaching a whole bunch of photos of mountain and glaciers as seen from the ship… I could spend an entire cruise sailing these fjords!  They are gorgeous.  It is a joke many places to say ‘If you don’t like the weather, wait an hour,’ but here it is literally true.  We have gone from brilliant sunlight to socked-in fog and back a dizzying number of times in a day.  We suspended bridge this afternoon because we were approaching a ‘gynormous’ glacier and rushed outside to take pictures.  Unfortunately, we transitioned quickly while passing the glacier from mostly cloudy to socked-in fog so photos don’t do it justice, but I will post some anyway.  Actually none of my pictures do the scenery justice, but I still take them.  We spent our days sitting and the window reading and looking at the scenery along with some bridge (by a window) and eating (outside or by a window).

At night on the 5^th we were back in the Pacific—more waves to rock us to sleep—and back in the fjords in the morning.  By noon again back in the Pacific—of necessity–we’ll return to the fjords later tonight.  The sea is much rougher; the Captain says 8-12 foot waves (‘rough sea’) so we’re rolling around a bit as we walk, grabbing for railings along the corridors.  The port talk on Puerto Chacobucca, where we will spend tomorrow, promised more gorgeous scenery.  –Cynthia

The Patagonian Archipelago.  There are 3 basic ways around the southern part of South America: the northernmost route follows a somewhat erratic path along the Magellan Strait; a shorter, more direct passage along the Beagle Channel; and finally, more simply “rounding the Horn”!  Given the manner in which the continent is broken up especially along its western and southern regions, the northern two routes have numerous variants.

     Leaving Port Stanley in the Falkland Islands, the Viking Sun traveled to Ushuaia (“U shu ai a”), Argentina, the major port in the Beagle Channel and jumping-off point for many scientific and tourist cruises to Antarctica (1000 km away). The Sun then retraced its steps eastwards in the Channel and subsequently south to Hornus, which is located in Drakes Passage.  Hornus is the point where the Pacific and Atlantic oceans meet (and according to most accounts, usually collide with much turbulence and high waves) and is the basis for the geographical term “Cape Horn”.  The often turbulent seas were relatively calm for our memorable journey.

    Although not evident on the map, the Sun circled Hornus, allowing passengers to view the Chilean naval station on the cliff top and the large albatross monument that had been erected in memory of the thousands of sailors who over the centuries lost their lives “rounding the Horn” before the opening of the Panama Canal.

     The ship then returned north and turned westwards, winding its way through the Channel and around numerous Chilean islands along the way.  The short SW loop out to sea at the western edge of the Archipelago allowed the ship to make a relatively narrow, early morning reach, followed by a dawn pirouette and return between tall mountains and glaciers on its way northward to a late afternoon arrival in Punta Arenas, Chile, the largest port on the Straits of Magellan.  Sunrise brought the peaks and glaciers into majestic display on both starboard and port sides of the ship, and at some point one of the ship’s tenders captured a large chunk of glacier that had recently calved into the Strait.  When displayed on the pool deck, the irregular bluish piece of ice elicited tentative touches and frequent photo opportunities (see earlier posting), oohs and aahs and provided the backdrop for likely equally numerous uTube photos.

     Leaving Punta Arenas, Sun retraced its SE path along the Strait and then turned northwesterly interlacing its way in continuing calm waters amongst numerous islands, many too small to resolve on the map depicted above.  With virtually no shoreline, mountains rose abruptly to elevations often surpassing 1500 m, with rugged terrain occasionally broken by cataracts and with rising height covered by stunted trees, then what seemed at a distance like low shrubs finally yielding to naked or snow-covered granite.  Glaciers were rare but an impressive one extended down a valley to the edge of the Strait was sighted earlier this afternoon. –Chris

We woke early (because in the midst of summer this far south sunrise is very early—and the days are very long). 

We are still in Patagonia which comprises the southern portion of South America and, thus contains significant parts of both Chile and Argentina.  Chile gets the very bottom bit as it curves east under the bottom of Argentina.  Inhabitants of Ushuaia and the rest of Argentine Tierra del Fuego can fly to Buenos Aires or other parts of Argentina, but in order to go by land they must enter Chile, cross a bridge from Tierra del Fuego to the mainland, and cross back into Argentina.  They are really isolated by this because the Chilean-Argentinean border crossing requires a passport & visa.

Our guide for our morning bus tour of the area told us that today and yesterday were unusual—probably ‘best days of the summer,’ warmer, sunnier, and less windy than ‘normal.’  We could see Monte Sarmiento and other snow covered mountains far away across the channel, and that, we were told, happens only 2-3 days a year!  So much for my conviction that, so close to Ushuaia, Punta Arenas has a much warmer climate.  

Punta Arenas has a population of about 132,000 so approximately twice the size of Ushuaia.  It looks more like a city in large part due to its patron Sarah Braun.  Sarah was a Russian Jew who immigrated in 1874 and married Portuguese businessman José Nogueira, a pioneer of the sheep industry, which came to be Patagonia’s major source of wealth.  He and Sarah commissioned an opulent palace in Punta Arenas by a French architect.  When he died young, the wealthy widow completed the house and commissioned many other European style buildings in her adopted city especially around the central square.  She also imported furnishings for her home and other buildings to make the area seem like a bit of transported Europe.  The rest of the city is a contrast—rather furnishings ramshackle buildings ramshackle buildings (each house surrounded by a wall) with corrugated metal roofs—except for the sumptuous above ground cemetery reminiscent of that in Buenos Aires.  In the square was a man playing the pan pipes; the song as we entered was Songs of Silence by Simon & Garfunkel.

Sailing away this evening it was still beautiful and in the high 60s and we were able to eat and then readon the deck until about 9 pm.  We also saw several small dolphins leaping fully out of the water.  Our resident whale watcher saw sei whales (a baleen whale—‘the third-largest rorqual after the blue whale and the fin whale’) but we only saw their spouting a few times.  We are sailing south and east along the Magellan Strait and were excited to learn we will spend tomorrow sailing the Chilean fjords as well. –Cynthia

Keeping Up With The Rodriquez’s, Menendezes, Brauns, et al.  One of the mandatory behaviors expected of a “Viking Traveler” in South Americais “debarking” the ship and going ashore.  Ship-board shops are closed, no lectures and few other organized activities are scheduled, and there is no casino, so unless one wants to lie in the sun, go to the spa and/or exercise frenetically, there is very little else to do (except drink, I suppose!).  While ashore, travelers bicycling or exploring without a guide are relatively free to go where they wish, but those of us “on tour” in buses or on foot  dutifully go where we’re directed… and In each port we’ve visited recently, a minimum of 30 min is spent walking around a cemetery!

     You’d think a graveyard would be the last place a savvy company like Viking would include on a tour comprised of elderly retirees.  Why remind us of where we are all headed?  It turns out that in those South American cemeteries we’ve visited, mausoleums are a major, if not the sole, feature.  (Family members are interred within, we are told, many feet downwards, layered by generation.)  And these houses of the dead are elaborate!  While all have similar footprints and are constructed of similar stone, they are stylistically baroque, neo-classical, Italianate or Iberian and various mixtures of these, along with a potpourri of columns, statues of family and religious personages, and a variety of crosses, crucifixes, and plaques.  With lots of photographs being taken by the touring traveler, the answer to the question raised above is these few acre are economical and historical microcosms of their locales, and visiting them is one way to see the city in depth (so to speak)!

     One wonders where the servants, laborers, fishermen, and shops people are buried… not apparently with the upper middle classes. –Chris

We were awakened about 8 am by the Captain announcing we were approaching Cape Horn.  Cape Horn is on Hornos Island off the southern tip of Patagonia and south of it is the Drake Channel.  We approached from the north and proceeded to circumnavigate the island going through the Drake Channel itself from west to east (apparently that’s easier.)  We were fortunate to have a very calm day and so proceeded without incident.  Then we returned north to the Beagle Channel and, sailing portions of it for the third time, proceeded past Ushuaia west through the Channel.  I missed taking pictures of two fantastic glaciers because I didn’t bring my phone to dinner…

But there were more great mountains and glaciers the next morning—though, of course, the glaciers are receding and have been, I believe, since the 1960s.  Go soon if you want to go (the same applies to Alaska, of course.)  The ship’s crew went out in a tender and retrieved a couple of pieces of glacier ice, now on display on the pool deck (probably not for long but they may last through lunch…)

It was such gorgeous morning sailing through various fjords that I skipped church…  In the afternoon four of us played bridge though bridge was not officially scheduled today and we arrived at Punta Arenas late in the afternoon. 

Punta Arenas is the furthest south Chilean port–on the Magellan Strait across from the northern side of Tierra del Fuego.  If I’d kept up with the lectures, I’d know more about the geo-political aspects of this jockeying between Chile & Argentina that includes trying to bolster the population at these two southern ports.  Climate-wise there seems to be a world of difference!  It was in the 70s when we arrived—at least 20 degrees warmer than in Ushuaia—with bright sun and no wind.  For the first time in several days we could eat dinner on the back deck comfortably.  Not as impressive a backdrop as Ushuaia—the mountains are a little farther away.

I made no entry for January 30 because it was a typical ‘at sea’ day and Ushuaia was much more interesting.  First of all, ‘Ushuaia’ is the Yamana Indians name for the area as written by British explorers meaning ‘deep bay.’  That the spelling was determined by English language speakers is important because, although the pronunciation that follows the Yamana word is something like ‘oo-shwuy-a’, the Spanish language doesn’t pronounce an ‘h’ following an ‘s’ so another ‘correct’ pronunciation is ‘oo-swuy-a.’ 

We sailed in from the east along the Beagle Channel.  Ushuaia is a beautiful spot surrounded by snowcapped mountains on southern end of the island of Tierra del Fuego, which itself is part of Patagonia.  The population is about 70,000 although as little as 20 years ago it was about 15,000.  The Argentinean government wants to boost population so established much industry and gives financial incentives for living there.  The biggest industry is electronics, a surprise to all of us.  Another big industry is tourism mostly summer but also winter for downhill and cross-country skiing and dog-sledding.  Summer tourism is partly related to it being the closest port to Antarctica and more and more expedition ships as well as pleasure cruisers go to Antarctica.  As many as four other passenger vessels were in port simultaneously during our time there. 

I would find it difficult to live in a place where the average summer high temperature is in the low 50s with much wind and, at 55 degrees south of the equator (equivalent to somewhere in Hudson Bay or Glasgow, Scotland), winter days are exceedingly short, but people who live there seem happy. One of our guides was born there but grew up elsewhere and moved back as an adult; another was from Buenos Aires but prefers the mountains to the city.

Since we were in port for a day and half—an extra half-day—we managed to fit in three excursions as well as some tourist shopping.  We took a bus east and north over the Garibaldi Pass to beautiful Lake Fagnano—great scenery.  Since this is the tail end of the Andes mountains chain (before it goes under the sea and resurfaces in Antarctica), we were told we can say we conquered the Andes (admittedly at about 2800 feet or somewhat higher than Appalachian Gap in Vermont)!  The trip included a rainbow trout or roast lamb lunch at a small resort where many sled dogs were boarded.

The following morning, we took a tourist train into the National Park—again lovely.  Ushuaia was originally established as a penal colony, and the prisoners were transported into the forest by train for firewood.  Our train was much more comfortable and enclosed where theirs was open.  Until the prison closed in the mid-twentieth century, the town basically consisted of prison employees.  After a quick lunch we had a bus tour of the town.

The sail out from Ushuaia east on the Beagle Channel was lovely—we basically retraced part of our route in two days ago and then hung a right toward Cape Horn.  I’m afraid I’m overusing the words ‘beautiful’ and ‘lovely’ but the whole landscape really is beautiful and lovely!