Navimag - Puerto Montt to Puerto Natales, Chile

,

Day 1 Ex-Puerto Montt

We´re going though Seno Seloncavi (snake´s head in Mapuche), Golfo de Ancud, Chiloe peninsula and Golfo Corcovado - except it´s grey and rainy and therefore impossible to see anything apart from mist and the vague outline of land.

At 7.30pm an announcement is made at dinner while going through Corcovado that it´s not normally this rough here (oh good). I am feeling slightly nauseous as the boat is rocking a fair bit and the fish dinner is not going down too well.

Day 2

I dreamt that I needed to go to the bathroom but that I´d locked my keys in the locker. I eventually woke up at 5am realising that of course my keys were not in my locker. Couldn´t be bothered to put on any clothes so made a quick dash down the hallway in my nightie. Was only spotted by my (cabin) mate.

There´s an announcement at 8am that we´ll shortly be going through Bahia Anna Pink, which is named after an English ship that waited ages in the bay for good weather before being able to venture out into the open ocean. The announcement also includes a warning that at 10am we´ll be entering the ocean so it will be rough for the next 12 hours, and now is the time to take the sickness pills.

Bahia Anna Pink is the narrowest stretch of the waterway I´ve seen so far in that mountains and islands are visible on both sides. At 10am the sea starts to get choppier as we head out into the Pacific. I don´t normally get travel sick but I am feeling sick early on. The boat rolls from side to side violently. If I look out the window I can either see sea or sky but never both in the same glance. The only way I can contain the nausea is to slump down low in my chair and close my eyes. Annoyingly I´m unable to read and Mariah Carey on the pa system only heightens my nausea.

Lunch is an interesting experience - plates, chairs and tables are sliding all over the place. With nothing to see on deck as we're in the open ocean and not being able to read I go to bed and manage to sleep for two and a half hours. I think lots of people do the same. In fact all four of us are in the cabin looking green.

I read in a guide book that lots of people meet on the boat and some eventually get married. I find this bizarre. I´d say 70% of passengers are over the age of 50 and most are with partners or groups. I only spot one obviously single person.

Dinner is more fun. It´s spaghetti bolognese tonight and several people end up with dinner on their faces or worse flat on their bottoms. It´s a constant obstacle course navigating around the ship while it´s rocking so much. I lurch from a wall to a chair and then to the next piece of stable furniture. Although I´m not hungry I bolt my food down and go to bed hoping that when I wake up all will be calm.

Day 3

At 5am an announcement blurts that we are now travelling through the Angostura Inglesa (English Strait). Not sure why I decide I must see this but I put some clothes on and get myself on deck. It´s dark, cold and windy and even my camera doesn´t want to work on any settings. The landscape is completely monochrome. It´s spooky and melancholic. At this point the channel is 180 metres wide and the snowcapped mountains have returned, and at long last there are fjords. I go back to bed for half an hour as we need to congregate at 7am for our stop off at Puerto Eden, a remote community of 276 people. Living conditions are very basic and the community earns money from the cooking and drying of mussels.

We then pass through the Grappler Canal past more monochromatic fjords, peaks and inlets. There's another announcement that we´ll shortly be going past the Pio X1 glacier, the largest in South America. It´s a massive thing that advances 200m a year. It's also one of only two glaciers in the world that isn´t shrinking.

Everyone´s on deck jostling for the perfect position. In the distance it glistens like a blue-white diamond wedged between the mountains. As we approach the scale of the glacier becomes incomprehensible. An announcement for Group 1 for lunch is made but no one´s listening. Everyone´s on deck marvelling at the amazing sight.