Fjord Fiesta
Trip Start
Oct 15, 2007
1
43
97
Trip End
Aug 24, 2008
Puerto Eden, Chile
Thursday, January 10, 2008
We all had to attend a briefing in the dining room, so we headed down there. The dining room had a very functional canteen/mess hall type appearance. We were given a talk about safety, the route and suchlike by our guides; a miniature Chilean girl called Raphaella and a tall German called Lena.
Around 6pm, we cast off and were away! We admired the scenery until it became dark, then soon after, dinner was served. The meal was not spectacular, but was OK. After the meal, we watched the evening's film ('The Spirit Room') and had one of our bottles of wine, then headed up to the top deck to the bar, where we played cards and drank some of our whisky, before bed.
The following morning, we were woken by the dulcet tones of Raphaella. We went up to the dining room for breakfast and then spent the day pottering about the boat, admiring the scenery and chatting to people. In the afternoon, we arrived at the Pio XI glacier, which at sixty kilometres in length is the largest in the southern hemisphere. Despite being right beside a glacier, the rain continued unabated, but everyone was out on deck looking at the beautiful blue ice and the little icebergs floating past the boat. A chunk flaked off the leading face and fell into the sea with a huge bang, also giving us a sense of perspective: the ice that looked to be only a couple of metres high was actually seventy-five metres.
We were told that during the later part of the day, we would be crossing a stretch of open ocean, where the going could get a bit rough, so Jacob took a sea-sickness tablet. The 'rough' patch was not too bad, and we both felt fine, although at dinner, the staff were offering to carry trays for people as the boat was pitching a little bit. We sat with a couple of Dutch guys and chatted for a while, then decided to have an early night as we didn't fancy the film ('Happy Feet') and were feeling quite tired. Actually, Kirsty was feeling quite tired; the glass of wine the Dutch guys had donated appeared to have reacted with Jacob's seasickness medication and he was having great difficulty keeping his eyes open, or, indeed, remembering who the hell he was.
The following day, we passed through some more beautiful fjord scenery, including the "English Narrows", the most slender portion of the fjords, which seemed barely wider than the ship itself. The weather was still pretty damp. In the afternoon, we stopped at the tiny port of Puerto Eden, a remote village in the middle of the fjords. The Navimag has a contract to provide transport for the Puerto Eden residents at a reduced rate, and we picked up a few passengers.
That evening was our last on the Navimag, so we had our other bottle of wine with dinner, which was a nice piece of salmon, the best meal that we had on board the ship. We decided that we would go and join in with the bingo and party instead of watching the film, so headed up to the bar on the top deck.
Bingo turned out to be quite a terrible affair: numbers were called out in the usual fashion, but anyone successfully getting a line and therefore winning would have to dance before they were allowed to receive their prize. We felt quite lucky not to win.
The Puerto Eden residents who we had picked up earlier in the day seemed to be totally bewildered by the idea of Bingo. Not surprising really, given all of the dancing and stuff.
We spent the rest of the evening talking to various people that we had met during the journey: Paul and Pauline from Liverpool, Yvonne from Coventry and Jurgen from Holland and Linda and Mark from Dublin. Eventually, in the small hours of the morning, we all headed off to bed.
On our last day, we passed through some more gorgeous scenery and pulled into dock at Puerto Natales in the early afternoon. Time to say goodbye to the ship and disembark.
