Today we took a nice boat trip down ´Ultima Esperanza Sound´. This translates to ´Last Hope Sound´ which is a large valley carved out by Glacial action a long time ago not far from our current residence of Puerto Nateles.

We boarded our boat and off we went down the sound, after a few hours of sailing past beautiful landscapes we arrived at a colony of Cormorant birds which look a bit like small Penguins but all perching rather precariously on the almost vertical cliff face (we assume they do this to protect them from preditors) then we arrived at what is supposed to be a Sea Lion colony but unfortunatly they were all hiding away today so no luck for us.

A couple of hours more pleasant sailing past lush green landscapes, snow covered mountains and some really pretty waterfalls we finally arrived at the Balmaceda Glacier. This being our first ever view of a glacier so we were very exicited.

This Glacier is interesting in that is is retreating up the mountainside and is currently about two thirds of the way up. We circled around for a while but the rain and mists came in which restricted our view somewhat so we moved on (however the mist made it a very atmospheric experience).

Then another hour of nice sailing took us to a forest shoreline where we got off the boat and trekked 1km to another Glacier, this one is called ´Sarreno´ and was even more impressive. Although also a retreating glacier, this one is still at the water level and we could get quite close to it and really appriciate its scale and beauty.

While we were there staring at the large amounts of ice (with our mouths and eyes wide open) the glacier reminded us that it is not a static mass but a moving beast when chunks of it broke off further up the mountain and came crumbling down, with an almightly BOOM echoing around the mountains.

After a while of standing there just staring at the Glacier we all went back to the boat. The next thing we know we pull up further down shore and get treated to a massive meat feast for dinner. A ridiculous amount of meat is plonked on our table, all sizzling away. We did our best but could not finish it all, but even so we must have consumed a few animals worth of meat.

Rolling ourselves back onto the boat, most people fell asleep but we ended up sitting next to an elderly American couple who have travelled to every country in the world and loved to talk to two young travellers about every topic under the sun. It was an amusing few hours with the wife falling asleep mid conversation and the husband obsessed with his new gps gadget and kept checking our progress literally every second, must to his wife´s annoyance.

As we returned to Puerto Natales we all enjoyed a complimentary Pisco Sour from the boat crew which had some fresh Glacier ice in, a very tasty and fresh drink to end a great sailing trip!