Day 27 – Happy Halloween

It's 4:16 a.m. on Halloween morning. Since leaving Vancouver, we have traveled over 6,000 nautical miles and it doesn’t feel like we’ve left the hotel yet. I’m awaken by the tossing and turning of the ship. First we go way up in the bow and then down, rolling from port to starboard in the waves. The old girl is making her way through the rough waves tonight and the creaking is louder than normal. The glass in our window is surely under some stress as it squeaks with pretty much every roll of each wave.

We had probably our greatest tour yesterday in Puerto Chacabuco. It was the smallest tour in terms of our numbers, but the most magical so far. This was yet another tendered port but far easier than our disembarkation in Puerto Montt. We were in a sheltered harbour so the tenders were very easy thank heavens. As we waited for the tour bus, the wind blew and there was snow in the air.

If anyone had told me that later that day I would be trudging through a cow pasture, loaded with cows and bulls making my way to a "witches kitchen" for pisco sours and lamb while alpaca’s looked on I would have seriously doubted you. Yesterday was one of those days that will be etched in my mind forever. As I’ve said earlier, Chile is just a magical, amazing country.

We were with En Patagonia Tours and Tim was our guide. He’s an expat from the U.K. that has lived here in Patagonia for the past 17 years and is very, very knowledgeable about his adopted country. We started out with waterfalls, then more waterfalls. Then it was off to a botanical garden on the edge of a glacier fed river. We were shrouded in mountains on every side. While they rarely get snow here in the Puerto Chacabuco area because of their microclimate, but there’s always snow on the mountains. We saw condors up in the mountains, a sight not normally afforded to the regular tourists to this area – so large and majestic as they flew on the thermals but still so far off in the distance.

We’re in District 11 here in Peru. This southern district is about the size of the U.K. Scotland and Ireland combined but has a total population of only 100,000 inhabitants, far short of the 60 million people in the same area across the pond. Our little tour bus continued to travel down the gravel road to our luncheon destination. It was a working farm; the family is completely self-sufficient and has virtually no reliance on the nearest town some 60 kilometers away to maintain their existence. Everything comes from the farm. It’s common for Chilean families to have a quincho (kin-show) a wooden barbeque house, which is an outbuilding used for holidays, family get-togethers and special events. It was here that the great memories started to all come together. In this particular case, they called it the “witches kitchen”. The family treated us all to a spectacular luncheon of salmon, beef, lamb, empanadas, Chilean wine, pisco sour’s and traditional Chilean dancing in front of the roaring fire that was used to cook the lamb on a spit.

I realize now that I’m an ignoramus. I never knew anything about South America before coming here, let alone Chile itself. I have been very pleasantly surprised and overwhelmed by this country and their people, The beauty is everywhere you look here is Chile and I’m told that it will only get better. I got introduced, face-to-face to my first Alpaca yesterday on the farm too – what a cutie. We’ve made some good friends here onboard the ms Zaandam. As I said in my earlier blog, I smashed my short 55mm lens, it turns out that one of the guys on our tour group, Niels, from Scotland has lent me his Nikon 17mm-105 zoom for the remainder of the cruise – no questions, just here you go. Sometimes the generosity of people reminds you that there are still some good blokes in the world. Thanks Niels!

For the next two days we will be traversing through fjords, and glaciers (five of them in fact) in what has been described as some of the most beautiful places on earth. Hopefully my pictures can do it justice. As some of you may know, in addition to my blog, I’m writing an eBook, “There’s more to South America than Tango” and I’ve just reached the one hundred-page mark which recaps the historical, geographical along with my personal observations of what I’ve seen through my photographs. Knowing that I still have some eighteen days left in this adventure, I’m sure that it will continue to grow as we go.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN EVERYONE!