We had to wait for 3 hours with Gerty at the port in Puerto Montt but then she was loaded and strapped down for the trip to Puerto Natales, which takes 4 days. We were pleased with our cabin. Nothing fancy but comfortable with our own bathroom. The beds proved to be very comfortable and we slept well every night. Most passengers were foreign hitchhikers, German, Swiss, Australian, Canadian, American and English kitted out and planning some serious trekking. I felt quite lazy in comparison.

The scenery en route was quite beautiful with snow capped mountains and wooded hills down to the waters edge. Numerous waterfalls cascaded down the mountains and every now and then small islands filled the channel. At several points the channel became very narrow. The area is very remote and we only saw 4 boats in 2 days. The only activity was a few fish farms.

The second night we hit open sea and lucky for me it was the calmest they have known for a long time. Mind you it was still quite rough; certainly enough for me so I headed to bed with several travel sickness tablets and when I woke up it was all over and we were back in fjords.

The next day was a lot cooler and just before lunch we had our first siting of a glacier (Glacier Tempanos). We passed very close and got some great photos.

After lunch we docked at Puerto Eden, a tiny village of only 176 people. Peter got off for a quick stroll.

Finally we arrived at Puerto Natales. We had to wait over an hour to dock and another hour to get Gerty off. For some unknown reason we had to go through Customs. Which was fairly painless, but as we had only traveled internally in Chile, we couldn't work out why, but all the vehicles coming off the ferry had to.