For years I have been waiting for someone to take me on a cruise, but as it obviously was never going to happen I decided to take myself.
Now this is a cruise with a difference as it is only four days and starts from Punta Arenas in Chile and goes to Ushuaia in Argentina via the Beagle Channel and Cape Horn. It is really a cruise for those who want to take pictures of birds and other wildlife and to be honest I was expecting the boat to be an old tub that had been retired from service somewhere in the Antarctic, so it was a bit of a surprise to find that it had only been in service for a year.
Another surprise was that instead of a large cupboard as a single cabin, which is what I was expecting, I actually got a twin cabin all to myself.
Apart from seeing the penguins on Christmas Day I was not really interested in the wildlife that much. Wildlife is notoriously unreliable at appearing to order, (last year around Alice Springs I was promised wedge tailed eagles, kangaroos, and camels, when we finally did see a wedge tailed eagle it was feeding off a dead kangaroo at the side of the road, and I never did see a camel), and the thought of getting up at 6am just to get into an inflatable dinghy and go and look at birds was all a bit too much........
Embarking on Christmas Eve, we finally left Punta Arenas after going round in circles for hours because a bag had gone missing, and were treated to 'Christmas dinner' that evening.
Apparently it was beyond the collective imaginations of the Hotel Manager, the Maitre D, and the waiting staff to accept the fact that they might have a single passenger, with no affiliations to any other passenger, on board, so my first difficulty was actually in finding a table where I might sit down and eat. This situation lasted until Boxing Day breakfast time when I finally threw a whoopsy in the middle of the restaurant as I had been moved to no less than three different tables under the watchful eye of three different waiters, none of whom would let me sit at a table 'because it is laid for two people'!
As said vessel was only half full I really could not see what the problem was, I dread to think what it would have been like if the cruise had been full. But I digress....
Midnight on Christmas Eve was the Captain's 'cocktail party', so having hit the g and t's big time, it was hardly surprising that I didn't bother to get out of bed the next day, and even less surprising that I was going to get togged up in three layers of clothing, waterproofs, and a lifejacket to look at birds......I did recover enough by the afternoon to risk life and limb to go and look at the Magellan penguins, one of which as you can see from the photos was kind enough to pose for me about four feet away from the side of the dinghy.
I will give the crew their due, they are very safety conscious and go to great lengths to make sure you disembark and embark according to the rules. Most of the waiting staff etc. are Chilean so they are all very sociable and speak to you ten times a day, and the bar staff have the normal Chilean problem in that they do not have the faintest idea how much gin to put in a glass before they add the tonic. This results in you being given a gin in a half pint glass with three ice cubes and enough space left for about one tablespoon of tonic.
This beautiful nearly new ship the MV Stella Australis has three beautiful lounge areas where you can sit and watch the scenery go past in comfort, but strangely hardly anybody else used them but me......Where was everyone else? In their cabins I suppose.
If anybody was looking for me I was usually to be found in the Sky Lounge on the 4th deck either having a mid morning nap after breakfast, or an afternoon nap after lunch, fortunately like most cruises they have a team of experts on board who give lectures and as the English version of these took place in the Sky Lounge, there was usually a disturbance early in the evening which woke me up in time for dinner.
Actually I must say that the food was not terribly brilliant. Presentation was amazing, but they seemed to have only two flavours in the kitchen, meat or fish. If it didn't have either fish bouillon or meat bouillon on it but had sugar on it, then it was dessert, if it didn't have any bouillon or sugar then it was salad....And who in their right mind produces a menu with a seafood starter, followed by seafood soup, followed by fish main course? Fortunately someone had thought to have some lamb standing by as an emergency, except that they said it has rosemary sauce but it was mint, and although it tasted like lamb when you first bit into it, after that it just tasted like meat (again).
They had a selection of pastas and sauces one day for lunch, one of my favourites, except the bolognese sauce did not have any meat in it....
The lecturers were very good, not so much when talking about the birds and fishes, which are not my line, but when chatting about glaciers and the indigenous peoples, who no longer exist. And we also got to see that documentary about Shackleton getting stuck in the ice, but I missed a couple of bits of that because I nodded off......
There are other cruises around this area but they last for about two weeks and go from Buenos Aires around to Valparaiso, and the ships are too big to use the smaller channels so we had some extra treats that you wouldn't normally see on one of these.
So apart from watching the mountains, which are by turns majestic or brooding, depending on the light and the amount of cloud, we got to travel through the smaller channels and because the cruise is for naturalists (that is WITH an 'al' in the middle) and people interested in geology etc. then there is a shore trip to the spectacular Pia Glacier. It doesn't look like much in the photo, but if you look to the left you can just about see one of the inflatables heading towards it which should give you some idea of the sheer size of it.
After passing the Pia Glacier our route took us along the Beagle Channel through the part that is known as Glacier Alley....I haven't posted all the pictures here but Sniffer Nicholls, my old geography master would have been in his element with hanging glaciers and this glacier and that glacier....As you pass by them there is a French glacier, a German glacier, an Italian glacier, and a Dutch glacier. On board ship they have this interesting idea to serve food and drinks accordingly, so champagne and cheese for the French, beer and sausages for the German, Patagonian pizza and red wine for the Italian, and finally meatballs and beer for the Dutch. By the time we had passed them all everyone was quite well oiled....
But early night this night after looking with trepidation at the weather and lots of checking of weather forecasts as tomorrow we arrive at the destination I have been waiting for, Cape Horn itself.
As everyone knows Cape Horn is notorious for its bad weather, even during high summer such as it is no. Some 10,000 people are known to have lost their lives trying to navigate the route around the Cape, and sometimes with the winds and currents against them sailors have been known to take weeks to round Cape Horn, fortunately we have engines and not sails but nevertheless with uncertain weather even this ship cannot always make the trip.
Luck and the weather is with us, and at nightfall the clouds begin to clear and not only were we able to approach Cape Horn Island, but we are able to land also and climb the 140 steps to the Cape Horn monument, meet the light house keeper's wife, and visit the small chapel next door as well.....
A forbidding and mysterious place, where little grows on the peat bog topsoil except for a few hardy plants and sedges, and to the south the next piece of land is Antarctica. Under darkening skies we all seemed quite subdued and very slightly overawed as we walked the duckboard walk from point to point (you are not allowed to actually stand on the ground for fear that the environment might be damaged and anyway it is soaking wet), and then it began to pour with rain.
Returning to the ship for a late breakfast we were in for an extra ride, as weather conditions often mean that the ship has to return to the Beagle Channel by the route it came, but for us the sea remained calm enough for us to actually go round the Cape and take a different route back.
Only a few minutes later and the sea became rough and as we sat eating the ship got up a bit of a roll until very soon we were seeing nothing but sky one minute and nothing but sea the next.
Cape Horn was not ready to let us have it all our own way it seemed.
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