CHAPTER 43
One day I was idly leafing through our South America guide book and on a totally random page at the very back, my thumb stopped on an advertisement for the Navimag Ferry Company. It caught my eye because there was a nice colorful map of southern Chile with a bright red line clearly marking the ferry’s route, from a point about two-thirds the way down the country, all the way to the very bottom of Patagonia. I won’t deny that I have a somewhat childish fascination with maps, especially if they are brightly colored, and as I traced my finger down the line I was in the middle of thinking “hmmm, that’s interesti…” and a light bulb went off in my head. “Kacey, this ferry goes through the Chilean fjords. The fjords, love. We have to take it!”
Strangely, during all of our countless hours of research for this trip, we had never heard of this ferry. And even after 6 months or so (at this point) on the road, we had never come across another traveler who had mentioned using it either. I looked up the Navimag website and was delighted to see that they had a few specials going, including a “your vehicle rides free” deal that would save us about $500. Add this to the lower off-season price which we could take advantage of because we wouldn’t be getting to Ushuaia until well into autumn, and this ferry was shaping up to be the perfect way to return north. It would end up costing us a little more, but in every other respect it sure beat the hell out of retracing our route through thousands of miles of devoid Patagonian pampas. I clicked the buy button before we could over-think it and purchased our passage on the north bound Navimag Ferry leaving Puerto Natales on April 19th. Then I started to over-think it…
Up until now, we had been traveling along on a leisurely, open ended ramble down to the bottom of South America. But now we would be playing a risky game of calendar roulette- we had to plan our itinerary to include all the sights we wanted to visit in southern Patagonia and still arrive at the ferry before its departure, while not being overly conservative as to leave us arriving too early, inevitably stuck as fixtures in the hostel bar for a few weeks, drowning our boredom and waiting for the ship to leave. Throw into the mix the very real possibility of breaking down (which did happen, leaving us stranded in Esquel, Argentina for over a week) and our fledgling idea of selling the truck (which luckily did not happen), and the fact that we were able to see every last sight on our list, while arriving into Puerto Natales the evening before the departure of the ferry, was, forgive me for tooting my own horn, nothing less than the “driving to South America” equivalent of landing a man on the moon. Ok, maybe that is a slight exaggeration, but considering the whole mess of things that could have gone wrong, and the slightly smaller pile of things that did go wrong, we really could not have planed it better. Toot toot!
Puerto Natales is a small, unremarkable town, aside from its proximity to Torres del Paine, and its excessive amount of dramatic coastal views. We spent one night in a decent hostel on the town square, and had a pretty good wood-fired pizza dinner at a fun boliche where all the patrons sat collectively at long wooden tables that spanned the length of the room. The next day we stuffed our backpacks with everything we would need for the 5 day ocean voyage (after loading the truck onto the ferry, we would not be allowed access to it) and made a final run to the grocery store to get some snacks, a case of beer and a few bottles of wine- there wouldn’t be much to do on the ferry, so the “it’s five o’clock somewhere” rule might be taken advantage of a little earlier in the day than normal. That night we drove to the port, had the truck inspected and the papers stamped, and were the first ones to rumble up the ramp into the cavernous belly of the ferry.
I always like boarding a ship, especially a big one. Inevitably, there are those first few hours where the maze of passageways and corridors are a mystery, leaving you lost and confused when you try to return to your room, and unexpectedly open the door to an outside deck, or the pub, or the bridge of the ship. It’s like an adult sized funhouse, and wherever you end up, it is always a pleasant surprise. We had an extra surprise this time: when booking the tickets, we had to decide which class of cabin we wanted, and settled on the second cheapest- a shared four bunk room. This would save us the uncomfortableness inherent with the preposterously exposed single births that lined the public hallways, only hidden by a thin curtain, while ensuring we would still have enough pesos to buy a round or two at the pub (once we found it) for our cabin mates. Luckily for us, and unquestionably due to Kacey’s smile in my opinion, the guy checking us in upgraded us to a private two bunk cabin. I gave Kacey a victorious fist pump for this inexplicable rise in our fortunes, and walked away distractedly imagining the extravagant opulence that awaited us- Jacuzzi in room, outside balcony, golden toilet… I should have known better though, any ship so crowded that they make people sleep in the hallways would probably not provide lavish luxury suites. Our cabin was so small that you couldn’t open the door if both of us were standing up, and I had to sleep on my side the whole time because the bed was too narrow for my shoulders. Imagine the grandfather’s 2ft x 2ft shack in Chitti Chitti Bang Bang, and then add another body and 2 sets of luggage, and you will get the picture. Even so, we were happy to have our own little nook on the ship, and after deftly balancing our bags on top of each other, so we could move past one another and escape through the door, we set about exploring the ferry and meeting our shipmates.
The ferry didn’t actually depart until sometime in the middle of the night, so when I woke up the next morning, I saw a fantastic and wild view out of our porthole. Judging by my GPS, we were already a fair distance into the winding maze of these treacherous fjords. The scene was one of pure wilderness. An expanse of rocky islands and peninsulas, covered with scraggly trees, tenaciously keeping their foothold on the steep mountain sides that plunged directly into the inky waters. The channel we were sailing must have been extremely deep, as evidenced by its nearly vertical walls in some places. Our deep draft ship could pass within yards of the land without apparent concern of grounding. I roused Kacey from her bunk, and excitedly led the way to the upper deck for a better view. About 2 seconds after stepping outside, we hastily retreated back into the ship- it was outrageously cold out there!
There is something exhilarating about braving extreme cold. The kind of cold that burns your lungs, and makes your eyes water, and turns the hairs inside your nose into crunchy little instant icicles. The hurricane force winds that blow down the tributary valleys of the Chilean fjords, called williwaws, bring with them a bitter cold air from the snow covered peaks of the Andes. These winds come on without warning and are powerful enough to capsize even a large sail boat. Fortunately, this ship was not in danger of foundering, but on deck we were still at the mercy of the williwaw’s piercing winds and stinging cold. Even with every layer of clothes on that we had brought, we could only stand outside for a few short minuets- long enough to snap a couple of photos, and then jump back in the door, clenching our hands and stamping our feet, followed by an inevitable, violent, whole body shiver.
As amazing as the scenery was, it could only occupy our interests for so long at a time. Our ship board life fell into a pleasant routine of relaxing and napping, reading books and playing cards, and chatting with other travelers, while still making the occasional rounds of the outside decks to get some fresh air and take in the landscape slowly sliding by. The only real break in our schedule was for meals- something we did not necessarily look forward to. The ships kitchen diligently churned out mushy piles of mediocre glop, dramatically plopped on your plate like some cliché grade school cafeteria. After our first breakfast, a decidedly unsavory experience, we retreated back to our cabin and made a supplementary meal out of the bag of snacks we had brought with us. Unfortunately we were not very good at rationing our supplies and by lunch on the second day were hungry enough to gag down the third showing of a watery spaghetti Bolognese.
Well, so what? We knew this wasn’t a Carnival Cruise when we signed up for it. Any lack of space in our coffin sized cabin, or the consummate deficit of culinary prowess exhibited by the galley staff (I refrain from labeling them chefs), were in reality only a small annoyance. We were cruising the Chilean Fjords after all. A land so secluded, so supremely devoid of the influence of man, that we might as well have been the first men there- aside from the rusting hull of a derelict ship we passed one afternoon, our ferry had the waterways all to its self.
Except, that is, for a few aquatic companions… During the sunny afternoon of our last day on board, we were crossing the large Golfo Corcovado, which is apparently a favorite refuge for a little thing the experts like to call Balaenoptera musculus– none other than the great blue whale, the largest animal to ever live on Earth! We had never seen a whale before in the ocean, let alone the granddaddy of them all, and by the buzzing excitement emanating from the rest of the passengers, they hadn’t either. When the captain announced that we were nearing the great blue’s normal territory, everyone eagerly made their way to the outside deck and crowded the railings vying for a chance to spot the first whale. The feeling of anticipation was palpable, and every eye was scanning the water for any sign of the behemoths. Sure enough, someone eventually yelled out, and we all rushed to the port side of the ship. A narrow black hump could be seen cresting the water a couple of hundred yards off. Even through my telephoto lens it didn’t look like much, and I was almost inclined to think it was just a floating log or something, when all of a sudden a huge geyser of water erupted from the creature. It was pretty amazing seeing this submarine sized monster in its natural environment, but I guess I was hoping for a little more activity- maybe a powerful tail splash, or preferably, one of those whole-body jumps out of the water like you see on TV, hell, I would have even settled for a playful fin slap- but alas, these whales were a little lazy, and saw no need to entertain a boatload of gawking tourists. Eventually, the black humps submerged under the waves, and most of us returned to the pub to read our books, or watch the movie that was playing on the big screen.
As it happened, Kacey and a newly acquired traveling friend of ours, Gaia (a freelance journalist from the UK, wanderinggaia.com) decided to stay outside and enjoy the sun that had been so reclusive for most of the voyage. They were sitting on a bench overlooking the shimmering blue waters of the bay, when all of a sudden one of the great whales breached the water right in front of them, perhaps only a dozen yards from the ship. Kacey yelled out excitedly, and all the passengers and crew came pouring back out on deck. I barely managed to catch a glimpse the huge body of the leviathan melting back into the black water. We all stood there hopefully, waiting for it to resurface, but it never did. As quickly as the whales had come, they were gone, leaving us each to ponder the tragedy that is the whale’s existence. I, for one, felt supremely lucky to have encountered this docile king of the ocean, while at the same time I couldn’t help but feel a tinge of remorse that so much of traveling has become a race to “see things before they are gone”, and that ironically, the majority of the general degradation to the world at large is caused by man’s hand- the rarity of seeing a whale in the wild is just one poignant example of this precarious situation.
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