Cruise to Chile

(m) We booked a four day, three night cruise from Ushuaia, Argentina to Punta Arenas, Chile onboard Via Australis. The cruise agenda includes a expedition each day, weather permitting, to Cape Horn, an uninhabited island, some glaciers, and a penguin visit. Trin was particularly excited as this would be her first cruise.

The boat itself is relatively small and was dramatically dwarfed by the Princess Cruises´ Star Princess she shared the dock with that day.

Catching the last bit of sunshine as we pull out of Ushuaia.
The cruise company uses four zodiacs to bring passengers to shore. Below we are decked out in our loud orange life preservers for our first outing to Cape Horn National Park.

Cape Horn is the southern most tip of South America. Sailing around this point has claimed more than 10,000 sailors due to the strong currents, weather, and ice burg danger that prevails here. The park has a monument of a flying albatross dedicated to those lost at sea here. There is also a lighthouse and home inhabited by a Chilean military fellow and his family (they rotate yearly). The area we disembarked at is on the same island but not actually at the Cape Horn itself. As luck would have it, "calm" seas would permit us to sail around it later in the day which we were told is a rare occurrence.

Passengers loading up in the zodiacs off of the rear of the boat.
Boats returning after the Cape Horn tour.

The monument and a line of spectators heading towards it.
Cape Horn is a 1300 feet sheer rock wall. This picture is a bit cloudy because I was sea sick at this point and took the photo from our cabin.
A shot of our boat and Wulaia Bay after a small hike.

On the third day we zodiaced for twenty minutes up a ice burg filled bay to our first sizable glacier. With camera ready in hand the glacier was kind enough to drop a big chuck off into the water which was quite a loud and exhilarating experience. If you look closely at the before and after photos you can see the large area of glacier that fell.

Later that day, the boat parked at the even larger Plüschow Glacier. I found it was hard to appreciate its size after reviewing the photo. It looks this was taken from water level but it was actually shot from the upper deck of the boat.

The last day we would disebark early at Magdalena Island to see over 200k Magellanic Penguins getting ready for their day. In the info session leading up to the visit, we learned that penguins only inhabit the southern hemisphere. Also, they all have the same moring routine (1 hour or more) including washing off the dirt from the previous night and applying a special oil which water proofs their coats.

Sunrise was awesome.

My favorite part was watching the penguins porpoising along side us (same as dolphins do) as we approached in the zodiac. They do this in order to breath without losing their swimming speed.

Humans are confined to a small roped off area to view the penguins in their natural habit which consists of thousands of small dug holes used for child rearing. Suffice to say they are spread across the horizon in every direction and the roar of their collective calls is deafening. Not surprisingly, they don´t use sight to recognize one another, only sound. Also, they were not particularly skittish and often crossed our path within a foot of us to reach the sea.