Chile and Patagonia 2016 – Wulaia Bay, Australis Cruise

Date Explored: February 16, 2016

Following our excursion to Cape Horn, the Stella Australis took us to Wulaia Bay for the afternoon, where we had a choice of three hikes. The Captain gave a compelling lecture (previous to our visit to Wulaia Bay) about the Yamana aboriginal settlements. Wulaia Bay was the site of one of the largest Yamana settlements, was also sketched by FitzRoy and described by Darwin during their voyage on board the HMS Beagle (yeah for beagles!). Here’s another link for more information.

There is an old radio station at Wulaia Bay that has been converted to a museum, and it’s very good. For the hikes, BILly decided to take the Difficult option while SILly, DH and I opted for Medium. Really, BILly’s hike just took him to a higher vantage point.

This would be our last time setting forth from the zodiacs. Awwwwwwwww….

Everyone drops their life jackets somewhere they are apt to remember them for picking up later, but it really doesn't matter whose lifejacket you pick up. Some folks were no so great at remembering where they put theirs. :) But I love this shot showing both the Chile and Argentina flags.
Everyone drops their life jackets somewhere they are apt to remember them for picking up later, but it really doesn’t matter whose life jacket you pick up. Some folks were no so great at remembering where they put theirs. 🙂 But I love this shot showing both the Chile and Argentina flags.
Breathtaking views! If you look very hard, you can see the old radio station/now museum in the lower left hand corner of this photo. Our hiking group visited the museum following our hike.
Breathtaking views! If you look very hard, you can see the old radio station/now museum in the lower left hand corner of this photo. Our hiking group visited the museum following our hike.
Patagonia really reminds me of British Columbia. It's not the same, yet it is. Depending where you are.
Patagonia really reminds me of British Columbia. It’s not the same, yet it is. Depending where you are.
"Us".
“Us”.

On the last evening of the cruise, the crew auctioned off the navigation chart sued for sailing to Cape Horn. My motion sickness was still bothering me, though not as badly as the first few days. I’ve done three cruises now (Galapagos 2012, Cuba 2014 and now this one), and the Australis Cruise was by far the shortest, at only 4 nights. It’s a great cruise, not cheap but was well worth it for us. Since we backpacked through Europe and touched the westernmost point of Europe in the 19080s, we have wanted to check out other “direction-most” points. We’ve been to the easternmost tip of North America (Cape Spear, Newfoundland) and to the highest navigable body of water (Lake Titicaca), so visiting the southernmost point of South America was definitely on the Bucket List. Now, I need to get to the Dead Sea, but no idea when that will occur!

We had one more night on the Stella Australis before she docked at Ushuaia, Argentina, the southernmost city on the continent, the following morning. We disembarked and had some more adventures before flying up to Buenos Aires for a couple of days. So we’re not finished yet!