Date Explored: February 15th
Day 3 of our Australis Cruise was pretty much the reason FOR the cruise. Overnight, the ship makes its way around the western end of Tierra del Fuego and into the Ballenero Channel. It’s pretty exciting to look out your cabin window and see bits of ice beginning to show in the water. I can only imagine what it must be like to experience in colder months (but I’m a wimp so we went during their summer). The closer the ship cruises to Pia Glacier, the more you can feel excitement mounting on-board. Pia Glacier is one of the few glaciers accessible to humans that is not in retreat, but instead is advancing (this is when a glacier grows faster than it’s melting, whereas the Columbia Ice Fields in my home province are melting faster than they are growing, hence they are in retreat).
When Pia Glacier first comes into view, it is just breathtaking. It’s surreal to be among such beauty, and in today’s day and age there is a pretty somber realization that seeing a glacier calve (which we did, several times) as the ice pushes from the back and huge chunks split off into the ocean is a rarity. You truly feel like you are at the mercy of Mother Earth.
When you visit the glacier, you can choose to just stay at the viewing area or to hike to gain “better views.” The hike was pretty slippery, over large boulders, and it was muddy. They warned us it would be muddy, and it was! I had rain pants and gators. We were in Chile and Argentina for a month, so I didn’t have space in my luggage for hiking boots. You can borrow gumboots off the cruise folks, but I thought they would be too slippery on the rocks for this excursion. I just used my hiking runners with the rain pants and gators, and that combo worked great.
I had to put quotation marks around “enjoy,” because I am not a scotch drinker. I just wanted my picture taken like everyone else.
See the blue area of the glacier to the left? That’s where Pia Glacier was calving during our visit. We didn’t think it was going to calve at all. Then we started our hike and as the day warmed, you could start to hear the rumblings of a potential calve. Once we returned from our hike, I forgot about taking pictures or even attempting to get a calving on video. I just stood there and watched in awe. A couple small chunks calved, and a big one calved. See that icy water just behind me up above? As the glacier calves and drops into the ocean, it creates this “down the sink” effect, which shoves and swirls the water just beyond our viewing rock. The force of nature is awesome.
Sometimes it pays to just enjoy the moment instead of recording it for posterity, you know?
After you return to the ship, the boat cruises through “Glacier Alley,” which features tidewater glaciers coming down from the Darwin mountains and the Darwin Ice Sheet. Most of these glaciers are named after European countries, and the ship serves you a drink reminiscent of the country as you cruise past a glacier in question. Excuse my photos, because I took them through the window. It was quite blustery outside by this point. So I can’t tell you if this glacier is France, Holland, Germany or Italy, but I can tell you I enjoyed sips of champagne and beer (I think I ran out of steam after that).
During the cruise along Beagle Channel (beagle!!!) and through Glacier Alley, my sea-sickness was taking its toll. This was the night before we would reach Cape Horn, another reason to take the cruise – a chance to disembark at Cape Horn!! The success of the landing depends entirely on what the weather is doing around midnight to 2 a.m. the night before. The ship guys (captains, whatever) are in contact with a weather station that alerts them to the probability of landing at Cape Horn. But of course they don’t tell you whether you’ll land or not until the next morning, because how else will they get the entire boat into life jackets otherwise?
Did we land at Cape Horn? Did I fall overboard and need to be retrieved? Or did they toss me a rope and allow me to barefoot water-ski through ice chunks? These and other questions will be answered next week on another installment of Cindiana Jones Does Patagonia. Stay tuned!