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Today , we arrived in Laguna San Rafael, Chile. This is South of Puerto Montt and Puerto Chacabuco but we are still in the Chilean Archipelago and the surroundings look very similar with lots of islands, lots of snow-capped peaks, although more jagged rather than volcanic cones. The weather treated me with a little blue sky showing through the misty clouds early this morning but, after a few pictures, it disappeared and, by the end of the day it was more typical with low misty clouds that covered most of the mountains accompanied by a bit of cold drizzle. Above: San Valentin Glacier calving – Note all the birds flying around. Appears that the ice hitting the water must kill or knock out fish that float to the surface. A great feast for the sea birds!
I worked out this morning after getting a low fat latte and light fruit and mueslis breakfast at the coffee shop on the 6th floor. The spinning class this morning was canceled (not enough folks signed up I guess) so I just did it a bit of cycling on my own and then got my tickets for the catamaran trip to the nearby glacier.
This area is a big lagoon, in fact a series of big lagoons that are called Seno Elefantes. However, no elephants in sight. Although I’ve seen a lot of birds, I can’t say that I could identify them all, but I did see what looked like black-browed and sooty albatross, elegant black-necked swans, flightless steamer ducks and Magellanic penguins that are supposed to be flying or waddling around here.
Margaret is still ill but we have diagnosed her situation as bronchitis and treated her with some antibiotics that we brought with us. There are several others in the Machu Picchu group that have had similar symptoms and they have been treated with the same drug by the ship’s doctor. She should be on her feet by tomorrow and back with the living by Thursday. She is still able to work on her conference calls and other work while in the room and she had a nice dinner tonight….good sign that her appetite is returning! I feel so sorry for her but she is being a good sport about it and making the best of it. Everyone misses her, especially her gambling buddies, Doug the Concierge cigar smoking buddy and all the Machu Picchu group. But she’ll be back stronger than ever in less than a week!
Today I head out on the Catamaran trip by myself. They were running the two hour cruise on a very well made motorboat that probably went about 20+knots, was very stable and had two levels of comfortable seating with large windows, an upper deck in the back outside where you could do viewing and picture taking and, if you had a life vest on, you could walk around the front of the ship’s deck for even better picture taking!
We drove through a couple lagoons which are several miles long and then down a channel that took us into the final lagoon where icebergs of varying sizes were floating around. While they were all glacial ice, some were of the very blue variety that are always crowd pleasers. After an hour we finally arrived at the huge San Valentin Glacier. This is one of a group of four glaciers flowing in all directions from the San Valentin Mountain. This happens to be the glacier that is closest to the equator but you could have fooled me on this point since I only brought a fleece jacket and no gloves. But, given that I have to report back to you with stories and pictures (at some point when I figure out the best way to upload and the internet behaves) I still braved the elements and did my usual thorough job.
You’d swear that the world has turned upside down as it looks almost exactly like Alaska here. The glacier behaved nicely and calved several times. I know that I got some great pictures that we will be sharing with you. The weather was drizzly but not enough to impact the pictures and not enough to keep me inside. We drifted around for probably 45 minutes before turning back. They served us coffee/hot chocolate, sandwiches and cookies and were very professional. All in all, a very well run tour. One of the really nice things was, after getting frozen outside I went to the restroom and, while standing there a hand dryer went on next to me. Turns out it was VERY toasty and I spent several minute defrosting. Fortunately, they had four!!! restrooms available so I didn’t feel too guilty.
In the last lagoon before the ship and, with the ship in sight, all of the sudden the boat jumped to the right as if we had hit a big log. Turns out that there are strong currents as the water enters the lagoons through the opening and we had run into two currents hitting us at different angles. It knocked a bunch of plates and coffee pots off the shelf in the back and caused quite a ruckus. No one was hurt and we continued on to unload at the Mariner.
The vegetation is interesting because at times, other than the cold rain and mist, you would swear we were back in Panama as some of the trees and other plants look very similar to that area. However, the mountains in the distance look exactly like Alaska. Not sure how this happened but it adds to the mystery of this area. The lagoons look very similar to those we saw on our South Pacific cruise a year ago over New Years. Just no coral reefs, no clear turquoise water and the water temperature is VERY frigid. They tell us that when the sky is blue (a few times a year) that the water becomes a very pretty cobalt blue but we won’t be seeing that today unfortunately…
Machu Picchu Presentation
We got back about 5 pm and I went straight to the room to get ready for the special Machu Picchu experience presentation to show all of the non-Regent 64 group what happened and share some stories written by our group. For the past few days I have been working with Lisa, the Asst. Cruise Director and Ben, the video production manager on putting the slide show together. I made an iPhoto slide presentation with 350 slides, sat with them to go over the flow of our trip and then made an iMovie with about 10 movie clips that I made on the trip that gave a more visceral view of what was going on than still pictures. Lisa asked the others in the MP group to donate pictures to fill in the gaps and Ben took all this content and made a Final Cut Pro still/video montage presentation complete with Lisa reading the stories that were submitted.
At least a couple hundred people attended and Ben and Lisa did a very good job and were fun to work with. It was nice to see that they used a lot of my content, including all the video clips and also to see the pictures that others did. It was very well received and we then took a group picture on the stage and sang a song that was written by one of our group and sung to the tune of the Brady Bunch Theme Song (in tribute to Florence Henderson who had sung a couple weeks back on the ship).
Here are the words to the song:
Here’s the story of a group of travelers,
who were touring through the highlands of Peru
They had four guides, traveling all together
when the flooding grew
Then the ‘copters came and rescued all of them
and they knew that they were such a lucky bunch
That this group had somehow formed a family
and that’s the way we all became the Machu Picchu Bunch.
Chorus:
The Machu Picchu Bunch, The Machu Picchu Bunch,
that’s the way we became the Machu Picchu Bunch.
But the story, it did not end there
as the ship sailed even further away
Fed and sheltered, as we flew and flew
but there was tension too!
Another day, another flight, what’s on the horizon?
could we hope that this would truly be the day?
When this group would eventually see the ship
and we’d be safe and home to finally end this crazy trip!
Chorus.
We met in the bar for a bit and relived some of the fun times and then I went back to the room to have dinner with Margaret while the others went to La Veranda for a special dinner for the MP group and officers, etc. A nice touch by Regent as they continue to take good care of all of us! It is greatly appreciated.
Thanks for Lisa and Ben for putting in the time on this project from their busy schedules. It was a fun project and got me to spend some time organizing the hundreds (maybe thousands!) of pictures that I’ve taken so far in Adobe Lightroom and iPhoto as well as cataloging all the video clips in iMovie. Good times!
Tomorrow is a sea day (YEAH!) as we go a bit North tonight to escape the Archipelago by sneaking through a channel that takes us West, then start heading South again as we head to Punta Arenas where we are SERIOUSLY South. I think we’ll finally see some penguins there. But that’s another day and another story. I’m going to work on uploading some videos of MP tonight to YouTube. Stay tuned!
Laguna San Rafael, Chile: http://travelwithdm.smugmug.com/Travel/South-America/Laguna-San-Rafael-Feb-2-2010/25168188_knFxLV#!i=2064167015&k=pXRFRrq