Sunday, 6 January 2019
Beagle Channel, Tierra del Fuego, Chile
Bang.
Pause.
Bang.
Pause.
Bang.
Pause.
What.
The.
Is.
That.
Bang.
Pause.
Rhythmically.
Investigate.
It’s 0400hrs.
We’re going around the Brecknock Peninsula.
It’s very choppy.
Not as choppy as the Bransfield Strait though.
Bang.
Pause.
It’s in my room.
Finally.
It’s the door of the safe banging shut every time the ship rolls.
Hmmm.
Can’t be bothered trying to work out how to work it. Stuff the operating instructions card into the door to jam it shut.
And now to sleep.
Except.
We’re rocking and rolling and it’s not that easy.
Fortunately, we have a very leisurely morning ahead. No shore excursions until this afternoon as we sail up the Beagle Channel. Up until last week, I’d never done any cruising and now I’ve done two in two weeks. Quite taken with this expedition style cruising. A Med/Caribbean type cruise would be my idea of hell. Stuck on a boat with 3,000 fellow passengers. Even with 120 people on board the Stella Australis, it’s erring on the side of touristy. The Ocean Nova Antarctic cruise with 65 passengers was spot on.
Nice to have a relaxing morning and read a book at last (Roger Daltrey’s autobiography ‘Thanks a lot Mr Kibblewhite’, seeing as you were thinking) before late morning lecture on ‘Discovering Tierra del Fuego’. Here’s a precis.
First encounter by Magellan in 1520, who recorded the following:
‘Two months passed before we saw any inhabitant of the country. One day, when we least expected it, a giant figure of a man appeared before us. It was on the sand almost naked. And he sang and danced at the same time, putting dust on his head…This man was so big that our head came barely to his waist.’
It wasn’t me that Magellan was referring to.
There were five ethnicities of Fuego Patagonia: Tehuelche, Ona, Haush, Yagan and Alacaluf, each with their own idiosyncrasies. Some wore guanaco hides with fur on outside, some with fur inside. The Ona painted their naked bodies and did dancing for their Hain ceremony, when boys became men. The southernmost group located where I am now in the area surrounding the Beagle channel, the Yagan, were nomads of the sea and tended to live in canoes with a fire built on stones in the canoe.
Father Alberto de Agostini, a Salesian missionary, documented their lives in photographs at the turn of the 20th century. The photographs and film are fascinating. Google Alberto Maria de Agostini to see the videos on YouTube of Tierra del Fuego at the turn of the century.
Opportunity to visit the bridge. Unlike the Ocean Nova’s bridge which is always open and you can walk in at any time and have a chat with the captain and crew, the Stella Australis’s bridge is always closed. They still proper paper navigation charts to plot the course as they’re more accurate, apparently, than the electronic systems. The navigation chart for tomorrow’s Cape Horn trip is to be auctioned off at the farewell dinner tomorrow night. I fancy it. Will look good on my office wall. They also have access to the outside world. Unlike us. They need to know what’s happening in case of nuclear war. And the football scores.
Sail up the fjord to the Pia Glacier for a shore excursion. It’s 1.2km wide and about 50m high but it looks higher and not as wide.
As soon as we approach on the Zodiacs, we hear the thunder of the calving glacier. It’s surprising how loud and frequent it is and big chunks, guess the size of a house, crash into the fjord. We’re standing listening to the guide who advises to keep video on as he believes these small calves are a pre-cursor to a bigger one. So glad I did. It happens right in front of us. See video below. It’s a thunderous sound. The mass of ice falling into the fjord creates a mini tsunami on the shore in front of us.
The shore excursion finishes with the obligatory hot chocolate with Johnny Walker Red Label. It’s warming. It needs to be. It’s been chucking it down with rain the past two hours. Cold and wet. Hot chocolate and whisky. That’s the way to warm a man’s heart.
Early evening cruise down the Beagle Channel, for the part known as Glacier Alley. I’m sitting in the 5th floor bar lounge typing this blog over a cold beer. The things I do to keep you lot entertained, or late for work. As we sail, we’re to pass five glaciers, named after countries. Swiss, German, French, Italian, Dutch. As we pass Germany, the bar staff serve up beer and mini bratwurst. As we pass France, champagne and cheese. Italy, pizza and wine. Dutch finishes off with oliebol (deep fried dough ball type thing). Great atmosphere in the bar. Noise volume has increased with all the alcohol intake.
Day finishes with amusing and interesting table conversation and hear Mr Dutch Professor of Sociology’s thoughts on urbanisation and localised voting.
