Yesterday was supposed to begin with scenic cruising past Wager Island, but instead it began with scenic cruising through heavy rain and pea soup fog. Wager Island was not to be seen which certainly enabled us to understand this morning’s lecture better.
This is an accurate representation of how much we saw before noon yesterday, so instead I attended a lecture and lost $104 playing blackjack.
Amidst all of this we started seeing a lot of albatrosses and other sea birds, but mostly the albatross (photo above taken with iPhone 17 Pro). Sneaky birds didn’t come close enough for me to capture them frequently but as I spent over an hour walking laps on the promenade I certainly was able to photograph plenty of them.
When the weather cleared it was really spectacular.
After I spent time on the promenade in the afternoon I ended up spending forty five minutes on the treadmill. What’s great after the treadmill? Time on the bow on the 9th deck in front of the fitness center. Isn’t it beautiful? As there was a considerable breeze it also helped with cool down.
As the day began to wind down, we settled down for dinner at Oosterdam’s Italian specialty restaurant – Canneletto. The food here was great, but the views were even better.
Along the mountains here along the edge of the sea there is a fairly wide level area, perhaps twenty minutes walk across, which reminds me of the east side of Barbados or parts of the west coast of New Zealand. Elsewhere in southern Chile it just drops off to the fjords or the water.
This morning we woke to more scenic cruising. Imagine you’re sitting at the desk in your cabin looking out the window and you start seeing little bergy bits such as these going past. Still with pajamas on (I know people are going to flame me for this) I threw on a sweatshirt and walked to the far end of Deck 4 to go out to the bow because I knew we were near the glacier.
Captain Kevin managed to pull the ship into a narrow passage at the base of Brujo glacier.
He has also been keeping the bow open for most of the day for cruisers’ use for sightseeing and photography. I spent a short time out there but as I was not dressed as Nanook of the North like the folks above I eventually retreated to our aft cabin, where I continued to duck out into the rain and cold for photography.
Fortunately Captain Kevin elected to spend over an hour in this spot all while doing pirouettes and pivoting in circles so we could all have a view.
Periodically we would hear rumblings from the ice. I believe the glacier is about ten kilometers long. From the above it appears to be several hundred feet thick at its thickest point as well. I’m not certain without checking the map but I suspect the snowpack and ice collects beyond the initial range of mountains and squeezes through this valley to the top of the fjord. It isn’t the only one around in the immediate vicinity.
In today’s overcast weather the ice had infinite shades of green and blue as well.
Eventually after nearly ninety minutes spent we waved goodbye to the ice and made our way back towards the sea.
The headlands along the fjords are much more barren today than yesterday or the day before. It’s clear that winters here are longer and sunlight is harder to find – and the scraping of glaciers is more recent.
And now the weather has turned rainy again. Fortunately, I can sit here with our plant (the ship refreshed our prior green friend for a more sturdy and robust model) as we travel south.
In Retrospect 