Thursday, March 1, 2018- Cruise Day 37; Chacabuco, Chile

Thursday, March 1, 2018- Cruise Day 37; Chacabuco, Chile

We set an alarm to get us up early enough to get breakfast and make our scheduled excursion in Chacabuco.  The sun was trying to burn its way through dense cloud cover as we wound our way through the fjords leading to Chacabuco.  The islands have been rounded by glaciers and in this area, the islands must be older because they are covered by mature trees and dense shrubs.  There are still some large mountains forming the backdrop that have captive glaciers and ice fields visible just under the cloud deck.  

While we had breakfast, we could see the crew setting up the tenders and could hear hydraulics whirring as the ship’s tender docks were deployed at the waterline below the dining rooms.  We had gray and misty weather as we boarded the tenders.  There was a delay for our tour once we arrived at the dock.  Fortunately, there was some free Wifi, and a pair of folk dancers doing demonstrations of the handkerchief dances to keep us entertained.  

They eventually loaded our tour bus and we headed off to the Parque Aiken del Sur, which is a privately developed Eco tourism park.  The park brochures and signage had Columbia Sportswear logos on them, so they apparently have corporate sponsorship.  They had a small but well done visitor center with a few dioramas and static exhibits explaining the flora and fauna of the area.  They had a well done park brochure in English.  Our guide, Martha explained that our group was going to be divided into two tours but the second tour guide never showed up, so things seemed a bit disorganized and confusing.  Martha ended up herding the whole busload of nearly 40 passengers along a narrow winding trail through dense woods.  The trail was barely wide enough for two skinny people to walk side by side, so our group was spread out over about 300’.  There was no way to hear the commentary or explanations of what was to be seen along the trail.  We passed several other tour groups from our ship that had only 7-12 passengers per guide, who were obviously getting a better tour experience.  While we did get to see the waterfalls at the end of the trail, we didn’t get a whole lot out of the “Guided” tour.  We did see a colorful large kingfisher in a tree overlooking a stream, and several very large beetles along the trail.  One interesting find is that Gunera, the giant leaved plants that Sharon has planted in front of her door, grow wild all over the place in Chacabuca and they grow HUGE.  The locals use the leaves to wrap foods that are cooked in pits in the ground, and use young stalks to make a local spirit.  Apparently, it is related to rhubarb.

Once the nature walk was completed, we walked to the Quincho, which is a guest lodge for hosting Patagonian barbeques.  There was an open fire in the center with a lamb roasting on a spit.  We were served Pisco Sours, a national cocktail containing a local rum-like distilled spirit mixed with lemon juice and sugar.  They had a singer playing music, including a lot of American popular hits from the 70’s.  After a few Pisco Sours and tapas, everyone’s moods lightened up and we ended up having a good time despite the overcrowded “nature walk”.  

We had no trouble getting back to the ship via a short and uncrowded tender ride.  We walked straight into the afternoon trivia quiz and ended up with 18/20, but the winning team had a perfect score.  We need to memorize how much each letter is worth in Scrabble, as that keeps coming up as a trivia question that we miss.

We had afternoon tea and then watched the movie “Wonderstruck” on the TV, which was a weird and confusing movie that ended up not being worth the time invested to watch it. We did watch the beautiful scenery go by as we sailed out of the Chacabuco port, passing a dozen salmon net pen farms as the sun set on the fjords.  Salmon farming is apparently a big business in Chile and salmon is a big export item.

We had a relaxing dinner and decided to skip the second performance of Ric Steel, the country singer since we weren’t wowed by his first show, and we were looking forward to just relaxing in front of the TV.  The ship had a Discovery at Sea stargazing party scheduled for 10:30PM, but there was dense cloud cover and a bright moon poking through the few beaks in the clouds, so the stargazing was cancelled.  We hope we get an opportunity to see the Southern Cross before this trip is over.