TheTraveler

 

Patagonia Passage
Cherie Thiessen

I hold unto the side of the building to prevent the unrelenting Puerto Natales wind from turfing me onto the busy road.  It has already scooped up at least five travelers, backpacks and all. One of the airborne was my partner, who is now laid up in our hostería with his left leg in a cast. Ergo I've been sent to scout and report back.

An ubiquitous summer presence in Patagonia, this morning's "breeze" has enough attitude to prevent the hybrid cargo-ferry, the Magallanes, from docking and disgorging its passengers.  

On the narrow eastern shore of what's ominously called Last Hope Sound, the vivid primary coloured ship is a hulking presence. The sky and the waters are as angry as the captive travelers who bristle on its decks.

I'm reassured, though, by the vessel¹s size - 21.2 meters wide and 122 meters long doesn't mean a lot until you see it looming in front of you. I want size. This four day voyage to Puerto Montt takes us through some infamous water:
       
"Passengers prone to motion sickness should consider taking medication prior to crossing the Golfo de Penas, which is exposed to gut wrenching Pacific swells", cautioned a popular travel book I'd read earlier in preparation.  I get motion sickness on a lakeside wharf.  

The wind wracked Magallanes, in Chile's region X11 beyond 49šS, gives its name to our passenger freighter which lurches across this Gulf twice a week transporting seafood, freight, trucks, cars and herds of unhappy cattle as well as intrepid travelers The moaning bovines lend a certain ambience, especially after the open seas, when the rural aroma becomes more pungent.

This trip has become famous among backpackers, having  been compared to Alaska's coast, New Zealand's Milford Sound and Norway's fjords. It's not surprising that the company, Navimag, has been experiencing increasing passenger loads since it started its service in 1979.  (www.navimag.com)  As most tourists prefer traveling from north to south, we¹ve chosen the opposite routing.

Eventually the ship's captain senses a microscopic lull in the wind and the Magallanes lumbers to shore.  There's a stampede of disembarking passengers and I return to assist my hobbling husband. Late that evening we board, are shown our cabin and burrow into bed.  A few hours later, the shuddering and the jangling of heavy chains signaling departure rattle us awake.

The next morning, after we inch through Paso White, the narrowest part in the trip at 80 meters, the mountains close in on both sides and we experience an isolation far greater than anything we have ever felt on British Columbia's coast. No planes, no boats, no settlements, no fish farms, no clear cuts, instead only rivers, a milky sea and glaciers from continental ice fields nestling into the Andes Cordillera.

By dinner the first night we are nudging into an ice floe garden in Laguna San Rafael.  Blue with cold, the chunky San Valentín Glacier stretches toward us. We retreat, shivering, and continue our incredible solitary voyage up the sheltered coast.

Each day a flyer slipped through our door offers a collage of information and activities.  Twice daily presentations in English and Spanish range from glaciology to history, from culture to fauna. Also offered are nightly films,  pub entertainment and naturally, pisco sour happy hours.  

While most passengers eat in the cafeteria, we First Classers dine deliciously with the officers, consuming a choice of amazingly tasty local dishes and bottomless bottles of first rate Chilean wines. If the chef wants something polished off, I'm certain he instructs our waiter to tell us, "It's a famous Chilean dish." Then, of course, we jump in.

On our second day we idle near Cotopaxi, a wrecked Greek freighter that now serves as a lighthouse, we see the far off spume of Blue Whales, and we venture ashore at Puerto Edén. The tiny boardwalk settlement on the northeast side of Wellington Island is home to the last seven Kawéskar Indians who were relocated by the Chilean government in 1969. Other Chileans live here now, however, and all residents make their living from fishing, oyster gathering and us.

At our briefing on the third day we are given an update on conditions in the dreaded Gulf and urged to take precautions. I notice little discs appearing behind ears, bands suddenly encircling wrists, and pink pills being briskly swallowed.  I¹ve already concealed a disc behind my hair but why take chances?  I swallow gravol and slip on two wrist bands, hiding them under my long shirt.  I may be a wimp but the world doesn't have to know.

Soon after, the brave ship shimmies and begins its dance.  Its flanks heave, its bow drops and objects start to roll downhill.  With incredible timing, dinner is announced.  How can anyone hang unto their plates and eat from them, I wonder, as I follow my partner to the dining room, being hurled with bruising attitude from one side of the narrow corridor to the other.

"You OK?" My partner asks solicitously. He to whom seasickness is a stranger. Surprisingly, though, I am.

We greet our dinner partners as our chairs come up to meet us.

Of the ten of us; two are missing.  I gloat as I grab for the wine glass sliding away and hold it out to the placid waiter.

"Is this rougher than usual?" asks my pale companion on the left.

"No." He reassures her.  "We haven't turned yet.  That's when it gets rough."

She thanks him, daintily takes a roll from the basket and says a gracious bon appetite  to the rest of us.

The exodus continues between courses.  A couple leaves after spilling the soup course on their laps, three others totter out midway through the special Chilean dish, and by dessert the boat has turned and only three of us remain.  Coffee is now impossible to get to our lips, so we settle for more wine as the contents of the table clink and careen.

I am jubilant with wine and victory.  

A few hours later, the heaving boat settles and we rock ourselves to sleep. The next morning Puerto Montt¹s harbor unrolls sunshine, beaches, warmth, no wind and the promise of prawns.  

I am hung over but smiling, proudly wearing my  "I cruised on the Magallanes and lived" t-shirt.

Cherie Thiessen is a professional freelance travel writer and a regular contributor to The Traveler

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