Thur, Oct 19 – Chilean Fjords - During colonial times, the fjords and channels of Patagonia were first explored by the Spaniards for a number of reasons.  First they wanted to bring Christianity to the indigenous people, to prevent other powers from intruding into their (Spanish) territory, and to increase geographic knowledge of the area.   In 1792, Peru ordered the exploration of the Patagonian channels in order to find an entrance to the interior of Patagonia.  The area was explored for decades.  In the early to mid 19th century, explorations by hydrographers helped to open these channels.   These waterways became very useful when western Patagonia was settled and incorporated into Chile. The fjords also served as a natural barrier preventing north-south land travel in Chilean Patagonia.

We will spend the next several days going in and out of the channels here in southern Chile.  Our first venture into the Chilean Channels was through the Darwin Channel, which was very nice in that we have calm waters now, unfortunately we were only in their for a few hours and then back out into the rough Pacific.  The channel is 42 miles long and is known as the Darwin Channel because this is where Charles Darwin sailed while on the ship Beagle (another channel is also named for the ship) and explored many of the small islands along this channel.  Although we were told we might see wildlife as in birds, sea lions, dophins, etc. we saw nothing. 

Our next channel that we travelled through was the Sarmiento Channel.  This is where we saw the fjords that were to be comparable to the Alaska fjords and those of Norway.   The fjords were not exactly what we expected.  I guess we thought we would see snow and ice on them, but we did not.  Picture short steep barren hills flowing into the cold icy water.  Although we were looking hard we never did see any whales or other sea life.  We did, however, have a  birds for company.  Many of the sea birds decided that our ship was much warmer than the cold waters and so they came on bard (without a passport I'm sure) to warm up.  The crew kept putting them off, but they kept coming back.  Going through the fjords made you feel like you were in no man's land, because there was nobody else around; the ground was to steep and harsh to grow anything, and although it did have some scrub trees, but not much else.  It was a very eerie experience going through these channels.  

As we travelled through the fjords we came into view of the El Brujo Glacier.  This glacier is part of the Southern Patagonia Ice Field, which is second largest  polar ice field outside of a polar region on the planet.  It is approximately 4700 square miles.    The glacier itself is about 130 feet high above the water line and is over 3000 feet wide across its face.  It is a stable glacier, neither growing, nor dying.  We weren't able to get real close to it due to the amount of small icebergs in the water and also because of the silt in the water.  

The bow of the ship was open for us to go out and view the glacier.  It was nice and calm and quiet, and no we did not get any "Titantic" type pictures at the very front of the ship.  It was blocked off as their is navigational equipment at the very front.  It was amazing to see the blueness of the ice.  Just Gorgeous.      The captain did an awesome job of turning the ship around so that you could see the glacier from all sides.  

Cruising through the Sarmiento channel we find ourselves treading through very shallow water, with only three feet clearance below the ship.  We slowly creep through this area so as not to ground ourselves.  If we were to move to quickly we could easily due so.  Needless to say even though the waters were quite rough when we returned to the Pacific, it made us all feel a lot safer knowing we had 1,000's of feet water underneath us.

We spent two days travelling through these channels, but most impressive was the Brujo Glacier.  We kept looking for sea life, but we never did see any.  Now other people might have, but Russ and I were not lucky enough to see any of it.

We had one of our two dinners in the Pinnacles Restaurant.  Oh my god - it was absolutely delicious; the service was superb and the company was fantastic - we left there feeling way too stuffed - several trips around the ship and we are feeling a little better.

On to Penguins and Punta Arenas.