por fin.... el gran viaje

On January 16 Andrea and I headed South, taking an overnight bus to Puerto Montt.  We had our first adventure when Andrea's phone got stolen out of her bag at the bus terminal, along with some medicine and her toothpaste.  We mourned the loss, but quickly moved on to boarding our Navimag cruise ship.

When I say cruise, don't think pools and tennis and open bars.  The Navimag is a cargo ship that has been fixed up to serve as a ferry during the week, and a tourist attraction on weekends.  We bunked in the cheapest area - a long skinny room with 16 bunk-beds.  The view from the boat was absolutely astounding, even with the clouds and mist.

1/18/09

We are passing through fjords lined with mountains, cliffs, islands.  They peel out of the mist in ever fainter layers.  Every moment is brand new, with the cloud formations swirling in.  I'm passing through channels of uninhabited water and islands, waterfalls cutting through the cracks of the stone, virgin forests making the stone look smooth and curved.  The changing nature of the weather is evident in the twisted forms of the trees that stand out on the edges.  The waterfalls look like white lightning streaks on the prehistoric shapes rising out of the sea.

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On the 19, I got up early to watch the day shake out the night and catch the first glimpse of the glacier - our reason for taking this trip!  The day was cloudy again - thick rolls that hung low in the sky and sifted out from behind the slices of the mountains.  The surface of the water was blanketed with hunks of surreal blue ice, and we got into little rowboats to pull up as close to the glacier as possible.  Once up close, we all drank whiskey with little pieces of glacial ice and cheered to the magnificence of the glacier.  Really it's pointless to even attempt to describe the grandeur....  deep blue caves and crevices marking the surface, formations of clear, smooth blue and green, peaks and points and absolutely awesome and sacred.  Many times chunks of ice crashed down into the water, creating an appearance of a waterfall of snow and ice.  As the falling glacier hit the water, it was as if a geyser exploded out of the sea... and the SOUND!  pre-historic, ancient, creaking and crashing.

The next day we got off the boat to continue our journey on land, passing through the charming town of Coyhaique to the even more charming town of Puyuhuapi, where we went to Parque Nacional Queulat to see more glaciers.  Puyuhuapi is a town of about 600 that was settled in the mid 1930's by a group of 4 German settlers, and we fell in love with the fresh fish and friendly people.

Parque Queulat is gorgeous - there are Nalca leaves (like wild rhubarb) bigger than me, flower-covered vines twining around and dripping down from trees and rocks, wildflowers and fuchsia bushes covering the hills, and glaciers serenely sweeping across the horizon.  We were so close to the arctic, yet it felt as if we were in a prehistoric tropical dream world.  We saw the Ventisquero Colgante (hanging glacier), which hangs high up in the curve of the mountains.  It is a gleaming blue, and the glacial water is in a constant process of pounding down the mountains into the milky jade river and lagoon.  The lagoon was really special because it allowed us to see the stark contrasts of the area - plunging, roiling, thunderous, churning waterfalls petering out into the complete tranquility of the still lagoon water.  

The air in the forest was pure and humid and dense with the aroma of wet earth, growth, and decomposition.