Navimag Ferry - desde Puerto Montt, hasta Puerto Natales de Chile, 24-27 de Septiembre

We boarded the ferry and experienced the Chilean Island time we described earlier in the blog, leaving 3 hours after boarding but all good as it was a nice day and we were excited about the journey ahead.

Again, we love the low season! The boat had a capacity of 184 passengers and we filled it with a whopping 24 people. Most of which were couples in their mid 20 - mid 30’s. We had booked a 4 bed dorm but managed to score our own room. Bunks again but bunks with no room mates is better than with, especially in the tiny cabin!

It was great as 184 people would’ve been a totally different experience.Having so few people on board meant the bridge was constanly open so we all had free access to head up front and hang out with the captain. 

Matt keeping in touch with the architecture world.

Basically we spent 4 days on board and cruised continuously south through the fiords, 12 hours of which were out in the open Pacific ocean. Thankfully we probably got the best weather we could ask for with only a small swell. The rest of the trip was basically glass and we were again incredibly lucky with the weather. Apparently people do this trip and see nothing but cloud for 4 days.

We describe this whole journey as New Zealand on steroids!

Much of the scenery was incredibly similar to NZ's Milford and Doubtful Sounds. The scenery was stunning and continuously changing as we got closer to the deep south. Standing up on deck was surprisingly warm given the fact that we were approaching 51° south.

Shipwreck in southern Patagonia - Insurance fraud gone wrong
in the 60's. Captain intending to sink the ship failed to interpret
the water depth so here it lies beached.

The beginning of the 'big gun' Patagonian Andes.

Back to school camp again, we were all summoned to the dining hall every meal time by Percy (the tour guide) via the loud speaker onboard - lining up for our chicken and corn soup, followed by meat and mash.

Sadly didn’t see any of the whales that are often spotted out in the Pacific at this time of year but we did see some dolphins, seal pups, sea otters and plenty of birds (albatross & condors). By the end we were all saying 'bloody birds' as obviously we were all hanging out for the marine mammals.

Matt and I introduced everyone to the drinking game ‘circle of death’ which proved a brilliant way of merging the non-english speaking locals and the spanglesh speaking tourists. In return the Chileans gave us a whisky drinking lesson. Again, thankfully the swell was minimal as there were a few sore heads the following morning. The ‘ship came into the harbour’ was a particular favourite!

Shallowest water of the trip (6m). A little hairy as the boats minimum is 5m!!

Puerto Natales

The attraction of Peurto Natales is the Torres del Paine National Park which is where we plan to spend 4-5 days tramping. This tramp is one of the major highlights to tick off on our trip.