On the Navimag Ferry Evangelistas from Pto Montt to Pto Natales

Although we had happily been riding the excellent buses everywhere we went in Chile, we came to a place where going further south meant either flying or diverting into Argentina, there being nothing for the most part but rough tracks south along the glacier-strewn Chilean Andes.

Mirabile dictu! There is a passenger- and freight-carrying ferry weekly from Puerto Montt all the way to Puerto Natales. That’s the one, at the top of the page.

I imagined Patagonia’s weather to be like this much of the time, so I was secretly thrilled to see my prejudices justified on our first evening, looking out from my cozy cabin. But, also thrilled to see the sun breaking through the next morning.

I found the kaleidoscopic clouds and mountains fascinating.

One of the reasons we came to Chile was because of Patagonia. It has mystical status in my mind, like Timbuktu, or Kuala Lumpur. It turns out there is way more to the place, at least area-wise, than I knew. Patagonia is basically all the southern tip of South America, generally considered to include Tierra del Fuego. In Argentina, Patagonia is dry and flat, diametrically opposed to the steep, jagged, and damp Chilean coastline I had in mind from years of reading sailing yarns and history of the early explorers.*

However this isn’t a post about Patagonia per se, but about how we moved ourselves southward down the coast of Chile through the portion of the territory that falls under the Patagonia umbrella, on the Navimag ferry Evangelistas.

From my reading I carried an impression of Patagonia, Chile Deep South Section, as a fine-cut maze of rocky fjords and uncharted reefs islands and under a perpetual low pressure system that made the weather blustery, erratic and generally foul, in the 40-knot-with-gusts-higher-and-cold-rain kind of foul. In short, a miserable place to try to sail. The map below, from the iPhone app Tracks, that shows our track, gives just a tiny hint of the myriad compound indentions, and no hint at all of the weather.

Screen shot Navimag Ferry Pto Montt to Pto Natales. — I’m not sure we covered as many miles as the counter says, but the internet guesses of how long the trip is are all over the place too, but always shorter.

Hence the trip down the coast on the ferry, the Navimag Evangelistas in this case, sounded wonderful. Four days, three nights, somebody else’s boat, someone else’s responsibility. I could sleep through the night if I wanted, didn’t have to go out in the cold or rain if I didn’t want to. No reefing of sails or radar tweaking for me! No night watches, and all the cooking was outsourced. Yes, please!

Passengers climbing stairs to upper decks — We were brought by bus from downtown Pto. Montt to the dock a bit out of town and boarded by walking down the truck ramp. Nice young men offered to lug our luggage upstairs but not many of us accepted. We’re intrepidistas, remember?

Evangelistas carries trailers and other cargo (including at times live cattle in pens on the open deck) between Puerto Montt and Puerto Natales. And it takes passengers, maybe 250 max, if every single bunk including all those indented the thwartships passageways, were filled. On our trip Constanza, the lovely young guide in training, thought we had about 160, which seemed close to capacity for dining room seating. A layout of the ship is shown in the Photo Gallery at the end of the post.

The open ocean part of the trip took place at night, with the wind mainly behind us, which made for such a comfortable ride that I slept through it all in my cozy top bunk. But Doug said, there and in the narrower channels, that he sure was glad he wasn’t trying to go the other way under sail.

This I think was the pass where we timed our arrival for slack water, as it was a narrow dog-leg. I was impressed that a vessel like this approached the area so conservatively, and wondered if there was a back story.

The passengers were a mix of backpackers and silverbacks, which is to say, young and old. The mid-range strongbacks, in their 30s and 40s and not with us, were, I guess, still at work.

Several groups were heading towards Torres del Paine, a Chilean national park with a well-known super-scenic 5- to 10- day hiking trail. Some would turn east and then north towards the glaciers on the Chilean-Argentine border. And some, including us, wanted to see Ushuaia, the self-styled ‘Fin del Mundo’ end of the world city, (although not too much further south in Puerto Williams they disagree, in a thinner, piping voice!)

Girl with doll, both in hats — We did have this one little French girl, and her friend, for sheer cuteness.

The uniform was common to all – hiking clothes, clumpy boots, puffy jackets, hi tech windbreakers. There was a scattering of North Americans, but there were many more Germans, and French, and Swiss (or as we came to call them, the sharp-elbowed Swiss). And there were a dozen Chileans, who were either tourists like the rest of us, or truckdrivers.

How was the food, you ask? It was pretty good! There was only one option per meal, but the ingredients were straight, unprocessed, and well-prepared, and the portions were ample.Real potatoes, real fish, real mushrooms, and a salad for our first meal, plus a good soup.

We didn’t have a cruise director exactly, since it’s a ferry, not a cruise ship. We did have a naturalist. Percy made presentations every day on matters of geology, vegetation, sea life and birds. He was a hard-working man who had to do everything in Spanish, then again in English, and he had a lot to say. He also relayed messages from the captain about expected sea conditions and how these would affect the route. So maybe he was a cruise director!

Percy, the on-board naturalist, spoke about what we might see en route and when we got ashore.

Things We Saw Underway

For us, at the summer solstice towards the end of December, there were some Minke whales pretty far away, some penguins, condors, maybe some birds that didn’t get announced, and at least 17 hours of daylight to see them in. Here is what I took notice of.

Apparently there is a pinnacle rock (named Cotopaxi after a volcano in Ecuador) right under this wreck. And apparently the captain hit it on purpose in an attempt to scuttle the boat and claim insurance. He was found out and sent to prison. The wreck has stood like this through all weather since 1963. A French yacht passing in fine weather went aboard and found a hull like lace and lush green grass on deck. A bit more info at wrecksite.com

Fish farming, a rant.

Fish farms. I was on the lookout for them on our route because of seeing tenders and supply boats in the harbor, as well as protest graffiti ashore. Puerto Montt is the epicenter of salmon boom, but also of bust, following disease among the fish, time and time again. The activity is concentrated in the bays around Puerto Montt, but I am sure that global agricultural industrialists are looking for places further afield and still ‘pristine’ where they can invisibly wreak havoc by raising an inappropriate animal in an inappropriate location in an inappropriate manner. I guess you know how I feel about profit-motivated, large-scale, confined-animal farming! There’s more to say, but we’re passing by on a ferry boat here!

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/mar/10/chiles-salmon-farms-lose-800m-as-algal-bloom-kills-millions-of-fish

http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2012/04/chilean-fish-farms-and-the-tragedy-of-the-commons/#.WKBBDOuEqK0

Snow-capped mountains and glaciers

We started seeing more bare rock mountains, and then, in the distance, glaciers, and even dusting of fresh snow. Exciting, at least to me, nature doing her thing. And just in time for me to see it.

Puerto Edén

Puerto Eden is on an island, and well west of several glaciers. The Navimag boats bring in diesel for generators, and propane, but the dock is not up to receiving Evangelistas, so everything is ferried to and fro in small boats.

Christmas Day was sunny and bright, at least for a while, coinciding with our stop at the little settlement of Puerto Eden. Googling around to find out what the place was even there for, I learned how lucky we were with the weather: “Villa Puerto Edén has an extremely wet subpolar oceanic climate (Köppen Cfc) and is widely reputed to be the place in the world with the highest frequency of rainfall,[2] though according to Guinness World Records the highest frequency of rain in a year occurred at Bahia Felix, a little further south, with only eighteen rainless days in the whole of 1916”. (1916??)

Furthermore, this Wikipedia article went on to say that there were no roads in Puerto Eden, only raised boardwalks, and that it was the home of the last Kawéshkar people, one of several indigenous groups no longer extant in Patagonia. In 2002 there were 175 people, but Percy told us it was less than a hundred now.

You can see what a beautiful Christmas Day it was in one of the rainiest places in the world.

As we were anchoring off Puerto Eden, I saw someone checking his cell phone. It was interesting to watch how news of a nearby tower spread through the passengers. People who had been looking around were now looking down.

There was news from the world: a 7.7 earthquake that morning on the coast of Chile, south of Puerto Montt in an area we had traversed less than two days before. With my own phone out, I heard about it by email from a friend, and got details on the Guardian newspaper’s website, then on usgs.gov, a wonderful site for the geologically inclined.

Up in the dining room, it turned out we really did have satellite TV, which had heretofore been silly white noise off in the corner, but now was showing a crack in the asphalt of a bridge on Chiloe Island.

TV news of an earthquake off Chiloe Island on Christmas Day reached us at Puerto Eden, but the main footage of damage was this highway crack.

Then they had a home video of someone’s lamp shaking. Those two items played for the rest of the day, and that was it as far as the big earthquake went.

Foredeck of ship crew anchoring — One man down the hatch, and one on deck, up comes the anchor in Puerto Edén.

A Windy Weather Event

As we made a few last turns towards Puerto Natales on a hard blue day, the wind began to pick up until it did become a little challenging to hold on to one’s hat, and the sharp-elbowed Swiss could be found already hunkered down in the cozy lee corners.

Seas were calm, but wind gusts sent passengers lurching unsteadily down the deck.

When we arrived at Pto Natales, the wind was reported at 60 knots, which was odd because the seas were so flat, although the boat did have a modest heel.

Mountains, blue skies, windblown seas. — The ferry could not dock in these winds, said to be 60 knots, so we went back out and anchored overnight. The wind blew but the sea state in these sheltered waters was negligible to a ship like this.

Percy made an announcement: the port had been closed and the ferry was going back out to a better anchorage. There would be no docking this afternoon, and probably not this night. So the kitchen made another good meal and we all went to bed.

This 2-berth B class cabin looks small, and it is. We took turns during wardrobe adjustments. The only thing you are not seeing is the closet behind me. But the beds were comfy and cozy, the reading lights illuminating, and that radiator under the window could fry the proverbial egg, or at least steam it, and dry your jacket too.

When I woke up at seven the next morning, we were tied to the dock and the trucks had already left. It was grand! After breakfast, the intrepidistas shouldered their bags and strode off toward Puerto Natales.

*one of the books I have really enjoyed about this area is by Dallas Murphy, called Rounding the Horn. It blends history with modernity, perspective with adventure, in a conversational way. It’s as if we were meeting over a beer, not over a thesis interview.

Trouble editing the photo gallery – sorry, but moving on….