Santiago

 

Santiago is a very cosmopolitan city, with just a few reminders that it was under a military dictator twenty five years ago.

The feeling on the military dictatorship is complicated.  Many people are still supporters of Pinochet.  Chile had the strongest economic growth it has ever had under Pinochet and many people feel that Allende was connected to the KGB. It does get very complicated with no easy answers.

Modern Santiago is filled with monuments to old liberators such as Simon Bolivar,

and young children who understand the purpose of these monuments.

I enjoy the plaza life and really like setting around watching people.

 

It is as they say, “a dogs life.”

More pictures of Santiago

Animals of Patagonia

 

We didn’t intend this trip as a photography safari, but in Patagonia the animals out number the people and seem quite satisfied with that arrangement.  They are very tolerant of tourists.  The first thing I wanted to see was guanacos.  Turns out they are quite numerous and I stopped taking pictures before photographing all 8000 in the park.

I was surprised to see flamingoes since I think of them as a tropical bird.  Fortunately they were not constrained by the limits of my imagination and were all over the park.

We also got to see both red and grey foxes

and some kind of duck whose name the guide told me, but I forgot as we got close to dinner.

The following picture is of a male and female of the same species.  The male is the black bird and the female is the white.  Again, I was told the name, but could not remember it across the dinner hour.  There is a lesson to be learned here.

And who could forget hiking in the Miledon Cave

 

to see a statue of the giant, but now extinct ground sloth.

 

Fortunately, the hike in the cave was on the only really rainy period we had on the trip. I have included a picture of the feet of a Alpaca just in case you thought you were in need of a pedicure.  These have to be the ugliest feet I have ever seen.

More animal pictures

Torres del Paine

 

When I told Molly we were going hiking in Torres del Paine, she asked, “Isn’t that Spanish for terror and pain?”. Paine is an Indian word meaning purple and the name translates as purple towers.

Patagonia is essentially at sea level and consists of what is called the Patagonian Steppes, which looks a lot like eastern Washington.

There are no trees though occasionally you will find a sheltered gully with some tall bushes.  The shelter is required because of the constant wind.

 

But it is beautiful for hiking in

 

and filled with streams, waterfalls

Lakes

and a hotel that gets my vote for the best located hotel in the world.

It is surrounded by mountains with interesting climbing possibilities

glaciers that come down to the lakes

and ice bergs that come down to your lunch spot.

We got to enjoy it in some of the best weather that they have had in a hundred years. And Molly had a great time hiking there.

 

More photos of Torres del Paine

Penguinos

 

We sailed all night through the Magellan Straights and arrived at Magdalena Island in the morning.

Magdalena Island is a rookery for the Magellianic Penguin.  There are one hundred sixty thousand on a small island that you can walk around in an hour. There are penguins everywhere

The penguins dig holes in the ground to nest.  You’ll walk by a hole and the dirt will be flying.

The penguins go about their business ignoring the people walking around

Doing what ever it is that penguins do.  It pretty much seemed like standing around was their main activity

With an occasional foray to the ocean

More penguin photos

The Straight of Magellan

 

When Ferdinand Magellan found the straights named after him, he was approaching from the Atlantic side and exited on the Pacific side. When the Vice Roy sent a expedition to find the entrance from the Pacific side, it wandered around for two months and never did find it.  Tierra del Fuego is a maze of narrow fjords

where glaciers crash down to the sea

Our boat was specially designed with a shallow draft so that it could negotiate the narrow channels and head up the icy channels.

And the zodiacs were build nice and light to bounce off of the ice.

Well that’s what they told us.  The narrow channels were rookeries for cormorants.  They hung on the sides and looked down on us as we passed by

Photos of channel

The Beagle Channel

 

The Beagle channel is on the Sothern side of the Grand Island of Tierra del Fuego. South of it are more islands, channels, bays an fjords until you reach Cape horn.  The Northern Boundary is the Straights of Magellan.  The channel has rocky shores with snow covered mountains

beautiful bays that almost make you want to plunge into the 48 degree water

and smiling tourists enjoying it all.

If you get to shore, you can explore the countryside which is rich in bogs and grasses swept by the ever present wind.

There are strange “plants”  growing on the trees which our guide described as half parasites.  They were half parasites because they only hurt the trees and didn’t kill them.

and the end of the Pan-American Highway, just a short 17848 KM jaunt from Alaska. The channel does reach from the Atlantic to the Pacific adding yet more confusion for marine navigators.

Photos from Bahai Ensenada

Wulaia

 

We dashed back towards the Beagle Channel on the way back from Cape Horn seeking the safety and protection from the wind in the Tierra del Fuego archipelago.  We stopped at Wulaia on the island of Navarino for a short hike.

It is the site of the Yamana people who lived here.  They are the natives who lit the fires along the shore as Ferdinand Magellan went by and inspired the name Tierra del Fuego, land of fire.  It has 32 archeology sites, though what they may be is a mystery to me.  They lived in their canoes and didn’t build settlements. Here is a picture of their structures.  Look kind of small? That is because it was for their ever so precious fires.  The people slept out side.

The natives were thought to be very primitive by Europeans because they did not wear clothes.  Darwin thought that they were the missing link. It turns out that their language had a larger vocabulary than the English language, which requires a lot of memorization, since they didn’t have a written language.  No going to a thesaurus for a new word. They didn’t  wear cloths because once wet, which occurred with in ten minutes of putting them on in this climate, they would never dry out and would keep the wearer cold. They lived most of their life in a canoe gathering food. The canoe was built with three pieces of tree bark sewed and strengthened by a light structure of wooden rods. It was manufactured by the man of the group, but it belonged to the woman, who was in charge of it. During navigation, the man curled up at the front of the canoe with his weapons, fishing nets and harpoons. In the central deepest part were the children, who took care of the fire that burned on rough sand and dust. The woman sat on the stern. She propelled and commanded the boat while carrying the paddle with both hands.  Interestingly, only women were taught how to swim. I guess if he was causing trouble, she did a quick turn of the canoe sending him over  board, where he sank to his death while chanting all of the oral histories of man’s superiority.

I think the cruise ship actually stops their to allow people to get off of the boat and shake their sea sickness after traveling back from the cape.  I just enjoyed the hike

Once back on ship, we sailed into some incredible mists. I expected the original inhabitants to come sailing out of the mist.

Photos of Wulaia