Four meter swells all night, and the ship was still rolling and pitching when we closed in on Isla Robinson Crusoe. Would it be sufficiently calm in small Bahia Cumberland for Amsterdam to drop anchor, and more importantly, launch tenders to take us ashore?
The rugged mountainous island certainly looked forbidding smack bang in the middle of heaving seas and whipped by howling 60 knot winds, which kept all but our hard-pressed seamen (ready to launch tenders anyway) away from the outside decks.
A we drew closer we entered the lee of the vulcanic peaks and magically the seas calmed. Nothing much there, a small pier, some houses, a red and white light house, a little fleet of fishing dories and a couple of sailboats riding at anchor, breakers crashing into steep cliffs behind them. High ridges and deep valleys covered mostly in lush green forest surround the little settlement of San Juan Bautista.
About 600 souls live there now, but in 1708 there were no settlers. That was the year, when a Scotish sailor named Alexander Selkirk, left the unseaworthy pirate vessel on which he worked and subsequently spent a solitary four years and four months stranded on this island. He had nothing but a musket, gunpowder, carpenter's tools, a knife, a bible and some clothing. Selkirk's adventure inspired Daniel Defoe to write his world famous novel 'Robinson Crusoe' in 1719.
Swiss Baron Alfred von Roth, the first official settler arrivng in 1877, is buried here. Surprisingly, a WW1 sea battle took place offshore, and one of the combating ships, the German warship Dresden, sank near the northcoast. One sailor, Hugo Weber, survived and built a house on one of the peaks, some of the perished sailors are buried on the idsland.
To our surprise, and that of the islanders (as we later found out), we tendered to shore. Sleepy little village consisting of scattered colourful wood and tin houses, some paved roads, a few sell-it-all shops, a postcard and souvenir shop (open), a few restaurants (still closed), a museum cum library (half open) a soccer/baseball field; a couple of tiny churches, a cemetry, and trails leading into the amphitheatre of the scraggy mountains. Electricity wires overhead, internet satellite dishes and wireless communication antennas, a few mules resting beside a generator plant, pretty 'public gardens' where endemic sunflower-like bushes grew in profusion, fishing skiffs ready for maintenance on shore, and baffled locals looking at us as if we had arrived from Mars. It appeared that neither the local 'authorities' (harbour master) nor Holland America had warned the tiny population about this influx of tourists, almost tripling the population for the duration of our stay. But, last night the storm raged on the island as much as on the sea, and communications had been interrupted.
Line ups grew in front of the post card shop, and a second line up formed at the tiny post office.
I explored the short walk (signage absolutely perfect with hand carved stained wood street signs at every pavement/dirt road intersection) and chatted to a young man, who carried a skinned carcass of an animal.
What is that, I asked him in Spanish.
My dog, he smiled back at me.
A few chuckled words later, he confessed that it was a dead goat....still looked like a dog to me...
A few children skipped up to us strange visitors, and wanted to have their picture taken together with their (very much alive) dog; a local youth mounted on small horse rode by, another led a mule hung with two baskets and a boy perched on top; a fisherman was scraping ther bottom of his boat clean; some sleepy shop keepers watched the lengthening stream of visitors take photos of everything from their small church to their wind swept little cemetry.
We climbed a few of the surrounding hills, enjoying the stunning scenery, now bathed in brilliant sunshine. After exhausting literally every 'avenue' and not having time to climb the mountains to Selkirk's Peak (that would take at least five hours of strenuous hiking) I discovered a little bistro hidden behind some thick hedges amongst a delightful flower garden. Sitting on a wooden porch, open to sun, wind and sea with a million dollar vista, I enjoyed a fish carpaccio, so fresh, the poor fish was still wiggling in it the lime marinade. Absolutely superb food, especially when accompanied by a subtle San Emilion Chilean white vino.
Getting away was a little problematic, as the rustic wooden bench I sat on, was so freshly cut, that I was now stuck to a whole seam of fragrant sticky resin. I finally got unstuck without having to leave my white slacks behind; the rear part of them marked inedibly with amber coloured resin droplets. But I walked away enveloped in a cloud of aromatic scent of pine.
The line up at the souvenir shop had disappeared, so had most of the post cards in it, but I garnered a couple. The one-man post office shack was deserted as well and for good reason. The good Correo Chile postman had collected stacks of post cards written by tourists wishing to send Robinson Crusoe stamps back home to their families. But, he had long since ran out of stamps, and was piling up the cards and promised they would be sent out, as soon as the mail brought him a new supply of stamps from the 'continent' as he called it.
Tendering back to the ship just got us there before pretty stiff winds flowing from the high mountains and funneling into the sea through the precipitous valleys whipped the little bay into a lively chop covered with white-caps and chasing little curtains of spray across the surface.
Everyone would have loved to remain another day. A delightful spot, not yet discovered by commercial tourist interest, so the atmosphere is that of an outpost almost forgotten by the rest of the world.
